Two hours later, after the rest of those in the inn were fast asleep, the six men crouched in the shadows of a warehouse along the docks. Few vessels showed any sign of activity. The ship they sought was dark and, thankfully, still moored.

“Stick to the plan, stay quiet and keep low,” Elas said, his voice quiet, just above a whisper, which tended to carry further on the wind than a low voice. “Be ready with that ship when Rost and I retrieve the package. I want us moving as soon as we’re aboard.”

“Sir, how will we know you’re coming?” asked Hoight, the newest member of the team.

“You’ll know, private,” Elas said. Rost chuckled. The rest of the men looked uncomfortable, but nodded agreement. “When we’re aboard, we make straight for Freehaven to meet our contact. I’ll see you all soon. For Traerheim.”

“For Traerheim,” the soldiers said in unison, fists to chests in salute to their captain.

“We’ll see you on the water.”

Rost leered at them in the faint torchlight as he followed his friend off into the darkness.

“You need to stop being so hard on the men, Rost,” Elas said as they slipped into an alleyway between two warehouses.

“It’s the only way I know how to be, sir,” Rost said with mock gravity.

“According to our informants, the target is two buildings that way,” Elas said, pointing in the opposite direction of their nearly-acquired transportation. “We’re going to be cutting this one close.”

“That’s the best way to cut it, sir,” Rost said, then froze as he spotted something out of Elas’s vision. “Elas we may have a problem.”

The lack of formality alarmed Elas. Not because he particularly cared for titles, but because Rost only used his first name under very dire circumstances. Elas inched closer to the edge of the alley and peered around the corner.

“Shit.” 

Two ranks of soldiers had formed up outside of the warehouse in question. Their black armor would render them nearly invisible on any other night. Elas counted his blessings that both moons were at nearly full light, the larger of the two suspended directly above them like a toy above a child’s crib. The men held guns rather than swords, though they were shorter of barrel and more compact that those carried by the guards at the gate. The metal had been burnished and the wood darkened to match the uniforms and armor. Elas turned to Rost and motioned up to the roof. Rost nodded and the two began to climb.

Elas gazed back toward the ship his men had boarded. A quick flash of light in the window of the aft cabin caught his eye. He nodded reassurance to himself and drew his dirk from its sheath on his boot.

“The men have the ship, then,” Rost said behind him in the darkness.

“Let’s get this over with,” Elas said. “Once we’re inside, you set the charges and I’ll retrieve whatever it is we’re here to get.”

“This is going to be fun, sir, you should smile a bit more,” Rost said, his casual sarcasm layered over concern.

Elas chuckled as he picked his way across the roof of the warehouse. The canvas pads on his boots didn’t provide as much grip, but their sound dampening made up for that. The warehouses were simply enough to walk across, but the wind blowing in from the harbor necessitated them to move more carefully along the roofs. Elas was so focused on his balance that he nearly ran into the guard standing at the edge of the building.
“Damn,” Elas cursed aloud.

“Ey, who are you?” the guard asked, startled by the bump in the darkness. His attention had been on his comrades forming up below.

“Sorry about this,” Elas said.

He jammed the dirk up under the man’s breast bone. The blade sunk in to the hilt. Rost reach over Elas’s shoulder and clamped a gloved hand down on the man’s mouth as he tried to scream. Elas twist the blade and pushed up once more.

“Change of plans, Rost,” Elas said as the pushed the body further back on the roof, away from the edge. “Give me the charges and take his post. If they see him gone, we’ll be made for certain. Cover your mouth and nose and put on his helm. When the charges go off, kill as many as you can and cover me on my way out. If I don’t come out or I’m stopped, get back to the ship.”

“With all due respect, sir, I’m not leavi-”

“That’s an order,” Elas said. He clapped a hand on his sergeant’s shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Bury the bastards, sir,” Rost said after a moment and handed Elas the charges on his bandolier.

“That’s the plan,” Elas said as he slipped the charges and detonator into his waist pouch.

He walked back onto the roof a few feet. The gap between buildings was only a few feet but Elas didn’t want to chance the jump with the canvas on his shoes. His caution was warranted, as he leaped. He cleared the gap easily, but the cloth on his boots betray his footing on the slick rooftop. The extra foot of clearance saved him from a twenty foot fall to the wharf below. The big bone in his left arm cracked as he hit roof.

Elas grunted and his vision blurred. Rost started toward him, all thoughts of his pantomime gone, but Elas stayed his sergeant with his good hand. He pushed himself up and carefully applied pressure along his arm.

“Not fully broken,” he said to himself. “That’s going to hurt like hell to run with, though.” 

He climbed to his feet, carefully not using the injured arm, and gave Rost a thumb up with his good hand. 

“Thank the gods it wasn’t the other hand,” he mumbled as he turned to continue.

He negotiated his way toward the back of the warehouse, on the opposite end of the building from the wharf. The trap door was right where the plans had said it would be. Elas was actually surprised to find it, given the sources who had procured the building plans for them. The Thieves Clan could get you anything you wanted, for the right price, but Elas still didn’t trust information from a man who stole and deceived for a living.

The door was built into the roof on a slide, a wonderful design that provided far less noise than drawing open a large door that would slam back down. Elas counted himself fortunate that the door was relatively easy to draw one-handed. A staircase led down into the warehouse. After watching the hallway a moment, Elas crept down the stars. He pulled the door shut behind him and inched down the hallway, dirk in hand.

The hallway was deserted, as were the adjoining hallways he reached. That matched up with the intelligence. The facility was a processing and research division within the Varestan military, set up since the coup and run without Royal purview. The thief in charge of intelligence gathering said the work was primarily done during the day to mask any noise or the comings and goings of the researchers. Evidently the Varestans didn’t trust the other denizens of Solveim. From what Elas had seen the past day, they were right not to.

Another staircase led further down into the warehouse, to an open platform and walkway that gave out over the warehouse floor. Tables loaded with assortments of armor and weapons littered the ground floor. Three large vats sat against the far wall surrounded by thick piles of canvas sacks filled with sand. Elas patted the dwarven charges on his bandolier.

Bags filled with sand and rock won’t stand up to this, but they’ll make for an interesting exit, he thought as he descended the next staircase to the ground floor.

Dwarven charges were an engineering marvel. Explosives that were easy to carry and safe transport, but which detonated with immense power. The gift of these weapons to humans was rare in the history of the Kingdom and only done with immense caution. That they had agreed to this request spoke to his father, Lord Eric’s diplomacy. His elder sister, Lady Ellerina, was by all reports her father’s daughter and Elas had heard it was she who convinced the dwarven council of the dire need for their technology.

Elas placed the charges against the tanks, facing out into the room. The more they destroyed, the better. The trigger for the explosives was the most incredible part. Magic, something only the dwarves and elves truly knew how to wield, was imbued into the charges and connected to a small vial. If the vial were crushed, the charges would explode. 

The engineers back in Traerheim had theorized that the magic simply held the forces at bay, as if the charges were the infancy of the explosion and that the magic was some sort of container, like a jar or a bottle. Elas knew enough to safely handle them. They worked and they would do the job, that was all he cared about.

Elas scanned the room. Long tables were stacked with various parts for the construction of various types of weapons, mostly rifles from what he could see, but Elas had been told by his superiors the prototype he was to retrieve would be locked away securely. 

“There,” he said to no one in particular.

A room built out of the wall of the warehouse was the only separated area on the ground floor. Iron doors sat on reinforced hinges. The walls were solid, likely built by some of the men now reinforcing the city walls. Elas inspected the locks. Serascon locks were the finest in the kingdom and whoever had done this had taken care to make a lock he couldn’t pick. Certainly not with a broken arm. Elas reaching into a pocket on his battle webbing and drew out a small metal vial with a needle on the end.

Elas hadn’t practiced any form of magic in years. His time serving in the Solana Arcanum Force had been brief. He hadn’t quite had the knack required to continue his training in the elite magical brigade of the kingdom’s military. Elas had never been very comfortable with their methods either. Injecting arcanium, a mineral with magical properties, into one’s arm granted incredible power, abilities to control the elements and even the very earth itself. But the cost was great for those who practiced magic and few lived to old age or had families.

“Gods, but I don’t miss this one bit,” Elas said. “Nothing for it, though.”

He pressed the needle into the vein at the base of his left elbow. The pain was brief, but stronger than usual due to the swelling in his broken arm. Then the familiar feeling crept through his body, heat like a roaring fire filling him. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped down on to the wooden floor. Elas focused the power coursing through his body and let his mental senses reach outward.

No one in the vicinity, he thought as he probed the edges of the building with his mind. 

Arcanium reacted differently depending on the user. Elas had been originally selected to enter the SAF’s academy as a Support Mage. Where Combat Mages could summon balls of fire or rain down sleet on enemy baggage trains, support mages would scry enemy movements, calm frantic horses or, in this case, pick complicated locks no man could do with natural talents alone.

The lock clicked open after only a few moments of probing. Despite their security measures, the Varestans didn’t seem to expect one or two assailants to sneak in. Pride, perhaps, or simply neglect in covering every possible contingency. Elas slipped inside the room and pulled the door gently closed behind. The room was dark for only a moment, as a flame sparked to life in a man’s open palm.

“Shit.”

“Welcome, Captain.” 

It was the Varestan officer they had encountered at Wallace’s. He sat in a chair, his hands resting on a small table. Two Varestan soldiers stood behind him, dressed in the same black uniform and armor as the men outside. Elas glanced behind him. Even through the small crack in the door, he could see several others outside the door.

“I take it there is no prototype here for me, then?” Elas said aloud.

“Well, it wouldn’t be much of a trap if we let you sneak in and steal our property. There is a prototype, your informant was correct on that,” he said. 

He hefted a rifle leaning against the table beside him and laid it down for Elas to see. The design was unlike anything Elas had ever seen. Shorter than any rifle he had ever seen, it had a strange elliptical grip running behind the trigger and into the stock. 

“Not very smart, admitting you’ve got something here,” Elas said.

“Two things, technically,” the man said. He held out a hand full of bullets, the tips painted in various colors. He pushed them, one by one, into the side of the rifle’s chamber. He cranked the handle below the butt forward a quarter rotation and then back. “Not that it matters much, you’ll be dead before you get these back to your father or his doomed rebellion.”

“Of course,” Elas said with a forced smile.

“Now then, tell us where the rest of your men are and we’ll get this business over with. Traerheim and its treacherous Duke need to be taught a lesson.”

“I’m flattered they sent one of the King’s Own, or should I say the Duke’s Own. I hadn’t thought myself that important,” Elas replied with a sly smile.

“I requested the honor. I like to get to know traitors before I watch them burn.”

Elas spat at the man and had the fortune to hit his face. Executions of traitors usually involved hanging, but some preferred the long-abandoned practice of burning the accused alive.

“The only traitors in this city are those who’ve killed our king and taken his throne,” Elas said.

“I’ll be sure to set you afire last,” the man said. He wiped Elas’s spittle off his face, onto the tunic of the guard to his left.  “So you can watch each and every one of your men suffer before you leave this world.”

“I have one question, before you take me away.”

“What?”

“Do you know what this is?” Elas asked. He held held his hand up, holding the dwarven detonator vial between his thumb and forefinger. The two soldiers raised their rifles, cranking the arms forward as the man at the table had.

“Committing suicide will not save your friends,” the man at the table said. “We’ll find them all and I will personally disembowel each of them while they burn, while I tell the world how you were too much of a coward to die with your men, that you had to dishonor your kin, treacherous as they may be, with poison.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘No’.”

Elas dropped the vial on the hard wooden floor. It shattered and emitted a piercing ring. He dove forward and grabbed the table, pushing it and tipping it over behind himself as a shield. The force of his dive overturned the knight’s chair and the man sprawled out across the floor between his guards. The shockwave of the detonation blew the door to the room in off its hinges. The separated door spun through the room, decapitating the Varestan guard on the right who hadn’t the foresight to take cover.

The other guard rolled behind his superior. Shrapnel sailed past Elas as debris from the warehouse flew through the open doorway. A cry from behind him was more assurance that there was at least one more casualty.  A blistering heat wave passed over his head, singeing the hairs on the back of his neck. His ears rang from the sound of the explosions, his ears ringing louder than the tone of the detonator. After a moment he glanced back.

The knight lay in a pool of blood that spread out from behind his left shoulder. A plank, likely from the wall of the room, protruded from his chest, just below his heart. The man coughed blood as he struggled for his sword. Elas stood and kicked the weapon aside. He leveled his on blade on the man.

“This is a warning, from Lord Eric of Traerheim,” Elas said, his voice even and his words sharp. “Withdraw from the royal city. Because if you don’t, the full force of Traerheim shall descend upon you like a storm from which you will never escape.”

“You are bold, Captain,” the knight said with a struggle. Blood leaked out between the corners of his mouth. “When my father finds me dead and you captured by my men outside, there will be war, but it will see the end of your beloved Traerheim and the unification of the Three Duchies under one banner, one true Kingdom.”

Elas’s sword wavered over the Varestan’s neck. Only now did he notice the man’s physical features. The man smiled. Dark green eyes, like a forest at night. Strawberry-blond hair cut short and shaved on the sides above his ears. A red mustache, barely evident on his upper lip. Elas suddenly realized who his opponent was.

“You’re Baron Ayvo Veras, then, I take it?”

“Good… Captain….” Ayvo gasped. “Eldest son to… Lord Saizer Veras. Now you have… forced his hand. My younger brother will ascend the… throne in my place. With only one heir… this war will start before your body is cold. You… killed… the heir… after all.”

Before Elas could reply, Ayvo lunge upward, driving the point of Elas’s sword through his throat, gripping the blade with both hands until the edges cut almost to the bone. He smiled at Elas, then gurgled half a scream, his face a mask of terror, and died.

“Stop where you are,” a man shouted behind Elas. “Turn slowly and drop your sword.”

Elas did as the man bid. He released the sword, the handle bobbing slowly as the weight of the hilt pulled against Ayvo’s corpse and the blade’s point lodged inside it.

“You bastard!” the man shrieked. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

“I’ve killed a snake and a traitor to our Kingdom,” Elas said. Pain arced along his ribs. “I’ve done Solana a favor. Leave now or die.”

The man gaped, his expression almost comical despite the destruction and death that surrounded them. After a moment, he regained his composure.

“You may have killed Ayvo, but you’ll not escape Lord Veras’s justice,” he said, drawing his sword as he picked his way over the bodies and wreckage. “You may be a Loyalist, but I’ll give you a soldier’s death all the same, one fighting man to another.”

“That is kind of you, but I’m afraid I don’t have time for it,” Elas said.

He snatched his sword out of Ayvo’s body with barely enough time to mount a block on the man’s first attack. His opponent lashed out again, this time with a side thrust at Elas’s bad arm. Both men knew nothing could prevent the second strike. Steel cut flesh and Elas screamed. He spun away, saving his arm from dismemberment. He tripped over the body of a dead soldier and sprawled out on the floor. His sword slipped from his grip and slid away out of arm’s reach.

“Stop fighting, and I’ll give you that clean death,” his opponent said. He flicked Elas’s blood from his blade. “Don’t refuse the inevitable. Face it like a soldier and accept your fate.”

“Step away from him or I blow your fucking head off, Varestan.”

Rost appeared out of the smoke. He carried a Varestan short rifle in his right hand and his dirk in the his left. The blade was held in a stabbing grip, fist and forearm parallel to his chest, so as to let the rifle’s foregrip rest on his wrist.

That’s neat. We’ll have to make that a standard tactic if we survive this, Elas thought, his mind wandering from heat and injury.

“I can skewer him faster than you can reach me and if you miss with that weapon, your man is dead anyway,” the soldier said, inching toward Elas.

“You’re right, of course,” Rost said, mock exasperation in his tone. “I suppose it’s a good thing I don’t miss.”

The crack of the rifle shot echoed through the warehouse. The round pierced the side of the man’s throat. He stumbled back from the force of the shot, screaming silently as he tried to staunch the flow of blood pouring from his throat.

“Take your own advice and die with some dignity, Varestan,” Rost said as he approached the wounded soldier.

Rost approached slowly, wary of the sword that still wavered close to Elas. The Varestan stared back at him. Lips peeled back over teeth and the man lunged with his final bit of strength. Rost stepped sideways and the sword passed harmlessly by. Reversing his grip on the rifle, he slammed the butt of the weapon into the Varestan soldier’s chest. The blow took the wind out of the man, who spun away from the force of the blow, collapsing on the charred floorboards. After a few moments of heaving, the soldier’s body went still, his blood running out into a pool on the charred floorboards.

“Time to leave, sir,” Rost said, heaving Elas up to his feet.

“Get out of here, Sergeant. I’m a mess and I’ll only slow you down.”

“Not an option, sir, how would I explain that to your father and sister?”

“The same way you’ll report Gorsch and the others, Sergeant. Now, I can hold them off a few minutes for you.”

“Not happening, so stop asking. You’re not exactly in a position to do anything about it.”

“Drop me, that’s an order.”

“With all due respect, sir, fuck off. I’m not leaving you to the mercies of Veras’s men, let alone the tender care of the Arcanum Forces. You can court martial me at home or throw me overboard on our way to Freehaven, but I am not leaving here. Now let’s go!”

“Wait!” Elas half shouted. “Get that rifle off of Ayvo. And grab two sacks of those bullets. This will all be for naught if we don’t get this back to Traerheim.”

Rost pried Ayvo’s fingers open and slipped the rifle over one shoulder and slipped two back of ammunition into the pockets of his jacket. Then he half-dragged his captain out of the warehouse, giving Elas a better grasp on the situation. The rest of his men stood at the ready, Varestan rifles in-hand, liberated from some of the many bodies that now littered the docks.

“Gods above, did you kill the entire company?” Elas asked, staring at the carnage along the docks.

Bodies lay everywhere about the area in front of the warehouse, many missing limbs. Some were victims of the blast while others lay in pools of blood with ragged holes punched through bodies or necks. Most lay riddled with bullet holes or bleeding across the docks with slit throats.

“Hoight’s fault, sir,” Rost said. 

“We followed your orders, sir,” Hoight said. “But when the warehouse went up, I couldn’t just sit there. We hit them before they even had time to organize a team to get inside the warehouse. If you want me out when we get home, I’ll submit to whatever punishment you deem appropriate, but I stand by my actions.”

“Forget the report, help me with the Captain,” Rost said.

Together, they carried Elas to the ship. Rex pushed down the gangplank from his position on the deck. Rost and Hoight lay Elas down on the board and pushed it up over the side of the ship. Hoight leaped aboard nimbly while Rost clambered over the gunwale. The younger soldier climbed the forecastle and raised one of the strange rifles recovered from outside the warehouse, scanning the docks for any remaining threats while the rest of the crew clambered up a rope ladder dropped for them.

“Get underway, I want us out of the harbor before anyone else shows up,” Rost said. “Anyone following us?”

“Not that I can see, Sergeant,” Hoight replied. 

Then he drew a sharp breath.

“Shit! Get down!”

Rost pushed Hoight aside as a blast of fire arched up from a cloaked figure on the docks. It struck Rost, launching him off the forecastle onto the deck in a smoldering heap.

Hoight rolled to the gunwale and cracked off a shot at the source of the fireball. The round slammed into the man square in the chest, knocking him backwards off the dock into the cold waters of the harbor. Globes of fire shot out in all directions as the mage’s power unleashed itself while he thrashed in the water. Then there was a blinding flash, followed by a blast of heat and an accompanying shockwave stronger than even the dwarven charges had produced.

Hoight recovered, shielding his eyes against the fading light. Two ships lay destroyed, sinking slowly into the harbor. The docks where the hooded figure had been standing were gone, obliterated by the blast from beneath. There was no body to be seen.

“Hoight! Rex! Someone help Rost, he needs attention now!” Elas shouted.

He slithered across the deck of the ship, his wounds forgotten in his rush to help his friend. Rost lay still on the deck, crumpled like a doll absently thrown on a child’s bed before supper. The air smelled of a seared flesh and Elas wretched briefly as his men knelt beside him and turned over Rost.

“He’s out cold,” Rex said. “Arm looks broken, but the fire missed him. How, only the gods know, but he’ll make it.”

“Get him in the cabin and set the arm, the last thing we need is an amputation at sea,” Elas said. He grabbed the prototype rifle and took aim at the docks. “Time to see what we went to all this trouble for.”

BAM!

The the bullet cracked out of the barrel and slammed into the nearest man on the docks, who as on his knees after being blown away by the arcknight’s deadly crash into the harbor. The man rocked back from the shot. But what happened next caused Elas’s jaw to drop open. Ice bloomed out of the man’s back, hunks of it shattering and spraying into the men behind. Dozens fell screaming as foot-long icicles hammered them to the ground. Hoight watched the onslaught, then looked at Elas and the rifle in his hands.

“Gods above and below, that was one bullet?” he murmured. “How the hells did you do that?”

“I have no idea, private,” Elas said. He cranked another round into the chamber of the rifle, but no more pursuit was forthcoming as the ship slipped the dock and headed for the harbor. “Get aloft and let me know if anyone follows. We’ve got a three day sail to Freeport.”