The Way of Caine ,The Warcaster Chronicl - By Miles Holmes Page 0,29

stepping into the bubble of shimmering distortion. As he did, Caine saw the world around him take on a strange aspect. From this side of the umbrella, the world had somehow become muffled and even a little out of focus.

Slowly, stepping together, they began to walk into the clearing.

Caine saw the refuse heap ahead, only another dozen yards away. His skin crawled, and his breath came in shallow gasps. Though they had threaded the needle thus far, there were still dozens of men moving around him. They had wound a precarious path through the gaps in the light, pausing several times as soldiers passed around them. He cringed each time, but the umbrella had held. Another few yards gained.

Until.

A lone corpsman stepped into sight, walking behind a trash laden laborjack. As the lumbering metal beast unloaded its refuse, Caine saw the man reach for something in his service jacket. The laborjack turned about with a series of clockwork lurches, and stepped back the way it had come. The corpsman did not. Out came a silver flask, and with a sheepish look the way he had come, the man took a long pull.

Caine waited for the corpsman to leave, but he didn’t, his eyes roving about until they fixed directly on the space distorted by Ace’s umbrella. With another pull from his flask, his face twisted into a mask of bewilderment.

Caine internalized a curse. What now? Pull the man into the umbrella and cut his throat? What other choice did he have? Caine willed Ace forward, ready to strike. For his part, the corpsman stepped a pace closer, mouth agape. Caine drew his service knife and tensed.

The man suddenly looked with horror at his flask and tossed it to the ground. He whirled about and ran back to his crew with a whimper. Caine followed Ace, stepping past the slowly draining flask.

At last, the refuse heap was theirs. Eyeing the culvert, he ushered his warjack within. Ace easily pushed aside rusted bars, and in a moment its bulk was hidden from sight.

“Wait here until I get back. This shouldn’t take long.”

Caine began to climb.

Caine shimmied from the drainpipe to a toothing stone, and from there reached across to grasp the slit of a murder hole. Safe from the light of the torches below, he was nevertheless not out of danger yet. Another story above, sentries marched along the ramparts. He could hear their chatter and smell the smoke of their pipes. He concentrated, looking to the next murder hole. It was too far to reach, at least by climbing alone. Bending space around him, he pictured his hand gripping it. An instant later, so it was. He braced himself in his new position and looked for the next handhold. An adjacent loop hole was in reach, and he slid slowly across, then grabbed another drainpipe. Shimmying a few more feet up, he saw the roof of a parapet just over the heads of the sentries. Yards above, perhaps, but close enough for him. He caught his breath a moment, and gathered his focus before risking another flash forward.

There.

In an instant, he found himself upon the eaves of the parapet. He paused to catch his breath, watching the sentries below like a spider from its web. Sure that they had not seen his passing, he crawled the rest of the way to the summit of the parapet. The view of the city from this height was spectacular. He peered over the rooftops below, recalling his directions from Rebald. There was a little pub down the south side, not far from here. He marked a path, and started slinking forward.

“Do y’see that!” a sentry shouted, somewhere below him. Caine spun around, clutching at a weather vane. He looked at the guardsman, expecting their eyes would meet. Instead, it was to the south woods the man pointed. Other sentries were gathering to his call. Caine followed their gaze out over the dark of the wilds. He saw the rolling hills, woods, even the swamps of Cygnar to the south. He did not, however, see what the fuss was over.

He was about to turn back to the city when a flash of pyrotechnics lit the night sky in the distant south. Then another, and another. There was no mistaking cannon fire, even from this distance. It was a battle. Squinting to spot where they were coming from, a sick feeling hit him in the pit of his stomach.

“Bollocks. I’ve got to go back,” he whispered.

With