The Way of Caine ,The Warcaster Chronicl - By Miles Holmes Page 0,40

first man he’d tailed had wandered too far from the pack, and he’d put the man down for good, but there were a half dozen more he counted spread out over the rooftop of the large factory. Occasionally, they stepped within the up-cast light of large skylights across the roof, allowing him a better glimpse of them. No less than a motley crew of dog-faced cutthroats by his estimation. There had been no sign of the rumored sniper, Zeke. Whoever was up here, he’d get to them. He had no intention of leaving guns on high once he got to work below.

Over a length of oversized ductwork, he saw a silhouette shuffling in the dark. “Louden? Where you at lad? You don’t want to piss off Zeke now do you?” Caine crouched low, and watched the shadow pass by. The man was armed with a basic long rifle, like the first had been. Across the way, he saw another pair of thugs over the largest skylight on the roof. They were talking, and staring down at the proceedings below.

An idea struck him.

The skylight they stood over had large glass panes he could open. That was his entrance, and the rafters within should give him a commanding view of things. Patiently, Caine waited for the man nearest him to get closer, and flipped a Spellstorm around in his hand. He loathed the idea of using his beautiful Spellstorm as a simple blackjack, but until he had eyes on the target, there was no sense in causing a commotion. The man drew closer in the darkness. Caine lunged.

Caine drew near the skylight, checking each corner of the roof as he went. To all appearances, the roof was his now. Just the same, he couldn’t shake the notion he was being watched. The thought was interrupted by a murmur by his feet, and a feeble hand reaching for his ankle.

“Easy now, chum,” he whispered.

Another strike with a Spellstorm turned club and the man fell silent. A second later, Caine stepped to the skylight and peered down. He saw large copper vats along one side, crates stacked three stories high on another. There were catwalks crisscrossed to the rafters, and circular gantries around the vats. There, in the center of the place, he saw twenty men in a loose circle around three wagons. The wagons looked exactly like the one he’d seen before. From what he could make out, not one of the men down there was a trollkin. No McCoy, no Zeke, he thought. Caine wondered if Kreel wasn’t as connected as he thought he was. Maybe it didn’t matter.

His target was down there, sure as sure could be.

On the factory floor, Thaddeus Montague, royal treasurer to King Rynnard himself stood out from the rogues’ gallery around him like a sore thumb. A slightly built and bespectacled man of early middle age, he nervously held a ledger while the others around him clutched at hand cannons. Moving from crate to crate and marking his ledger as he did, he opened each, revealing a breathtaking horde of gold. Caine looked at the man, lining him up along the iron sights of both Spellstorms. It could all be over so quickly. Just a pull of the trigger and the man’s brainpan would burst onto the floor, here and now.

Aye, but that is only half of the thing, he thought with a sigh.

Rebald had sent him here to find out what was in Montague’s head before he emptied it. With another look about the place, he sighed and re-holstered the Spellstorm. Even for him, a one man assault into the hornet’s nest below seemed near suicide. All in all, there were just too many angles, and too many exits. He had no idea how many men were in that tangle, and where the high priced talent was, if it was here at all.

Meanwhile, of course, his target was right in the middle of it.

Reluctantly, he slid in through the opened glass pane, and stepped down onto the crisscrossing network of rusting iron rafters to get a closer look. Carefully, he tested his weight on the old frame and then started to climb across it. Below, no one noticed. At least he’d have the element of surprise.

He didn’t hear the whistle of displaced air until it was too late.

Caine’s shoulder was on fire and with it his head. The shock of an impact sent him keeling over, just as he was within arm’s reach of the gantry.