Iron Quill (The Message) - The Glorious Guild Rifles

[admiralvorkraft]

The Glorious Guild Rifles

1750 words

Ingredients used: All

As always, I welcome and encourage any questions, comments, or critiques.

The cold tore at his throat like fingernails as Flynn darted up the rise and slid into the bowl of a tree. There were screams up ahead but he couldn’t see anything through the snow whipped forest. He raised a fist to signal his sergeant back on the road and then braced his long rifle against the tree. The crack of the bolt was satisfyingly sharp in the brittle air, and Flynn grinned at the feeling of one long bullet locking into place even as the cold metal of the lever burnt his fingertips.

 

“Hold the line!” The Sergeant screamed, “We’ve got company, one o’clock through 3 o’clock by the road. Four, no five. Hold fire, raptor flying.”

 

Flynn blinked, tried not to roll his eyes. The Sergeant was a fat, blustery man with more friends than tactical sense, and it was his incompetence that got the squad assigned to shit show jobs like this one.

 

Join the riflemen they said, fight from behind nice barricades with pretty nurses bringing you tea, Flynn thinks, sure. There was no way the mail carriage merited a full escort on its four day runs unless the higher ups wanted a certain Sergeant Baskell safely out of Malifaux City as much as possible.

 

The cries of the diving raptor broke him from his reverie, but there were no answering screams. And what the hell happened to Blackjack? The pathfinder was a smart man, a coward, and a hell of a tracker, the kind of man that comes home from a mission even if the rest of the squad ends up as so much Gremlin stew.

 

“Pick your targets and take them down!” The Sergeant shouted.

 

I’d love to, only I can’t see a bleeding thing. Flashes of gunfire illuminated the hill to his right. The road was built into a gully and the hills loomed on either side of it like the knees of sleeping giants, it was good mining country, and a great place for an ambush.

 

Flynn reached over his shoulder for his brace and stabbed it into the ground, he flipped the cover up on his rifle’s sight and cradled the gun into the brace. For once I’m on the support flank, time to make that training count.

 

Through the sight he could make out pale shadows moving through the trees, but he couldn’t tell if they wore the long coats of his fellow riflemen, or it was something else that shrouded their figures. Not for the first time he wished that he had Sergeant Baskell’s clockwork telescope. Or maybe the bastard could reach for his axe on occasion instead…

 

Then the wind shifted around one of the figures, and for a second he could see her clearly. A tanned hide cloak fluttered about her bare shoulders, and crystals congealed around her raised fingers. Flynn took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and shot her through the head.

 

Well what did you do that for? He asked himself, Now they know you’re over here, may as well have sent up a flare, “Here crouches a stupid bastard.” He snapped open the bolt on his rifle, and the spent cartridge spat out the side, to steam in the snow.

 

But for a long minute nothing came his way. Flynn concentrated on not freezing his eyeball to the metal rim of his sight, and tracked the combat on the other hill, unable to get another clear shot. Pillars of ice shattered trees, and the sounds of gunfire and screams mingled together into one long drone.

 

“That’s right,” Baskell screamed, standing safely at the back of the carriage with his precious Austringer bodyguard, “Drive them back! Push forward! Move, move, move!”

 

Well that’s something at least. Flynn thought. He made sure his knife was loose in it’s sheath and shouldered his rifle. Picking his way up the slope he kept his ears peeled for the sounds of turning fortunes on the other flank. Getting his men over extended and killed was a favorite pass time of the Sergeant’s.

 

The carriage was a hundred yards back from a ridge when they were hit, and that ridge had hid their attackers. And if Baskell had been smart we’d have taken positions on top of it in the first place rather than… But of course the Sergeant hadn’t wanted his men too far away for him to “coordinate.” Now the bodies of two riflemen decorated that eastern slope and there were only five to crest the ridge.

 

Flynn looked to his left for the first time since the shooting started. Carter was there somewhere, he can hear the shell casings at the ends of her dreadlocks bouncing and jangling as she moves up. And there’s Lance, further back down the hill, but crossing to reinforce whoever was still standing on their flank. The consummate professional, going to get himself killed. Better him than me.

 

Flynn tried not to think of the dead soldiers on the other hill, but their faces swam up unbidden. Carl who couldn’t bluff to save his life, Ty with her round face and ribbons who could punch harder and shoot straighter than anyone in the squad, fleet-footed Catherine who they all called Cat. He wondered which one was still alive. I hope for my pocketbook it’s Carl…

 

And then he was at the top of the ridge, he crouched behind a twisted spruce tree, and unlimbered his rifle.

 

There was silence and he could feel something moving. Somewhere a tree groaned and snapped and Flynn felt a hollow form in his stomach. Sounds weren’t moving right, the ground was shuddering. Something came flying through the air and landed ten feet from him.

It was a head. The flesh was purple with bruises and its mouth hung open in a final silent scream. Flynn couldn’t resist moving to get a better look at it. No one I know, we must have stumbled onto some argument already in progress. Just our luck.

 

The earth shuddered, and Flynn turned, raising his rifle. It was a dozen yards to the tree line, whatever threw the head had one hell of an arm. The pine trees danced with the heavy footfalls of something moving towards him. Flynn inhaled slowly, forcing his heart rate to slow, willing his hands to stop shaking. At this range he would have one shot. Better make it count.

 

Trees parted for the creature like water around rock. It was over twelve feet tall and three times as wide as any man. It’s skin was composed of crystalline jags of ice and its fists swung like pendulous boulders as it lumbered forward. Well, thought Flynn, it wasn’t a bad life. And he fired.

 

The bullet bit home in a shower of ice shards, but the thing didn’t notice. A fae smile found its way to Flynn’s lips as he tossed away his rifle, and drew his knife.

 

The knife was not Guild issue. It was an ugly thing, broad and flat like Flynn himself, but he’d never met a blade that felt quite so good in his hand as this one that he’d taken off a lizard-eyed mugger in the quarantine zone.

 

He met the monster’s charge half-way, building momentum from the slope of the hill. Leaping, he struck out, but one fist caught him in the gut, and he was flying through the air. He landed in blackness.

 

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He wakes up on a bed that feels like a slab of granite wrapped in tissue paper. He hurts too much to open his eyes.

 

“No use playing dead my friend,” a smooth baritone says from far away, “I’ve spent too much energy and medicine treating you to allow for that.”

 

Flynn forces his lids apart, just a crack, and a wave of nausea crashes over him. He gags but nothing comes up.

 

“I guess it’s for the best that I haven’t been able to get you to eat much.” The baritone is a well dressed man seated in a high backed chair. His black pants are held up with silver chased suspenders, and his shirt fits with the cut of wealth - even if his sleeves are presently rolled up to the elbows. A small pair of glasses perches on the end of the man’s nose, and his hair is held back by layers of pomade.

 

“Where am I?” Flynn gasps.

 

“Company hospital, ward C, township of Promise.”

 

“Never heard of it,” Flynn says.

 

“You wouldn’t have. Mining town, but nobody cares. We’re digging up iron ore, not soulstones.” The man spreads his hands in mock surrender.

 

“You’re doing alright for yourself,” Flynn says, sitting up.

 

The man laughs, “Sure I am, the Guild still needs iron doesn’t it? You don’t cast your guns out of soul dust.”

 

“Of course, but…”

 

“The owner always comes out ahead, boy,” his smile is snake-tight, “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

 

“You own the mine then?”

 

“Doctor Conrad Hibble,” the man said, extending a hand, “At your service.”

 

“And you pulled me out of the snow?” The man nods, “Why?” Flynn asks.

 

“I think that we can help each other,” the man says, “The rest of your squad is dead, and when you’re well enough to walk out of here I’m going to give you a choice; go back to the Guild and enjoy the questionable benefits of your sole survivor status, or stay with me. I need a new sheriff, and I can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.”

 

“Aren’t you even going to ask my name first?” Flynn asks.

 

“I’ve been by your bedside for the past six days, what makes you think you haven’t mentioned it.” The man rises and rolls down his sleeves, cuffing the ends with links that look like bone scarabs, “Rest awhile and think on my offer. I’ll send the nurse around to bring you tea.”

 

“Thank you,” Flynn says.

 

The man slips into a fur-lined coat, settles a bowler hat on his head, and walks out swinging a silver cane.

 

The nurse, when she appears, is young and clean, with legs that go on for hours. Compared to McMourning’s lot she’s conservatively dressed but Flynn still finds his breath catching in his throat as he watches her pour his tea. Join the riflemen they said… Well maybe.

 

But when she leaves him alone he's stuck with his father's bitter, drunken mantra, "Beware the honeyed words of a silver tongue."

[admiralvorkraft]

Sorry about the double post, can a mod remove this thread?

Thank you.