Crime

Razha kicks the door open, with splinters flying from the rotten wood around the latch. She and Nadia step inside, a grey scarf and a grey bandana covering their faces. Razha points her loaded rifle, with its sword bayonet attached, at the old man counting scrip behind the counter. Nadia backs her up with her pistol.

“K.R.A! This is a robbery! Hands behind your head you traitor!” Razha says, taking a few steps forward.

He puts his hands on his head, his eyes wide with fear and welling with tears. He tries to speak through quivering lips, but can’t get a word out. Nadia keeps her gun trained on the shopkeeper, but her eyes are on the door to the back as she hears the creak of the handle turning. It swings open, and a man enters--tall, healthy and muscular, in worker’s clothes but clearly not eating what the workers are. He raises his gun, aiming at Razha. Nadia puts his heart in her sights.

“Drop your weapons!” the mercenary says.

Razha glances over at him. “Unfortunate,” she says. “One gun there, two guns here. You can kill one of us, but then you die, and a minute later, so does he.”

“You'll still be dead,” he says.

“Oh sure, do you think that scares us?” Nadia says.

“How about you?” Razha’s dark eyes stare deep into the wide blue eyes of the old shopkeeper. She can see his will breaking under her stare. “You see, this is no ordinary gun. It’s an alchemical weapon, maybe you’ve heard what they can do. Who knows what I’ve loaded it with? Could be you get a bullet in the head and it’s over just like that. Could find yourself on fire instead, spend your last minute screaming as your skin melts off. Want to roll that die?”

“Lower it! Lower it!” he says to his hired man.

“But--”

“Don't be a fool, we're outgunned.”

He lowers his gun, then starts to raise it again. “I ain’t scared of no woman!”

Before he can take aim at Razha again, Nadia pulls her trigger. White smoke fills the room and he falls to the floor with a red hole in his chest. As his body slumps over, his gun goes off. The bullet flies between Razha and Nadia and leaves a hole in the wall next to the doorway.

The old man puts his trembling hands on his head and pleads, “Take what you want! I won't resist!”

Razha runs for the counter, braces herself on one hand and leaps over it. She punches him in the face, knocking him to the floor. “I know you won't, you coward! All you know how to do is lick boots.” She steps on his chest and leans in with all her weight as he gasps for breath and clutches at her black boot. “Heard all about you, Einin. How many children starved so you could turn a profit? You were a worker once, you damned traitor!”

“Oh just kill the man, Razha! You get so worked up,” Nadia says, reloading her pistol.

“Next life, join the fucking union!” She thrusts the point of her bayonet into his throat and holds down his writhing body with her boot as he bleeds out in seconds.

“To the back!” Nadia says, running to the open door. They stick their guns through and sweep their barrels across the storeroom, but find nobody else inside.

“Clear!” Nadia says.

“Let’s go,” Razha says. “You keep eyes on the road and I’ll go check on the others.” She runs out the front door and around to the back of the little wooden building.

The medics, Filla and Kurri, are waiting by the wagon. The katal has been offloaded and the back is open, with a wide plank extended as a ramp. Zal is working on the padlock on the back door with their picks.

“Time’s up, Zal,” Razha says.

“Gotta pick it the old fashioned way, then.” They step to the side of it and their left hand pulls their pistol out of their jacket, a slender weapon with a silver-colored octagonal barrel. Their finger pulls back the hammer in front of the trigger.

“Cover!” Razha says looking at the medics. They duck behind the cart and Razha slips around the corner of the shop. She hears the gunshot and runs back around. The lock and the clasp are only twisted scrap metal on the ground once the smoke clears, and the door swings open as Zal flips up the chamber of their gun to reload it. Razha and Krev and the medics run inside and begin the load out.

“Over here!” Krev says, pulling over a stacked barrel. “Rice!” Together, they roll the barrel outside and up the ramp into the cart. Then they go back for the next one. While they’re bringing the third barrel to the cart, Nadia runs around behind the warehouse.

“Sentinels on the road! Time to move!” Nadia says.

“Damn! I didn’t think they were so close by.” Razha runs around the side of the building and sees four drakes in the distance, just around the curve out of the west end of town. She raises her rifle, but they are too far out of her range.

Krev jumps up and climbs into the driver's seat and takes the reins. The drakes look about anxiously. Zal helps Kurri roll up the third barrel, pulls up the ramp, and closes the back rail of the cart just as Krev snaps the reigns and the drakes take off in a swift walk.

Razha runs out into the courtyard and aims for the sents. She fires just as the cart passes behind her, then jumps up on it, catching one of the rails with one hand. Nadia takes her other hand by the wrist and helps pull her up as the drakes pick up speed. Her bullet leaves a cloud of dust on the dirt road but the sents ride out of it unharmed. She pulls the chamber lever up and reaches for a red vial from her bandolier.

They reach the bridge of green paint and rusted iron just as the four sentinels enter the west end of town. Their brown drakes break into a charge as Krev’s go to a full run. The sents fire a volley with their pistols. They miss by a wide margin, but the blue drake shakes its head from side to side and starts veering from the path.

“It's okay girl, it's okay! Just run!” Krev says, guiding her back with the reins. They are barreling down the road as fast as the strong young drakes can run in the noon heat of a clear spring day. Behind, the sentinels affix their reigns to hooks on their belts and pour powder into their guns. They have breech-loaders now too, even out here, so they will fire just as fast as she and her comrades can.

Razha fires. As the hammer strikes the cap below the chamber, red sparks fly from the action, and a ball of fire erupts from the black barrel. But the shaking of the cart causes her shot to veer too high, and the flames merely singe the top of a sentinel’s helmet before dissipating into a cloud of white smoke.

Nadia takes a shot and grazes the head of a sentinel, knocking his black helmet off but leaving him unharmed. They ride out beyond Korben as the sentinels shut the chambers on their guns and the first of them takes aim.

“Down!” Razha says.

“We need some maneuvers, Krev!” Zal says.

The cart swings to the left as the sentinel fires, and he misses his shot. The second fires and strikes the cart, blowing off a board from the left rail. The next two shots fly over their heads. Zal lifts their head up to fire. They hit a sentinel in the right arm. His gun tumbles down the road behind him.

Razha and Nadia reload, but while Nadia reaches for a bullet, Razha takes a vial of translucent white powder and pours a little down the chamber, then stuffs a ball of wax down. Zal pushes a bullet into their chamber, and readies their next shot with Nadia, but Razha signs for them to wait. She pulls a copper percussion cap from the compartment beside the white powder vial--inscribed with the rune of Zuul, guardian of air--and stuffs it on the nipple of the gun, then slams the lever shut.

They ride alongside the Black River until the intersection of snakebite road, and Krev takes the turn so hard the right wheel of the cart lifts off the ground. The sentinels are gaining on them as their drakes round the turn with ease. The three sents still armed have reloaded, and they take aim.

But as Razha pulls her trigger, a burst of wind erupts from the barrel, so powerful it picks up a drake and topples it on its back, blowing its rider off. He lands on his head, and his neck snaps under the full weight of his body, leaving his head hanging at an angle as his body tumbles over. The other two sentinels fire their shots, but the edge of the gale of wind blows their aim astray.

Then Zal and Nadia fire. Nadia strikes the one without a helmet, and suddenly he also has no head to wear one. Zal hits the other in the leg, and wounds his drake. He falls from his mount, tangled up in the reins, and the beast drags him along behind it as it runs aimlessly away, smearing blood on the dirt road. The remaining officer, his hand wounded and his weapon gone, pulls back on his reins with his good hand and brings his mount to a halt. The cart speeds up the road, rounds a turn, and escapes.

“Hel yeah, y’all!” Zal said as they and Razha embrace. Then Nadia grabs Razha by the back of her skull and kisses her.

“K! R! A!” Razha shouts.

“Strike as one!” her comrades answer.

As Razha pulls her hand off of Nadia’s arm she notices it has turned red. “Nadia, you’re bleeding.”

She turns her arm to examine a gash just below her shoulder. “I must have been hit by some of the cart shrapnel.”

“Medic,” Razha says. Kurri is closest. He opens his bag and pulls some gauze from a pocket inside.

“No big deal, but tell us if there is any sign of infection, okay?” Kurri says.

“Yes,” Nadia says as he wraps her arm in white cloth.

Razha sits down, leaning against one of the stolen barrels. “Good haul,” she says.

“Rice and beans, enough to last Korben a while!” Krev says.

“The sents will think we stole it for ourselves,” Zal says. “Now we’ll just have someone sneak it back into town and distribute it a little more fairly than Einin planned on.”

“Take it to the safehouse for now, Krev,” Razha says.

“You got it,” he says.