Bounty

Bount
y

Harper Alexander

Copyright © July 2011 by Harper Alexander

All rights reserved.

No part of this product may be reproduced,

in whole or in part,

without prior written permission from the author.

Cover images courtesy of:

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Cover art copyright © by Laura Gordon

1:
A Piece of the Wind

It’s happened again. The winds change, the masks change, and my fate dizzies itself changing courses accordingly. Once again, my captors have exchanged faces.

I am the fraying rope in a game of tug-of-war, the haunch of meat being fought over by the dogs. They do not seem to realize that if they tear me to pieces, there will be no profit. For the signs advertising my face do not offer t he leeway ‘dead or alive’.

No. They want me alive.

*

T
he raven feather ran dry of Godren’s blood just as he finished the brief entry, and he slid the quill back up his sleeve as he let the scrap of parchment be snatched out of his fingers by the wind. The journal he kept was in pieces everywhere, scattered to wherever the wind took them. He always made entries this way, drawing his own blood for ink whenever a scrap could be found to write on.

He could not really say why he devised them. If he didn’t keep them, they were of no use to him, and it wasn’t as if anyone else could ever accumulate every piece of a puzzle scattered to all corners of the earth. Besides, his handwriting was illegible anyway. Writing when you were shackled was a very difficult task indeed.

Through his wind-tousled dark hair, Godren watched the scrap of paper flutter away over the cobblestones, tumbling, tumbling – caught. From an alley, unless it was thin air, a cloaked figure appeared to catch the escaping entry in a significant, crushing fist, and Godren’s staggered eyes rose to the man’s face. It was masked, which was no surprise, and even without knowing him, Godren knew who he was.

Here we go again,
he thought.

His current captor, hunched wretchedly in his jostling seat, drove the wagon through the alley, oblivious to the danger that had appeared behind. This quest had been doomed for him from the beginning, Godren knew. While stealing Godren from his previous status of custody, the unfortunate man had acquired a nasty gash across his side, hence the wagon as an aid in transportation that was so impractical when it came to sneaking quickly away with such a valuable prize. Godren was shackled to the wagon to ensure his arrival at their destination, but that only put restrictions on his own actions. The actions of others became another story entirely.

With the crumpled missive still clenched in a gloved fist, the stealthy bounty hunter moved down the alley toward the trundling wagon. Though the driver’s senses were tempered from the toll of his draining wound, the little burrow pulling the contraption sensed the ill-intending newcomer. There must have been something about him that boded instantly ill in an equine’s mind, for the animal flinched and suddenly scrambled faster down the alley. Godren’s view of the advancing figure was jostled and misconstrued from the back of the wagon, but he could recognize the man lengthening his threatening stride. It wasn’t long before the wagon grazed the alley wall and erupted into a teetering, crashing disaster, and then the man was upon them.

By then, the wagon driver realized the danger. Hunched with pain, he swept out a useless dagger, but the new man knocked it away without a thought and clouted him across the side of his sweaty, feverish head. The injured driver crumpled, unconscious, and the masked figure turned to Godren. Quietly, Godren awaited the transfer of custody, immune to the procedure by now.

The bounty hunter ripped the shackles free of the cart with one burly heave, and dragged Godren away from the wagon toward his new destination. “Settle in, chump,” he said gruffly to his new captive. “You’ve got a new daddy.”

He only put a dozen steps behind him before a dagger flew into his chest and toppled him to the alley floor as swiftly as his recent victim.

Gods, this is war,
Godren thought.
How valuable
am
I?

From a broken old gap in the stone a ways up the alley wall, someone new dropped into the picture. He carried a second weapon, so Godren didn’t run. He wasn’t fond of knives flying into his back.

This new character, unmasked, sauntered up. He brought with him the undeniably familiar scent of roses, and Godren met his eyes knowingly. Their gaze went unbroken as the newcomer approached, their eyes alight with something wary, something respectful, and something else entirely more hostile.

“
Greetings, friend,” offered the new young man without affection.

“
It’s been too long,” Godren returned just as insincerely, remembering the last time he had been left with that rose scent lingering in his nostrils. Ossen always smelled like roses.

“
Has your existence been that miserable? You really wanted me to come back and finish the job sooner?” As Ossen spoke, he crouched at his victim’s side and rummaged through his pockets. He was rewarded with a handful of copper currency, a tarnished jingle, but, apparently not satisfied, he went to the unconscious wagon driver and tried him. After a moment, he triumphantly pulled out a small key. Continuing to where Godren stood glaring dully at him, he plunged the key into the lock of his shackles. With a little twist, they fell from Godren’s strangled wrists.

Godren looked at him, completely mistrusting. Ossen offered no explanation as he turned and began walking away down the alley, simple as that.

“
Why?” Godren called after him, utterly baffled by the deliverance from one of his own typically backstabbing kind. It was one man for himself in this criminal business, and Ossen had nearly killed him once before. He half expected the young criminal to whirl back around and hurl a knife at him any moment as the finishing touch, but he just continued leaving. This was extremely unorthodox.

Ossen turned on his heel, looking bored – and perhaps, just a little disappointed in himself for not finishing Godren off. “Mastodon,” he explained. “She wants to see you.” Then, with an annoyed look, he added, “Unfortunately, she wants to see you alive.”

Then he left, disappearing into the shadows that fell across the alley distance. A rosy fragrance lingered sweetly in his cold wake – his signature characteristic that was such a contradiction to his real character.

Godren stood there, feeling an uncanny prickle run through is blood. Mastodon wanted to see him? The name of the most dangerous woman in Raven City rang dauntingly in his ears. What could she want? And why, in the Gods’ names, had Ossen been sent by her?

Godren considered not going. He considered just disregarding the summons and taking advantage of his unexpected freedom. But you didn’t disregard something Mastodon ordered. Her hounds, once sent after you, were far worse as far as hunters went than anything the law directed your way – and the law was what Godren’s kind feared the most.

Well there was no help for it. He was required to go if he didn’t want the darkest lords of crime biting at his heels the instant he was deemed late. He may have been somewhat of a criminal ace himself, but when it came to brutality and ruthlessness, it was not his game. He would lose, and lose quite sorely.

Cursing the misfortune of landing in Mastodon’s interests, Godren tried to imagine what all this could mean for him. He would have to tread very carefully in her midst, but it would likely do no good. He had clearly already made some sort of impression on her, and apparently there was something she wanted of him. She would lay it out for him and give him only two options, but they would be quite simple, of course; oblige and be rewarded – or spared – or refuse, and die. The only ‘treading carefully’ he could really do would be to walk in there planning on saying yes, and she knew that.

Wishing he had not become quite so infamous, for perhaps she would not have noted his existence otherwise, Godren resigned himself to his fate and prepared himself for a trip to the Underworld, where Mastodon hid in her dark kingdom. At least he was free. But Mastodon had her own ways of binding men. Grimly, he considered his shadowed future, wondering if a quick, lawful ending would not have been a much better alternative.

He glanced at the dead bounty hunter.
Wake up,
he willed.
Perhaps you’d better take me to the headsman after all
. The man didn’t move. The only response was a fluttering at his hand, where the wind channeled down the alley and pushed through his dead, open fingers, snatching the scrap of parchment he held. Godren watched it continue tumbling down the alley, as he had meant it to from the beginning.

With a small sense of satisfaction, he left the alley as it was. With a much heavier sense of dread, he took on his future as it would be.

2:
Mastodon

R
aven City had its king, a wise, respectable man that the people loved for his honesty, integrity, and devotion. And then it had its queen, a lurking presence of unroyal power whom everyone feared for her treachery and infamous ruthlessness. She owned the alleys, the night, and every criminal whether they wanted to admit it or not. Ruthlessness and treachery were not, however, her only means of power – nor her greatest. It had been established that she was some manner of sorceress, and it had been learned the hard way that she was not to be trifled with. Dark, suspicious things happened when a threat treaded too close to her dealings, and there was considerable more peace in the city when she was left to go about her slithery business.

Godren followed the gradual crumbling of the city until he reached The Ruins, a graveyard of stony mansions that had long since started disintegrating since their abundance in the prime of centuries past. It always seemed darker here, as if night liked the place and clung to the territory more than the sun would allow elsewhere.