Bounty Read online

  Bounty

  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:

  Csnyder.deviantart.com

  Sd-stock.deviantart.com

  CAStock.deviantart.com

  Fantasystock.deviantart.com

  Amptone-stock.deviantart.com

  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.

  *

  The 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

  Raven 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.

  A few slumped beggars and darting urchins frequented the fringes of The Ruins, but once immersed in the depth of the crumbling buildings, there was no one at all. The lonesome shadows were the only things that watched him go by, and though they were lifeless, he could feel their eyes. Everyone whispered about the ghosts that hung around Mastodon’s domain, and Godren did not always doubt the stories. It was a good place for ghosts, really.

  He saw the flash of a cat’s eyes before he noticed the glint of steel. Mastodon’s guards, feline and human alike, stood around her mansion blocking the entrances. Seeing Godren, the criminal at the nearest entrance flashed a morbid grin to complete the series of telltale glints in the night, confirming that Godren had come to the right doorstep.

  “Nice of you to drop in,” Kane greeted ominously, and kicked open the door. Without gesturing for Godren to enter, he waited for Mastodon’s guest to step past the threshold without the invitation, as if daring him to. It did not escape Godren that once he did, the cat at Kane’s side started to purr.

  Inside was a single vast room, dark, barren, and broken. The patchy ceiling towered above the dirty, rubble-strewn ground, all the floors of the multiple-story building gone from in between. Broken windows and other unintentional gaps in the walls dotted the structure with scars, and it was a wonder the thing was still standing at all. Even the stone that remained seemed warped, like wrinkles that came with its incredible age.

  A fire pit stood at the center of the room, ablaze with flame that you couldn’t see from outside, and that, admittedly, did not stretch far into the shadows of this room. Bastin, Mastodon’s head bruiser, sat on the other side of the fire, looking like he sat in the dark.

  “Well, well,” Bastin drawled. “Look what the cat dragged in.” He cackled as if it had been a great joke, and spat on the fire. There was a sizzle, and then the flames melted away, leaving no ashes or wood. There was only a dark pit, baring the first few steps of a spiraling stone staircase below before the rest of it disappeared underground.

  Taking his life in his hands, Godren began his descent. He spiraled down, down through the dark, using the outer wall for guidance. He feared – perhaps irrationally, perhaps not – slipping off the curving, inner edge, falling to his crushing death at the foot of the steps below. There was no rail to prevent such a fate, and certainly no light to encourage his safe passage to the bottom. Occasionally he would catch a pair of glinting cat eyes watching him from deviating levels of the stairs, but he never seemed to pass them by. A little cautiously, he imagined treading on one of their tails in the dark, careening sideways as a feline scream scared him out of his wits.

  He reached the bottom without incident, though, and followed a trio of waiting cat escorts through the suddenly carpeted hallways of Mastodon’s lavish Underworld. The crime queen certainly lived in luxury, making more than the best of a life that forced her to live in the dark.

  When he reached Mastodon’s quarters, the door opened for him. Ghosts, he thought with suppressed unease, stepping inside.

  A smoky incense laced the air of Mastodon’s vast antechamber. The woman herself sat behind a desk that rested in the far, lower level of the room. “Ah, Godren,” she said from where she sat in the dusky, smoky corner. Her voice was slightly raspy, as if the smoke of her incense had singed her lungs over the years. “How are you, my unacquainted pet?”

  Skirting a lavish sofa, Godren descended the few steps to her level and seated himself very carefully across from her.

  “I’m faring,” he replied without commitment.

  “Thanks to me,” she reminded him, starting things off with a wily poise right away.

  “If you’re going to start claiming I’m in your debt, you can stop wasting your smoky breath right now,” Godren hazarded making a stand. He was not going to be controlled that easily. “Any man would rather kill himself than be in your debt, my lady mastodon, myself wisely included. All you’re going to gain this way is my suicidal blood all over your lovely carpet.”

  “Maybe that’s what I want.” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, allowing him to consider that. “I care nothing for my carpet, Godren. It’s not as if it was expensive. It was just as easily attained as the rest of my smuggled goods. You should know that.”

  “Of course,” he granted.

  “And it wouldn’t be the first time blood has been spilled on my carpet.”

  “Then shall I just get on with it?” Godren asked, making as if to reach for his belt knife.

  “Not so hastily, Godren. All in good time.”

  She has a way of saying things, Godren thought, letting his hand rest.

  “I see you do not want to be prodded. Perhaps a bribe will work instead.”

  “What do you want?” Godren asked, trying to avoid a crafty introduction that would lead up to her ultimate desires and have him snared before she even got to the point.

  Mastodon considered him. “I would like to commission you to fulfill a service to me.”

  “Commission? You mean without holding something over my head and taunting me with it whenever I lag in my duty to you?” He knew he was being risky speaking to her this way, but as long as she wanted something of him and they hadn’t struck a deal yet – particularly one that confirmed she would likely have him killed at the first sign of treachery – he had a slight edge for speaking his mind. Admittedly it was a perilous edge, ready to crumble underneath him and give way at any wrong turn, but it was an edge.

  “Yes, commission,” she confirmed, her smoky voice surprisingly patient. “I have nothing against bargains, Godren, even if I do fancy threats. I may be in a dishonest business, but I am not a dishonest businesswoman.”

  “Just an elusive one. You did not answer my question. What do you want of me?”

  “I’ve watched you in this city, Godren. I’ve watched you rise from a puppy to a wolf. A reputation like yours does not go unnoticed by someone like
me. Nor does it go un-admired and dismissed. I can use people like you. I want people like you.”

  “Because we might become valid threats one day if you don’t tame us young?”

  “You think I can tame you young? With a tongue like that? You demonstrate your defiance quite clearly, Godren. I see that,” she assured him. “However you must remember that whether I can tame you or not, I can kill you quite easily, so watch yourself.” With that warning, she dismissed his flippancy. “Now. Let me explain my position.”

  “By all means,” he granted a little dryly. He’d only been trying to encourage this development in the conversation since she had opened her elusive mouth…

  “I’m developing a bit of a flea problem.”

  Godren blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The human kind, Godren. Don’t play dumb with me; stupidity does not become you. There is a rising vice astir, and I want it terminated.”

  “What sort of vice?”

  “Lawmen do not bother me. They don’t mess with me. But bounty hunters are a greedy, ruthless bunch all their own. They disregard the law – not to mention rumors of magic – to get their hands on great prizes, and their unlawful actions are pardoned or overlooked when they present such prizes to the law. They annoy me. So I’m putting a price on their heads.”

  Godren blinked again. “You’re encouraging a new breed of bounty hunter? One to hunt the originals.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And me?”

  “I would like to appoint you my personal hunter, paid in advance.”

  “I’m not a murderer.”

  “Really? I’ve heard otherwise,” Mastodon countered tauntingly.

  “I’m not a murderer,” Godren repeated more forcefully, jaw set fiercely though he kept his eyes neutral.

  Mastodon did not look fazed, but she did not provoke him further either. “No, but I am, Godren. And I hold that over your head whether we make this agreement or not, as I always have. It has nothing to do with this bargain, but you will never be safe again. You never have been.”