1        Soul Bound 1.3      Making a Splash 1.3.3    An Unrequited Love 1.3.3.7  Reprieve

Raggedy Man: "Good kind hearted gentlemen. And farty Farinacci. Haven't you got anything better to do, like fawning upon Viscount Pantalone just like your daughters? Well, perhaps not quite like that - I hear they do it naked, and just the thought of your gallivanting ungarbed would make even leperous slugs vomit."

Farinacci, who'd previously been calm and in control of himself despite any words or objects flung at him, now became incoherent with rage and, robbed of words, expressed himself by charging headlong at the figure, knocking over two archers and a mage in the process. Was there truth behind the Raggedy Man's insinuation?

The mysterious figure waved something hidden inside his sleeve, resulting in a jet of flame ten meters long which he aimed at the wooden crates still piled on most of the trolleys, and the carts at either end. The barricade burst into blue tinged flames so fierce that even the plate armoured melee specialists wouldn't risk it, and the figure jumped off just in time to avoid catching fire himself. Not back into safety but forwards and, with perfect timing, he trod heavily on Farinacci's shiny helm using it as a stepping stone to reach the archers whose bow strings he proceeded to cut with deft knife swings. Then, swiping Fra Meschino hat and purse as he passed, the Raggedy Man skipped away, yelling insults and taunting the guard's ability to find their own arses without a map and search team.

Wellington: {Kafana, impact in 20 seconds.}

Damn, she'd gotten distracted. No time for resonance, runes, or anything fancy. She'd just have to buff the ball itself and hope. She visualised the effect she wanted and poured in mana from her storage ring while watching the team now running along a high walkway as they pulled a swaying crucible that they'd lowered so much it was nearly touching the floor.

Bungo: {The guards at the back have pulled out. They're sprinting away. What happened?}

8 seconds.

I came in like a wrecking ball

I never hit so hard in love

All I wanted was to break your walls

The wall didn't stand a chance. She'd visualised the crucible bouncing away like a ball, with all its momentum transferred to the bricks in one small localised area, using the same reality magic principles that let force from a team of horses get directed into raising a heavy girder. The bricks shot away, destroying everything in their path, leaving a clean exit hole in the wall just a bit larger than Bungo. She wanted to enthuse, but Wellington had lectured her on communication protocols and emphasised at least three times about there being times for non-essential chat and times when she should say only what needed saying. "Brief. Clear. Relevant."

Kafana: {Gamma open and ready for use.}

Tomsk: {Bungo, we've received outside help. Move out now, while the guards are distracted. Wellington, I'll send Pierrot up to keep watch. You rendezvous with Kafana and see if you can stop their mages tracking the Chartists. Kafana, good work, starting Gamma evacuation now. I'm rear guard. Bulgaria, anything to report?}

Bulgaria's voice sounded amused.

Bulgaria: {I'm standing with, err, another Raggedy Man. She's got a route planned that will get people safely to the Scarrow parish where horsemen won't be able to follow. Captain Farinacci's taken half his guards after the main Raggedy Man, but his tenente has taken control of the other half and they're nearly through the barrier. One fatality so far - some of those archers had spare bow strings and are pretty good, so stay behind cover if you can. Enemy mages are a mix of reinforcement and mind magic. One healer. But they could have capabilities or items they've not revealed yet. Details in the map overlay, which I'll try to keep updated.}

By the time Farinacci's tenente led his group of thirty or so soldiers into the foundry, over half Tomsk's group of Chartists had left through the hole, but that still left more than a hundred of them, crouching behind whatever shelter they could find, gripping their tools as much for a feeling of security as because they could be used as weapons, waiting for Tomsk to call out the number of their batch of ten, which would be their cue to line up in single file and then run for the wall just as the last batch finished passing through. Kafana couldn't even organise cutting a birthday cake that fast, but Tomsk had a way of breaking tasks down into simple clear orders that even frightened people could remember and follow. He'd made it look easy.

Wellington: "Any ideas?"

Kafana: "Hit the mages on the head? Give them food that makes them sick? It would be hard to concentrate on casting magic while you were throwing up."

Wellington shook his head.

Wellington: "Good ideas, but we'd need Alderney. Ideally we don't attack or use magic on them. They're already calling you a criminal. Can we dim or mask the thing they're detecting?"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tomsk jump on a pre-positioned crowbar, cracking open a rolling bed filled with molten iron and sending streams of blazing metal towards the feet of the approaching guards. It didn't even slightly distract Wellington.

Kafana: "How about summoning rats, and amplifying their thoughts so they are too many signals for the mind mages to keep track of?"

Wellington: "Have you learned enough about taming magic to pull it off?"

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Kafana shook her head.

Kafana: "Alderney mentioned reading about rat kings in the notes left behind by Domatore Landi. She might know how to do it, but I don't."

Columbina joined them, the legendary bow formerly owned by WraithLock slung over one shoulder. She gave an nonchalant shrug, looking as innocent as a choir boy.

Columbina: "I could shoot them. If you ask nicely, and enchant my arrows, I might even shoot them in a location that's merely painful rather than lethal."

Kafana and Wellington looked at each other, and simultaneously nodded.

Kafana: "Oh noble and anonymous passing stranger who we don't recognise. We would be delighted to accept your offer. I might even sing your praises. If I didn't think you had a vested interest in preserving the hide of one particularly stubborn and honour-bound knife chucker."

She giggled as Columbina pouted and then mimed taking a hit. Wellington, meanwhile, had already grabbed a handful of arrows and was inscribing runes upon them. She added a buff of her own, based on her Homing spell, carefully selecting each mage's hand as the desired target. Not that Columbina would make fatal shots if she agreed not to. Probably. Unless it was funny. Or she'd seen a mage who'd hurt one of her friends. In that case, no matter what she'd promised, Kafana suspected the mage would suffer an accident followed by a "Whoops, sorry, my finger slipped on the string. Butter fingers, that's me. Must remember next time to clean them properly after making croissants."

Columbina returned to her perch and shot the first mage, just as the tenente had a board thrown across the molten metal barrier and his men started to advance across it. Two batches left to go. Tomsk stepped into the breach, a wooden club in either hand, facing down the first pair of guards. Guards in full plate armour, bearing shields and sharp shiny metal swords.

He grinned.

Wellington tugged on her arm while she stood transfixed, full of worry for Tomsk. The odds against him were impossible, weren't they? Even if the armour and weapons had been equal, he was outnumbered thirty to one, and he couldn't kill them while they were under no such restriction.

Wellington: "Time for us to go, Kafana. The last batch is at the hole, and we need to be ready to raise a temporary seal over it as soon as everyone is through, or they'll keep chasing us."

A ball of paper wrapped around a roof tile landed next to Columbina, just as she took down the last mage. She read it rapidly while clattering feet heralded Pierrot's return.

Columbina: "Pierrot says the rest of the guards are returning. We're out of time."

She was almost immediately proven correct when a pair of crashes made Kafana spin around to look. The first bridge being blocked by Tomsk, who was moving so fast he made the guards look like six year olds playing with plastic toy swords, the tenente had ordered his men to drop two more boards down, one at the far left and one at the far right. Already four soldiers had crossed at each point, and in moments Tomsk would be surrounded. She checked her mana levels, trying to work out how much she could spare for an attempt at stunning them while still leaving enough to work reality magic with Wellington.

Pierrot reached the foundry floor just as Columbina took the decision out of Kafana's hands. She withdrew an obsidian arrow crawling with runes in green and electric blue, then turned and aimed down the full length of the long building, beyond High Master Mazoni's pristine experimental zone, to the wall at the far end where the ponderous Juggernaut wheel was still spinning unstoppably on it's enchanted friction-free axel.

She couldn't. She wouldn't.

Barely had the thoughts occurred, when Kafana realised with a growing horror that, yes, to save Tomsk Columbina would gleefully cause any amount of property damage, if it wouldn't get traced back to her.

The guards noticed too and watched helpless, with a dreadful fascination, as the magic arrow flew towards its target and then impacted with a light so dazzling that Kafana was left temporarily blinded, feeling an increasing juddering through the soles of her feet, accompanied by stupendous sound explosions as whole furnaces and van-sized metal machines were crushed by the approaching doom. The experienced blood thirsty guards she'd been so afraid of moments earlier? They too had been robbed of sight, and were now screaming in panic, forced to choose between swift crushing or risking stumbling into one of the metal streams and then being hideously burned alive.

The guards? They were abandoned. Without support. But the Wombles? She put one hand upon her pendant, and prayed to Cov for healing. Healing for the eyes of herself and the other Wombles, healing for Columbina and Pierrot. But, whoops, she somehow forgot to pray for Pazzi's guards. Her bad. She'd do it in a moment, once safely beyond the hole.

She blinked and opened her eyes, just in time to watch the careening three story high stone flywheel smash open one last furnace and knock over the scaffolding Pierrot had descended, before bashing through the wall next to the entrance, almost exactly where the Charter had been attached. The same Charter that was now safely stored in her stash. Tomsk calmly moved towards them, walking around the stumbling guards as though they were pot plants, not a scratch on him.

Pierrot wasn't so lucky. He'd been hit by the falling scaffolding and was now lying in agony with a broken leg, desperately trying to crawl away from the metal flooding out of the broken furnace. Ironic, that the fastest runner in the Messengers Guild now wasn't fast enough. Kafana stepped forwards, as did Tomsk, but they were both too far away to reach him in time. Wellington was already through the hole, setting up a clay model of the seal he wanted to make to plug the hole, and certainly none of the guards would help even if they'd been able. Bungo had left the building entirely and Alderney, who might well have been fast enough, wasn't there.

Chyort voz'mi!

She turned her head away, unable to watch the boy they'd sacrificed so much to save from being tortured by Kullervo, meet an end nearly as bad. Did Rac have him written down as doomed, and intend to make it happen one way or another?

And then Tomsk started to laugh, clapping his hands in applause.

Tomsk: "Show off."

She turned back, not daring to hope, to see Columbina staggering towards them with Pierrot in her arms, and Pierrot gazing up at her heart-shaped face as though it were the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen, more beautiful than suns or moons or any stars.

It was a look she'd seen before, on the face of teenagers in her village.

Pierrot was in love.

Well, only a crush really, but he'd get over it. Still, it was cute. She shrugged and stepped through the hole, barely remembering how proud she'd felt just moments ago when creating it - pride at what she then thought was an impressive demonstration of destructive power.

Behind her, with a crash, the entire foundry building collapsed into rubble, felled by Columbina with a single arrow.

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