Free Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments by Tom Lloyd Page B

on his other side seemed to draw him inexorably in.
    There were few Duegar ruins in So Han. The bulk were to the north and east, dotted around the inland seas, inlets, sounds, rivers and Duegar canals that were the lifeblood of trade in the continent. Shadows Deep, which they would hopefully be skirting in a few weeks, was probably larger than every combined ruin in the whole of So Han and it was by no means the biggest or most wondrous in the world. Lynx had no desire to investigate any of them, those dead places of a lost race that remained dangerous both by accident and design. He’d known a few mercenaries who’d worked at one time or another with relic hunters, but only the crazed signed up more than once or twice, despite the rewards.
    With regular breaks to rest the horses, they were well into the afternoon by the time Payl called a halt. Easily long enough for him to observe his companions without looking overly rude. Payl wasn’t a natural leader, he thought; she’d been pushed into it and obviously disliked command, despite being good at it by Lynx’s reckoning. Having seen Anatin helplessly drunk, Lynx could well imagine the worth of her sober and capable manner to counterbalance Anatin’s uncertain flamboyance.
    Kas and Llaith engaged in quiet, good-natured banter for much of the journey, mostly about the surly, muscular man called Varain who wore the Stranger of Sun badge, while Teshen rode ahead and barely spoke a word. The woman with the crooked smile was called Tyn, Lynx discovered once they halted. She had brought up the rear of the group the whole time, apparently preferring her own company.
    At Payl’s order, the seven dismounted and led their horses down an overgrown rabbit path until they were hidden from the road. There they hobbled the mounts and left them in Llaith’s charge while Teshen and Kas produced recurved bows from their saddle holsters and set off through the undulating forest. Once the two scouts were at the crest of the first rise, Payl gestured for the remaining four to follow, Lynx, Tyn and Varain keeping close to her heels.
    They were comfortably short of where the attack had happened so for a while they moved as quickly as the terrain permitted, but after an hour Payl raised a hand to stop her group. She crouched and squinted forward. It took Lynx a moment to pick Teshen out from the undergrowth, so he only caught the last of the man’s gestures, but it was no signal code he’d seen before anyway.
    ‘Kas has found ’em,’ Payl called softly back. ‘Lookout by the road, camp further down – Teshen will deal with the lookout.’
    ‘What’s the order?’ Lynx asked.
    Payl glanced back at him, her face unreadable. ‘Employer wasn’t too specific there, she just asked for justice.’
    ‘We killing the bastards or not?’ Varain growled.
    ‘Piles giving you gyp again, Varain?’ Tyn asked.
    ‘You’re the only pain in my arse, woman.’
    She smirked. ‘You’d love it if I was.’
    ‘Quiet, the pair of you,’ Payl said despairingly. ‘Order depends on what we find there. I want to take them unawares, quick and bloodless if we can. Varain and Tyn, on my right. Once we’ve got the target, take their right flank and follow my lead. I doubt they’ll put up a fight if they find a mage-gun in their faces. I’ll keep a burner in the pipe just in case, rest of you load icers.’
    Lynx allowed himself a small moment of relief as he pulled his mage-gun from the sheath on his back. Too many mercenaries would just kill everyone in sight – it wasn’t like there was any law in these parts to object – but Payl clearly had no desire for blood.
    He clicked open the chamber of his gun and slipped a slender brass cartridge from his cartridge case. One end was wadded tight, holding a porcelain bullet inside, while the other was capped with fired clay and marked with the runic shape denoting ‘ice’. When he pulled the trigger, the hammer would crack the clay and break the