Called to Battle, Volume 1 by Larry Correia

Author:Larry Correia
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Privateer Press
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Bright spots of crimson bloomed in the snow, like blood-red flowers poking through the surface. Clutching her midsection and gasping for breath against the driving blizzard, the gun mage stumbled through the thigh-high drift. Blood leaked from between her fingers and red-tinged spittle slid from her mouth.

“Dammit,” she murmured. “Dammit, why couldn’t you listen?”

A sound drew Svyn’s attention and she whirled, pistol raised in a shaking hand. Only the whirling wind greeted her, driving snow into her skin like tiny shards of glass.

She spoke the words of a seeing spell, and green runes circled her hands, then her head. Her eyes shone with emerald light, and she looked all around her. “Who—”

“Caught,” came a single word.

Then a javelin hurtled out of the storm and impaled the arm she raised to defend herself. Crying out in pain, Svyn fell back a step and took hold of the javelin to pull it out. When she moved it, though, she shrieked as the barbs cut into her flesh. Then she saw a wire attached to the javelin, one that disappeared into the darkness.

“No,” she said. “That—”

The hum of electricity split the night, even over the howling of the wind, and lightning flowed up the wire to crackle around her body. Svyn tried to scream, failed, and fell convulsing into the snow.

“Poor dear,” said the man in alchemist’s leather who loomed out of the storm. His goggles glowed with an angry red hue, an alchemical treatment that let his vision pierce the swirling snow. His voice rasped through his gas mask. “First you have bad luck with a hunter, then you pick the wrong ally, and now you’ve gone and had an accident, great-niece. Tsk, tsk. Not so great, I suppose.”

Revane held out his left hand, where the wire on the javelin connected to a mechanikal glove he wore, and turned a wheel near his thumb. Svyn screeched as more electricity flowed into her. The alchemist released the charge so the accumulator could build up another jolt, leaving Svyn gasping for breath and shuddering in the snow.

“There, there.” Revane flipped up his goggles, then leaned over Svyn. With his free hand, he wiped tears from her cheek. “I’m not going to kill you. No, no, no. Not right away, anyway. I want to savor your death. It’s better that way.”

Svyn glared up at him, eyes defiant. The hint of a smile touched her lips.

“What, did something I said amuse you?” He turned up the dial on his electrocution device. “You know I hate being laughed at.”

A shadow surged out of the snow behind him, twin slivers of steel glinting in the awful red light of his devices. Revane half-turned, summoning icy green magic to guard himself, but Narn’s sabers knifed through his defenses. When he raised his gauntleted hand to defend himself, Narn’s first blade took it off at the wrist. An instant later the second saber rammed through the alchemist’s chest. Revane sucked in a breath and sagged against the mage hunter’s arm.

Narn turned his blade point down, kicked the alchemist’s body off, and reached down to help Svyn.

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