Chapter Twenty - Gate Talk

I walked Rusty right up to the gate and slowed to a stop.

The front gate leading into Mortarview from the west was called the Windy Gate. When the wind picked up the sandstone wall would get blasted with sand, and because of its angle, the sand and wind would be tossed up. Then it all rained back down onto Mortarview proper.

It was a sort of natural law that there was no escaping the sand.

I waited, lifting my feet off the pedals to flex my toes. Rusty’s magical eye scanned the two openings by the sides of the gate, both of them a little higher than Rusty’s head.

“What are we waiting for?” Clin asked.

“Can’t exactly barge through the gate, can I?” I asked.

The wall was sandstone. Tough enough to endure a bit of sand-blasting, and maybe a small-caliber bullet. Behind the pretty facade was a second wall. A foot or so of hardened warsteel. The gate itself was probably thicker. I doubted I could do more than put a dent in it, even if I flung Rusty’s core at the door and shot it.

One of the doors opened and I shifted in my seat, hands tightening over the control gauntlets. A man stepped out, in pale woolen robes and with a dark tabard tucked into his belt. His face was entirely covered by a goggled-mask, one with a stylized pair of mandibles sticking out the front.

I sighed. That could mean trouble.

The man extended his arms and, from the end of two sticks, unfurled a pair of green flags. He moved them up and around in jerky motions.

“What’s he doing?” Clin asked.

“Semaphore,” I replied. “G-R-E-T. He’s saying ‘hi.’”

I shifted Rusty’s arms, moving them slowly into the same positions the man had moved his flags. My left arm, on account of being entirely unsuitable for Rusty, didn’t raise all that high, so I didn’t raise my right arm as high either, just the forearms to compensate.

I added another string of letters after the first. “B-H, pause,” I muttered. “R-E-T-U-R-N, pause. S-R-M. Stop.”

“I didn’t follow all of that,” Clin said.

“They didn’t teach you your letters in your elven treehouse?” I asked.

“Hilarious,” he said. “What’s an S-R-M? Or a B-H?”

“Storm, and bounty hunter,” I said.

The flag-man flashed a quick and sloppy O-K, and darted away. A moment later the gates cracked open with a thumping boom I could feel from where we stood. I waited until the passage was wide enough for Rusty before moving in.

There was a second gate, with an enclosure between it and the first. I stood there, head turning this way and that to take in the catwalks all around. There were more folk there, but not all of them wore black tabards. I let my shoulders slump. Not a problem then.

The enclosure had guns mounted on the inner walls. Nothing too fancy, but not even the toughest mech wanted to be caught in a box with people shooting at them from two sides. Looking up, I could see where the walls ended. There was the sandstone, the warsteel layer, then about ten paces of stone bricks, each a foot across and two wide.

Mortarview was one of the last independent cities, and for damned good reason. The gnomes had tried, and so had the humans to the east, but no one could break through the city’s walls, or endure a prolonged barrage from its mortars.

A second flag man signaled me to stop and I respected him. Then a crane came around and lowered a basket with a winch, a pair of men standing in it. One in a black tabard, another in a fancier brown jacket.

They stopped with a bounce right in front of Rusty.

I opened the slit in Rusty’s front. “Can I help ya?” I asked.

The two men were on the shorter side, but the one in the brown suit took the prize for one of the shortest guys I’d ever seen.

Clan Mouse, and the guy in the black had to be clan Scorpio, they were the only ones dumb enough to wear black out in the daytime. The mousey guy checked a clip-board. “Do you have a record with Mortarview?” he asked.

“Yeah. Charlie Norwood, Bounty Hunter’s association, tied to modified warmech Rusty. Code is One-Five-Oh-One.”

The Scorpio guy sighed, pulled out a set of flags, and signalled the four numbers out to some clerks waiting above. I knew they’d be checking my file. I’d been here some three dozen times already. Maybe two or three times a year. Not often enough for folk to really recognize me, I supposed.

“And your reason for visiting?” the clerk asked.

“Returning from a bounty run,” I said. “Killing goblins out in the Vastness.”

The mouse-clan rep shook his head. “Goblins,” he muttered. “We had a whole lot of them attack the wall a week back.”

“Which crater is theirs?” I asked.

He barked a laugh. “They didn’t last long. Three warmechs though, one of them an old gnome-ish model. Tough thing took three hits to go down for good. Had a whole team from Fox clan patching up the wall after that.”

“Huh,” I said.

“You signalled you were here for a storm?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Got the goblin bounty out in Galenook, I’ll see if I can cash it in here. Otherwise, I’ll wait out the storm and then head back. Might get Rusty here a quick patch job too.”

He looked at his clipboard, then flipped the page up. “Got nothing about a storm on here.”

“I hitched a ride with some nomads. Akx’s crew,” I said. The name wasn’t worth much, with the way nomads were about those. “They were heading over to some wedding nearby? Told me to watch out for a storm that was coming soon.”

“Shit,” the mouse-clan guy said. The Scorpio grunt didn’t seem rightly pleased either. “If the nomads say so. I’ll send the news along. It’s appreciated.” He looked off to the side where someone was signaling with more flags. “Numbers check out.” He signed something and slipped it into the hole in Rusty’s front.

I grabbed the slit and flipped it open. A three day pass. “Three days?” I asked. I usually only got a night, two if I was lucky.

“If there’s a storm, we might be locking everything up. You won’t be fixing your mech for a day if the shops close down.”

“Fair. I ‘ppreciate it.”

“Glad to be of service. You’ve been here before, but still... The rules are simple. Don’t fight any clanned member of Mortarview, don’t start any shit, don’t touch anything that looks explosive, and try not to trample anyone’s sheep.”

The crane pulled up the box with the two men, and soon the second gate started to rumble open even as the first boomed shut behind me.

“You didn’t mention me?” Clin asked.

“They’d have asked questions,” I said. “Got the impression you’re trying not to be the centre of attention.”

“I.. perhaps that’s for the best. I’m still not certain why things happened as they did.”

“You think the gnomes will be after you?” I asked. “Far as they’re likely to tell, you messed up a whole patrol.”

“They... no, it’s no concern of yours. I’ll figure it out. I suspect that it’s all a misunderstanding, but one that has cost more lives than it ever should have.”

“Right,” I said. It was hard to keep caring about the elf’s problems, not now that I was so close to being rid of him. We stepped out onto one of the main streets of Mortarview and I slowed down to take in our surroundings.

Most of the buildings in the city were three or four stories tall, with fenced balconies around them and little smokestacks to the sides. The flat roofs often had little gardens and mortar positions. You could tell how well-off a family was by the size and bore of the gun placement on their roof.

No one had ever captured Mortarview, and the reason why wasn’t just the walls around the city. It was the ceaseless and enthusiastic barrage of explosives the citizens could rain down on any idiot that came within ten klicks of the place.

No one knew their bombs better than the fine citizens of Mortarview, and even the kids could land a mortar within two paces of a person-sized target three klicks out.

The streets were a bit on the narrow side, planned and built just a bit before mecha became as popular as they were now. That meant that I had to walk down the middle all the while watching out that I didn’t step on someone.

Carts rolled by, people in long flowing robes and wide-brimmed hats scurried past. I paused as a squadron of the city’s sweepers moved by, some six or seven folk in tight, bandage-like clothes with brooms and dustpans following a cart filled to the brim with glassy sand.

I could only just make out the talking, the screaming, and the faint music of a lively city. Sure, it was still warm out, enough so that some folk were baking bread on ceramic slabs hanging off window-sills, but the folk here were used to that.

“I’ll be heading over to the Centre Saloon,” I said. “It’s a big place, with a couple of gantries for mechs like Rusty out back. You can have yourself a room for the night for one silver, and a damned fine meal for a couple of copper. They have long-horn steak here, with this salt they get from Arrowworth, it’s great.”

“I... think I’m looking forward to it,” Clin said.

I grinned. “Hell, I’ll pay for your first beer myself.”

It was good to be somewhere safe again.

***