Lord of the Inferno - Chapter Nine

This week’s episode features a chapter from Lord of the Inferno, Volume Two of War of the Fathers. War of the Fathers is available as a free ebook if you sign up for the Dan Decker Newsletter. Here is an excerpt from the show:

Once Neare and Erro disappeared, Adar retrieved the blasters from the dead Hunwei turncoats and ducked into the home. He didn’t want to leave them lying around for Neare—or anyone else—to pick up. Neare had left before the stress of the situation had given him a chance to think about what he was leaving behind. Once he did, he would realize he’d missed an opportunity to pick up a blaster or two.

On the second floor, Adar found a bedroom and stuffed the extra blasters underneath the bed, careful to lift the blasters over the dust on the wooden planks, so it wasn’t obvious that something had been placed there. He looked around the room, wondering if there might be a less obvious place, but nothing jumped out at him. An old dresser would have fit the weapons and a dark corner beside a desk as well, but he figured that they were all natural places to look if somebody came in here hoping to find something.

I better hope they don’t come back right away, Adar thought when he looked back at the trail of water he’d left on the wooden floor, I should have stopped to kick the rain off my boots. The wood was untreated and would hopefully absorb his tracks quickly, but that would be cold comfort if the next time Adar saw Erro was down the wrong end of a blaster.

Adar had never thought he’d be glad that most of the burned Hunwei destroyed their own blasters. It hadn’t been too difficult to figure out how to get them to work, and Adar didn’t doubt that Neare or Erro would be able to figure it out given enough time.

He hesitated and stared at the bed, wondering if he should bring another blaster with him. He was down to one working blaster plus a spare and having extras kept coming in handy.

So does that ridiculous looking dagger, if I’d known what that Ou Qui was giving me, I’d have given him gold coins and tried to buy some more. The Ou Qui’s shorts swords hadn’t been covered with the black tar-like residue, but Adar didn’t see any reason why a sword that had been similarly treated wouldn’t work just as well. He wouldn’t do something like that to his Radim sword, but he wouldn’t hesitate to do that to a cheaper weapon. 

He had tried to keep count of the number of shots he got from a blaster, but he’d been unable to be exact. From what he could tell, they all appeared to stop working at random times. One blaster, he’d been able to use for a greater number of shots, the next had been far fewer. Perhaps they all had the same capacity, and it depended on how many shots the previous owner had used. That was something to think about.

He went back downstairs. He still had two blasters and carrying the additional one while also lugging around his sword was already a bit much, not to mention adding a couple of more. He would just have to return for these when he could. 

Because Neare and Erro might be watching the front of the home, Adar returned out the back door and moved from there out towards the street. He didn’t want them to think to look in the home for the blasters.

Who am I trying to fool? He wondered. Chances are good they will stumble across a couple of dead Hunwei with working blasters anyway. How many did it take for me? Five? Ten? He didn’t like the idea of having to keep an eye out for Neare and Erro as well as Hunwei, turncoats, and Tere, but a man did what he had to do. Adar wouldn’t put it past Neare to ambush him, despite Neare’s conciliatory words to the contrary.

Adar paused before coming out into the open of the street to check either direction. He had thought that Erro and Neare would have already disappeared, but they were several blocks away, walking in the middle of the street. Erro had stopped struggling, and they were moving quickly.