Tainted Cascade Read Online Free Page B

sleeping outside the wall tonight, so try and steal some blankets.”
    â€œWe broke already?” Rose said out of the corner of her mouth, dealing a new hand of cards.
    â€œShitfire, that seems to happen faster every month,” Charlie mumbled, watching the deal as he picked his teeth with a sliver of wood. He found something interesting and chewed the unidentified morsel briefly before swallowing.
    â€œYou eat too much,” Thal rumbled in a surprisingly gentle voice. Then the giant scowled and clawed for his Remington.
    â€œFragging, mutie-loving bastards!” the outlander snarled, staggering back through the doorway. There was blood dripping from the back of his head, chilling in his blurry eyes and a scattergun held in his shaking hands. “Gonna ace ya all!”
    Instantly, Petrov and his people cut loose with their assorted weapons, the barrage of arrows and lead blowing the outlander off the floor and sending him sailing back into the street.
    â€œNuking hell, you boys are fast!” a sec man gasped, his own blaster only halfway out of his holster.
    â€œThe way that idjit was waving his blaster around it was him or us,” Petrov said, the smoking Webley still tight in his fist.
    â€œWell, you boys got yourself a free round on me,” the sec man stated, slapping the other man on the back. “And feel free to take anything that outlander owns.”
    â€œThat include his blaster?” Rose asked, nocking a fresh arrow into her crossbow.
    â€œYep, the scattergun is yours now.”
    â€œWhat about his horse?”
    â€œThat too, if he had one.” The sec man nodded. “Now I know that seems kinda hard, so I’ll tell you what. Baron Cranston gets half of any brass recovered from a fight, that’s the law.” Then the man paused. “But I won’t be counting it very closely. Savvy?”
    â€œYeah, we savvy,” Charlie replied, already cutting a fresh notch into the stock of his own blaster.
    Gathering the loose cards, Rose stuffed them into a shirt pocket. Only a feeb left their belongings unguarded in Heaven. Rising from the table, Petrov walked outside and found a crowd gathered around the body, but nobody was closer than a few yards. The accuracy and speed of his gang were well-known in the ville and much respected.
    Rifling through the warm, bloody clothing, Petrov unearthed a dozen rounds for the scattergun and passed three of them to the waiting sec man, then one more. Pocketing that extra round, the sec man gave the gang a brief salute and walked off toward the brick house on top of the hill in the center of the ville, a formerNational Guard armory that was now the castle of the baron and what remained of the Cranston family.
    Divvying up the rest of the belongings with his crew, Petrov gave the gun belt and scattergun to Rose. She beamed in delight over finally owning a blaster and tested the action on the weapon several times before loading in two live cartridges. The weight perfectly balanced her crossbow and made the diminutive woman feel more dangerous than a shithouse rat.
    â€œShort barrels mean a big spray,” Thal stated. “And watch for the kick. That scattergun is gonna rise up hard. A lot more than your crossbow.”
    â€œJust cause there wasn’t any iron on my hip doesn’t mean I’m a fragging virgin,” Rose answered curtly, tucking her thumbs into the gun belt. Then she smiled up at the giant. “But thanks for the advice anyway, Bear.”
    Unsuccessfully, the colossus tried to hide a grin at the use of his private name. They had been bed partners for years, and it amused the other two men to pretend that they didn’t know about the raucous nightly coupling.
    â€œPity the outlander didn’t have a horse,” Petrov said, turning away from the body to head back into the tavern. “We could have sold it for a week of hot food and clean beds here at Heaven, or just slaughtered the