Van Augur kept his eyes on them even as he descended.
Pintel and Ragetti were a moving problem in the middle of a battlefield—two familiar silhouettes bobbing through smoke and panic, dragging chains, carrying something that had no business being carried in the middle of a siege. A palanquin. A small, ridiculous palace-on-poles that swayed as if the desert itself had decided to mock the concept of survival.
Augur braced his shoulder, sighted down the senriku, and fired.
A pirate who'd been closing in behind them jerked, staggered, and went down with a shout—hit clean in the leg.
"Tch," Augur muttered, lowering the rifle only long enough to move again.
He didn't bother trying to look like a soldier anymore. That disguise had served its purpose: vantage, information, a few minutes of breathing room. Now the city was past the point where uniforms mattered. Smoke blurred colors. Fear made everyone look the same—running, screaming, killing.
He calculated their path with the same cold focus he used for wind and distance.
They weren't heading for the main gates.
Augur's eyes narrowed.
At first it didn't make sense—until it did. The gates were a meat grinder. Cannons, bodies, cavalry, barricades. If you were small and desperate, you didn't try to force the front door. You looked for the side wall, the underside, the places the officers didn't watch because they were too busy dying heroically at the obvious point of entry.
Augur hit the ground hard enough to jar his bones and immediately moved.
Behind him, voices rose—shouts from the wall, confusion, suspicion. Someone may have realized the "guard with the big gun" had stopped pretending. Some might even have spotted his face under the helmet as he descended.
He didn't care.
He cut through an alley that reeked of scorched wood and spilled oil, then another, then emerged near the lower wall. Here, the noise changed. It was less cannon thunder, more desperate scrambling, more muffled screams from streets that were trying to pretend they weren't becoming a graveyard.
A few guards stood posted near a service route, spears clutched tight, eyes darting.
Unfortunate.
Augur approached with the same efficiency he'd used on the wall. A quick movement. A sharp strike. One guard went down without a sound. The second raised his spear—
Augur drove the butt of the senriku into the man's throat and caught him before he hit the ground too loudly.
He dragged both bodies behind stacked crates and exhaled once.
Then he searched.
His gaze drifted over the wall's underside: storage, supplies, barrels, carts abandoned mid-haul. He stepped toward a cluster of barrels and pried one open.
Gunpowder.
Augur's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened with purpose. The kingdom had prepared for siege, all right. It had simply prepared to lose slowly, with dignity, rather than win.
He worked fast, scooping powder from one barrel to another, packing it tighter, building a crude charge. He needed a hole.
In the distance, Pintel and Ragetti stumbled into view, half-hidden by smoke and sand, the palanquin swaying behind them like the world's most stubborn joke.
Augur stepped back, measured his distance, raised the senriku—
And fired.
The shot struck the packed powder.
The wall groaned, then thundered.
Stone burst outward, dust and debris billowing in a choking wave. The blast proved effective- an ugly wound in the city's side that widened as cracks spidered through the masonry.
Guards screamed. Officers shouted questions that nobody could answer.
Augur didn't dwell on it. He moved into the smoke, stepping over rubble while the air filled with grit and the smell of scorched powder.
On the other side of the breach—
Carnage.
The space between the wall and the city streets was chaos compressed into a narrow throat. Pirates surged toward the gap, sensing opportunity. Guards tried to form a barricade, panicking as they realized their "secure perimeter" had just become a doorway.
And there, near a broken cart, Pintel and Ragetti had stopped, crouched low, trying to make themselves smaller than their usual impossible size. The palanquin sat behind them, tilted slightly. Augur could hear high pitched cursing from inside.
Augur called out once, sharp and low.
They looked up, wary.
To them, he was still a soldier—tall, armed, and entirely capable of ending their day with one gun.
Augur clicked his tongue in irritation.
He tore off the helmet and yanked the uniform's collar loose.
Pintel and Ragetti stared.
Recognition hit them like a bucket of cold water.
"Augur!" Pintel blurted, voice cracking into something that sounded dangerously close to relief. "Save us!"
Ragetti nodded frantically and lifted his bound hands to demonstrate the chains that had been making his life miserable for far too long. "Please—before I start enjoying the idea of dying."
A head peeked out from the palanquin.
Small. Round-faced. Sweaty. A cigar clenched between nervous lips.
The man's eyes met Augur's, widened at the sight of the rifle, and swallowed hard.
"What was that explosion?" he demanded, trying to sound in control and failing. "And who is—who are you?"
He looked from Pintel to Ragetti, then back to the tall marksman whose presence made him feel like an insect standing under a boot that hadn't decided whether to step down yet.
Augur raised the senriku.
The man froze.
Fear took him so completely that, for a moment, he forgot to breathe.
Augur fired once.
The shot cracked through the din and the man collapsed back into the palanquin, instantly silent.
Pintel flinched as if the bullet had grazed his own ear.
Ragetti squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them slowly and stared at Augur as though trying to decide whether to scream or congratulate him.
"You…" Ragetti began.
Augur ignored the half-formed sentence and stepped forward. He grabbed the chains at Pintel's wrists, tested them, then shifted the rifle's angle and fired again—this time at the lock.
Metal snapped.
The chain went slack.
Pintel's eyes widened like a child being told he could skip school forever.
Augur did the same for Ragetti, the lock breaking under a clean shot.
Pintel immediately tried to wipe himself off as if "being near death" had left a physical residue on his skin.
"I was starting to get attached to that guy," Pintel muttered, rubbing his wrists.
Augur's stare was flat enough to freeze water. "Who was he?"
"A pirate captain," Pintel said, as if that explained everything. "Captured us."
"Made us slaves," Ragetti added, voice rising with indignation that he had clearly been saving for the right audience. "Made us carry his little body."
"All the way across the desert," Pintel continued, like a man reciting a personal tragedy.
Ragetti's eyes bulged. "ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE DESERT! Can you believe that?!"
Augur's grip tightened on the rifle. He looked like he was deciding whether to shoot them both simply to restore silence.
He didn't, sadly.
He forced himself to speak like a professional addressing incompetent recruits.
"Where's the captain?"
Pintel's face shifted instantly. The relief evaporated. "Captain? He's not with you?"
Augur's eyes cut toward the palace skyline in the distance. "Inside the palace."
Ragetti blinked. "How?"
"It's a long story," Augur said, and his tone implied the story was mostly composed of regret. "You're going to get him."
Pintel stared as though Augur had suggested they swim to the moon. "We're supposed to go into the palace? The palace where the king is? With guards? And spears?"
Augur spoke through his teeth. "Yes."
Ragetti lifted a hand. "Minor detail—how do we do that?"
Augur's gaze flicked to the breach, where pirates were already starting to push toward the gap like rats finding a new hole in a pantry. Guards tried to form a line, but their eyes kept darting back to the smoke as if expecting the wall itself to bite them.
Augur jerked his chin toward the opening. "Through here. Move while everyone's too confused and distracted."
Pintel looked at the widening hole, then at Ragetti, then back at Augur. "And you?"
"I hold them off," Augur said.
Ragetti's eyebrows rose. "You're going to hold off all of them?"
Augur lifted the senriku and fired three rapid shots.
Three pirates dropped. The fourth stumbled backward, terrified by the sudden precision.
Augur didn't look at Ragetti. "Go."
They hesitated—because for all their arguing and foolishness, Pintel and Ragetti were not brave men by nature. Their courage usually arrived late, like a ship that had misunderstood the tide.
Augur's voice sharpened. "If you don't go now, you'll die here, and I will personally consider it your fault."
That, somehow, did it.
Pintel and Ragetti stumbled forward, pushed into motion by insult, fear, and the faint, stubborn loyalty that had somehow grown in them despite every logical argument against it.
They burst through the weak barricade of guards with more enthusiasm than skill.
"AARGH!" Pintel yelled, as if volume could substitute for intimidation.
Ragetti tried to match the energy. "Aargh!"
The guards screamed anyway.
Pintel looked offended as they ran. "We're not that frightening, are we?"
Ragetti didn't even glance at him. "You are."
From behind them, Augur's voice cut through the noise like a blade. "GET TO THE PALACE, YOU DAMN BASTARDS!"
Ragetti flinched. "Oh—yes!"
The breach erupted into violence.
Augur planted his feet at the mouth of the hole and became what he had always been: a problem that moved faster than most men could think. He fired with ruthless rhythm, bullets snapping through limbs, shoulders, knees—anything that would slow the surge. When pirates got too close, he used the rifle like a club, cracking skulls and jaws with brutal efficiency.
He could hear guards shouting behind him, trying to form a second line. He didn't care if they lived or died. He cared about buying time.
A shadow moved at the edge of his vision.
A man approaching with a katana.
Walking through the chaos with calm intent, as if battle around him didn't excite him, didn't bother him.
Augur struck one pirate down with the rifle's butt and turned fully.
The swordsman's thin frame was wrapped in a coat that somehow remained neat even in smoke. Glasses sat on his nose, reflecting firelight in a cold glint. His eyes were sharp—too sharp, the kind that didn't just see you but measured you.
The katana slid free with a whisper.
The man swung once.
Augur's instincts screamed.
He dragged a pirate into the path of the blade.
The pirate didn't even have time to understand what was happening before the slice carved through him and continued—so clean, so powerful that it widened the breach itself, shearing more stone away as if the wall were paper.
Dust exploded outward again.
Augur stepped back, eyes narrowed, the senriku lifting.
The swordsman's blade leveled toward him, and the man's calm voice carried through the smoke.
Augur didn't know his name.
But he knew, instantly, that this was not a normal pirate.
Augur steadied his breathing, the barrel of his rifle tracking the man's centerline.
The swordsman advanced one measured step.
Augur's expression remained cold.