Read Online Steam Legion by Evan Currie - Free Book Online

great deal of satisfaction in what they were doing here. Punishment may belong to the Lord, but that was in the afterlife. Here and now, he relished delivering unto the oppressors what they had sown in the eyes of God.
    ****
    “’Ere’s another one. Leader type, I’d say.”
    Immune Sevarus of the Deiotariana Legion moved closer so he could look out over the Pedes’s head to see what the man was speaking of. Sure enough, there were three armed men moving down the darkened streets, heading toward the docks. They’d heard fighting in that range earlier, but it was out of their assigned area. Now, however, they had specific tasks to accomplish, so they had ignored it in favor of trailing this new group.
    He patted his spotter on the shoulder. “Good eye. Middle one is no thug, that much I’ll swear to.”
    Before being pressed into service with the Legion, Sevarus and his “colleagues” were well-known in the dark alleys of Alexandria as the people to avoid if you had a full purse.
    “Let them pass. The lead man looks preoccupied with something,” he decided. “Let his trail of thought lead him down a dark alley of our choice.”
    “Right.”
    They fell back into the shadows, hiding themselves in the crux of an aqueduct support while the men passed. With the enemy inside the walls, the Garrison largely defeated, and the Legion hundreds of mile markers away from Alexandria, the Zealots were almost literally walking around like they owned the entire city.
    Time they learned that this is my city.
    “Move,” he ordered as the men passed.
    His squad—half squad really—had four men whom Sevarus personally picked. He knew them, had haunted more than a few back alleys with them before his Legion days. So when he told them to move, they moved, rushing the men from behind.
    It was impossible to move quietly in armor at the best of times, one reason why he’d stripped the Legion-issued Lorica Laminata and told his squad to do the same. So, barefoot and dressed in cloth tunics, they padded quickly behind the trio and struck without slowing.
    Two of the three heard them coming, but it was too late by far. A long, slim dagger drove deep into the kidneys of the first, while the second turned just as the short-bladed gladius thrust into his side and exited through his back, severing his spine.
    Sevarus and his spotter, however, had other ideas in mind. They hit the leader, hard, slamming him to the ground while he was still thinking about whatever had been preoccupying his mind and held him down as the other two finished with his guards. They’d gotten lucky catching this group off on its own and now had a plan that they intended to enjoy carrying out.
    The leader swore at them as they twisted him over, but the four ignored it. There wasn’t a thing he could say that would cause them to let him go, and certainly nothing he could call them that would not be repaid by what was about to happen to him.
    “Silence him,” Sevarus ordered.
    His spotter, Pedes Gungsun, cold cocked the man with his dagger in his fist, then pulled his captive’s own dagger from his belt. It was child’s play to snap the cheap iron blade off at the pommel. Then he jammed the papyrus-chorded hilt into the man’s mouth, breaking teeth liberally in the process.
    “Spit it out,” he hissed in the man’s ear, his tone making a promise, “and I’ll drive it elsewhere.”
    “Leave them,” Sevarus ordered as he climbed to his feet. “This one will do.”
    The four men left the two cooling bodies face down in the street, picking the single live man up and dragging him down the road.
    “There’s a place that will suit just ahead,” Sevarus said. “Gung, take Loren and run ahead. I want to know where their closest groups are and what direction they’re moving.”
    The two Pedes saluted, running ahead while Sevarus and the fourth man continued to drag their prisoner along the paved street toward their destination. They hadn’t reached the spot