Chapter 38

The man known as Doyle impatiently tapped the armrest of his chair while he listened to the latest reports from his lieutenants.

The large cavernous room where he was holding court was ornate. The building that he had taken as his headquarters had once been a religious temple of some kind, and he suspected that it had long pre-dated the war. As such, there were a number of statues and intricate carvings that lined the walls. A massive set of stone pillars ran through the center of the room, directly leading to the steps of the dais which he now sat upon in his chair, or throne as he sometimes liked to call it.

It had been an off-month for collecting money. A recent week-long snowstorm in the area had delayed the normal start time of the spring trade caravans and ships, which had left his financial coffers dwindling. If he wanted, he could send out a literal army of people to threaten and cajole the various merchants and businesses in Ulareg, but overtly squeezing them for cash now would only demonstrate to the other gangs in the city that he was hurting.

"They rely on the same fat merchants to fund their organizations as well, so they are probably hurting as much as I," he thought. "I can probably take some solace in that."

In his 37-years, he had seen so many organizations rise and fall in the city. All the gangs that he had seen destroyed had one thing in common, they had overreached and had gotten greedy. There was a fine line between a merchant begrudgingly paying their bribes, to them chafing so much under financial demands that they would start working with the other groups to bring the offending gang down.

Several times within the last century, outside forces were able to successfully bribe UIareg's notoriously corrupt city guard into finally cracking down on the offending gangs. Of course, once an organization was destroyed, it left a power vacuum that people were all too willing to try and fill. Things always got bloody until the void left by the destroyed gang had been filled and the victors were able to enforce enough power to stabilize things.

The last gang purge by the city guard had been five years ago, and it had been in one of these power vacuums that Doyle had seized his place as a gang leader. At that point, Doyle had been working as an enforcer for one of the smaller gangs in the city. When it came time to split up the territory left behind by the newly departed gang, he was on the front lines making sure that the his organization seized what it could. By the end of two-bloody weeks of fighting in the streets with other gangs, Doyle's gang had lost many good people, leaving it a shell of its former self.

Doyle knew an opportunity when he saw it, so it was during his gang's weakened state that he had challenged the then leader of the gang to a fight to the death for leadership and had won. Using the remaining resources he could muster, he then started hitting various other smaller gangs that had been left weakened by the fight. It was touch and go for a long while, but little by little, Doyle's Demons began absorbing more men and territory until it had been built to the respected organization that it was today.

"Should we do something about the metalmancers sir?"

A question by Zery, his second in command snapped him back into reality. When the word "metalmancer" was spoken, both of his legs began to ache.

"What?" he bristled. Doyle could hear anger and tension in his voice when he spoke. He was annoyed with himself for drifting off during the reports, but he had the luxury of taking that out on his subordinates. The dull ache in his legs didn't help his mood either. He subconsciously began to rub them.

"Metalmancers? What about them?" He demanded.

"For the past three years, a handful of the younger metalmancers in our organization have disappeared one by one," Zery said in a calm, patient voice.

The tall, hawkish woman was an expert of managing her gang leader's mood, often by being freakishly calm during his outbursts. Doyle had often felt the urge to ring her neck sometimes, to wipe away the arrogant way the woman controlled her emotions, and in her own way control him, but he knew he would be losing a valuable asset if he ever did so. He knew that without her, his rage would cloud him and he would have lost the gang leadership one way or another.

Again, with the utterance of the word metalmancers, his legs throbbed again.

"The other gangs?" he asked. "Are they being bribed away?"

He shuddered, recruiting people from other gangs was rare, but it did happen. While gang members sometimes weren't the most loyal, if enough coin was offered, somebody might defect, even under the threat of being hunted for the rest of their days for being a traitor. If the recruiting gang had enough money, power and influence to guarantee the safety of their new recruit, then they were a force to be reckoned with.

"No," the woman shook her head. "I've had reports that every time that it has happened, there has been a foreign ship in dock. I suspect they are being taken aboard those."

He felt his ire rise instantly. It was one thing for another gang to interfere, that was life in the city of Ulareg, but outsiders he could not tolerate. He slammed a meaty fist down on the chair's armrest.

"Taken!" he shouted. "Why wasn't I informed of this earlier?"

The woman remained eerily still and calm. "Sir, I reported these disappearances to you as they occurred. The disappearances were so spread out, that we just considered them to be part of our normal attrition rate. You even sent out hunting parties to try and track some of them down."

She was right, she had told him about them. But those reports were so rare and far between that he had forgotten.

"Remind me, were any of these parties successful?" Doyle clamped down on each armrest, digging is fingernails into the wood.

"No, they always ended up at a dead-end, and that dead-end was always the docks. It was only recently that we discovered the connection to the foreign ships."

"How many have we lost?"

"Four sir."

Four didn't seem like a large number, but metalmancers were rare enough in their own right. The ones under gang control were often "rented" out to some of the merchants in the city for an exorbitant fee. The amount of value each of them generated was about 10-fold of one of the normal gang members. It would be hard to recover from those losses.

"Do we know where these foreign ships come from?"

"No, they claim to be from a different region every time they enter the city. I've gotten some reports that they all seem to be patched up pre-war, or war-era vessels."

"Foreigners," he spat. "Tell our workers at the docks to keep an eye out for any ships that match that description. Lock down the metalmancers we have remaining."

"Already done sir," Zery gave a slight smile. She knew him too well. "There's one more thing you should know about."

Doyle gave a twisted smile as Zery informed him of the news.