Rise of the Grandmaster

by Bradford Bates

  Scanning the deck of the ship, Tim smiled in relief. There were plenty of shadows for him to hide in and not a lot of people roaming around. One man patrolled the bow of the ship with a lantern, and two others were keeping an eye on the stern. All he had to do was avoid the three men on guard duty, sneak into Dapper Don Diego’s cabin, and take him out.

  Easy-fucking-peasy.

  Sure, if you were playing Agent 47. If you were on your first assassination mission ever, easy made you nervous. When things felt too easy, the hero normally got bamboozled. Tim climbed over the rail and moved into the first cluster of shadows he saw. No one called out; the alarm wasn’t raised. Maybe he wasn’t giving himself enough credit.

  Tim watched as the guards with lanterns patrolled, but they didn’t seem very interested in leaving their posts, which made Tim’s job easier. Flitting from one shadow to another, Tim crouched as he ran across the open spaces. He made it to the mast, and finally he was standing outside the door to the captain’s quarters. Tim took out one of his daggers and slowly turned the knob with his other hand.

  When the knob turned, Tim’s stomach dropped. Wouldn’t the door be locked? He hadn’t even thought about asking Gaston to show him how to pick a lock. Or maybe Don Diego was inside the room waiting for him?

  Oh, shit.

  It was too late to do anything but go for it. Tim swung the door wide and darted to the side of the entrance, then charged toward the back of the room. He slid to a stop, then backed up slowly, scanning every inch of the captain’s cabin.

  Dapper Don Diego wasn’t here.

  Tim closed the door. The last thing he needed was for some sailor to see the captain’s chambers open as he stumbled back from a night on the town. At least he was inside the lion’s den. All he had to do now was wait. Dapper Don would show up sooner or later. Tim would just have to hope that when Don Diego came back, he didn’t bring company.

  Moving to the side of the room that would remain hidden as the door opened, Tim tried not to think too hard about what would happen when Dapper Don finally came back. He hoped everything played out like it did in the movies. When people walked into a room, they never looked toward the door. Why would they, when all the furniture was arranged to minimize the dead zone the door created as it swung into the room?

  He wasn’t dumb enough to stand behind the door. If the captain flung it open and smashed him with the door, he might figure out something was up. Instead, he stayed a foot or so outside of the door’s range. When the captain came in, Tim would leap at him as he turned to close the door. It wouldn’t be a fair fight, but neither was pretending to be a sick old lady.

  The seconds seemed to stretch into minutes, and the minutes felt like days. Waiting for the door to open was tense work. He’d only get one shot at this. Even if his caseworker respawned him, Don Diego would be gone. This was his moment, so he had to make it count.

  A boot scrapped the deck outside the door. There was the clink of keys on a ring, then the scrape of metal on metal. The door rattled in its frame, and then again. “Motherfucker,” the man on the other side snarled. “Must not have locked the fucking thing.” The same rattle sounded as he fished his keys out again. The lock turned, and the door started to open.

  Dapper Dan stumbled into the room, swatting the door closed with his left hand while using his right to hold a bottle of amber liquid up to his mouth. He took several healthy gulps before weaving forward. He swayed from side to side, but a man with sea legs was no stranger to handling precarious balance issues.

  Another few chugs from the bottle, and it clattered to the floor. Diego stumbled, hit the edge of his desk with his hip, and made a mad lunge for his bunk. The side of his head caught the bedframe on the way down, and he landed on the ground in a heap.

  Tim watched his unmoving body for a few moments before whispering, “He might have just offed himself.”

  It wasn’t exactly how the outcome he’d been looking for, but one dead pirate was as good as another. He pulled up his user interface and checked the quest, but it hadn’t updated. Guess he’s still alive. Tim closed the screen and watched as Don Diego took a breath. He’d spent so much time worrying about a fight that he hadn’t prepared for the possibility that he might have to kill him in his sleep.

  Stabbing someone while they were sleeping was next-level serial-killer shit.

  But now it was worse. He wasn’t going to stab someone who was sleeping, he was going to slit the throat of an unconscious man. It sounded like the start of a paranormal movie. Dude walks into the coma ward and starts introducing people to Mr. Mayhem, then the cops show up and blow him away. On the fiftieth anniversary of that gruesome night, a team of dedicated paranormal activists enter the property, never to be seen again.

  It was time to make this a ghost ship.

  Tim crept forward to make sure Dapper Don Diego wasn’t faking. He pulled his second dagger free, then kicked Don in the boot. A small moan escaped his lips, and Diego’s body went still again.

  Tim was going to have to come up with a much better story to tell Gaston. Assassination stories were like fishing stories, right? The fish were always bigger and took way more effort to land, just like the stabs were always more precise, and no one ever saw you coming.

  Kneeling, Tim straddled the captain’s back. The man moaned again and kicked feebly. It wouldn’t be long before Dapper Don came back to his senses enough to put up a fight. The last thing Tim wanted was for him to scream and bring the three guards.

  He slipped the dagger in his left hand back into the sheath behind his back. Grabbing a fistful of Dapper Don’s greasy black hair, Tim yanked his head back, exposing the man’s throat. His palm felt sweaty, but his grip on the other dagger was secure. Now, if he could only remember what Gaston had told him.

  Don’t hesitate. It’s better to cut deeper than to give them a scratch, and don’t fuck it up.

  Tim put the blade of the dagger against Don Diego’s throat. When the cool metal touched his throat, the man started to squirm underneath him.

  When Dapper Don couldn’t get up, he swatted at Tim. “Hey, get offa me. This isn’t funny.”

  Tim wasn’t laughing.

  “Paul sends his regards.” Tim pulled Dapper Don’s head back farther with a rough jerk and started to cut. Don’t hesitate. With Gaston’s voice ringing in his mind, Tim pulled the dagger across the man’s throat with all the strength he had.

  Blood spurted from Dapper Don Diego’s neck, and he didn’t cry out or move again. Looking down, Tim realized he’d nearly decapitated the man. He scrambled off of the corpse’s back, not able to get away fast enough. He came to a stop when his back crashed into the wall.

  Holy shit, he’d done it.

  For better or worse, he was a killer. And what was with that line, “Paul sends his regards?” “What am I, a B-movie star?” Tim fought the smile trying to form on his lips. It didn’t feel right to smile when there was a dead man a few feet away, but he was proud of himself. He had come through in the clutch.

  Back against the wall, he waited for something to happen. There was no sense of overwhelming dread. He didn’t throw up. On a scale of one to ten, he was probably riding an eight and a half or a nine. By all accounts, he was doing just fine. Tim wasn’t sure what that said about him as a person, but as far as the game went, he was making progress.

  It helped that Don Diego was a stinking shit-pile of a man, and working for the cardinal confirmed it. Not to mention the kind of men he employed and the tactics they used to get what they wanted. If these were the kind of people Jepsom planned to reward when he was in charge, Tim was glad he’d chosen to fight instead of sitting on the sidelines.

  Slowly, he climbed back to his feet. His body was wired with adrenaline, making his movements almost jerky. Bending over the body, he picked up his dagger and wiped the blade on Don’s shirt before sliding it back into its sheath. There was an option to loot the corpse, which was nice. Tim wasn’t looking forward to scrounging around
in the man’s pockets. It was funny, which lines people chose to cross. The devs made it okay for Tim to kill him, but rooting around his corpse for loose change was too much.

  Tim appreciated the developers’ decision when all of Dapper Don’s personal items appeared in his own inventory.

  A red icon on the lower right-hand side of his vision drew his attention away from Diego. Tim opened the notification and realized that his quest had just updated. “They can do that?”

  Quest Received: Fleecing The Righteous

  Good job taking out the trash. Now that Dapper Don Diego has met his end, secure the ship before Lady Briarthorn’s people arrive to claim your reward.

  Success: Make sure the ship is free of guards or attackers before Lady Briarthorn boards the Mary Lou

  Failure: If any of Lady Briarthorn’s retainers die boarding the ship, your reward will be reduced to five percent.

  Reward: Fifteen percent of the take and a new weapon upon successful completion.

  An extra five percent of whatever was in the cargo hold might be worth the risk, but he’d have to kill the guards, and maybe find some way to secure the deck hatches so any men below couldn’t make it topside and cause trouble. It wasn’t impossible, but it would mean killing at least three more people. He had gone into tonight planning to kill one man, but now he was going to potentially kill four, and he had two more on his list for later.

  His body count was growing faster than Bundy’s.

  It was logical to go after the single guard first. If he couldn’t handle the man by himself, he’d never be able to take on two at once. Before he could worry about walking into his first real fight, he needed to find something to seal off the decks below. There was no way to know how many men were down there. Leaving the hatches open was just too big a risk.

  Trying to ignore the corpse in the room, Tim looked for something he could use to block the door. There were two sets of shackles in the corner. Those might work if he could find some rope. Then he saw the sword lying against the wall. It was a beast of a thing. How anyone could lift it in battle, let alone swing it, was beyond his understanding.

  As he got closer, Tim noticed that the edge of the blade was dull, and there were jewels set around the pommel. So the blade was mostly for decoration, the kind of thing an old warrior would hang above his hearth. Or maybe it was just the thing to block a door or a hatch, depending on how it opened. Tim put the massive sword and the sets of matching shackles in his inventory.

  “I’m a fucking idiot.” The palm of his hand made a thud as it bounced off his forehead.

  The open inventory screen showed him exactly what he had looted from Don Diego. Among the items and coins the system had added to his inventory was a ring of keys, just the thing he’d need to lock people below decks and keep them out of the hold. Tim shrugged; it was worth a shot. Worst case scenario, he could go back to using the sword or the shackles.

  Tim opened the door and poked his head out to scan the deck. Nothing had changed since he’d entered Dapper Don’s quarters. He could clearly see the man with his lantern making his circles at the front of the ship and the other two in the stern. After slipping through the door, he closed it behind him.

  The main entrance to the decks below was next to the captain’s quarters. Tim peeked around the corner to make sure the guard at the bow of the ship was still in place, then pulled out the keys. He tried the keys one at a time, cursing when one didn’t work. He’d thought the keys were loud when Don Diego had used them, but now each jingle might as well have been a banshee’s scream.

  The fourth key clicked the lock into place. Tim yanked on the handle and the door stayed firm. There was no reason not to be safe. Taking the giant sword out of his inventory, he placed it in the brackets over the hatch. If they broke the lock, the sword should keep anyone down there busy for a while.

  With the hatch as secure as he could make it, Tim moved across the deck until he found a spot to watch the bow guard make his rounds. He completed the circular sweep every three minutes or so. He watched the man make the same loop four times before creeping forward. Tim pulled both his blades free and closed the distance to his target.

  The light from the lantern swayed gently, casting shadows across the deck. When one more appeared, the man didn’t think anything of it. Nothing ever happened on watch. He leaned over the edge of the boat and held out the lantern to scan the water below, then started moving to the next point.

  Tim didn’t know how the man missed seeing him, but he was thankful he had. Keeping his eyes locked on the target, he waited until the guard leaned over the edge of the boat again. Rushing forward, he sank both his blades into the soft spots on the man’s back. The knives slid in to the hilt, and the lantern tumbled into the water below.

  The man made a gurgling sound, and Tim realized he had been lucky enough to have punctured one of the man’s lungs. He stopped the guard from falling over the side of the boat, laying him on the deck. While it would have been a convenient way to get rid of the corpse, it also would have made one hell of a racket.

  How much time did he have before the cavalry arrived? His guess was “not long,” so he needed to do this right. Tim had already wasted too much time watching this man circle the ship, and he still had to finish him off before moving on. “It’s just a game,” he mumbled as he slit the man’s throat. Killing the monsters of this world was going to be a non-event after his actions tonight.

  Pulling the body behind a stack of crates took some effort, but it was worth it. The last thing Tim wanted was for one of the guards to deviate from his route and stumble across their dead friend, not to mention the sword barring the hatch. He told the system to loot the body and moved toward the stern of the ship.

  This was where things were going to get difficult.

  Tim briefly asked Gaston about how to deal with multiple opponents at the same time, and the burly assassin had told him to kill one as fast as possible. Then you had one less to deal with than you did before. In theory, it was simple enough. If he could wait until the men were far enough apart, he’d be able to take one out before the other could react. He liked his chances in a one-on-one fight a hell of a lot better.

  It might have just been a question of trusting his abilities. Hitting an unmoving wooden dummy was one thing, but killing two moving people was something else entirely. How could you feel confident in a fight to the death if you’d never been in one?

  The rational part of his brain finally caught up to his panicked thoughts. He had been in a fight to the death. Sure, the man hadn’t seen him coming, but if he had turned around, it would have been on like Donkey Kong. Maybe it was like when Harry Potter couldn’t cast the Patronus charm until he knew he had been the one to do it earlier. Knowing you could accomplish something you thought was impossible gave you the confidence to do all kinds of things.

  Tim didn’t have a Time-Turner to fall back on, so he was going to have to go with real-world experience over a test run. So far his quest hadn’t gone according to script, but he’d come out on top. By his count, it was Tim two, bad guys zero—unless you counted his unfortunate brush with death the day before. Then it was two to one.

  Time to make his percentage a little higher.

  Sneaking into position, Tim waited for the perfect moment. When the guard passed him, he launched himself from the shadows. The man managed to turn at the last second. His half-hearted defense wasn’t enough to stop Tim’s daggers from sinking into him, but the turn made it so he missed the vital spots he’d been aiming for.

  The man’s lantern fell to the deck as he screamed in pain. The guard started reaching for the sword on his hip, but Tim didn’t give him the chance and slit his throat. Pounding footsteps forced him to turn and prepare for the next guard. This man would surely have his sword out.

  A flash of silver caught his eye and Tim rolled to the side, narrowly dodging the sword strike that would have slashed open his chest. The blade smashed into the deck, buying hi
m the time he needed to get back on his feet.

  He adjusted the dagger in his left hand so he could hold the blade against his forearm to slash or block. He kept the dagger in his right hand in a more traditional grip for thrusting. The guard started to circle him, his longer weapon giving him confidence. Tim knew the guard was forcing him toward his dead friend, probably hoping to screw up his footing.

  When you were facing formidable odds, sometimes you had to do the unexpected. The dagger in Tim’s right hand disappeared, and one of his throwing knives appeared in its place. He flicked his arm as Gaston had shown him, and the blade traveled between them and buried itself in the guard’s leg.

  Not what he’d been aiming for, but it would do.

  His second attempt went much better, and the knife sank into the man’s gut. With a bellow of rage, the swordsman brought his blade down in a vicious arc. It was the kind of suicidal blow that could cut a man in half.

  If it landed.

  Tim watched the blade coming at him. It was almost as if the sword were moving in slow motion. He wondered if this was how Gaston felt as he dodged and attacked the swinging death ball he kept in the basement. It was like his body knew exactly what to do.

  Stepping inside the swing, Tim flipped the dagger from his left hand to his right and spun around the guard, kicking him in the back as he passed. The man hit the deck, screaming as the knives sticking out of him were pushed farther in. Not giving him the chance to strike again, Tim landed on his back, and his arm rose and fell six times in rapid succession.

  He stood up and kicked the sword from the man’s hand. His breath was coming in massive gasps. The world swam in front of him and then started to come back into focus as the oxygen reached his brain. Was there oxygen in-game?

  No one had ever told him that fighting for your life was so draining. He’d been in more than a few fistfights, but those were normally over as quickly as they started. This was different. He’d been amped up, and now he was completely drained. His legs started to shake, and he hit the deck like a ton of bricks.