by J. P. Ashman
‘All apples, is it?’ the guard by the driver asked.
‘Aye, and some rhubarb. For plates and pies and cider. Early crop though, not me best. Could’ve done wi’ a few more weeks, but—’
‘Anyone approached you on the way in?’
‘How’d ye mean?’
The guard took a bite out of the apple his friend had thrown him. ‘For passage,’ he said, mouth full.
‘Why’d they wanna do that?’
‘Answer him,’ said Rooter, at the back of the cart.
‘No. Ent no one’s approached me, ’cept more like you two, back at the main gates.’
The guard bit another chunk of the apple.
‘All’s clear,’ Rooter said, before re-covering the load and moving back to the brazier, rubbing his green prize on his chest, under his dripping cloak.
Without a word, he guard by the driver waved him on. Gates clunked, creaked and opened.
Walking over to his companion and their brazier, the guard who’d done the talking watched the cart rock ever so slowly through. He finished the apple he’d been devouring and fed the core to the flames, which hissed in satisfaction.
‘Did you not check under the cart?’ he asked, looking to his friend.
Rooter laughed. ‘No. Stop asking, will ye? I never do. Every damn bard song or story has someone hiding under a cart. No one’s stupid enough to actually do it.’ He threw his own core into the fire.
‘Well they should, since no one ever checks.’
‘Listen, I ain’t getting down in this shit ’n’ mud to check for no one to be not clingin’ underneath the slowest pissin’ cart I ever did see pass through those gates.’ He took a breath after that. ‘Poor donkey’s dead on its legs, pulling that load.’ Rooter clapped his hands together and shuddered as a rain drop ran down his nose. He wiped it away and turned to see his friend staring at him.
‘But if there is?’
‘There isn’t, trust me. It’s a stupid hiding place and I ain’t looking stupid m’self, and getting more wet, by getting on all fours to check for nowt. I’ll do the rootin’, like always, but that’s it. Now leave it, will ye? Unless you wanna look?’
A shake of the head. They both watched the cart enter the courtyard beyond as the gates started to close.
‘And if Sergeant Grannit asks?’
‘For ’morl’s sake.’
‘If there’s an assassin under that there cart, and he gets in, and Grannit knows you—’
‘Stop that cart!’ Rooter shouted.
The donkey huffed its relief as the driver obliged, mumbling and grumbling to himself.
The two guards motioned for their friends on the far brazier to keep watch, and pressed through the nearly closed gates to the cart on the far side.
Squatting at the back wheel, Rooter glanced under and shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said, looking up to his partner, eyes squinting the rain away.
Eyebrows were raised and a helmeted head nodded back to the cart, insistent.
Following a heavy sigh, Rooter shifted his sword to the side and knelt on the wet ground, cursing colourfully as he discovered the puddle was deeper than it looked. He still couldn’t see properly, so with yet more curses, Rooter resigned himself to it and dropped to all fours.
A gust of wind howled and rain fell all the more.
By the side of the cart, eyes widened before an unseen blade punched through one of them. Rooter’s arms and legs went limp and he flopped to the floor with a shallow splash.
The second guard hit the ground hard as two kamas swept him from his feet, finishing him before he could shout out.
Cursing the further delay, the old driver urged the donkey on, and cursed the guards who he assumed must have passed back through the gates without telling him he was free to go.
Cheung waited with the two dead men in the evening gloom, the sun’s position too low to illuminate the courtyard, nestled as it was within the Palace’s high walls. Once the cart and its driver were out of sight, Cheung heaved and dragged the blood-, piss- and, in one case, shit-soiled bodies to a deeply shadowed corner, leaving blood-slick puddles in his wake. He disappeared into the sprawling palace after that, certain his mark was finally within striking distance.
Bells sounded and so did soldiers, servants and dogs. The latter barked and howled as they were led through corridors and across yards. Armour rustled and scraped and clanked and doors were barred. Knights and sergeants shouted orders and others called out warnings.
Cheung moved down a dark passageway, pulling torches from walls as he ran. He’d attempted to cross a large, empty hall as the bells started to ring loud and clear, only to find the floor dissolving as he stepped out onto it. He’d watched in confusion as the stone slabs liquefied, beginning to bob like the skin on a cooling soup. He’d turned from that path, knowing magic when he saw it.
An iron studded door stood before him as he reached the end of the torch scattered but otherwise featureless passage. Satchel gripped in one hand, he pressed his ear to the door and held his breath.
Nothing.
Turning the handle with a pale, scarred hand, Cheung eased it open and peeked through the gap.
Nothing.
He entered the oblong room and eyed the harnesses of plate armour along the walls. His heart lurched in his chest as the empty great-helms turned and eyed him back.
Mages be cursed…
Cheung ran, satchel at his side. He ran as fast as he could through the middle of the room, ignoring the scraping of metal as swords were drawn and boots stepped from flanking dais’.
A haze rose from the six guardians as they stepped towards him, longswords held offensively. Their armour seemed held in place by that haze to form an awkward moving mass of steel and leather.
Cheung made the door before the nearest made him. He ducked as he pulled it open, and felt a concussive shudder hammer up his arm as a large blade split oak above him. He reeled at the speed of the thing, swaying away as the hack turned into an overstretched lunge.
Taking hold of the bluntness higher up the blade, Cheung pulled hard, forcing the off-balanced animation to crash helmet first onto stone flags. Armour scattered and maille and leather flattened.
There was no respite as another length of steel came in horizontally, cleaving at Cheung’s waist. He barely avoided the swing, but managed to dive over pieces of armour and through the doorway to safety.
The steel guardians fought to push through after him, hindering themselves in their single mindedness.
Scrabbling to his feet, Cheung raced on, following the sound of men shouting warnings. Turning a corner, he powered up a narrow, curving staircase before spilling out, chest heaving, onto a short corridor with a set of double doors at the end.
Two heads turned. The halberdiers they belonged to readied themselves. Cheung was sure they’d just closed those doors.
‘You’re not getting through,’ the older of the two said. The other nodded, nostrils flaring, jaw bunching.
‘I don’t mean to,’ Cheung said in Altolnan, between breaths. He pulled his satchel from his shoulder as the men advanced, halberds lowered towards him.
Cheung took a deep breath and slid his satchel towards the guards. A heartbeat later, as their faces turned from determination to confusion, Cheung exploded into motion. He darted forward with incredible speed, chasing his sliding satchel until he met with it, a forearm’s length before the points of the lowered halberds.
Pale hands plunged into the satchel and took hold of bone.
Broad-bladed polearms thrust forward.
Two black bladed kamas left satchel as Cheung sprang up and over the weapons coming in at him. His attackers struck stone and fell forward as Cheung landed between them, black blades finding gaps in polished plate.
Landing in a crouch, blooded kamas to the sides, Cheung looked forward to the double doors he did indeed intend to pass through.
He rose to his feet and took a step forward, hearing the shift of pla
te too late to stop the bollock dagger from slicing across the back of his trailing calf.
Biting back a cry of pain, Cheung twisted and dropped, driving his weapons into the offending survivor, who grunted his last breath. Defiant old eyes bored into Cheung’s before the light faded from them.
Cheung stood once more. He drew a single red line through his shirt and across his chest, joining two other recent additions from the courtyard. He accepted the wound on his calf as payment for the older halberdier’s death, and nodded his respect of the man’s final attempt to stop him.
Rolling his head and his arms, Cheung stretched one last time before approaching and pushing his way through the double doors those behind him died to protect.
As soon as Cheung passed through the doors, he heard the double clicks. More snaps than clicks. Snaps and twangs and loud cracks as two crossbow bolts smashed against and ricocheted off the plastered wall above his head. Coming back to his feet after his instinctive roll, and cursing his lack of discipline of late, Cheung launched into a light-footed run that took him, body arching and twisting and turning, through the centre of two wide-eyed halberdiers to close on the deftly reloading crossbowmen.
Their eyes were on their weapons, experience and confidence steadying their hands as they spanned the bows and begun loading bolts into grooves. The two men looked up at the shouted warning from their protectors. Their eyes widened too – one managing to drop his crossbow and reach for a dagger at his belt – before black-bladed kamas thudded wetly into shoulders. Both men went down hard, howling as they fell, blood arcing from wounds like twin fountains of crimson as Cheung made to turn right but dashed left, keeping the reacting halberdiers and their wicked polearms in his periphery.
Cheung circled the thrashing, shrieking and cursing men slipping around on the polished floor, assaulting the halberdiers with a confidence he’d not felt since his journey out of Eatri began. He was impressed how quickly the halberdiers had recovered their surprise at his speed and skill, at their surprise of the wounded men, friends likely, before them. Snarls pulled at lips and noses wrinkled. Teeth showed through peeled-back lips and as a well-trained duo, the halberdiers charged Cheung, flat-bladed halberds jabbing and swinging in quick, jerky movements – no pattern to those moves. Hard to defend against, Cheung managed to think, as he ran for the wall to the right of the right-hand man. He launched himself from the ground and propelled himself up, backwards and over the too-late-to-react halberdier. The long weapon the man wielded never made it up in time to stop the light-drinking blade of Cheung’s trailing weapon from piercing and sinking into his eye and brain thereafter.
No shriek or agonised cry came, just a weight that pulled Cheung, along with his momentum, down and into the second halberdier, who dropped shortly after, Cheung’s leading kama mirroring the action of its twin.
Cheung landed in a crouch, breaths heavy, sweat beading his scarred brow. The clatter and thud of armoured bodies striking the floor, of halberds doing the same, accompanied the thudding of Cheung’s pulse in his ears, the rush of blood circulating his system. He glanced about, to the two corpses and two cursing, snarling crossbowmen, all blood covered, scared and rightfully angry at Cheung, and themselves for that matter. He knew enough of soldiers to understand that. Standing, the slice Cheung had taken in the corridor pulling at his calf now the rush of the fight fled him, he gave the severely bleeding crossbowmen a wide birth and made for the small door he’d seen one of them glance towards.
‘Bastard!’ the furthest man managed, voice tinged with pain.
Cheung accepted the understandable, outrage filled insult and opened the door without turning, two kamas held in one hand.
He didn’t expect the gauntleted fist that greeted him; didn’t expect the crunch of his nose and the spattering of hot blood across his top lip as he rocked back.
Chapter 46 – Sergeant Grannit
Sergeant Grannit backed into the corridor as the assassin came on fast and furious, despite broken nose. The palace sergeant-at-arms hadn’t got where he was through hubris and bluster. He’d got and stayed there by fighting smart. By choosing his fights, the when and the where and the who, often as not. Grannit knew the man he faced was quick as a stoat and carried a deadly bite: the black blades of his cycle-like weapons drawing Grannit’s eyes in a dangerous way. He also knew his thick padding, riveted maille and steel plate offered him far more protection in the confines of the corridor, where he was unflank-able and exposed only on his most dangerous side. If he was to stop this bastard, if he was to survive, he needed to use his advantage of armour and strength and take away his opponent’s speed and agility.
The assassin came in low, then high, flashing in with strikes like an adder. The blades licked out like fangs, hooked at his arming sword and rondel dagger, trying to pull them out to expose him. Grannit stepped back, knowing the corridor and avoiding as many attacks by the assassin as he parried with one blade or another. He punched back with lunges where he could, but conserved his energy, knowing he’d tire first if he tried to match the Eatrian’s speed and aggression. Grannit sucked in a breath as a black blade swished across the maille covering his throat. He’d hardly seen the attack in the fast dimming light – the further he backed away from the doorway to the chamber was the further he backed into the windowless corridor. He watched for gaps, forcing his eyes on the assassin’s chest, letting his periphery pick up the subtle movements from shoulders through arms to weapons. If he let himself be drawn in by those black blades, or the red-spattered pale hands holding them, then he was gone; of that Grannit was sure.
The assassin knocked Grannit’s sword wide. The thud and reverberation of the blade connecting with the wall opened him up enough for the assassin to flash a foot out, connecting with and staggering Grannit back through his solar plexus.
‘Shitting twat.’ Grannit spat at the assassin’s feet and came on hard and fast, sword leading, rondel following; the tri-edged straight foot of steel designed to punch through armour would sink deep into the cloth-covered assassin, ghostly agile or not.
The assassin leapt back, but could hardly go sideways. He let Grannit come at him and Grannit knew it; he counted on it. As he overstretched with his sword, and stumbled, the assassin stepped in, black blade guiding Grannit’s sword harmlessly past whilst the other hooked for the armour-less spot under Grannit’s outstretched arm. The assassin twisted as he did so, seeing, Grannit knew, the danger presented by the rondel dagger. As the depth-less blade cut through wool and linen, scraping past pouldron, causing Grannit to clench teeth and roar through them with the pain, Grannit dropped sword and rondel, and the gauntleted hand holding the latter took the assassin’s balls and squeezed… Grannit frowned, the confusion and realisation overcoming the pain as he sagged to the floor, black blade sucking painfully free of his under-arm and the innards it’d skewered beneath. He fell to the floor, hand grasping cloth, but no balls. Grannit felt the empty package slip his grasp as the Eatrian eunuch leapt over him and sprinted away, leaving Grannit to struggle to his feet, armpit pissing blood over polished plate and the passage-polished stone floor. Leaving him to know his failure and to know, more than likely, his own end.
‘Gods but it hurts,’ Grannit managed before slipping on and crashing to the blood-slick floor.
Chapter 47 – It all led to this
Nose and face throbbing, Cheung wiped at his eyes with the back of his scar-roughed, henna-faded hand. He took a breath and slowed, his walk, his heart, his thoughts. The door before him was everything, or so he hoped. He’d hoped the door after the two halberdiers had been, but alas it had not, and since then he’d travelled upstairs and down corridors galore. The map of the palace his masters placed in his head along with the original order, had been guiding him thus far. Cheung knew such a mark would prove difficult, to say the least, but the level of resistance he’d met troubled him. They knew of the mark, that much was clear. How? Souch Sader? He didn’t know for sure, nor did it matter. The fact
they knew was what mattered; to him, to the mission and to the honour of his masters. He had to see it through. He had to leave behind the doubts sown by the Caravaneers. Cheung allowed himself a rare smile at the thought of those men and women, and children. Infectious was their mirth and love of life, their passion, whether to anger or love or dance or song. Infectious. But he was an assassin of Eatri and the door before him was everything. Of course, Cheung knew there’d be the hardest resistance yet beyond that door, it only made sense. There’d be no stalking up to or jumping out on an unsuspecting mark, not this time. This would be a rush of blades and blood and adrenaline and… death. His and – or – the King of Altoln’s. Cheung accepted now – more than he thought he’d accepted at any point along the road – that his life was forfeit for the mission. He accepted his masters knew so and also accepted that, unusually, they’d sent more than one of his order to attempt to see this through. No second attempts, as had happened on occasion throughout history, such as those sent against the great warlords of the Eastern Planes in centuries past, before they had become the Naga. No, this time multiple assassins, he could only assume after the one he’d seen in the tavern, had been sent at the same time. This mark must be the greatest of Cheung’s time, and for that, for that honour, he was proud.
Head high and one last trick up his sleeve, so to speak, Cheung shoved through the door with a confidence he’d not felt in years. He would succeed. No Altolnan could stop him in that.
The light struck Cheung’s eyes as shouts, triggered by the opening of the door, filled the room. Gruff voiced and soft voiced shouts alike; warnings and curses and threats, all in the tongue of Altoln, although three different accents were present, which caused Cheung a measure of confusion.
Polished armour, road-dusted leather, men and women and swords and a bow all greeted Cheung. As did the anger-reddened face of King Barrison, stood behind his defensive barrier of protectors young and old.