by Tim Stead
“Sir Shadow Warrior?”
The boy was awake, trying to sit up.
“You rest easy, Jackan,” Francis said around a mouthful of bread. “We’ll be taking you out of here today.”
“I’m thirsty,” the boy said.
Francis filled a cup from a jug and took it over to the boy. He supported his head and held the cup to his lips. “Easy,” he said. “Just sip – don’t want you choking.”
Rubel sipped obediently. “Did we win?” he asked.
Francis nodded in the direction of the bodies in the corner. “Aye, we won, but you and Calitanto were hurt. It was a close run thing. Are you hungry?”
The boy shook his head, so Francis laid him back down on his makeshift bed and went to eat more food. It was impossible to be as hungry as he felt. He had eaten more than twice what he normally ate and it hadn’t filled him.
“We’re going to put you back to Calitanto’s place for a week, then you’ll come to mine and work as an apprentice at the forge,” he told the boy as he ate.
“Will I be strong enough?” the prince asked.
“You’ll do fine. Your cut’s not so bad. I’ll wager you’ll be strong as a horse in a week. How do you feel?”
“Sore,” the boy replied. He lifted his shirt carefully and looked at the wound. “It doesn’t look as bad as I thought,” he said.
Francis said nothing. Rubel carried on talking of inconsequential things, and Francis carried on eating until Calitanto came back.
*
He returned to the forge when the boy had gone, relieved that he had escaped the responsibility for a while. Master Franioso called him over as soon as he appeared.
“Those two pieces that were due on Saturday, how are they coming?”
“Both with the polishers,” Francis replied. He’d made great efforts to get them out of the way. “I’m working on something else,” he added. “A private commission.”
Franioso nodded. “Fine. I’ve got something else for you next week – a set of six daggers.”
“I might be bringing on an apprentice,” Francis said. “My cousin’s boy Jackan – good family, but fallen on hard times.”
Franioso nodded again. “About time you took someone on,” he said.
Francis went back to his work space. Private commission indeed. He was making a blade for his own use. He unwrapped the steel and examined it. The thing was nearly done. It was not what you might call a gentleman’s blade. The whole thing was only a little more than a dagger, a stubby grip, a rudimentary guard and a slender blade that he’d modelled on a rapier. It was a little fatter than a fencing blade, double edged, with a razor sharp point – an assassin’s weapon if ever there was such a thing.
He had little left to do, a little shaping work and then it would be fit to be polished, but that wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t want a blade that caught the light and scattered it to any watching guards. He was instead looking for ways to darken the steel.
He had made a sheath that fastened onto his forearm, a tight fitting sheath that would hold the weapon grip downmost. It was not a weapon that he wanted to wear at the forge for all to see. It would make people wonder.
When he finished work on the edge it was evening again, and he wrapped the steel in cloth and put it in a small sack. He headed for home. Once there he took it out and tested the edge again. It was as sharp as he could wish for. He could have shaved with it.
He strapped the sheath to his arm and slid the blade in. There was a small locking catch that he had designed to prevent it falling out, and he tested it, swinging his arm, jumping up and down to try to dislodge it. The knife stayed in place.
He slipped on a long sleeved shirt. It was a loose garment, grey, and it hid the sheath completely. He practiced drawing the blade, and found that a small pressure on the catch released it and it glided free with the slightest click and whisper. He cut the air with it a few times and found it a little blade heavy, but that didn’t matter.
He ate again, and left his rooms just after sunset, his blade strapped to his left arm and his collapsible grapple tucked under his coat.
The streets of Dock Ward were quiet, unusually so. It was the war, he supposed. Although the killing had yet to begin he could feel it in the air. People were afraid. They still went about their daily tasks as though life would go on as before, but nobody expected it. Ears were cocked for the first sound of alarm, the first drumming of hooves in the street.
Francis made his way up into central ward and then out into the outlying districts where the wealthy had their city estates. After a while he came once more to Falini’s gates. This time he was prepared.
He walked around the back of the estate, calling his gift when he was certain that nobody was watching. He assembled his grapple in the shadow of the wall. It took a little while, but when he finished it felt solid.
He checked again. This was his most vulnerable moment. The wall in this section looked over an open stretch of land with a scattering of small houses, but they were all shuttered for the night and he could see no movement.
He threw the grapple. The first time it missed, and he had to duck out of the way as it fell, clanging loudly against the cobbles. He picked it up and held it to himself, waiting for his alarm to subside. He looked up and down the wall, but saw no sign that he had been heard.
He tried again.
This time the grapple found purchase, and after testing his weight against the rope he scrambled up onto the top of the wall. From here he had a commanding view over the northern part of Falini’s estate. He paused to unhook the grapple and disassemble it, tucking it and the rope once more under his coat where it would be invisible.
A sound to his left startled him, and he was unnerved to see a guard walking along the wall towards him. The man didn’t seem alert, so he guessed it was just a regular patrol. Nevertheless, he had to get out of the way. He didn’t want the man to bump into him. It was too early to start killing.
He dropped from the wall onto a gravel path. It was a risk. The gravel crunched when he hit, and he waited, crouched, as the guard approached above him. The man looked down, held up a lamp the better to see what lay in the wall’s shadow, but saw nothing. He had heard something, though, so he lingered and Francis waited, breathing shallow, still as stone.
The guard moved on. He had his duty, his rounds to complete, and that was what pulled him away. Francis watched him go. When he had passed into the darkness, his lamp a spark in the distance, Francis moved again. He remembered the layout of the estate from his last visit. It was not so long ago, and the place was not that large.
He found the kitchen door.
Here, too, things had changed. The door was locked. It was a different time of day, but he suspected that the door being locked was a direct result of his previous visit. It made sense. He was beginning to resent the foolish drama of his first foray here. He should not have tried to scare Duke Falini.
He walked around the main house, carefully past the guards in front of the main door, and on around the other side. There was no obvious way in. The doors were all firmly bolted and the windows shuttered.
He went back to the kitchen. Perhaps there was only one way. He drew his knife, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” A voice from inside – a woman’s voice. He didn’t answer, but eased to one side.
He heard a bolt drawn and the door opened.
“Who’s there?” A girl stepped out. She could have been no more than fifteen, young and pretty. She was smiling, and looked from side to side without letting go her grip on the door handle.
“Is that you, Martin?” she called. “Show yourself.”
Francis was frozen. He couldn’t kill a serving girl. He’d expected a soldier, but this girl was no more than a child, an innocent. He watched helplessly as she closed and bolted the door again. There had not even been room to slip past her.
He was alone again in the dark, confused about what he was, what he shou
ld be. Could he be ruthless? Should Falini be spared because he had a girl answering the kitchen door? The answer to the second question was no. Of course it was. But Francis couldn’t kill a young girl like that and still pretend that his cause was pure. It would make him no better than Falini.
He walked around the building again, more to give him time to think than to find another way in, but he was lucky this time. As he was passing a door that had previously been locked and unlit, he saw it open and a man stepped out.
Francis couldn’t let himself miss such a gift. He rushed forwards, for once not concerned with stealth and, as the man turned back to the door, Francis drove his short blade into his back. It was a good blow, but as he wrenched the blade free and his victim cried out he saw that there was a second man standing inside the door.
He should have expected it, really. All the doors were bolted from the inside, and someone would have to shoot those bolts.
Francis thrust himself forwards at the same moment as the man inside tried to slam the door. Again he was lucky. The man he had stabbed had fallen forwards and now lay across the threshold. He lashed out with his blade and caught the second man across the arm, making him release his grip on the door.
He was in, but his problems were only just beginning. The man with the bleeding arm turned to flee, and in a moment the alarm would be raised. Francis was quick and strong – the legacy of his trade. He snatched at the man and managed to catch his sleeve and pull. The sleeve ripped, but it unbalanced the doorkeeper, and he lost his footing and fell.
Francis was on him in a moment, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest. It was over in seconds.
He sat back on his haunches and looked at the carnage. Anyone passing the door or coming down the corridor from the inside would know at once that something was wrong, but Francis didn’t have to buy himself that much time. He dragged the first man through the door and closed it, bolting it from the inside. That would deceive anyone who passed by. It was too dark to see the blood on the ground.
Inside there was less that he could do. There was nowhere to hide two bodies. He would just have to chance it.
He set off down the corridor, hoping that the commotion at the door had not attracted the wrong sort of attention. He reached the main hall again, and it seemed that his luck was still holding. He remembered that there had been a guard on the landing, and even which stairs on the staircase creaked, so he climbed quietly and saw that the man had been replaced by two. They sat in darkness, one either side of the landing.
He decided to leave them be, for now at least. He crept past them and on up to the upper floor. He knew where the duke’s chamber was, but he had to ask himself whether the man would have moved after the last attack. Francis would hardly have stayed in the same room if it had happened to him.
He went to the corridor where he had found the duke’s room last time and sure enough it seemed that the man was still here. There were four guards seated outside the door. Four was too many. He’d shown that with his gift and the element of surprise he could kill two, but four would take too much time.
It struck Francis that if the duke had put no guards in the corridor and switched rooms he would never have found him. But what if he had switched rooms and put the guards on the old room? That would be clever, but he suspected Falini was too arrogant, too stubborn for such games.
This was a long corridor and there were other rooms. He walked as quietly as he could to the first door. The guards didn’t look particularly alert, and he watched them as he tried the door. It was unlocked, and the tiny click as he opened it didn’t seem to be noticed. He eased the door open, stepped inside and eased it shut again.
He waited.
If someone had heard it shut there would be a guard following him through the door in a few seconds, but a minute passed and he was still alone. He turned and looked around the chamber. It was a bed chamber. He had expected that, but what he hadn’t expected was that it was occupied. There was a distinct lump in the sheets.
He stepped closer.
It was a woman. He could hear her breathing, see her long hair dark and wild about her head. She was still asleep. Francis watched her for a while. He was aware that there was a tall window to his left, and that was where he wanted to look, but he couldn’t while she was there, while she could wake and shout and put armed men at his back.
And after all, this was no serving girl. Sleeping here she was a Falini, a wife or sister or cousin or friend. She was one of them. He drew his knife and approached the bed. There was hardly any light in the room, just what came through the shutters from the moon and under the door from the guards’ lamps, but his eyes began to adjust and he could see her face, but just as eyes, nose mouth, or shadows of them.
Best done quickly, he thought, though it was against all decency to kill a woman. He clapped his hand over her mouth and struck with the knife in the same instant. She bucked like she’d been struck in the back and her eyes opened to stare at him for a moment of surprise, and then she was gone, staring past him at nothing.
Francis wondered if she had really seen him, in spite of his gift. It didn’t seem likely.
He left the body on the bed and went to the window. It was a door, and he unlatched the shutters and opened it to find himself out on a small balcony in the night air. He looked to his right, in the direction of the duke’s room and saw that the pattern was repeated all down the side of the building, and that three balconies down there was a guard sitting outside the window.
Surely he could manage one guard?
He closed the door carefully behind him and examined the gap between the balconies. He could jump it easily enough. It was no more that five feet, and the drop below, though intimidating, would not be enough to kill him unless he landed on his head.
The real problem was the noise. There was no way he could jump from one balcony to the next without making a noise.
He examined the balconies. Each was about three feet deep and ten wide, fenced in by a stone balustrade. The balustrade was two and half feet high. He could climb up onto the edge, but a step across was not possible. He would definitely have to jump. Luckily there was no furniture on this balcony or the next, and only a chair on the third. The chair, of course, was occupied by the guard, but the man looked something less than alert.
If he couldn’t do it silently he would have to be quick. He drew his blade once more and held it firmly in his right hand. This was going to be tricky. If he got it wrong he could land on his own dagger and kill himself. Part of the problem was that he couldn’t see his own feet. That made tricks like this a lot more difficult.
He climbed up onto the rail and braced himself, concentrating on his balance. His knees bent, and he leaned forwards a little until he felt himself begin to tip. He jumped. It was a good jump, and he tucked himself over, saw the rail of the next balcony pass below him and hit with a shoulder, rolling hard into the rail on the far side.
It hurt, but he forced himself up again.
The guard had clearly heard something. His head came up and he was looking in Francis’s direction. Hesitation was the enemy, and he hauled himself onto the rail of the second balcony, ignoring a sharp pain in his knee.
He jumped again. His flight went well, but he knew as soon as he jumped that there was no room for him to land. There was a chair, thankfully a flimsy one, and a guard in the way. He hit both hard. The chair broke, and the guard, who had just risen to his feet and was trying to see what had caused the commotion, was bowled over, crashing into the balustrade on the far side of the balcony and cushioning Francis’s landing.
Francis wasted no time. He was on the man at once, using his weight to keep his sword arm pinned, stabbing him over and over until he stopped struggling.
Done. He was here outside the duke’s window. The next question was: had he been heard? He lay on top of the guard’s body, catching his breath, feeling his injuries. He didn’t think the knee was bad – probably just a bruise. His shoulde
r was sore as well from where he’d struck the chair, but he could live with that. Nothing seemed broken.
Five minutes passed and still there was no sign that anyone had heard anything, but that was no guarantee. They could be waiting inside for him to open the door. He tried the handle, and found that the door opened easily enough. He lay back on the ground and pushed it gently open with a foot, half expecting an arrow to fly over him, but he saw nothing. There was no noise or movement from within. He crawled forwards, put his head around the corner of the door and peered inside. It was dark. Out on the balcony there was moonlight, and some of it filtered through the door, but it was still difficult to make out anything.
He slipped through the open door. He stood for a while, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the light, and slowly the geography of the duke’s room revealed itself.
It was a large bed chamber, quite a bit larger than the one he’d come from, and it was dominated by a large bed set against the left hand wall.
The bed was empty.
Francis didn’t think that he was in the wrong room. The bed wasn’t tidy, and he guessed that a minute before it had been occupied. So the duke had heard the noise outside. Francis was puzzled that the guards had not been called, after all there were four armed men just the other side of the door. The duke could have gone out through the door, but Francis didn’t think so. He was here, somewhere, waiting for Francis to make a mistake.
He turned slowly, studying every inch of the darkened room. The walls were hung with richly embroidered Afaeli rugs, robbed of all colour by the moonlight. There were a hundred places to hide, and searching them would give away his position to the waiting duke.
This was, Francis supposed, exactly how it should be. The two of them alone, both invisible, both intent on killing the other. He wondered what weapon the duke was holding. A sword? It would be typical, but not useful in a room this size. A bow? Unwieldy, and drawing it would give him away a moment before he could shoot. A crossbow, then. It must be a crossbow. That meant the duke had one shot.
Francis closed his eyes and listened, hoping to hear the drawing of breath, the slightest movement, a hand brushing against cloth, a nervous swallow. There was nothing. He heard a chair scrape outside in the corridor, a low voice speaking. A reply. If he’d needed confirmation that the duke was still here that was it. The men outside were calm and bored.