Killstreak Book One

by Stuart Thaman

  When they reached the priory, they found the doors already opened and a line of what appeared to be peasants carrying supplies inside. It took a moment for Kadorax to find a knight who wasn’t already occupied.

  “You, knight,” he called unceremoniously. “I’ll need a word with your prior.” He extended the scroll out to the man, but the knight did not take it.

  “Prior’s out on a raid,” came the curt response.

  “Well, who’s next in charge? I’ve a letter from the priory in Oscine City.”

  The knight looked him over, then inspected his character sheet as he wrinkled his face in disgust. “You’re not a knight,” he said with a heavy dose of condescension. He snatched the scroll from Kadorax’s hand and opened it. “None of you are knights or any other class the priory would hire.”

  Kadorax wished he still had his title as Lord of Darkarrow attached to his name. Maybe then he’d get somewhere with the stubborn knights. “Just tell us where to go to find someone with a little more authority,” he said.

  The knight’s expression soured even further. “I’m the commanding officer here while the prior is away. All this letter says is to not kill you, hope that no one kills you, throw your body in the sea and never speak of it if someone accidentally kills you, and otherwise order you to the front lines. Who are you?”

  For once, Kadorax was rather glad his reputation didn’t precede him.

  “You—” Syzak started. Kadorax stopped him with a hand across his chest.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just tell us where we’ll find some action.” Kadorax tried to put on his most disarming smile. He had a strong hunch that it didn’t work.

  The knight handed the scroll back while showing as little interest as possible. “Fine, then. To the front you go. There’s a trail out of the Reif to the east, lots of knights there all the time, you can’t miss it. Take the trail out five or six miles, and you’ll see the command tent clear as day. If the prior’s back, you’ll find her there.”

  Kadorax considered thanking the man for the directions, then the silence between them stretched to an awkward length, so he simply turned and left.

  “Grab a sword from in town and then find that camp?” Syzak asked.

  Kadorax and Brinna both gave their assent. “I just hope Elise isn’t there. Knowing her tremendous ability to remember those she hated, we might not find the Blackened Blades to be as welcoming as we would like,” he said.

  “And the Miners’ Union?” Brinna added. “No one’s even bothered to mention them. I thought they were supposed to be caught up in the war as well.”

  Syzak looked around the street, but he didn’t see any non-humans other than a pair of gnomes standing in front of a bar with clay jars in their hands. Their scrawny builds and fine attire easily placed them outside the ranks of the Miners’ Union. “We might find some of them at the forward camp, no doubt profiteering from all the raw materials coming into the city, but don’t get your hopes up on fighting side by side with miners. They’re industrious—they aren’t adventurers.”

  “I’ve never met a proper dwarf or orc before,” Brinna said with a nod, her mind far away. “And Santo was the only elf I had ever known. Assir feels so… far away…”

  Kadorax found the weapon shop once more and stepped inside. A man dressed in blue and gold was busy haggling with the attendant at the counter, so the bastion took his time going through the weapons that weren’t locked at the front.

  Glancing at the prices, Syzak kept his voice low. “Way overpriced,” he said.

  Silently, Kadorax agreed. He found a sturdy short sword with a deep fuller in a slotted wooden bin and lifted it, surprised by the weight. He had to remind himself that his Strength score was terrible compared to the stats he was used to as an assassin. “Seventy gold,” he nearly gasped. It didn’t take him long to return the blade to its wooden home and be gone from the store.

  “Well, the Grim Sleeper shouldn’t have any trouble finding work transporting cargo, and Ayers’ workshop will be fully stocked and operational in a week,” Kadorax observed. He could just barely see the top of the ship’s center mast from the street.

  “Aye,” Syzak agreed. “Let’s find some jackals.”

  Chapter 9

  The path to the forward camp, as it turned out, was even marked with a priory archway and a set of flapping banners. It was heavily used, perhaps even more so than some of the streets in Virast. The walk took a few hours, and they passed hundreds of other adventurers, merchants, and even a few members of the Miners’ Union along the way. Some of the adventurers were in pretty bad shape as they went by. More than one of the groups they saw pulled along a sheet-covered corpse in a wagon.

  More blue and gold banners flapped happily in the wind at the camp. The road sort of ended in a sea of tents, hastily constructed wooden buildings, and latrine lines dug into the ground. From what they could see of the other side of the camp, a few more trails began there and wound their way into the wilderness. There was a thick forest to the road’s right side and jagged, rock-strewn plains to the left. In the center was a priory building, a compound of tents, wooden shacks, and a brick fireplace to one side that held several spits of roasting meat.

  It didn’t take long to find the Blackened Blades among the constant bustle of the camp. Their outpost was plain and dreary, flying no heraldry or colors at all, with a single man standing watch in front of the door. Behind the low building were two rows of palisades complete with sharpened spears and shallow pits. The ring of several blacksmiths’ hammers sounded from a series of thatched roofs over a collection of anvils next to the Blackened Blades. Each of the smiths was busily shaping arrowheads and passing off buckets of them to fletchers who fit them to shafts in the next building.

  Before Kadorax could knock on the door, it opened, and the guard stepped politely to the side. Elise stepped out into the sunlight, stretching her back. Then her eyes found Kadorax and she stopped midstep.

  “You,” the woman said flatly. Her right hand hovered near the hilt of her sword, a magnificent weapon dripping puffs of black shadow into the air from its unsheathed tip.

  Kadorax brought up the woman’s character sheet. Sure enough, Lady of Darkarrow was clearly present right after her name. Beyond that, Kadorax saw her level as well: Elise Stormdottr, Lady of Darkarrow, Level 41 Assassin.

  “You’re alive,” she said. The guard from the door recognized the tension, and he stepped forward with his own blade in hand.

  “Yes,” Kadorax finally said, dismissing Elise’s stats from his vision. “We’ve come to help…”

  Elise raised an eyebrow. She was a tall woman, built, and her eyes glimmered with violence. When she smiled—something that almost never happened—Kadorax thought even her grin appeared sinister. Everything about the new Lady of Darkarrow spoke of malice. “I suppose that is fitting. It was you, after all, who put Agglor in such a mess.”

  “I caused it?” Kadorax laughed. “If you’ve forgotten, I hate jackals. I didn’t summon their god and start a war.”

  Elise ignored his words with an ugly snarl. “You were there. You failed to kill the Gar’kesh. Probably got cocky and made a mistake.”

  Kadorax decided to let her think whatever she liked about his demise. Telling her the truth wouldn’t make her believe it. “Just tell me when the next mission leaves,” he said.

  She motioned for the guard to relax, then stepped forward and placed her hands on Kadorax shoulders, making him jump a bit at the unexpected touch. “If this is some ploy to win back your title, you’re far too late. The Blackened Blades are mine.” She was several inches taller than Kadorax, and her breath was hot on his forehead. “If you take a single step toward me that I don’t like, I’ll paint the walls of my tent with your innards.”

  Kadorax knew she meant every word. Her grip on his shoulders was starting to bring a bit of pain, even through his armor. “You can have the Blackened Blades,” he stated as he turned away from her vise-like grasp. />
  Finally, the woman eased away, a smirk replacing her scowl. “Good. There’s an expedition leaving this afternoon,” she told the group. “Two assassins and two knights. You’re welcome to join them, though I don’t know what they’d need with a bunch of low-level has-beens. Meet them here shortly, and they’ll give you the details.”

  Elise stalked off without waiting for a reply.

  “Well, there you have it,” Syzak hissed.

  Brinna watched Elise’s back as she left. “If the only choices for a new adventurer were the Priorate Knights and that insufferable woman, I think I’d take a closer look at the Miners’ Union.”

  Just then a fresh cart of ore and other supplies rolled into the forges next to the Blackened Blades’ command post. A short, hairy goblin wearing a pointed felt hat led a pair of ponies, frivolously shouting commands at the clearly untrained beasts until they came to halt. A bedraggled human, or perhaps a mix of human and elf, followed behind with a stick in his hand. The Miners’ Union didn’t have any particular colors or uniform, but the side of the cart was stamped with their group’s logo: a short, stubby arm holding a mining pick.

  “Now’s your chance,” Syzak said, pushing Brinna toward the haphazard delivery crew. “An exciting life of unloading carts and digging through pitch-black mines awaits!”

  Brinna watched as the goblin ordered the human around. It was a strange sight considering the stark height discrepancy between the two. “I’ll take my chances with the jackals,” she said.

  The Miners’ Union workers spent the better part of ten minutes squabbling as they slowly unloaded the supplies at the front of the forge. By time the four adventurers arrived at the command post, the goblin and his companion were arguing over who would get to ride in the cart on the way back to Skarm’s Reif, though it was obvious that the cart had plenty of room for the both of them.

  “We’re joining up,” Kadorax told the higher level of the two Blackened Blade assassins. They were both human, lithe of build, and similar enough in appearance to be sisters. The knights, on the other hand, were older than everyone else and covered in scars. Each of them wore a steel breastplate and matching tassets. Their armor bore no less than a hundred dents and scratches each.

  “Glad to have you along,” the assassin replied, sizing them up. “I’ll never turn down an extra hand.”

  “We’re heading east to a new temple,” one of the burly knights cut in, lacking all tact.

  “You ever fought jackals?” the other knight asked.

  Kadorax nodded, but he didn’t turn to include them in the conversation. “How many are there?” he asked the pair of assassins.

  The level twelve smiled with a hint of recognition as she read Kadorax’s name from his character sheet, then answered, “We don’t have much information. We only heard about the new temple yesterday from some of the outrunners. Once they establish a temple, it takes about three days to complete their summoning, or at least that’s how it’s been going so far. We’ve only been out here for about three weeks. If we leave now, we can hit the temple by nightfall.”

  Everyone agreed, and the group left the forward camp on one of the small trails that began north before turning east to enter the forest. The trees on either side of the path were tall enough cast a bit of gloom as they blocked out the light. As far as Kadorax knew, there weren’t any real cities east of Skarm’s Reif, and it was clear that the forest had never been harvested en masse.

  A few miles into the forest, one of the assassins halted the group and consulted a crudely drawn map, then marked an X on one of the trees to her right. “This way,” she said confidently. “We’re looking for a cave entrance. The scouts said it was built up around the outside with minor defenses, so it should be easy to spot. We just need to remember how to find the trail when we come back.”

  The two assassins marked a handful of other trees before setting off. They moved slower without a path to follow, stopping frequently to mark their path and check the map. The two knights stayed at the back of the group, walking side by side and remaining quiet, their faces constant masks of seriousness.

  A low wall of stacked stones was the first indicator that they had found the newly established jackal temple. The wall wasn’t long, maybe thirty feet in length, and only waist high. “Check for sentries,” one of the assassins whispered to the rest of the group. They were crouched behind trees about fifty yards from the wall, waiting as quietly as they could.

  “See anything?” Kadorax asked.

  “I have Improved Perception: Rank 3,” the assassin whispered back. “Nothing yet. Let’s get closer.”

  No one needed a reminder to stay low and quiet as they stalked toward the temple. They arrived at the wall without being spotted, still crouched and listening. “There’s nothing,” one of the assassins whispered. She waited a moment longer before standing up.

  There was a cave entrance not far from the low wall. It was low and dark with several stakes crudely in place around the outside. The assassins crept up to the entrance on the balls of their feet, avoiding even the smallest of sticks lining the forest floor.

  “You need to raise your Sneak to whatever rank theirs is,” Kadorax whispered to Brinna.

  One of the assassins paused to listen while the second took a quick glance inside. Neither of them reacted. They waited another moment, then performed the same maneuver again. The one who had been listening waved for the others to join them at the entrance.

  “I only heard one,” the woman said.

  The other assassin nodded. “There’s a single room with an exit at the rear. It just looks like an entrance, nothing more. It was dark, so there might be a second jackal in there I didn’t see.”

  One of the knights drew a torch from his gear and lit it, keeping the flame away from the cave entrance. “We will lead the way,” he declared, his voice a bit too loud. “Keep the advantage and don’t slow down in the first chamber. We’ll handle however many are in there as the rest of you push through quickly. Take them by surprise, and we’ll all make it back to camp unscathed.”

  Without waiting for anyone else to offer their acknowledgment or consent, the knight bounded into the cave with his sword in one hand and his torch in the other. The rest of them had to go one at a time as they followed the meager light. Kadorax was thankful that most jackals didn’t have proficient eyesight in total darkness, and he glimpsed a bit of light as soon as he burst into the first room.

  “For the priory!” the lead knight shouted.

  “Way to alert the whole temple!” Kadorax yelled at him, though he figured it probably wouldn’t matter. The temple was small, or at least what he knew of it was small, and the fighting in the first room was already loud.

  The torch-bearing knight hacked and slashed wildly at a terrified jackal in front of him, and a second dog-headed creature emerged from the shadows with a knife, flanking the knight. To the right of the cramped combat, an opening in the cave wall led to the next chamber.

  The two assassins didn’t hesitate. They darted through the passageway without giving the knights a second thought, and fighting quickly erupted from that chamber as well.

  “Move!” Kadorax yelled, pushing Brinna behind him. Somewhere in the brief flash of chaos that was the beginning of the fight, he had let Brinna get ahead of him. The woman didn’t seem too upset about being forced back to her previous position in the line.

  The second room was far larger than the first. It had been carved out, or perhaps natural water had turned it into the hollow, spherical chamber that it was, but the stone altar in the center was certainly a late addition. Four jackals stood guard in front of the altar. Two of them were lightly armored, one wore a glinting necklace and nothing in the way of clothing, and the fourth, probably their leader, was already engaged with both assassins, fending them off with mighty swipes of his claws. The second assassin broke off to challenge one of the jackal fighters, leaving Kadorax, Brinna, and Syzak to handle two, a sizeable task considering
their low level.

  Before Kadorax could even close the distance, Syzak’s Spike Trap appeared right under the feet of the jackal holding a knife, and the beast let out a yelp of pain as it scampered out of the magical pit. Kadorax and Brinna stuck together, weapons in hand, and circled toward the right of the altar where there was the most unoccupied room.

  The jackal limped and dripped a bit of blood from its left paw, but it came at them all the same. Behind it, the last enemy was fiddling with a wand it had plucked from the altar. “Take the caster,” Kadorax commanded Brinna.

  Surprisingly, the rogue didn’t ask questions. Brinna broke off the side, vaulted over the spike pit with one graceful leap, and then was rocketed backward by a blast of icy magic directly to her chest.

  Kadorax didn’t have time to see how badly she was injured. He slashed from his right with his sword, his bastion’s whip still hanging from his side, then reversed his cut to catch the jackal’s knife by the handguard. He tried to rip his weapon away to disarm the doghead, but he wasn’t quick enough, and the failed move left him temporarily exposed. A jackal claw raked against his side a split second later.

  Kadorax’s Cage of Chaos activated in response to the hit, summoning a rather anticlimactic gust of wind that only served to very briefly confuse the jackal. Kadorax spun to his right with his sword tucked in close to his side in case any attack was there to meet him when he completed his turn, but the jackal had scampered back a step. He barely had time to react to the throwing knife hurtling in at his gut. Thankful for his boots raising his Agility score, he was able to dodge the knife, but only by an inch. A second knife followed the first and clipped him just above the groin, eliciting another magical response from Cage of Chaos. A little burst of fire erupted at the site of the hit, accomplishing absolutely nothing.

  The jackal pounced forward with supernatural speed. Kadorax didn’t know what talent the creature had activated, and he didn’t have time to care. With the knife still hanging loosely from his armor, the tip having penetrated his gut, he brought up his sword and attempted a Riposte. The blades met, but the talent didn’t activate. The jackal’s Agility score was simply too high. Luckily, what the jackal possessed in Agility it lacked in Strength, and Kadorax shoved all his weight into his hilt, throwing the creature out wide.