“Easily done, sir,” Godfrey acknowledged, managing a smile this time as he turned back toward Nguyen. “Innkeeper: a glass of your best for this good gentleman!”
“Four glassed of Green Fairy, or nary a one…” Randwick countered immediately. “A toast to The King – I’ll accept no less – then I’ll move my pack to the other room and leave you all in peace.”
But of course, ‘one’ drink became another and another as a far-too-friendly old traveller plied them with drinks and also plied them with subtle, indirect questions. Nev had tried desperately to sit on her first and not drink too much, knowing how little exposure she’d had to alcohol in general, and Lester’s mugs were heavily watered down at Godfrey’s order, in deference to the boy’s young age and in spite of his unending complaints. What should have taken just a few moments ultimately took over an hour, and all three were absolutely exhausted by the time Nguyen was able to finally convince the old man that the bar was well and truly closed.
Randwick knew the movements of a female well enough when he saw one, even one disguised with hood and heavy clothing, and He’d also noticed the shifting shape of a sword at her waist, hidden beneath the folds of her cloak. That in itself had been enough to pique his curiosity, boosted substantially by the realisation soon after that she’d been travelling under the pretence of being a man; without blindfold or anything else to cover her eyes as they’d entered the tavern.
Giving up the larger room was no great sacrifice – he’d have done that anyway as the decent thing to do – but the insistence of a drink beforehand would give him a few extra minutes’ of time in their presence, perhaps presenting a chance to gather more intelligence. The King’s Mentor hadn’t lived this long by taking chances or ignoring his instincts, and right now his instincts were telling him that there was something very unusual about this trio of strangers.
They’d been forced through toast after toast and downed each drink as quickly as had been humanly possible without arousing suspicion then – finally – waited for what felt like the passing of an age as the old man gathered his belongings and shifted across to the next room down the hall, at the rear of the building. There were indeed three mattresses as promised, and rough as they were they were the most wondrously inviting and comfortable beds any of them had seen in a long time.
“That old man’s trouble… I can feel it in me bones…” Godfrey whispered softly as they lay there in the darkness on either sides of the room while between them, Lester was already snoring softly. “He knew you were a girl... he should have denounced us! Why didn’t he?”
“We were three to one, for a start,” Nev suggested, too tired to really think about things deeply but trying to help all the same. “Four, really, if you count Nguyen…”
“Somehow, I get the feeling four-to-one wouldn’t be odds that’d worry that old bear all that much,” Godfrey mused, recalling how broad and intimidating the fellow had seemed as he’d stood before them. He wasn’t scared of us,” he continued, shaking his head, “and he wasn’t challenging us either, but he insisted on that drink for a reason. He had a careful way of asking things – all innocent like – but he was fishing for information all the same… working us with more and more of that cursed Green Fairy…!” Godfrey wasn’t a complete stranger to alcohol – it was almost impossible not to be a drinker in military service – but he was smart enough to moderate his intake and remain in control of his own faculties.
“Green Fairy…” Nev mumbled softly, having lost the thread of the conversation midway through as her mind wandered off on a tangent regarding the drinks they’d been served. “Green… Fairy…” she repeated carefully, giggling to herself softly for reasons not readily apparent even to herself. “Tinkerbell …” she rambled, veering off topic completely. “I’m drinking Tinkerbell, ha-ha…”
“For Crystal’s Sake, you’re drunk…?” Godfrey exclaimed in a hushed voice, trying very hard not to sound amused and not really managing it. “One drink…? Dragonfall take me… just one…?”
“Drunk…?” Nev managed, her attempt at indignance falling flat as she slurred her words. “That, sir, is an insult…! Can’t be… can’t…” She shook her head vaguely, her face a mask of confused sincerity. “What’s that saying…? I’m not… I’m… How does it go…? I’m not… as drunk… as you think… constable! Wait, no… no, that’s not right…”
Nev had never been drunk, having voluntarily lived a life of an extremely sheltered nature. She’d barely even tasted alcohol more than once or twice in her life and that had only been beer, which had tasted awful and had put her right off the whole idea of drinking in general. She’d never in her life encountered a drink as strong as absinthe, an extremely-potent, aniseed-flavoured spirit. Even with water added, her mind and body were completely unprepared for its effects as the alcohol began to work its way through her unsuspecting and generally defenceless bloodstream.
“Well…” Godfrey sighed, conceding defeat regarding any chance of sensible conversation “…I s’pose that’s that for the night…”
“Peter Pan… Captain Hook… Mister Smee…” Nev muttered softly to herself, lost in her own world as she rolled over on her mattress and stared up at the ceiling with wildly-unfocussed eyes. “Knock-knock… Who’s there…? It’s Smeeeeeeeee….!” She added, giggling softly again.
Staring at his own part of the ceiling, Godfrey was torn between whether to go with annoyance over there being no chance of any sleep tonight or outright amusement regarding what was clearly Nev’s first experience of being drunk. He was dog-tired and should have been grumpy about the situation but in her defence, the sight and sounds of the drunken teenager in the bed opposite were incredibly amusing.
“If I knew how to work that infernal ‘phone’ of yours,” he whispered softly to himself, glancing across at her with a caring smile, “there’d be some fine ‘moving pictures’ of you looking very three-sheets-to-the-wind…”
He was let off the hook a few moments later as Nev’s muddled brain negotiated with her body over whether to go with falling asleep or passing out: the result was a combination of the two as she slipped restlessly into snoring oblivion.
The assassin again… reaching up to the window sill with his crossbow at his back… lithe movements and the swish of the bolt as it thuds home…
Nev woke in the early hours of the morning, moonlight streaming through the large, open window set into the upper half of the room’s outside wall. She’d rolled over during the night, the sheathed katana uncomfortable beneath her left side, and was now facing the wall, where the glow of the moon had bathed the plaster above her in stark illumination bright enough to cause her to squint for a moment or two as her vision cleared.
She thought about the strangeness of the recurring dream, more perplexed the second time around than shocked by it, although she still had no idea where such ideas might have come from in the depths of her subconscious. The vivid nature of it receded from her thoughts however as she became increasingly aware of the pounding headache that was now quickly building behind her forehead. Having experienced drunkenness for the first time, Nev was now also experiencing her first hangover.
Water… She told herself seriously, wincing as even her thoughts seemed to be conspiring to worsen her aching head. That’s what dad used to say: a good drink of water should fix any hangover…
There was a jug and a few cups on a side table at the foot of her bed and it would be a simple task to get up and pour herself a drink or two… as soon as she’d prepared herself for the assault that was likely to bring down on her suffering frontal lobe. Just a few more seconds to gather her strength, she reasoned, and she’d be right as rain.
It was at that point she noticed the unexpected shape appear above the shadow line left against the wall by the lower window sill behind her. Pausing for just a second, it then rose quickly to reveal itself as the silhouetted shape of a human being climbing onto the window sill in almost complete silence. Terror gripped
her along with the realisation that it was her nightmare made very real, and it took every ounce of Nev’s self-control as she forced herself to not cry out or make any obvious movement.
Moving just her eyes, she watched with rigid fear as the shadowy shape perched itself on the sill exactly as she’d foreseen and raised the crossbow, taking a moment to check its readiness before lowering it toward its intended target. Trying to compare the positioning of the shadow itself, along with the fact that what she was seeing was actually happening behind her, Nev was unable to work out at that point whether the bolt was being aimed at her or Godfrey, although neither target presented in her mind as a preferred option.
Turn to the left, aiming the crossbow…
A vision of his attack flared in her mind, galvanising her into action. Her right hand, folded across her chest and invisible to the would-be attacker, was very near the hilt of her sword but there was no way she’d be fast enough to roll, draw the weapon and attack in the time it would take for the assassin to loose his bolt. All this occurred to her in a fraction of a second as her brain kicked into automatic pilot in its search for options. There was only one way to speed up her reaction time, and that was to cut out as many movements as possible: the only obvious alternative wouldn’t be particularly effective as an attack but it at least stood some chance of success.
Distract… throw off his aim… divert, then attack…
The images flashed in her mind again, but her system was too charged with adrenalin to even think about what was happening. Even as his finger began to squeeze lightly on the trigger, Nev began to roll onto her back, the fingers of her right hand sliding around the tsuka and bringing the katana with her as she came around. With her index finger pressed down on the scabbard, holding it in place, she was able to use her own movement to whip the sword downward toward the masked man at the window in a tight arc.
Lifting her fingertip at the right moment, she released the scabbard and allowed it to slip straight off the blade with substantial centrifugal force. Even as he turned his head and the crossbow toward her in reaction to the unexpected motion, it was already too late to react. The lacquered saya launched itself from the rest of the weapon, spearing across the short distance between them and then cracking against the centre of his forehead with full force.
The killer’s head jerked backward under the impact, the crossbow discharging by reflex and sending its bolt deep into the wall to Nev’s left as she rose from the bed and lunched toward him with a bellowed “Hyah…!”, her unsheathed blade stretched out before her.
The point of the katana caught him in the shoulder, slicing through his clothing and punching deep into the flesh beneath. He toppled backward with a scream, cracking his head on the upper sill as he fell heavily onto his back on the hard earth outside
“Assassin… assassin…!” Nev howled at the top of her lungs, Godfrey and Lester already leaping to their feet, roused groggy and disoriented by the killer’s cry of pain. They were in the process of reaching for their own weapons as the door to their room burst in with a crash, revealing two more black-clad assassins with weapons drawn.
Parry, lunge and strike…!
Too hyped to even think, Nev followed her instinct blindly and thrust forward, slapping the first attacker’s sword-thrust to one side with the flat of her blade, then punching upward into his throat with the heel of her hand as his own momentum brought him into range. He fell backward into the corridor with a strangled cry and Nev prepared for the next attack, only to be confronted with the second killer standing against the far wall with a very large crossbow already aimed right at her chest.
Pause… then strike…
She was going to die: there was no denying it. The third killer in black was too far away to strike and he had the drop on her anyway, the crossbow already loaded and ready. There was no way around it. Whatever her instincts and those strange, flashing images in were telling her, there was no ignoring the fact that it was all over.
That realisation crackled like lightning through her mind in that first fraction of a second as the assassin’s eyes flicked momentarily toward his fallen comrade, then instantly back to her in the doorway. His eyes were the only part of his face visible behind the hood and wrapping that he wore, and they narrowed with hatred as he lifted his weapon slightly and squeezed at the trigger.
That moment of pause between them had probably been enough. A long, wooden staff crashed into the side of his head at that moment, having been flung with some considerable accuracy from the doorway of the next room down from theirs. The crossbow bolt went wide, sizzling past her left ear, then miraculously also missed Lester and Godfrey completely as it disappeared into the darkness beyond the open window.
Nev didn’t hesitate any longer as he crashed to the floor in a heap. She instantly leaped forward and fractured his right forearm with a solid kick that sent the crossbow spiralling out of his grasp. He released a cry of agony, curling into a ball of semi-conscious pain and clutching at his broken arm, and Nev – recognising that he was no longer any immediate threat – would’ve been happy to have left things as they were for the time being.
Neither Randwick nor Godfrey were of similar mind, however. As Godfrey pushed past her, thrusting his sword deep into the man’s chest before he could even raise a hand in protest, the old man had also covered the distance between his room and the second assassin – the one Nev had struck in the throat – and despatched him in a similar manner with a thin-bladed dagger.
Nev’s initial over the fact that they’d just killed two defenceless human beings in cold blood was one of cold disgust. Sickened by the sight of such brutality, it didn’t matter to her that the assailants had been trying to kill them just moments before – to her mind, the fact remained that they’d since been disarmed and were now completely harmless, and as such there’d been no need for more killing.
“Fire… fire…!” A cry of alarm rose up from beyond the doorway to their left, leading out into the main tavern area, and as they turned in that direction they could clearly see wisps of grey/black smoke wafting into the hallway from around the edges of the closed door. There was a flickering glow beneath its bottom edge that suggested it a fine idea that doorway was left shut for the time being.
“There’s families here…” Randwick remarked to Godfrey, all that was needed as he received a nod of understanding in return and both men turned toward the remaining guest rooms further down the hall. Already, there were screams of fear coming from at least one of the other rooms, along with the unmistakable wail of a crying baby.
“Lester: you and Nev secure our gear and get yourselves out the window to safety. Watch yourselves out there – there might be a third one of those buggers still about. The gentleman and I will see to the others…”
The tavern was burning heavily at the other end of the building as Nev and Lester tossed out their packs and then followed them through the open window. After quickly scouting the area to make sure the remaining, wounded assassin wasn’t still lurking in the area, she headed back to help the others as Lester stood guard over their belongings.
The other two rooms had been taken by an older couple, both looking to be in their fifties at least, and a young family of three that included the crying baby, definitely no older than six or eight months. Godfrey and Randwick were respectively helping both groups to climb out through their own open windows, with smoke already streaming out beneath the upper sills as it spread right through the building.
That there’d been no back door to be found seemed dangerously amiss as she jogged up and assisted Godfrey in lowering first the old woman, then her husband to the ground, both coughing heavily because of the smoke. The tavern had been built on stumps to keep the floor raised and away from any moisture, and the window sills stood at least two metres from the ground outside – a difficult drop for the young or infirm. With Nev now present, she was at least able to guide the terrified woman safely to the ground and gently lead her off to
a safe distance as her husband followed through the opening behind her.
At the next window along, Randwick had first helped the father out into the cool, night air, where he was then able to safely reach up and take his screaming child into his outstretched arms. The mother came next, by which time Nev had been able to return and help her to the ground as her partner looked on anxiously, trying in vain to settle his terrified baby son.
Smoke was now filling every room and it poured out around both Godfrey and Randwick as they came out last, coughing and wheezing with scorched lungs, blackened faces and watering eyes. As a group, the eight of them then staggered together to a safer position a good thirty or forty metres away near the main road as Godfrey searched desperately about for a few moments as he realised Lester had gone missing.
“Where in the name of The Crystal were you?” He demanded angrily as the boy appeared a few moments later, looking shaken with his face as dirty and coated in soot as any of them.
“The whole place is goin’ up…” Lester explained, almost sounding tearful, although it was difficult to tell if it were from emotion or smoke stinging his eyes. “Went to let the horses out… be a damn shame to see ‘em hurt for nothin’…” he paused for a moment, considering what else to say. “Found Nguyen out near the corral…” he added, shaking his head meaningfully. “Mongrels cut his throat…”
“Why…” Godfrey spat angrily, asking no one in particular. “Why kill him… why target us…? How could The Brotherhood even know we were even here…?” He could see no sense to it. There was no way their exact whereabouts could conceivably have been known, even if news had come through regarding what had happened aboard Rapier the night before.
“Not you, lad…” Randwick growled sadly, shaking his head and carefully drawing him to one side, away from the other guests, as Nev and Lester followed close behind. “T’ weren’t you three they were after.”
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