by Mark Robson
The Guild of Assassins was a strange organisation. They had been hitting Surabar where it hurt most over the last few weeks. A contract on Lord Lacedian made no sense whatsoever in the light of their recent targets. First they had killed several of the Legion Commanders, then Lord Kempten; the Guild appeared set on removing those on whom Surabar relied the most. Lacedian could hardly be counted in this category, so they would not have accepted a hit on him on those grounds? So who had placed the hit, and why? It was strange timing.
‘Listen, old friend,’ Tremarle said eventually. ‘I have a contact in the Guild of Assassins. I’ll get in touch with him and find out if there’s a hit out on you. In the meantime, I’ll send you four of my men to supplement your personal guards. I suggest you have them patrol around the house night and day until I get an answer from the Guild. You might want to get some guard dogs for your garden as well. Assassins don’t like dogs.’
‘Oh, thank you, my friend. Thank you. I cannot tell you how much your help means. I’ll sleep a lot more soundly for the extra protection. I intend to hire more men as well. If this assassin does come after me, then he’s going to have to face a small army if he’s to earn his contract money.’
Rain sheeted down. The rattling impact of the large droplets driving onto the slate roof was loud, hiding any slight noises made by the crouching figure dressed in black. The footing was treacherous, the visibility abysmal. Lightning flickered, momentarily lighting up the skyline with its harsh, blue-white light. From his vantage point on the high rooftop, Reynik squinted out from under his hood at the distance to the lower roof of Lord Lacedian’s house. During the brief, flickering flash of lightning it looked closer than it had during his daytime reconnoitre. It was an illusion, of course. He knew how far it was. He just hoped his crossbow had not become damp inside its canvas wrapping.
A slow count of three, and a crackling rumble of thunder growled its angry complaint at the passage of the lightning. The heart of the storm was not far away, and closing fast. He would have to move quickly. In these conditions, the moment he removed his equipment from the waxed canvas, the sand would be trickling through the hourglass. He would only have a few seconds before the cord became too heavy with water for the bolt to carry it across to the neighbouring rooftop. If the bowstring became wet, then it would stretch, losing tension and power.
There was one good thing about the storm: Lacedian’s guards were all heads down and miserable. The chances of one of them looking up and seeing him in this weather were very slim. However, this was the only good point amongst a host of bad. Getting into Lacedian’s house would be more than doubly dangerous in this weather. He would inevitably leave tracks once inside, and getting away after the hit could prove every bit as dangerous as getting in.
Reynik realised he would only get one chance tonight. His first shot must be perfect. Taking off his backpack, he wedged it by his feet in the ‘V between the chimney-stack and the roof. Once ready, he worked swiftly. First he removed the canvas-wrapped bundle from the pack and began to unwrap it. It was not easy, but crouching down against the brickwork, he managed to keep the crossbow sheltered by the canvas as he first unwrapped it, then cocked and loaded it with the grappling hook attached to the thin rope. Rain hissed around him, swirling on the gusty wind. The drumming patter on the canvas sounded loud and obvious to his ears, but was lost amongst the background white noise outside of a very small radius.
It still seemed incredible that such a thin cord would hold his weight, but Femke had demonstrated it to his satisfaction during their training sessions. She had assured him rain would not affect its load-bearing properties. He hoped she was right, as he had never tested it in these conditions. If the rope broke, it was unlikely he would survive the fall.
‘OK, lightning, do your stuff,’ he murmured, the words lost in the wind.
On cue, another jagged spear of fire lit up the foul night sky. The timing was so uncannily perfect that Reynik’s face twisted into a smile of amusement as he angled the crossbow and squeezed the trigger. There was a ‘thunk’ and the grappling hook shot off in a low, arcing trajectory towards Lord Lacedian’s rooftop, the cord-like rope snaking out behind it as it whistled out of its neat coil. A wicked gust of wind buffeted the rooftop, turning the flight path of the grappling hook subtly to the left.
‘. . . two, thr . . .’
An ear-splitting crash of thunder rattled shutters and doors, with after-rumbles continuing for some seconds as the fury of the storm came closer. Reynik followed the flight path of the rope anxiously, but it was impossible to see where it had landed. The rain lashed even harder on the wind, reducing visibility still further. He knew that a deflection left was less critical than one to the right, for it was likely the grappling hook would simply impact higher up the sloping rooftop, allowing it to slide down and around the chimney-stack he was hoping to hook against. Too far left, however, and it would go over the top of the roof crest. There was nothing there for the grapple to hook against.
The uncoiling of the rope slowed. The energy given by the crossbow was spent. Reynik grabbed the remaining coil and peered across at Lord Lacedian’s rooftop in a further effort to see where the hook had come to rest. It was impossible to tell. All he could do was to slowly pull on the cord and hope the grappling hook caught on something solid.
With infinite care, he pulled the rope towards him, gathering it back into a neat coil as he went. He had marked it with a splash of white at the length he thought would be needed to reach the Lord’s chimney-stack. The white mark reached his hands, but the line had not pulled tight. He paused for a second and took a deep breath.
‘Hold,’ he prayed silently. ‘Come on. Catch the chimney-stack and hold.’
Hand over hand he carefully drew more of the cord into the coil. Five arm lengths past the white mark, the cord tightened. The grapple had caught on something. The question was what? Would it hold his weight? There was only one way to find out. Using the chimney-stack as a safeguard against falling, Reynik gradually increased the tension on the cord until he was leaning against it with all his weight. The line held fast. ‘Thank Shand for that!’ he murmured with a sigh of relief.
Taking care to maintain some tension and not to jerk the rope in any way, he gathered some coils from the spare and threw a large loop over the chimney-stack against which he was leaning. Then, with the ease of much recent practice, he increased the tension on the rope around the chimney, tied a self-tightening knot, cut off the spare coils and stowed them in the pack.
Out of the pack he pulled a rope-tensioning device that Femke had introduced him to a few days before. It took a moment to attach, then he was twisting the device round and round, watching as the angle of the rope climbed until it pointed away from his position in a straight line at Lord Lacedian’s rooftop. Ideally, he would have liked to tension the rope further, but without knowing for certain how much grip the grapple had, he was reluctant to risk increasing the load too much.
With the tension as great as he dared, he secured the tensioning device and took out yet another of Femke’s gadgets. This time it was a strange contraption: a narrow central drum that freely rotated around a thick circular axle of iron, which protruded two hand spans from either side of the drum’s axis of rotation. Cloth handgrips had been bound around the outer hand span of each end of the metal rod, and loops of strong cord were attached at the inner end of each of the handgrips. Reynik put the device down carefully into the ‘V between roof and chimney, then secured the top of the pack with the toggles and slung it onto his back.
He picked up Femke’s contraption, placed his right hand through one of the loops, twisted the loop until it tightened against his wrist, and settled his fingers around the handgrip. Satisfied that the grip was secure, he lifted the device, placing the narrow drum on top of the tensioned cord. He looped his left hand through the remaining safety loop, again twisting it tightly around his wrist, and worked his fingers into a secure grip. All that remained to
begin his slide was to lift his feet and suspend his weight totally on the iron bar. This was it – the moment of truth.
‘Shand help me! I must be mad,’ he whispered, gritting his teeth and narrowing his eyes against the driving rain. He knew if he procrastinated, he would look for excuses not to make the blind leap of faith, so, before he could change his mind, he straightened his arms and lifted his feet to begin his descent.
The rope dipped markedly under his weight, but nevertheless he accelerated away from the higher rooftop. Lightning split the sky again in a spectacular double fork. Gusts of wind caused him to swing wildly from side to side as he raced across the void. A particularly strong gust whipped his hood from his head. The rain soaked his hair instantly. The rest of his cloak billowed behind him with an alarmingly loud flapping noise, while the deluge plastered his other clothing against his skin.
Rain blinded him. Blinking and squinting against the barrage of wind-driven water, Reynik did not see the problem until it was almost too late. At the last second, he realised what had happened and braced his body for impact. He had not tensioned the rope sufficiently to allow him to glide onto the rooftop. Instead, the rope had dipped under his weight such that as he approached the house, the rope was almost parallel to the surface of the roof, and little more than a hand span above it.
With little time to react, Reynik crashed into the side wall of Lord Lacedian’s house at high speed. Despite having done his best to brace against the impact, his collision with the wall was not pretty. All the air was driven from his lungs, which prevented him from crying out more than an ‘oof of pain. What sound he did make was whipped away by the wind. It was well that he had twisted his hands tightly into the safety loops for they saved him from a long fall. His left hand slipped from the cloth grip, causing the device to tilt rapidly to the right. His right hand then lost grip too, leaving him dangling by the safety loops.
Winded and bruised, he hung against the wall for a moment, the gusts of wind swinging him on the line and scraping him back and forth against the rough surface. His arms felt stretched beyond their normal length. Pain spiked in his armpits and the whole of the front of his body felt mashed and bruised from the high-speed impact.
A noise from below drew his attention. There were two guards directly beneath him, trudging around the house on one of their regular patrols. His vulnerability spurred him back into action. Using the wall as a brace, he walked his feet upwards until he was almost inverted, hooking first one foot, then the other, over the rope. Then, pulling simultaneously with both arms, Reynik pulled his torso up towards the rope and made a grab for it with his right hand. It was awkward, as both of his hands were twisted into the safety loops of the sliding device, but there was just enough flex for him to get his fingers over the top. Untwisting his left hand from the safety loop took a scant few seconds, whereupon his left hand joined his right on the rope, leaving the drum device dangling from his right wrist.
With an inverted crawling motion, Reynik shuffled his body forward onto the roof until he felt it safe to unhook his feet and lay flat against the surface. As he took weight off the rope, so it rose under tension away from the surface. Without letting go, he regained his feet and traversed the slippery slates to the chimney-stack.
He crouched in the lee of the narrow brick tower for a moment, luxuriating in the break from the elements. Taking off his backpack he removed another, pre-measured, coil of rope from one of the inside pockets. After the near disastrous crossing from the nearby building, it would have been nice to take a rest, but Reynik knew he could not afford to stop here. He must get in and out of the house swiftly if he were to limit the danger of being caught. He did not dare to cast loose the grappling hook, so the high-wire would have to remain, leaving an obvious indicator and trail for anyone who saw it. Although the storm had proved a blessing for masking the noise he had made during the crossing, the lightning could yet betray him with its flickering light. The elements were a fickle ally at best.
Throwing a loop over the chimney, he tied off the rope in a self-tightening knot. Then, as Femke had taught him, Reynik pinched a ‘U’ in the rope and fed it through the figure-of-eight-shaped, cast iron accessory on his belt. He put on his pack once more and, bracing himself with the rope, he stepped tentatively around the chimney-stack and started to back down the steeply pitched roof.
As he descended and the rope settled around the chimney, he gained in confidence. His worst moment was the transition from the roof to going down the side of the house, but once past this hurdle, Reynik progressed smoothly down the wall until he reached the upper floor window shutters. As Femke had predicted, they were only held shut with simple internal lift latches, which were easily opened with his knife. Once open, however, it became a bit of a juggle to stow his knife and open the shutters without allowing them to rattle or bang in the gusty wind.
He latched the left hand shutter open and looked inside. Through the window, Reynik could see that the room inside was empty and the internal door was shut. Within a few seconds, he had opened the window. He was in.
Reynik swung silently inside, drawing the remaining free rope into the room with him. He took a quick look around to memorise the layout of the furniture, then, wedging the loose rope on the window ledge between the shutter and the window, he shut everything behind him. The sudden drop in noise level was marked. With the wind and rain shut out, the silence in the house was profound. Had anyone heard the increase in storm noise as he had opened the window? He could hear no signs of movement, but that could be because men were waiting for him on the other side of the door.
Cat-like, he crept through the dark room to the door. If Femke’s information were accurate, then when he left this room, Lord Lacedian’s bedroom would be to his left, two doors along the upper hallway on the right hand side. He found the door by touch and then paused to listen – still no sound. Reynik drew the knife from his back holster. With extreme care to avoid making any noise, he squeezed the door handle to the open position.
A single torch burned in its bracket at the top of the stairs to his right. The orange flicker chased shadows with leaping tongues that weaved and danced their stuttering patterns. Reynik peered cautiously around the door at the landing area. A shadowy figure not two paces away caused his breath to catch in his throat. It took only a moment to realise it was an empty suit of armour. His breath released in a silent sigh. There was no sign of anyone else about.
The door creaked slightly as he inched it open far enough for him to squeeze through. He paused again, his breath catching in his throat at the sound, but nothing stirred. Having got inside, could it really be this easy?
Working hard to move as Devarusso had taught him, light-footed and stealthy, Reynik slipped along the upper hallway to the door to Lord Lacedian’s bedroom. The next few seconds would be crucial. He must not allow the old fellow to attract attention to his presence.
Even as he placed his hand on the door handle, a low growl sounded inside Lacedian’s room. Reynik froze. The growl was not that of a human. It sounded like a large dog. Was it a pet? Did Lacedian sleep with a guard dog in his room? If so, the hit had just increased in difficulty.
Reynik backed away silently from the door and the growling subsided. ‘Damn!’ he thought. ‘What do I do now?’
Femke had known nothing of dogs in the house, or she would have mentioned it. The Lord obviously knew someone was out to kill him and had taken extra precautions. The additions to his house guards had made that much obvious, but the use of dogs was not something Femke and Reynik had anticipated.
‘If I were Lacedian, and I knew someone was coming to kill me, would I sleep in my own room? Unlikely. So where would I sleep?’ he thought, looking back and forth nervously along the upper landing. ‘I would certainly leave a trap in my normal room – hence the dog, but would I even sleep in my own house? Probably not – but Lacedian is. I’m sure he’s here somewhere. He came in. I didn’t see him leave. He must be here, but
where?’
Time was running out. Turning back towards the top of the staircase, Reynik noticed the trail of footprints he was leaving on the carpet. Not surprisingly, the wet moss from the roofs he had traversed had caught in the tread of his boots. The upper hall carpet was pale beige and his tracks were painfully obvious. He had to move swiftly.
Reynik peered over the gallery banister to the lower hallway. A guard was sitting at the base of the stairs. He looked bored, and not very alert. Reynik moved away from the banister rail and edged along the upper hall until he was as far as he could get without potentially exposing his presence to the guard at the foot of the stairs. He needed to cross the top of the stairs, but he was not sure how best to do it without drawing attention to himself. His mind raced through the possibilities, but before he had come to any conclusions, the front door to the house opened and two of the guards who had been patrolling outside stepped into the hallway.
The distraction was perfect. He raced across the top of the stairs, stooping to avoid casting a long shadow as he passed the bracketed torch. None of the guards noticed the movement. The two from outside were too busy shaking water from their cloaks and complaining about the weather. The one seated at the base of the stairs was watching them.
There were three doors on this side of the landing. Femke had drawn the layout of the house for him. If he remembered correctly, the middle of the three was the most likely, as it led to the guest suite. Lacedian was an older man. By Reynik’s reasoning, the Lord would not give up comforts unnecessarily. Reynik did not pause. Knife in hand, he tried the door. The noise of the chatting guards masked any slight sound he made.
The door would not budge. What now? It looked as though Lacedian had barred the door from the inside. This was getting more and more difficult. Should he give up and try to make the hit somewhere away from his home?
Suddenly, an idea began to form. He could still make the hit, but getting away afterwards might prove a bit more troublesome than he had originally hoped. The guards were all still chatting away in the lower hall, so Reynik darted back across the top of the stairway. Again he managed it without being seen. Sliding silently back along to the room where he had entered through the window, he cracked open the door and slipped back inside, pulling the door to behind him.