He shook his head away from such thoughts, knowing that it was pointless to dwell on the past.
Still, he had to admit that it was easy to understand why he would consider Nicolas his best friend. Nicolas had been there for him in the past and had done things for him because he wanted to, not because he owed him a debt like Katie had.
Caleb’s attention turned to the long bow that was setting on the table in front of him. Though he was done using it for the day, he could not just leave it as it was. In order to make a bowstring last longer, it was common practice to unstring the bow after using it. It was a fact that he had forgotten once before, and he had lost his best bowstring because of it. Now, he had a bowstring with quality that could only be described as decent at best. Still, it was better quality than what he could find in any shop in Caldreth, so he had no intention of letting it wear out faster than normal.
There was also the fact that he was out of money to consider. He had given all of his money up as a penance in Greenville, so he could not exactly rely on coin to fix any problems that he had.
The process of unstringing the bow only took a few moments. It seemed like he had more experience stringing and unstringing a bow than he did at shooting one, though it was not quite true.
After he had the bow unstrung, he rolled the string up and put it in a hidden pocket of the quiver lying next to it.
“Hey Caleb, I’m back,” Nicolas said as he opened the door to the tavern. “I managed to get all the information you needed in record time.”
Caleb looked excited at that, but he quickly felt a sense of unease filling him.
In retrospect, he had no reason to be particularly happy that Nicolas had learned who was after him. After all, they were a group of assassins.
Nicolas walked over and sat across the table from Caleb before he began to speak again. “The ones that are after you are called the Night Blades. They operate out of Umbridge, and have been around for over five hundred years. To make matters worse, they have a reputation for being the best of the best. My contact advised me to warn you to get out of the country as quickly as you can, but we both know that you won’t do that, so I won’t suggest it.”
“Smart,” Caleb remarked, still taking in the information that he had just heard.
“The Night Blades are led by a man named Victor Abrams. He is the brother of the leader of the Thieves’ Guild of Caldreth, and he is considered to be one of the greatest assassins alive. But there’s more. I know enough about him to know that’s he’s also a master swordsmen. Even with your sword’s magic, you will be hard pressed to defeat him in single combat,” Nicolas explained. “But you’re going to be fighting against the entire Night Blades organization. You’ve taken out around twenty, so there are still around eighty of them left. Seventy-nine men will be between you and Victor. In other words, you’ll be exhausted by the time you reach him, unless he decides to fight you before you can attempt to take out his men.”
“I’m still not that much of a threat. For all they know, I’ve just been getting lucky. They won’t have all of their men looking for me. You know that, and I know that,” Caleb countered.
“You’re right. They will have at least a quarter of their forces out on assignments,” Nicolas conceded. “However, you’re not thinking clearly. Even if they have twenty-five men on assignments, that’s still about fifty-four assassins and Victor to deal with. It’s likely that they’ve only been sending the weaker men among their forces to take you out so far because of how little of a threat they think you are. If you attack them head on, you’ll have to face their best.”
He suddenly shook his head at that. “We should both hope that their best isn’t there. Apparently, they have an assassin by the name of Azrael that is so skilled that he makes their leader look decent at best. If you have to fight him head on, you might win, but that’s only because he’s a true assassin and not a swordsman like Victor.”
“This is starting to sound fun,” Caleb remarked, earning a shocked look from Nicolas. “There’s nothing quite like fighting superior numbers.”
“Caleb, these aren’t weakling bandits like you’re used to,” Nicolas said seriously. “They are assassins. They kill for money, and they never fail an assignment.”
“It sounds like my fight with Cain Fell but even harder,” Caleb said thoughtfully. “Anyways, I’m not planning on fighting them head on. I’m not stupid.”
“Katie once told me you’re not a very tactical person,” Nicolas said with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m not,” Caleb agreed. “I’m a complete idiot when it comes to tactics and strategy. Those are things for generals to worry about. I have my skills to rely on. When I get in over my head, I can just fall back on the magic of my sword. It guides me pretty well.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Nicolas said with a sigh. “Well, I’ll let you handle this on your own. I’m not the adventuring type, after all. Besides, I don’t have some bizarre magic I can fall back on in case we get screwed. I’d just end up dead, and that would benefit no one.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you to come with me anyways. You’ve done enough as it is. Besides, your uncle might overreact if you just disappeared,” Caleb said with a weak smile.
“My uncle stopped by?” Nicolas guessed with a frown.
“Yeah, he stopped by a little more than an hour ago. We spoke for a little while, but he left after we had a little argument about the Massacre of Kirakath,” Caleb said with a frown.
“Don’t worry so much,” Nicolas said with a light hearted laugh. “If you’re worried that I’ll be upset that you argued with my uncle, then you’re worrying over nothing. Uncle Jason and I don’t see eye to eye on too many things. We stand on opposite sides of the law, after all.”
I suppose that’s true. He’s the magistrate, and Nicolas is a member of the Thieves’ Guild. There’s no way that they could go for too long without having an argument.
“When he showed up, he offered me a job working for the count,” Caleb suddenly said.
Nicolas actually laughed at that. “You must have impressed him. I take it you were practicing with your bow out back?” Seeing Caleb nod, he continued. “Uncle Jason has the count’s ear, so he could easily get you that job if you had wanted. However, I think we both know that you don’t want to serve someone who was unwilling to do anything about what happened to your village.”
“That’s basically what I told him,” Caleb said, nodding his head. “He actually asked me what I would have done if I was in the count’s position.”
“Oh?” Nicolas asked, clearly intrigued by the question.
“I told him that I’d do whatever needed to be done,” Caleb answered.
“Of course you would have,” Nicolas replied with a laugh that confused Caleb. “You already did do what needed to be done. Knowing you, you would have left someone else in charge while you personally sought out the ones responsible and brought them to justice. I doubt the title of count would have changed anything about your actions. You’re a complicated guy, but even I can see that you are drawn to doing the right thing.”
“Thanks… I needed to hear that,” Caleb said quietly.
“Good,” Nicolas said with a grin. “A guy has to hear what he needs to hear before he rides to his death, after all.”
Caleb just chuckled at that. “I’m not too worried about dying. I don’t have much to live for, so it’s not as though I stand to lose much if I fail.”
Nicolas frowned, but he nodded in understanding too. “Either way, you better not die. If you do, I’ll find a necromancer who can bring you back so I can kick your ass.”
Caleb smiled at his friend’s words, happiness filling his eyes. “You’re one of a kind. Don’t change while I’m gone.”
With those words, Caleb rose to his feet, picked up his bow and quiver, and made his way out of the tavern. He only stopped as he reached the door.
“I’ll see you after this is all done with,” Ni
colas said quietly.
“You’ll be the first one I come to see,” Caleb promised as he opened the door and walked out of the room.
Immediately, he made his way to the stables and opened his mare’s stall.
Walking next to the mare, he set the bow and his quiver on a piece of canvas that was directly behind the saddle. He quickly rolled the objects up in the canvas before he tied it to the back of the saddle and took the reins in hand.
Caleb walked her to the front door of the inn and opened the door, leading her out of the Black Raven Inn.
Once he was a ways away from the front door, he put his foot in the stirrup and swung his leg over her back, sitting firmly in his saddle.
“Well girl, we’ve got a long way to go,” Caleb whispered. “We might as well head out as fast as we possibly can. They’ve already proven that they can track me even when I use my training as a hunter to make it harder, so we’re not even going to worry about discretion.”
Inhaling and exhaling a deep breath, Caleb kicked his mare, going into a trot. Once he reached the road, he moved into a gallop.
As he made his way to Umbridge, he had no idea what awaited both him and Nicolas in the near future.
* * * * *
Hours after Caleb departed from the Black Raven Inn, Alexander Abrams walked through the door to his base. Though every eye in the tavern turned to him immediately, they all turned away within a second. They had good reason to be wary of the man.
Alexander glanced around the room momentarily, his eyes stopping at the man behind the bar. He had once been an enforcer of the Thieves’ Guild but had chosen to choose safety over power. In short, the man disgusted Alexander.
“Why are you looking at me?” he asked, making the man look even more nervous.
“Nicolas Edge showed up earlier today and went into one of the back rooms,” the man said, looking as though he feared that Alexander would kill him on the spot.
Alexander frowned at the news, but he nodded his head. Nicolas had not come to the tavern in seven months since he sought information on the Black Crows, so it was worrying that he came by recently.
“Thank you for informing me of this,” Alexander said, though he did not exactly sound thankful about it. “In the future, try not to piss him off. I know you, and I know him. If he stopped by, you had to have said something to make him threaten to kill you, which explains why you look even more nervous than you normally do.”
Sighing, Alexander walked across the tavern, ignoring the man’s arguments that he did no such thing. He was not a man who cared about such trivial things though. No, he had something else in mind that needed to be taken care of immediately.
Nicolas only came to the tavern to speak with one of his contacts, Edward Smith. Luckily for Alexander, Nicolas was unaware of one important fact. Ed was also one of Alexander’s contacts. As such, no information came from Ed to Nicolas without Alexander learning of it soon afterwards.
It took a shrewd man to head the Thieves’ Guild of Caldreth, and Alexander was that man.
A few minutes later, he entered Ed’s room and saw that the man was looking right at him from where he sat on his bed.
“Hello Alexander, I was wondering when you’d come by,” Ed commented casually. “You’re here to find out what I told Nicolas, I take it?”
Alexander nodded, not surprised that Ed had foreseen that visit. The man was astute. That was part of the reason Alexander let him live in the tavern.
“Nicolas was seeking information about some assassins that are after one of his friends. He brought in a scimitar that one of them used. It just so happened that the scimitar bore the mark of the Night Blades,” Ed explained.
Alexander frowned deeply at that. “So, Nicolas is friends with an enemy of my brother. Do you know who it was?”
“No, I don’t,” Ed said, unconcerned. “However, the Night Blades lost twenty men already in their hunt for his friend.”
“Caleb of Kirakath,” Alexander said quietly, shaking his head. “I visited Victor, and he told me that he had lost ten men against Caleb of Kirakath, the young man who killed Cain Fell. He told me that he had ten men leaving to take him down, so it’s clear that he beat them.”
“A man who can take out twenty assassins must be impressive,” Ed remarked.
“Not really,” Alexander said, shaking his head. “The Night Blades are good, but they’re out of their element fighting him. That’s why they’re sending so many people to kill him. Taking out a guy in a city like Umbridge or Caldreth is easy. You can hide in the shadows, throw a knife at his back, and leave before anyone realizes what happened. Going after a guy who constantly travels and stays in small inns… it’s very tricky. What’s worse is that Victor’s pride is too great to take care of it himself or to send Azrael after him. Anyone who could take on the Black Crows with only one other person at his side has to be strong enough to handle a few guys who have to rely on stealth to win.”
“I see,” Ed said thoughtfully.
“Caleb of Kirakath is none of our concern though,” Alexander said. “He might be an enemy of my brother, but it is just my brother who counts him as an enemy. I, on the other hand, have to deal with Nicolas.”
Surprise could clearly be seen in Ed’s eyes.
“Nicolas has aided an enemy of my brother. As a member of the Thieves’ Guild, his actions have put our organization at risk. If my brother believes that I allowed a subordinate to do such a thing, then it will cause problems for us all,” Alexander said, turning away from Ed. “It’s truly a shame too. Nicolas and I have been at odds from time to time, but I liked him. He’s strong of character and is capable of selling stolen goods faster than any other fence. It’s truly a shame that he has to be eliminated.”
With those words, Alexander spun around and cut Ed’s throat open with a dagger that had been hidden up his sleeve.
“And I cannot allow you to warn him either. I never fully trusted you. You may have served me over him, but I know that you would have been more than willing to betray me in order to preserve his life. Farewell Ed.”
With that, Alexander walked out of the room and shut the door. He had business to attend to.
Chapter 7
Caleb pulled his mare to a stop as he looked out at the horizon. As tempting as it was to keep riding down the road to Umbridge, he knew that it was not a good idea. Sunset was no more than an hour away, and there were still twenty-five miles between the city and his location. While he could make it in a couple hours, he did not think entering the city of an assassins’ guild at nighttime would have been a good idea.
He immediately began looking around for a good place to stop for the night, but the forest was right at the edges of the road on both sides.
Frowning, he began to look at his surroundings more intently. Within moments, he saw something that pleased him. Though the forest to his right was just as dense as the forest to his left where it met the road, it appeared as though it thinned out a bit as it got farther away from the road. He suspected that there was a clearing a short ways away from the road.
It took him a few minutes to ride his mare through the forest to his right until it thinned out, but he saw that he had been correct. The clearing that he found was no more than forty yards across, but it was more than big enough for him to use.
He slipped off of his mare immediately and unsaddled her, setting it on the ground. It served two purposes. One, it allowed her to get a break from having the saddle on her back. Two, it gave Caleb something to lay his head on when he went to sleep for the night.
As uncomfortable as the seat of a saddle was, it was definitely more comfortable to lie on than the hard ground.
Caleb took the paint by the reins and immediately walked her to the edge of the clearing. He dropped the reins over a tree branch to keep her from walking off, and then he returned to the saddle, where he immediately laid down and went to sleep.
It had been two days since he had left Caldreth, and he nee
ded a good night’s rest.
* * * * *
Caleb’s eyes snapped open as a chill ran down his spine.
He sat up quickly, his hand going to the hilt of his sword on instinct.
By the dim light that the stars and the full moon provided, Caleb could see well enough to know that no assassins had caught up to him. In all honesty, he wished that they had caught up to him instead of who he saw standing at the edge of the clearing.
He rose to his feet and drew the Sword of Kirakath, holding the longsword with both hands.
The figure at the edge of the clearing began to walk towards him, the moonlight making it a little easier to see that he wore a hooded cloak over a suit of plate armor that covered all of his body except for his neck and head.
Rise of the Champion (The Sword of Kirakath Omnibus #1) Page 22