Night's Haunting

by Matthew Sprange

  The thieves had not been expecting that level of generosity, and they whooped with glee and greed, causing Wendric to bark at them to restore order once again. As he left the thieves to stuff as many coins as they could into their sacks, pouches and underclothing, Wendric walked over to Lucius who, having slung his own sack of silver over his shoulder, was near the cliff top, staring out at the sea.

  "We had not agreed to that," Wendric said. "You'll spoil them. They'll expect to retain all of their takings in the future."

  Lucius shook his head. "There will be plenty of time to restore discipline later, and I daresay few will disobey while Elaine is guildmistress. It's alright this time. Thieves are not usually expected to fight pitched battles against Vos soldiers, and many of them are wounded. It will also do something to stop others leaving the guild altogether. Hopefully, there will be more volunteers next time."

  "I suppose," Wendric said.

  "But all of that does not really matter," said Lucius. "It is the big picture we must look at. The important thing is that Vos loses its silver, that we begin to starve them out of the city. Without money, we have a much easier time putting the guild back together. I don't mind if a few thieves get rich helping us do that. Besides, if they get to keep all the silver they carry, it will make this next step a bit easier."

  So saying, he turned from Wendric and headed back to the wagon. He could not help but smile again at the sight of the grinning thieves, all loaded down with silver.

  "One last task, my friends, and then it is back to the city," he said, eliciting a cheer of triumph from them. He pointed to the armoured wagon. "I want you all to push that over the cliffs."

  The grins fled from their faces immediately. The wagon was still full of silver and even though not one thief could carry any more about his person, the thought of pitching all that wealth into the endless sea was anathema to any thief.

  "You... you're kidding, right?" said one thief among the crowd.

  "It has to be done. You know that. If we just leave it here, or bury it, or hide it somewhere, Vos may find it. Our task was not to get rich, but to make the Empire poor. What you are carrying on your backs is... a bonus. Do what I ask."

  The thieves moved half-heartedly, some running back on board to cram another coin or two into their boots. When they were assembled around the wagon, ready to push it forward, no one moved.

  "Alright boys, it pains me too, but needs must," Ambrose said, and Lucius was not sure whether he was just making a show of solidarity or not. "On the count of three..."

  The wagon was weighed down with its metal armour, but the straining thieves gradually got it moving again, and inching towards the cliff edge. The massive structure slowly gained momentum, and soon the thieves were half running as they pushed it. At a shout from Ambrose, they released the wagon, and watched as it trundled toward the cliffs. For a brief moment, it tottered as the front wheels hit empty air, and then dropped out of sight. Later, Lucius would swear he heard more than one thief sobbing.

  Once the haul of silver had been thrown from the cliffs, getting the thieves to clean up the rest of the battleground was easier. Any horse that was still fit was led away, to be taken back to the city, but the dead were dragged to the cliffs and then pushed over. The wounded were killed cleanly and then they too were thrown over. Wagons, dead soldiers and dead thieves quickly followed them, the latter thrown with a degree of reverence and a few words dedicated to their souls.

  As the thieves cleared the remainder of the battlefield, collecting stray arrows and covering pools of blood with earth and dust, Wendric approached Lucius.

  "So," he said. "We'll call that a success then."

  "I think so. It could have been so much worse for us," Lucius said.

  "Well, in two weeks, when they send the next silver train, we can do this all over again."

  Looking north to the Vos Empire, Lucius grimaced.

  "Next time, it will not be this easy."

  Chapter Twelve

  As morning turned into afternoon, Elaine wandered slowly through the southernmost of the Five Markets, her arm linked with that of a tall, fair-haired man. Gesturing at the various stalls they passed, his Vos accent was clear as he chided vendors for the prices they tried to charge, or else made disparaging comments about the quality of their merchandise. Dressed in good but affordable clothes, to the casual observer they appeared to be the epitome of middle class Turnitia, hard-working but living comfortably.

  Even if such an observer did not miss the man's tone dropping whenever the crowd thinned out, and the couple would talking in hushed voices, they might only presume that the conversation had turned to matters only a man and his wife need know. There was certainly nothing in their demeanour to suggest that here was the mistress of the remaining thieves' guild, discussing work with one of her lead assassins.

  "I feel we are being shut out," the man was saying, as he steered Elaine away from a meat vendor whose prices had attracted a mob of excited wives and house cooks. "We are poised to act, and yet you are holding us back in favour of operations by footpads and burglars."

  Elaine smiled to herself. "There is no disrespect intended, Heinrich. Their talents are useful right now. Yours will come into play soon enough."

  "And what of the attack on the silver train? Our skills would have been well suited to that mission."

  That question caused Elaine to glance at him and raise an eyebrow, though she quickly reflected that it was difficult to keep any secret from her assassins. After all, she had taught several of them herself and, through her position in the guild, elevated the role of the trained killers.

  "The ambush will turn into a battle, and I will not risk our most capable members going toe-to-toe with Vos soldiers. You are better operating from the shadows. You know that."

  Heinrich frowned. "I was thinking more of the rewards from the mission. There are a lot of thieves getting rich right now, while the assassins are kept on a chain."

  "I thought that might be more to the point. I trust you have informed the others that there will be plenty of opportunities for everyone soon enough?"

  "Of course."

  "Any talk about splitting and starting an assassins' guild?"

  They had entered Ring Street, the thoroughfare that joined the Five Markets and ringed the imposing Citadel. They turned off the busy road and headed for quieter streets.

  "No. Not that I have heard of, anyway," Heinrich said. "I wouldn't worry too much about that. Business was always good under your employment, and we all trust that you will steer us back on course."

  "There will be some hard work for the assassins before that happens," Elaine said. "Hard, unpaid work."

  "I think, after their recent inactivity, your people will happily take it," Heinrich said, smiling. "They will see it as a point of pride, and a chance to refine their skills. What did you have in mind?"

  "The chief point of discussion in the next council meeting. So long as the attack on the silver train is at least a marginal success, we'll see what effect it has on the Vos forces in the city."

  "And then?"

  A wolfish look crossed Elaine's features. "Let's just say that if the assassins start tracking Vos officials and military leaders, I don't believe their time will be wasted."

  "Sounds like war." Heinrich did not seem unhappy with the idea.

  "That is what I am trying to avoid, as I am not sure even our assassins could survive a war with Vos. However, a few blades in the dark, a poisoning here or drowning there, might just make the Empire's position here untenable. We avert war and win by default."

  "What if that is not enough?"

  "Then, so long as we survive, we keep fighting. I'll not be driven from this city."

  Heinrich shrugged. "You'll need to find some way to finance our people in the long term. Their loyalty to you is firm at the moment, but it may not last, especially if they start dying."

  Nodding grimly, Elaine stopped as they came to a junction where t
he narrow road joined Lantern Street, a livelier part of the city that was home to many of the permanent traders and craftsmen's workshops. She turned her head to one side slightly as Heinrich leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  Turning on her heel, Elaine retraced her steps, thinking hard as she went. The news from Heinrich was encouraging, and she felt she had at least some time with the rest of the assassins. Unlike most of the rogues in the thieves' guild who might engage in the odd murder for silver, her killers were true professionals. They knew when they needed to act, and when they should lie low.

  She glanced up to see a woman approaching her from the other end of the street. Elaine found herself unnerved to see the woman walking straight towards her, eyes fixed on hers.

  Dropping a hand down to her stomach, Elaine brushed the pommel of the short knife she had concealed under her tunic, and slowed her pace, looking to the alleys she passed and the few passers-by behind her. She suddenly felt very exposed, and wondered if an ambush was about to be sprung.

  The woman continued her approach, her pace not slackening in the slightest as she stalked forwards. Elaine saw she was around her own age, with dark hair tied up behind her head. She wore a tunic of black leather, with unusual metal discs woven into the fabric, each dulled so as not to catch the sun. What arrested her attention, though, was the woman's eyes, beautifully wide but almost black as she stared back. Elaine was sure she had seen the woman before.

  As they moved to within a few yards of one another, Elaine whipped her knife out from under her tunic, keeping the blade down at her side, but in clear view of the other woman. The only response was a smile as the woman cupped a hand and then thrust it at Elaine, as if she were throwing something.

  Elaine had barely started to dodge when she was blasted off her feet by a moving wall of air.

  The thieves had scattered long before Turnitia had come into sight as they walked back along the coastal road. Wendric and Ambrose had taken the bulk of them in a wide loop around the city, beyond the sight of its walls. There were numerous ways into the city that avoided the two main gates in the east and north walls, from storm drains to overflow pipes leading straight to the sewers. The thieves' guild had long since mapped them all, and they had been a staple of smuggling franchises until Vos had strangled illicit trade in the city.

  The journey along the coastal road, in the company of the remaining jubilant thieves, had been an amiable way of passing an afternoon. Though loaded down with heavy coins, even the wounded thief, his left arm strung across his chest with a makeshift sling, was laughing. They were giddy with their success, and while Lucius kept quiet himself, he enjoyed listening to their plans on how they were going to spend their fortunes. Even the hilly terrain through which they travelled did nothing to dampen their spirits, though every few paces one thief or another would stop to shift his sack from one shoulder to the other.

  "Going to set me up a dozen new franchises," one said. "Maybe something at the docks, corner all trade coming in by sea."

  "Investing in the future, then?"

  "Aye, only sensible thing to do."

  "Well, in that case I think I'll get myself a new sword. One of those Allantian-forged jobs, perfect balance, they say."

  "That's for the future?"

  "Sure, I'll need it for when we go for the next silver train!"

  "You would be better off investing in a pony and cart, so we don't have to tip so much into the sea. What about you, Alfred, what are you going to do with your money?"

  There was a long pause. "I think, on balance," the thief Alfred said, "that I'll take three rooms at the Red Lion, and invite every whore, troubadour and gambler to join me. Oh, and make sure Myrklar never runs out of wine. Think I'll get through this little lot within a month or so, then I'll be ready for more work."

  His plans were met with stunned silence, until he turned and winked at the rest of them. They all laughed then, though Lucius was still not sure Alfred was completely joking. He just hoped they would all have the sense to keep their heads down for the next few weeks. Any sudden appearance of huge quantities of cash would lead even the dullest Vos sergeant straight to a guilty thief, once the raid on the silver train became common knowledge.

  "Hey, what's going on there?" one thief asked.

  The walls of Turnitia had come into view as they mounted the rise, and Lucius' gaze was drawn straight to the thin columns of smoke rising from the centre of the city. He frowned. The smoke was too thick to come from a blacksmith's, and there was too much for it to be an isolated house fire.

  "Looks like it's near the Citadel," said one thief.

  "A riot, you think?" Alfred asked.

  Lucius shook his head. "I can't see the Vos guard tolerating angry crowds long enough for them to light more than one or two fires. It looks like a battle is going on."

  That subdued the thieves, though their eyes lit up when Lucius slung his own sack of silver from his back and bade them share the load between them. Telling them to get back into the city through less obvious routes as planned, he jogged ahead, wanting to see what had happened within the city.

  It took him nearly an hour to reach the northern city gates. They were wide open, as was usual during the day, but completely untended. Hesitantly, fearing a trap, he approached the gates and peered inside, half expecting to see ranks of Vos soldiers beyond, spears and crossbows levelled at him as he entered. There was nothing. As he passed under the high stone arch of the gatehouse, Lucius began to pick up speed, looking anxiously for anyone that could tell him what had happened. Every street near the gatehouse was deserted, with the windows of many of the buildings shuttered or barred. He made his way towards the centre of the city, heading for Ring Street and the Citadel.

  The northernmost of the Five Markets looked like a battleground, and Lucius wondered if he had missed a sneak attack from some secret army of Pontaine, come to claim the city from the Empire.

  On Ring Street, three houses blazed, pouring black smoke into the afternoon sky, the columns streaking across the huge azure sphere of Kerberos. The dead lay everywhere on the cobbles of the marketplace, their bodies looking as if they had been picked up by some giant and then dashed on the ground. Limbs and heads lay at unnatural angles, while some were impaled on the smashed remains of vendors' stalls. He could not see a single wound on any that looked as though it was made by a weapon.

  He walked across the marketplace stunned, unable to believe what he was seeing, and he was not alone. Others stumbled over bodies as if in a daze. Every now and again, someone would cry out as they recognised a loved one, falling to their knees beside a body.

  It was a massacre, indiscriminate killing on a scale he had only seen performed by the worst mercenary companies operating in the Anclas Territories. The broken bodies of Vos soldiers were scattered all over the cobbles, most near the sealed gates of the Citadel. However, many more of the dead were ordinary men and women, the life blasted out of their corpses. With a shock, Lucius realised that many children were among the dead, covered by the bodies of their mothers or fathers as if they had tried, in vain, to shield them from attack. There were a hundred or more dead in the market.

  He walked past the wreckage of one stall, its bright green awning now a tattered sheet flapping in the breeze. The wood used to build the stall was little more than jagged splinters, mixed with the broken crockery the stall had sold. Seated on the ground next to the ruin, Lucius saw an aged woman, her long silver hair shielding her eyes from the devastation surrounding them.

  She sat, motionless, staring into nothingness, one hand on the twisted body of a man of similar age. His dead gaze was fixed on the sky, his neck broken.

  Crouching down by the woman, Lucius gently took her hand.

  "Are you hurt?" he asked, but received no response. He moved so he was crouching directly in her field of vision, and carefully brushed her hair to one side, before repeating the question.

  She did not stir for several seconds. When she looked up
at him there was fear in her face.

  "I will not harm you," he said softly. "Are you injured?"

  Slowly, she shook her head. "I'm fine," she said simply. She was silent for a moment more, then added, "Pietre threw me behind the stall. Then he died."

  Lucius looked around the market. The scene was being repeated all over, with survivors emerging from the wreckage, aided by those who had ventured to the scene of the battle. The gates of the Citadel opened enough to let a squad of Vos guards through, and they immediately set to work, dragging the bodies of fallen soldiers into the fortress. Only then did Lucius notice that the walls of the Citadel themselves had sustained damage. Great gouges had been torn into the stonework, as if by a powerful siege engine. Mystified, he turned back to the woman.

  "What happened here?"

  "She said she had come for everyone Vos-born," the woman said after a moment's hesitation. "Then she started attacking the soldiers."

  "Who?"

  "Some people started cheering at first, seeing the soldiers thrown around like rag dolls. But when she ran out of soldiers, she turned on everyone else. She just... broke them. Threw them into the stalls, the buildings, each other."

  "Lady, who did this?"

  "Pietre wanted to run, but I was frozen where I stood. Too scared to move. He saw what she was doing, as she killed everyone she could see. He saw her come towards us, and got me out of the way. Then she... she..."

  Lucius grasped the woman by her shoulders, shaking her slightly to bring her attention back to him.

  "Please, you must tell me," he said. "Who was it?" He knew the answer before the woman spoke.

  "Some maddened wizard, some rogue mage. Said she wanted to destroy everything Vos-built and Vos-born. Cloaked in darkness, she was."

  Dropping his own gaze to the ground, Lucius sighed uselessly, trying to find some course through the disaster.