by Jim C. Hines
“I’m already prepared to kill him. There’s an important difference.” It was a difference drilled into Shroud by some of the deadliest men and women in all of Albion. Only a select few were selected for initiation into Albion’s oldest order of assassins. Of those who proved themselves worthy to be trained by the Conclave, fewer than half survived the training process.
Shroud had not only survived, he had excelled. He knew the twelve best knots to use when preparing a garrotte. He could demonstrate all twenty-six techniques for killing a man with his own soup spoon. As an archer, his marksmanship had impressed even the shadowy masters of the Conclave.
“Is there anyone you aren’t prepared to kill?” asked Winter.
“Certainly.” He made a show of studying each of his companions in turn. “Me.”
Shroud had no intention of killing his fellow Heroes—not unless they gave him good reason to do so. Or if someone paid him. Or if he saw the opportunity to inflict a truly memorable and impressive death, one that would significantly add to his reputation. Regardless, he rather enjoyed the sidelong looks they gave him, as if he were a serpent, sleek and deadly and unpredictable. He turned and gestured “after you” with one arm.
Sterling was the first to step through that jagged crack into the darkness. He was the only one of the group who seemed comfortable turning his back on Shroud. Foolish man. But it would make killing him easier should that become necessary.
Sterling came across as a stuck-up, overly romantic peacock, but the man could fight. Shroud had seen him in action, his blade jumping from one foe to the next, striking so quickly his enemies didn’t have time to realise they had been slain. If there ever came a day when Sterling needed to be removed, Shroud would be better off doing so from a distance. A single well-placed arrow, probably a broadhead. Or else he would simply arrange an “accident” to divert suspicion.
You’ll always be a suspect. Members of the Conclave wear death as a second cloak.
That was true enough, but suspicion was a far cry from proof.
Shroud followed Sterling into the cave. The air was cool and damp. Water dripped in the distance. The tunnel was broader than he would have expected. Had he been the one digging for treasure, he would have kept the entrance as tight as possible to better conceal it.
Glory was next. Her magic made her a very different challenge than Sterling, but the Conclave had trained him to eliminate the most powerful targets, including both those with great Strength or Skill and those who used their Will to manipulate the supernatural. Magic was a dangerous weapon, but like any weapon, it had limitations. In a straightforward fight, Shroud was confident he could plant a blade in Glory’s chest faster than she could summon her magic to use against him.
Of course, a straightforward fight was always a last resort.
Shroud moved soundlessly ahead. By the time he was five steps in, it was too dim to make out anything but shadows and shapes. After ten steps, vision was useless.
Torchlight would alert the Mayor to their presence, but darkness presented dangers of its own. A single misstep could lead to a twisted ankle, and they had no way of knowing what other creatures might have taken up residence in a place like this. And to Shroud’s ear, the footfalls of his companions might as well have been an army marching in full plate armour.
“Allow me,” he whispered, slipping past Sterling. He brushed the man’s shoulder with one hand, using the other to follow the roughness of the wall. He tested each step before shifting his weight.
How many months had he spent training to fight while blind or deaf? He touched his face, remembering the rough cotton blindfold his teachers had tightened around his eyes. His opponent for those bouts had been an old master known as the Poisoned Violet, who took great pleasure in beating the tar out of him day after day until he learned to hear the softest footfall, to feel every disturbance in the air. Ah, the good old days.
The path sloped deeper underground before veering to the left, towards the dam’s foundation. They hadn’t gone far when he began to hear the clink of metal on rock.
“Idiots,” Glory said softly. “All it would take is for a single block to shift, and the water rushing into the tunnel would drown them all.”
“More likely they—and we—would be crushed in the cave-in,” said Shroud. Once the structure of the dam failed, the weight of the rock would flatten anyone caught inside like mosquitoes.
“You two suck all the fun out of exploring dark, dangerous tunnels,” whispered Winter.
Winter was as deadly as anyone else in their little band. She fought using her Will to conjure ice and cold. Unlike Glory, her technique was more instinctive. Winter’s power could slow or even immobilise an enemy. To take her out, it would be best to divert her attention and trick her into expending that arctic power in another direction. Perhaps a whistling arrow, shot into the distance to simulate the approach of some shrieking creature …
He nodded to himself, satisfied that he could dispose of any of his companions if necessary. Not that he expected to have to do so, but it was better to be prepared. Planning kept his mind sharp. It was one of the things that had always given him the edge over others in his classes.
His eyes began to discern the distant glow of a hanging lantern, illuminating jagged walls, glassy puddles, and bat guano. “Wait here.”
He crept silently ahead. A short distance beyond, a second lantern hung on a metal spike in the rock. Farther in, roughly twenty men worked in a small cavern. They had exposed three of the great stone blocks that formed the foundation of the dam, and were slowly chipping away at the centremost stone. Four others were piling dirt and rubble into wagons. Shroud wondered idly where they were taking the waste rock.
And then what he had assumed to be another rock pile trudged away from the wall, and surprise chased any other questions or concerns from his mind. He didn’t see the Mayor anywhere, but they had a bigger problem: The Mayor’s new foreman was an ogre.
Most ogres couldn’t supervise themselves, let alone a crew of twenty, but this one was not only shouting orders, she—Shroud was 70 percent certain the ogre was female—was even using complete sentences. Mostly.
The ogre resembled a boulder herself, round, grey, and craggy. She made the workers look like little dolls. A trio of daggers hung from her left ear like jewellery. In one hand, she carried an axe that looked capable of splitting the dam all by itself. The top of her head was bruised and bloody where it had scraped the low rock ceiling again and again, but none of the injuries looked serious enough to slow her down.
A pair of ogre heads hung from her belt like enormous, hairy grey prunes. A third was suspended by a rusty chain around her neck and sat nested in the chasm of the ogre’s cleavage. A fourth was tied to the end of a stick slung over her back.
Four noggins. Strange … most ogres only carry one.
One of the reasons ogres were so tough to kill was that their anatomy was so thoroughly ridiculous. Cut off the head, and the body would eventually stop trying to kill you, but the head would keep jabbering away. Their vital organs—the heart and what passed for a brain—were both housed in their rocky skulls.
Ogres were generally born in pairs. When they grew up, the stronger twin killed the weaker and took his or her head as a trophy, companion, and source of advice. Those unfortunate noggins tended to be smarter than their full-bodied brothers and sisters, perhaps because they had nothing to do except think and talk. This allowed the victorious ogre to worry about more important things, like eating and killing.
Go for the soft targets: belly, throat, groin, and eyes.
One of the heads on her belt blinked. “Hey, who said it was time to rest?”
The ogre marched towards a worker who had slumped against the wall to mop sweat from his face. He snatched up his hammer and attacked the rock with newfound vigour, while the various heads chuckled to themselves.
“That is no ghost,” Winter whispered. The clang of hammers helped to muffle her voice.
“Not yet.” Shroud allowed himself a small, unseen smile. He spied a fifth head strapped to the ogre’s opposite hip, though this one wore a gag of rope and old rags.
“There’s another one in the corner,” Glory whispered, pointing to an older-looking head nested among a pile of rocks.
Using the noggins to keep watch in every direction at once. Clever.
He could have shot the ogre from here, but arrows were a gamble. A perfect shot to the eye might penetrate through the socket to the brain, but this was an ogre. Piercing the brain might just make her mad.
Perhaps a flash bomb to blind the noggins. That would nullify much of the ogre’s advantage. If Shroud and his companions struck quickly, they could take her down in the confusion. A standard-issue Laird-Eastman Eyeburner Bomb would work best in this confined environment. He plucked a black egg from a padded inner pocket in his cloak. “You’ll want to shield your eyes.”
Shroud pulled his cloak around his body, transforming himself into shadow. He shook the egg gently, feeling the contents warm as they mixed together. A sharp impact against something solid—like an ogre’s skull—would be more than enough to crack the shell and trigger the reaction. He double-checked that his bow and arrows were ready, raised his arm—
A gravelly shout erupted mere feet from where he was standing. A seventh noggin stared up at him from the shadows. He had mistaken it for a rock. This one had braided pigtails, of all things. “Oi, Headstrong! Visitors!”
Headstrong the ogre spun around, raised her weapon, and bared enormous yellow teeth.
With a curse, Shroud snatched the noggin off the ground and crammed the Eyeburner into its mouth. The head squawked in muffled protest as Shroud grabbed both pigtails, spun around, and hurled it at the approaching ogre.
Headstrong reacted in typical fashion for her kind, swatting the noggin away with the flat of her axe.
The blow was more than enough to set off the flash bomb, and the resulting explosion reduced the number of noggins to six, as well as effectively blinding all those who hadn’t covered their eyes. Even through his hands and closed eyelids, it was like Shroud had stared at the midday sun. He blinked rapidly as he nocked an arrow—a hardened bodkin tip had the best chance of penetrating the ogre’s hide. He sighted in on the blurred form and released the string.
Cold wind caught the end of his cloak as Winter launched her own assault. Sterling bounded past with sword drawn, eliciting a curse from Glory, who had to smother her magic to avoid hitting him.
“Fear not, good people of Grayrock,” Sterling cried. “Sterling, Hero of Albion, has come to free you from your tormentor. Behold the legend!” He thrust his sword, jabbing Headstrong in the thigh.
The ogre spun to the side and swept her axe through the air, but Sterling had already danced out of range. The wound didn’t slow her down. She continued to whip her axe to and fro, drawing unpredictable patterns of steel all around her as a noggin with a ragged scar through the remnants of her left eye and ear barked orders.
“Keep moving! Don’t let ’em get close. Chop that one like a melon!”
Another noggin, this one with a snot-covered ring through his nose, said, “Chase ’em into the tunnel. Make ’em trip over each other. Forget the axe. Yer stench will drive ’em back!”
“Watch it, Schemer.” Headstrong yanked the noggin-on-a-stick from her back and used it like a club in her off hand, working to corral the Heroes. “I’ll gag you like I did Big Mouth.”
“I’m already gagging,” the noggin named Schemer replied.
“Are you seeing this?” asked Glory.
“Seeing, yes.” Shroud fired two more arrows. One lodged in the ogre’s belly. The other ricocheted off a noggin, leaving a thin cut along the scalp. “Still working on understanding.”
Few of the workers showed any interest in joining the battle. One man who tried was flattened by the accidental backswing of Headstrong’s makeshift club. After that, the rest stayed as far out of range as possible.
Headstrong continued to chase Sterling, swinging her axe like a farmer with a scythe. A drunk farmer. One who was less intent on harvesting her crop than on reducing it to a bloody pulp.
“Step to your right,” shouted Glory. Both Sterling and Shroud moved out of the way, and an orb of crackling flame hit the ground between Headstrong’s feet. The ogre howled as the fire exploded, burning her legs.
“Well done, my Lady of the Apples!” Sterling darted forwards to score another cut to the same leg he had hit before.
“Watch the ones in back,” shouted another of the female noggins. “Forget the peacock with the steel toothpick. And stop missing!”
“You don’t like it, Thinker?” Headstrong growled. “Help me kill the meat sacks!”
Thinker didn’t respond. Winter had encased the head in a layer of ice, a glassy mask that shone in the lantern light.
“Get outta dere.” That was the noggin called Schemer. “You’re outnumbered. I’m not dyin’ for some dirt and rocks.”
With a growl of frustration, Headstrong turned to flee, tossing human workers behind her to slow pursuit. Shroud put two more arrows into her back before she shoved her way into another tunnel. He started to follow.
“Shroud, wait,” Winter said. “We have to help these people.”
“Do I look like a healer? More important, imagine the injury my reputation will suffer if my enemies begin surviving their encounters with me.”
“We’re here to find the Mayor,” Winter pressed. “These people might know where he is.”
“Headstrong might know too,” Shroud countered, trying to duck around her. “I know a hundred and twelve ways of persuading her to tell us.”
“You really think an ogre is the best source for intelligence on the Mayor? Or intelligence, period?”
Shroud hesitated. “That’s a fair point.”
Sterling climbed onto the nearest rock pile and rested one arm on his bent leg. “Fear not, good villagers. Your imprisonment is at an end! And now, if you could tell us where your villainous Mayor is hiding, we’ll make certain his evil is vanquished from Grayrock for all time.”
“Ain’t seen him today,” said an older man, leaning heavily on his hammer. “Most days, he comes round with the Ghost of Grayrock to inspect the work.”
“Excellent,” said Sterling. “We’re interested in speaking with her as well.”
“What can you tell us about the ogre?” asked Shroud.
The old man shuddered. “Not much to tell. She’s an ogre. Big. Mean. Ugly. Rumour has it her job was to kill anyone who refused to work or who tried to leave these caves before the job was done. All I know is those few who walked off never came back.” He looked at them expectantly.
“Yes, yes. Your friends are dead,” Shroud said. “Where do you think Headstrong might have run off to?”
“None of us wanted to chat up an ogre,” said another worker.
The clank of a hammer cut off Shroud’s response. He stared at the man who had resumed his work on the dam. Two more moved to join him. Shroud looked at his companions, who appeared baffled.
“What are you doing?” asked Shroud.
“There’s still treasure to find,” said the old man, shouldering his hammer. “With rockhead gone, that gold will be all ours.”
“What gold?” asked Glory. “You’re digging into the foundation of the dam.”
“Right,” he said. “That’s where the treasure’s buried.”
“Keep digging and you’ll flood the entire town,” said Sterling.
“Ah,” answered one of the men loading the wagons. “That’s what makes it such a clever place to hide a treasure. You’d have to be a fool to dig here.”
Sterling blinked. “Well … yes.”
“You need to stop before you wipe out the entire town,” said Winter.
“We know what you’re about,” said the wagon worker. “You think you’re so clever, scaring off old granite-face and ‘rescuing’ us. Then once
we’re out of the way, you’ll take the gold for yourselves.” He grabbed a rock and raised it in what he doubtless believed to be a threatening manner. “We’ve earned this treasure. There’s nothing you and your gang here can do to make us leave.”
Shroud smiled. “Is that a challenge?”
“I vote we leave them,” said Glory.
“Why am I not surprised?” Winter asked.
“You can’t save people from their own stupidity,” Glory shot back.
“Sure you can.” Shroud unshouldered his pack. He pulled out a curved, double-edged dagger with an ivory handle and made a show of inspecting the long blade in the lantern light. “I received this weapon from an assassin who trained in the Deadlands. He taught me thirty-nine ways to kill a man with it. I’ve come up with a dozen more since then.”
His smile grew. “Who wants to stick around and help me find number fifty-two?”
CHAPTER 7
WINTER
Why would Headstrong, the Mayor, and the Ghost of Grayrock want to flood the town?” Winter asked, once the last of the workers had left. None of them had provided any useful information.
“Why indeed?” Sterling rubbed his chin and examined the shadows, as if his piercing eyes could pry the truth from the darkness. “Neither the Mayor nor the ogre strikes me as the evil-mastermind type. The ghost must be the one behind this.”
Winter jumped onto a pile of broken stone and balanced on one foot. “Maybe someone really did bury gold here when they built the dam. These people don’t exactly put a lot of thought into their actions.”
Glory smiled. “No wonder you’ve seemed so comfortable here.”
“I enjoy life no matter where I go. It’s so much nicer than walking about like you’ve got an icicle up your—”
“Does anyone have any useful suggestions for finding our foes?” asked Sterling.
A blackened noggin landed on the ground between them. “Let’s ask the ogre,” said Shroud.
Winter would have thought a flash bomb in the mouth was more than enough to kill an ogre head, but this one had survived. Mostly. The noggin was missing some teeth, and the jaw looked like it was broken, but the yellow eyes burned with hate. One of the braids had burned to a stub, adding to the stink.