The man turned and started down the alleyway as if he hadn’t just killed three men in cold blood. Still, once the giant was no longer looming over him, Orren felt some of his confidence and purpose returning. True, Zane and the others had died, but that was no great loss. There were always men willing to kill for coin. The situation could still be salvaged, especially now that the fool Chosen had told him where the others might be found. He turned to his two remaining priests and saw they, too, appeared to recognize the opportunity they’d been given. He also made a silent promise to himself to deal with the one who had fled; such cowardice had no place in those who worshipped the Goddess of the Wilds, and Orren would see that the man suffered before he died.
The two priests watched him, waiting for orders. Orren glanced at the big man’s back as he made his laborious way down the alley, clearly hampered by his wound. Then he felt a grin stretch across his face. He gave the two priests a nod, and they reached into their tunics, withdrawing the blades they had secreted there. Yes, the situation could still be salvaged, but to do so he would be forced to get his hands dirty. Still, that was alright. The Chosen was wounded, and it was obvious he could barely put one foot in front of the other. “Come on,” he said quietly, “let’s get this done.”
Chapter Thirteen
Rion lay in his bed at The Drunken Bard, his eyes grainy, his body and mind exhausted. Yet sleep eluded him. The bed itself was comfortable enough, simple but nicer and better cared for than many of those in some of the finest establishments back in Valeria. The mattress was soft, obviously regularly maintained and stuffed with fresh feathers, but no matter which way he moved, there always seemed to be a lump underneath him, pressing into his back or thighs.
Yet even that wasn’t the problem. Or at least he didn’t believe it was. After spending days and weeks sleeping on the forest ground, the mattress was almost too soft. What’s more, the room—though of a decent size—seemed small, almost cramped.
I’m like a dog that has spent too long in the wild and is no longer able to be taken into a civilized home. It was ridiculous, of course, but there it was. Perhaps the cruelest jest of all was that he had spent the last days and weeks trying to survive, barely managing it, only to find that once he had finally found a safe place, a shelter, he was unable to take advantage of it and get the rest his body so desperately needed.
He felt tired, and he felt exhausted, but most of all, he felt afraid. Not the frantic, piss-yourself-without-shame fear he’d experienced far too much recently, but a quieter, abiding one. If the last weeks had taught him anything, it was that no matter how secure a place appeared, a man was never truly safe. The shadows, after all, reached everywhere. They lurked underneath the bed, waiting. Crouched against the walls, moving almost imperceptibly in the light of the moon filtering in through the room’s single window. They even clung to the ceiling above his head, in the darkness, watching him.
“Well shit,” he mumbled to himself, “there go my chances of getting any sleep.” He sighed and finally gave in, sitting up. He wondered what the others were doing, if they were having as much trouble sleeping as he was. After all, how could anyone manage to sleep when it seemed the whole damned world had lined up for a chance to kill them? And that wasn’t even considering the Ekirani, the one they called the Broken. Rion had seen how the man had fought when Darl and Alesh had taken him on, and he couldn’t fool himself about how the fight would have gone if Larin hadn’t stepped in when he did. One lone man, and he would have taken down Alesh and Darl both, two of the strongest, most dangerous men Rion knew. What chance did anyone have against such a man?
Rion sighed, rubbing at his eyes. He needed to get out of this room, that was all. The walls were getting smaller and smaller, moving toward him slowly but surely and sooner or later they would crush him. He retrieved his boots from the floor, pulling one on, then the other. By the time he was finished with this simple task, his body practically hummed with the urge to move, to flee the room.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he was in the hallway. He paused outside Darl’s room and that of the two girls. He heard what he thought was the steady sound of breathing from inside, and a bitter expression came to his face. At least someone was able to get some sleep. He didn’t pause at Katherine and Alesh’s room. After all, unless the man was a complete idiot, Rion thought he knew well enough what sounds he might hear. Sounds he’d just as soon avoid, considering the last intimate moment he’d had with a woman was when she climbed onto their fleeing wagon and tried to kill him.
The common room was empty at this late hour, even Hank, the old innkeeper, apparently having decided to call it a night. That was too bad as Rion thought he could have used a drink just then, would have just about killed for one. Still, there were places in any city where a man could get a drink and more, if he knew where to look, and Rion had spent the last several years of his life since inheriting his father’s business finding them.
He thought a drink sounded good, maybe a hand or two of cards too, or watching the dice chase each other across the table, the outcome of their journey impossible to guess until it was done. Smiling at the thought and feeling better than he had in some time, Rion started for the door and out into the night.
***
Bishop Orren stood with his men in the alley opposite The Drunken Bard. In the darkness, he could see little of their expressions, but he could feel their excitement, a match for his own. Here was their moment, a chance to all rise in Shira’s graces, as well as Tesharna’s. Those who had dared to put themselves against the Darkness were within the inn, sleeping soundly with no idea their doom was upon them.
The thought was so tempting, so alluring, that it even helped distract him from the pain in his swollen jaw where the old bastard Chosen had struck him a glancing blow as well as the ache in his wrist where the man had grabbed him with hands like a vice as his knife had gone in. He knew without a doubt his jaw would be swollen in the morning—already, he was finding it difficult to swallow, and there was a distinct creaking to his jaw he didn’t like. As for his wrist, when he rotated it, it clicked, something it had definitely not done before.
Still he was grateful. Better to have a swollen jar and a sprained wrist than to end up like the other priests had. He had sent them in first, of course, and though they had both wounded the old giant, Larin had grabbed them both, smashing their heads together until no one would have been able to say for sure where one’s started and the other’s ended. It had been shocking to see, but as strong as he was, the Chosen had taken several deep wounds, and he was barely able to stand at all when Orren crept up behind him and finished the job.
His body would be found tomorrow or the next day in some back alley, and the benefit of it being in the poor quarter was that nothing much would be said of it. After all, most deaths in the poor quarter were the result of nothing more than natural causes. Understanding, of course, that in such a place, a knife in the throat or kidney was as natural as the sun rising in the morning. Oh, the city guard would put on a show of looking into the matter, but no more than that, most believing—rightly so, as far as Orren was concerned—that the dregs of society cleaning up themselves by thinning out the population wasn’t such a bad thing. And, of course the guards, while paid to investigate by the city council, were paid—far more generously—by its criminal element to ensure that such investigations inevitably failed.
A hand on his shoulder pulled Orren from his thoughts, and he looked to where the priest gestured to see a man stepping out of The Drunken Bard. One man, alone, looking exhausted but with an excited spring in his step. Probably off to see his favorite whore. “No,” Orren whispered, “the ones we are looking for will be together. That one has nothing to do with us.”
He waited until the figure disappeared down the street, then he turned and motioned to the others. “Take them—and keep it quiet, if you can. But either way, there can be no witnesses. Do you understand?” Heads nodded in the darkness, and they
moved toward the inn, shadows gliding across the road as quickly and silently as death itself.
Orren waited until they were ahead of him, then he followed, rubbing at his jaw. The night had not been an easy one—that giant old bastard had seen to that—but his work was nearly finished.
***
Hank groaned quietly as he rose from his bed in the back room of the inn. He owned a home not far away, but since his wife’s death he’d taken to sleeping in the tavern instead. It was more comfortable in the Bard, the house that had been their home for thirty years so crowded with the ghosts of her memory that Hank always felt an uncomfortable pressure when stepping inside, like a man being jostled in a heavy crowd. On those rare occasions when he stayed at his home instead of the tavern, it felt as if he’d entered a separate world, one that had come and gone, one to which he could not return no matter how much he might have wanted to. No, the tavern was better. Simpler. Grace had always hated the tavern, had always complained about him coming home smelling like spirits and desperation, so the memories here, in this place, were not of her or the fever that had taken her. And that was better.
Hank had been a soldier for most of his life, had fought in the Night Wars next to some of the finest men he’d ever known. He’d fought bravely in dozens of battles and skirmishes, had bled alongside friends and foes alike. He had never run as some others had, but had stuck, and so it did not even occur to him that by staying in the inn he was fleeing from his wife’s memory as surely as those men he’d believed cowards had fled before the nightling forces so long ago.
He pulled on his soft slippers, pausing to glance at them with a mixture of disgust and amusement. Thoughts of the war, of what he’d been through, were always there, in the back of his mind, but it seemed seeing Larin again had given them new strength, and he couldn’t help feeling ridiculous as he looked at those old slippers and the old, gnarled feet on which they sat.
He wondered what the man of thirty years ago would have said to the old man he’d become, the old man who slept in the back of an inn, who got up half a dozen times during the night to piss and who wore velvet slippers because they didn’t aggravate his bunions as much as regular boots did. He wasn’t sure what the younger him might have said, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t have been kind. Of course, the younger him hadn’t had arthritis in his joints, nor had he had any need of worrying about coaxing the piss from his cock, practically negotiating with the damned thing. No, that man had been all courage and honor, all blood and glory. Though, it had to be said, he’d also been a bit of a bastard.
Hank sighed, starting across the room toward the small privy on its other end. He’d taken one shuffling step, then a second, when the sound of the inn’s door opening caught his attention, and he frowned. Funny that; he’d been sure he’d locked the damned thing. But then, that was another one of the more annoying challenges about getting older—a man’s mind began to play tricks on him, like some mischievous child with a mean streak.
He was beginning to think maybe this was just one of those moments when he heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps. And in case he might have thought he was imagining that as well, there was the distinct creak of the third floorboard from the door, the one he’d been meaning to fix for some time now, but had never gotten around to. He knew his inn well, knew it as well as any man could know anything, and there was no mistaking, no denying that sound.
And he had locked the door, of that much he was certain. Which meant only one thing—whoever was up there had forced their way past the lock. And in his experience, the type of men who did such things as that weren’t coming to drop a sack of coins in your lap. Hank glanced to the chest at the foot of his bed, the same chest he’d carried around with him across half the continent, full of his old gear. A serviceable tin cookpot, a ladle, a deck of cards he couldn’t remember where he’d gotten. A few other knick knacks, artifacts of an age now past which held no value to anyone save him. But it wasn’t these that were on his mind. Instead, he thought of the sword. An old blade but a good one. It had served him well on more occasions than he liked to contemplate, and though old age and infirmity might have stolen much of his strength and wits, he still saw to the blade, always, cleaning out the grooves and slicking the scabbard with oil as he’d been taught. He thought about grabbing it now but quickly dismissed the idea.
There were already whispers from time to time about “Crazy Old Hank” who was losing his mind, who slept in his own inn and never left. The last thing he needed to do was add to them by rushing upstairs with a drawn sword only to find one of his customers hadn’t been able to sleep and had come down to the common room to sit and relax. They did that sometimes, he knew, and he didn’t even care to consider how bad the rumors would be then, if he came charging in, naked save for his sleeping pants, a sword trembling in hands far too old to wield it properly.
Still, there had been the creak, so he compromised, moving toward the fireplace where he sometimes started a flame in a vain effort to banish the chill from old bones that refused to ever completely let it go. He grabbed the steel fire poker he used to stir the embers and started for the steps leading up to the inn’s small kitchen.
Careful now, quiet, let the old bones ache if they had to, let the muscles, so poorly used, give what pain they would, but for the gods’ sake let them do it quietly. He crept up the stairs and eased the trap door open. Despite his best efforts, it gave an almost imperceptible creak as it slid away. Another job he’d meant to do, another task he hadn’t gotten around to yet, and one that just might cost him. He waited in tense silence to see if anyone would give a shout of alarm, but there was nothing. He waited another moment, then another. Then he climbed up into the kitchen. There were no windows in the kitchen, so he could see nothing but shadows all around him; the kitchen, which he normally thought of as a warm, inviting place, didn’t feel so now, and each shadow seemed to loom with menace.
Find your courage, old man, he scolded himself. You aren’t dead yet. He heard what he thought was the sound of whispering from inside the common room. Hank, once a great warrior, known for his skill with the sword, now an old man with a fire poker and velvet slippers, took a deep breath, gathering what courage the erosion of time had left, and moved toward the door.
***
Alesh started awake, jerking upright. He’d been dreaming, or at least he thought he had. But when he tried to latch onto the content of that dream, its remnants slipped past like water through open hands. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he realized that somehow, while he’d been sleeping, he’d grasped the handle of his sword where he’d laid it beside him, had even gone so far as to draw it halfway from its scabbard.
He sat there, listening, but the only sound he heard was Katherine’s light breathing from the bed. He had just about decided it had been nothing but a dream after all and was preparing to lie back down and try to get some of the sleep his body desperately needed, when he heard a crash that sounded as if it had come from the inn’s common room. A moment later, there was another sound, one he had heard far too often of late—the sound of a man screaming in pain.
He was on his feet in an instant, grasping the handle of his sword in a white-knuckled grip. He started for the door but paused as Katherine spoke.
“Alesh?” she said, her voice soft and thick with sleep. “I thought I heard somethi—” She cut off as another scream sounded from down below. “What is it? What’s happening?”
Alesh shook his head. “I don’t know. Stay here—lock the door behind me. I’ll go check it out.”
Before she could argue, he headed out into the hallway. There was only darkness. No lanterns burned to light the hallway, which was strange, as Alesh thought he remembered seeing some when Hank had led him to his room. He paused, listening, but whatever commotion had gone on in the common room, it seemed it was over now. Someone probably just tripped in the darkness, he thought. You’re overreacting.
But then there was a scuffling so
und from somewhere in front of him, and he heard the unmistakable ring of steel whistling through the air. Guided by the instincts Chosen Olliman had ingrained in him during his training, Alesh ducked and was rewarded a moment later by a thunk as a sword meant to take his head from his shoulders buried itself in the wall instead. He finished drawing his own blade and lunged forward. The steel pierced flesh, and someone screamed in pain.
Alesh was still trying to work his sword free when he saw the almost imperceptible shifting of a shadow to his left, and he spun, putting his attacker—who was still impaled on his sword—between him and the shadow. Something lashed out of the darkness, and warm blood spilled over him as the wounded man’s head came free of his shoulders, toppling to the ground.
He finally managed to free his sword, and he gave the corpse a kick, sending it crashing into this new threat who screamed as he—and the corpse of his comrade—were sent over the landing railing. Alesh’s breath was rasping out of his throat from the shock of the unexpected violence, and he didn’t at first hear the sound coming from behind him. He knew he was going to be too late even as he began to spin, trying to get his sword around in time to block.
But instead of feeling the pain of steel slicing through him as he had expected, the pale moonlight coming through the window showed him the attacker’s downward plunging knife as it went wide of him by nearly a foot. Alesh didn’t hesitate, stabbing forward with his blade and burying it deep into this latest attacker’s heart. He pulled the blade free, and the man collapsed against the wall. Another shape stood behind him, little more than a shadow in the darkness, and Alesh raised his blade, preparing to strike.
“Hold, lad.”
Alesh hesitated. Something about the voice sounded familiar. “Hank? Is that you?”
There was what might have been a grunt of pain. “It’s me, lad. Gods, but you…did for those bastards…quick enough, didn’t you?”
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