Darius Chapter 5
Peskimir lay in bed wide awake, jolted out of her slumber by foreign noises. In the darkness outside her home, light footsteps moved from the loud stones of the street to the soft crunch of earth and mulch, leading to her door. The clink of loose chainmail stood out in the quiet night as the links rustled against each other. She inched her way out of bed, at first remaining as horizontal as possible and allowing her legs to hover over the floorboards, not daring to put any weight on the creaky planks. When she heard a low voice murmur outside, she took the opportunity to hop out of bed and move to the floorboards on the edge of the room where they would creak less. With her thumb and index finger, she pried one of her daggers off a nearby bench and held it in an underhand grip, comfortable in its familiar weight. She heard the whisper of steel on leather as a blade was removed from its scabbard, confirming this was no friendly visit. Peskimir hovered like a ghost to the door, opting to wait in ambush where the door would swing open.
The hinges squeaked like a scared rat as the first man entered the house, lifting the chain lock with the point of his sword. With the silence broken, the two men abandoned all efforts at stealth, charging through the door and knocking it back on its hinges directly into Peskimir’s nose. She yelped, slashing with her dagger through bleary eyes, and managed to catch one bald intruder under the arm. He jumped back in surprise, swearing at her and raising his sword.
“Where’s the fucking money?!”
“Fuck you Baldy!”
She took the opportunity to grab a nearby candelabra and hurled it at the man. It caught him on the chin, and he stumbled back into the remnants of her cooking fire, slipping in the loose coals and sitting down hard on her clay cooking pot. The next man charged her, kicking her arm as she raised her dagger, and slammed his open palm into her solar plexus, winding her and sending her dagger out of her grasp onto the floor, out of reach. She didn’t stay down long. With a powerful kick, she swept the attacker’s legs out from under him and jumped at his throat, pushing his own blade down to his jugular. He struggled, and just as she drew blood, a heavy kick to her side sent her sprawling under her dinner table, once again fighting for oxygen. Her hair was still down from being in bed, and the long strands of black crossed her vision, blinding her for a split second. She swished it back as Baldy heaved up the table she was under, sending it smashing into the wall, taking with it all manner of cutlery and crockery. Taking his eyes off her was a mistake. She scrabbled around on the cold stones bordering the fireplace until she felt the slender form of the fire-poker. Yelling with exertion, she pushed off her knees and spun one-eighty degrees, thrusting the weapon up through Baldy’s stomach, the chainmail giving way to the pointed tool. He coughed in shock and screamed, but his wild, desperate swings were already weakening, and he fell to the floorboards in a flop, pushing the poker further through his bloodied midsection. The second man, Jugular, was up on his feet, angry and fired by vengeance. The adrenaline of his close shave with death brought a maddened light into his eyes, and his arms danced and twitched with anticipation.
“You have ONE second to tell me where you hid it, or I will make you PRAY for death after I torture it out of you.”
Brandishing a long saber, he crept towards Peskimir, blockading her escape. Weaponless and out of tricks, Peskimir tried to buy time as best she could.
“Stop, stop stop, just let me show you, I swear it’s here, let me show you.”
Jugular kept coming forward, his crazed eyes showing no intention of sparing her. Whether he comprehended her words or not, he was going to cut first, and ask questions later.
Jugular spat one last sentence at her as he gripped his saber, taking aim.
“Say hello to your father for me, eh?”
The blade arced down, and a dark lump burst into the room, crashing into Jugular and sending both across the floorspace, smashing into the bed and through the thin wall next to it. Countless items and fragments of her house fell to the floor, a line of carnage. For a moment, all was quiet, then Peskimir heard a long groan as the lump extricated itself from the shattered timber, both bedframe and wall, and collapsed on the floor where the bed used to be, rolling around in dull pain. In the low light, Peskimir recognized her savior.
“Marcus, you imbecile! He could’ve killed you, or you could’ve killed yourself headbutting the wall like that!” She hurried over to him and thwacked the back of his head. The groaning continued at an exaggerated volume.
She glanced over at Jugular’s broken body. It was clear that Marcus had used it as a battering ram when he blasted across the room and created the new doorway. The saber that she had seen so close to her head lay with its tip in the fireplace, Jugular having dropped it in shock when Marcus impacted him.
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They recovered in silence. Peskimir sat on the ground with her arms resting on her knees, and her head dangling between her legs. As people came to inspect the ruckus, Marcus stood up, helping Peskimir to her feet. He grabbed her shoulder and squeezed.
“Pesk, what have you gotten yourself into? Those were trained killers, wearing fucking chainmail for god’s sake! Someone had to have paid them to kill you.”
“I know, Marcus, I know. I’m going to the Bark & Tooles, I think I need to have a chat with Sandy.”
She first grabbed her daggers, one from the bench and the other buried amongst the destroyed interior of the house. Then she retrieved her cloak which was wrapped around the shattered leg-post of her former bed and strode out the door into the night.
Marcus and the few nosey locals were left with the two dead men and the remains of Peskimir’s abode. It didn’t take long for the swords and other bits and pieces to be looted, and Marcus tugged the chainmail off the man he had taken down. He figured he was owed it as a prize. He couldn’t be bothered shooing people out of the house as there wasn’t much to take – all Peskimir’s items of value were locked up at Marcus’s shop and home, an arrangement that he had suggested when he found out about Peskimir’s newest line of work. He sighed, looking around the tiny house she lived in. She constantly moved homes, wary of settling somewhere in case a job backfired and she ended up being targeted for retribution. It seemed like it had finally happened, and moving homes wasn’t enough to stop whoever was behind the attack. The signs of impermanence showed in the lackluster furnishings spread around the room – or what was left of them. The ‘bed’ had been just four stubby wooden legs and a thin sheet of wood, no mattress to speak of. It wasn’t as though Peskimir couldn’t afford anything better – her ‘jobs’ paid well, and Marcus was beginning to be concerned if his shop was a secure enough place for the gold she had been bringing in hand over fist throughout the years. He knew she would abandon this home now, the closest she’d ever been to his him – virtually neighbors. It was the first time he’d been able to keep an eye out for her, or an ear out like tonight, when the screams of the impaled man had catapulted him out of bed and out to the street. He took one last look around and trudged back to his home for a few hours of restless sleep.
Peskimir weaved through narrow alleys on foot, ignoring the jeers of drunken soldiers and the calls of the miserable vagrants. One homeless fellow stood out to Peskimir, one that had previously introduced himself to her as Ther. He seemed to alternate his begging spots from tavern to tavern throughout the kingdom, then he would disappear for months at a time in the late spring, probably finding better pickings by foraging in the forests and valleys outside the boundaries of Erinstone. He currently haunted a small square of space outside the Bark & Tooles, surviving more off the scraps of customer’s unfinished food, rather than from anyone’s generosity.
Peskimir opted for the side entrance, a small metal door used by the tavern employees that even she had to stoop to get under. It had a strange trick to it – the employees didn’t want to unlock and lock the door each time they went outside, so they put the handle on the same side of the door as the hinges, fooling many thieves-to-be into trying the door and thinking it was locked. In reality, it only needed a shove from the other edge.
Slipping through the door, she felt the hot, humid atmosphere of the kitchen start to dry her skin. Almost all of the employees wore tea towels around their heads, dunked in cold water to give some reprieve from the conditions. As the tea towels grew warm, steam rose from the employees’ heads as they wandered around the kitchen, a true piece of entertainment for the patrons of the tavern, who always seemed amused by the image.
Peskimir searched the kitchen, storage, and glanced out at the bar bench, but Sandy was nowhere in sight. She went out to the main area, mingling with the guests but not stopping until she spotted her target sitting in a corner-booth, buried in a deep mug. She felt anger flare up in her throat, but she held it down and sat next to Sandy in the booth.
“Sandy, do you know what just happened to me?” The accusation was obvious in her tone.
Sandy was pungent, something a lot stronger than mead filling her cup. She faced Peskimir with glistening eyes, responding in a drawl.
“They came for my boys, Pesk, they said they’d -“ she breathed back a sob, “they said they’d take ‘em if I didn’t tell where you were. I thought I’d gone and got you dead.”
Peskimir’s anger faded as she realized the dilemma Sandy had ended up in. She figured she would’ve done the same to protect her family if it came to it.
“Sandy, you’ve got to tell me everything you know. What did they say? Was anyone else with them?”
She knew that any attempt to get reliable information from Sandy in this state was like squeezing water from stone, but she had to try. Sandy waved an arm at her, speaking in a high pitch. The tears had cleared from her eyes once she confirmed that Peskimir had survived.
“Oooo yeah suuure, I know ‘em. They be Layla’s fixers, ya know? Sends ‘em to do the dirty work when someone gets on her bad side.”
Peskimir sunk in the booth when she heard the name Layla. If it was the person she thought it was, she was not going to be out of the woods until she was literally buried in the woods, or somewhere so far away that it wouldn’t be worth finding her. She looked at Sandy, hoping that against all odds there was some other Layla who wanted her dead.
A sobering thought.
“Sandy, when you say Layla...”
“Oh yes, Layla Avongold of course!”
That confirmed her fate. She flopped further into the booth, letting her body go limp like a worm going down a step. Why Layla? Was it related to the job with her son Heldrus, or perhaps vengeance for a past job? She hadn’t taken anything nearly as high-profile as killing a prince before, but she couldn’t understand why she would be targeted by the mother of the person she’d contracted with. Also troubling was Jugular’s final words to her before Marcus cut him off - ‘Say hello to your father for me.’ She knew her father hadn’t been a scrupulous man before he died, but how had he gotten caught up with Layla Avongold’s lackeys?
There was only one way to find out – go straight to the source.