image [https://i.imgur.com/ymiRn35.jpeg]
It wasn't even yet eight bells. I was, well, I don't know how to describe the feeling. My mind was racing thinking about that officer, if he had a family. He was a slaver. I had to keep telling myself that.
I had put Prince Anoresti in his place. Made him look like a fool in front of his men. But it's slightly hollow knowing that it was his arrogance and not my skill that was primarily the reason for that morning's outcome. I won't say I'm bad, but it's a reach to imply that I should be called a swordsman of any stripe.
And now the Prince wants me dead. He has the means to make that happen. I needed to speak to Mal'friq. Ördelon. Someone with abilities beyond my limited martial skills.
At just that moment, a knock came on the door. “Come! I'm dressed!” It was the pretend Greer. I quickly put the gem to my eye and was shocked to see a different older man, one I hadn't met yet. Ördelon, I was assuming.
“Who gave you a gem, Mister Bascombe?”
“It was given to me by Count Pelisir, Ördelon. I am to rely on it more and on my own senses less.”
“It's a powerful stone, Sir. Be cautious with it. If any of the bad players here knew you had it, they would instantly become harder to detect. Mister Mal'friq already has his hands full. Paws? Are they paws or hands?”
“Please, if you will, Ördelon, can you drop this glamour? Just show yourself to me as you are? I'll draw the curtain in the window here….”
As I went to pull the curtain across the window, a plink sound and then the tinkling of glass caused me to reflexively drop to the floor.
“Stay down!” Ördelon yelled at me from behind a chair.
“No, wait, the gem! That was a crossbow bolt. It will take a few seconds for them to reload!” I pulled the gem from the pommel of my rapier, placed it to my eye, and quickly stuck my head out the window. I saw the Assassin immediately and ducked back down just in time to miss another bolt as it whizzed over my head, sticking into the wooden wall across the room.
“Ördelon, have you any offensive spells readied for today?”
“I have several Mister Bascombe, why? Do you expect me to try my luck at the window too?”
“Don't be a coward, Sir! I've seen her, the Assassin. She's just across the way in that tall tree, in the limbs, about two thirds of the way up. She's camouflaged to look like redwood bark.”
“Look, I'll take the risk.” I tossed the gem to him. “Put it up to your eye when I say so. I'm going to pop my head up to draw her fire, then when she's reloading, look out the window through the gem and blast her back to Swalesia.”
“A swordsman like you can be cavalier about these things, Mister Bascombe! I've only killed goblinoids in my lifetime. Never a woman and never a Human. That's a line I hadn't thought I'd cross. Not today at least!”
“Just be ready please. This may be part of a larger attempt!”
I crawled on hands and knees over to the broken glass on the sitting room floor. Took a few deep breaths, and popped my head up into the window, letting it sit there for slightly longer than I felt wise, and I could hear the twunk and zoooose of the crossbow being triggered, its bolt flying just over my head as it came through the window and almost hit the bolt already in the wall there.
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“Now! Blast her now, Ördelon!” And he stood fully in the window and released six or seven bolts of bright, white light making quiet vwip, vwip, vwip sounds as they left his fingertips.
I heard from across the way a painful grunt, then a few second’s hesitation, then a thunk as the Assassin's body hit the forest floor. There were screams and yells from the pedestrians below. Eyes scouring the trees for other enemies.
“Get down you fool!” I yelled at the Wizard who seemed to be guiltily admiring his handiwork. “If you're going to expose yourself, use the gem and see if it's clear out there!”
He did do that. Standing there for a solid minute, scanning the surroundings.
“It's clear Mister Bascombe. I want to have those bolts there looked at.” He indicated those stuck in the wall.
“If they're using poison, and it would be a surprise if they weren't, we need to know what it is so we can ready an antitoxin.”
“Traditionally, they use toad venoms that are enough alike as to allow for a general antitoxin, but we'd be stupid to rely on tradition and supposition.”
He allowed the glamour that was disguising him to go away then. Exposing the true Ördelon. He looked like a child of course, at 500 plus years old. Probably 700, dressed in beautiful clothes of court. Definitely not a stereotypical Wizard.
“We need to go see someone about that Assassin. Will you come with me as yourself, Ördelon?”
“Certainly, Sir. I was growing tired of Greer anyway.”
I stuck my head out the door, “Lieut ….” quickly ducking it back in.
“There are four bodies in the corridor, Ördelon. The guards.”
“Gods! That means they're not through here.”
I put my finger to my lips, urging him to be quiet. Putting my ear to the door, I listened intently. What I heard on the other side, in the corridor, unnerved me profoundly. It was just the sound of two knives being scraped together, blade to blade, sharpening them, biding their time.
There was no way of knowing how many were out there. Aside from the metal scraping metal, there was no other sound.
“Wait, Ördelon, I have an idea! Give me the gem please!” He only hesitantly handed the thing over and I gave him a wicked glare.
Holding the thing up to my eye, I could see through the wall and into the corridor. There was one Assassin kneeling in the middle of the passage, going over a spell scroll. Getting as close as I could, I could see that the spell would turn him into a gaseous form in order to breach our door.
He was only rubbing the blades together absent-mindedly, but it looked like he was getting ready to read off the spell.
Very quietly, I asked Ördelon if he had a spell that could transport me to a point just behind the Assassin. “Fifteen feet that way,” I whispered.
Of course he did! “Before he can read that spell, put me five feet behind the devil, now!”
Everything went white momentarily. When it cleared, the Assassin's back was right before me and I ran the villain through! My rapier piercing his heart so that I could still feel it beating through the grip as he expired. I pushed him off my blade with my foot and wiped it on his tunic.
From down the winding corridor I could hear the clump, clump, clump of double-timing feet marching and knew help was finally on the way.
The lieutenant I had spoken with earlier was there dead on the floor with his three comrades along with the corpse of a dead Swalesian Assassin here and another on the forest floor outside. All because of me. All in an attempt to keep me from … what? Why all the effort? Surely it wasn't simply the duel. No, that Assassin had been outside already. There was something about my mission here that wasn't adding up, and I needed to get to the bottom of it before more lives were needlessly lost.
image [https://i.imgur.com/ymiRn35.jpeg]