Chapter 52 – Den of Mongrels

I soon passed out of range of the card I’d slipped in the mender’s pocket. But I didn’t need further diretions. Kindledown was my old haunt. I knew these streets, even though many of the buildings lining them had been boarded up, burned down, or rebuilt in the years since. The Teeth were but one of a dozen new additions. The old wildmarked pack of wolf-kin running the place when I was a boy had been a sour bunch, but not needlessly cruel like their ousters. If you stayed out of their way, they wouldn’t go out of it to harm you.

But orcs from Kalash and the Veldt were cannibals and worse. Their city-faring mongrel broods weren’t much better, in my experience. Though they’d inherited the strength of their sires, it had come with an inferiority complex and a need to swing that weight around.

What I’m saying was, locating the Teeth hideout wasn’t difficult. It was the one building on the block that people crossed the street to avoid. It was plastered with orc graffiti and shamanistic sigils, crude drawings of god beasts with exaggerated genitals, and vivid warnings to stay clear in less polite language. Naturally, I could not. Nor, could I do a reading without the four of knaves in my deck. This wasn’t the first time I had to go in blind. I didn’t know if I was walking into one mongrel or a dozen. I made a mental note to start carving some duplicate cards for situations like this in the future, so I wouldn’t be caught blinded and unable to gain critical intel from divination.

The last time I’d headed into the headquarters of another lower city gang, I’d ended up crushed against the ground by a much stronger mage. The orcs didn’t have mages, but they also didn’t need magic to crush me. Their fists and feet would do just fine. I watched the building for a few minutes, drawing on the dragon’s gaze to try and spot any sentries. Either they were exceptionally well-hidden, or the mongrels only ran a skeleton crew on fight nights. Maybe they were just supremely overconfident no one would dare challenge them in Kindledown.

Either way, wane light burned and soon Annalisa would be facing the bolstered Teeth fighter without my help. Even with her meteoric growth as a fighter, I held no illusions how that fight would turn out. Too much silver was wrapped up in her winning. We desperately needed those funds. I circled around behind the compound and started looking for a way in.

Typically, the best way into a protected building in the downs is via the joined cellars or rooftops of the other structures crammed against them. A tenement on the north side of the block had stacked rubbish high enough for me to get my fingers up over the gutter and swing through an open shutter. Making sure the room was empty, I let myself out into the hall and listened for movement below. The walls, being paper thin, played host to at least six different arguments, and not all of them in the tenement.

I pulled my knife and used it to jimmy open the trapdoor to the attic. Even several hours after sunset, the heat in the cramped space was oppressive. I worked my way through the dark, spitting out cobwebs and worrying about putting a nail through my hand.

Somehow, I managed to get to the vent without lockjaw and peered through the slats at the back lot behind the Teeth headquarters. One of the gangers was back there relieving himself against the wall just underneath me, and demons below, I swear the caustic stench of his waste threatened to burn a hole in my sinuses all the way from the attic. I’m surprised it didn’t catch the building on fire.

Wishing I had a free hand to hold over my nose, I eased the shutter out of its place and set it aside in the attic. Then, I slipped my knife out of its sheath again and drew the two of knaves from my deck. I charged it with my will and the shadowy keen slick spread across the surface of the blade.

The half-orc finished up, belched, and turned around. As soon as he did, I was out the window and falling towards him. I plunged my knife into his neck as my sudden weight bore him to the ground. He gurgled and bled as I scrambled on top of him and pushed his face into the mud. A few rapid heartbeats later, and the Teeth ganger was dead. Not the stealthiest kill, but with the night noise of the city, you’d be hard-pressed to hear it through any walls. Otherwise, quick, and clean. Neatly done, if I say so myself.

I looked up from the body, right into the slack-jawed faces of two more mongrels through the open window on the backside of their hideout.

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Shit. So much for my hope that he was the only one left to watch the mender’s brother.

They didn’t stay stunned for long before those shocked expressions twisted into grotesques of fury. One of them roared and launched himself right through the window, while the other at least thought to grab a club and a small buckler, first.

I had bare moments to fan out my cards and pull the two of towers. reinforcing my flesh with its power. The second mongrel hesitated when he saw the cards, but the first barreled on, heedless. He drew back, ready to hammer me with a haymaker from the right side, and probably expecting me to fall back from my much larger opponent. Instead, I slipped forward and low, slicing my blade against his ribs. I jabbed it a second time before he could turn around, hoping to slip between his ribs. But the dagger skipped over thick bone and the enchantment from the two of knaves shattered.

Heedless of the cuts I’d dealt him, the mongrel twisted, terrifyingly quickly, for his size. His elbow caught the side of my chin, and without the reinforcement from the towers, I’d have been out like a street lamp at dawn. He followed up with a two-handed grab for my middle, hoping to wrap me up and pin my knife hand all at once. I dropped a shadow clone and half-stepped back. The impatient brawler staggered through it, startled at the lack of mage caught in his grip, and his face at a level with mine while his hands were crossed. I plunged my knife into one of his wide eyes. No need for the keening enchantment there. Personally, I’m surprised he had enough brains to stab.

Even as his body dropped, along with the inverted fool arcana above his forehead, I felt a surge of alarm from the towers and threw myself to the ground. A thick cudgel whistled overhead. Had it connected, towers or no towers, my brains would have been painting the tenement. I rolled to the side to avoid the follow-up strike that sent filthy mud flying and managed to scramble to my feet.

Unlike his very dead friend, the mongrel who’d stopped and thought to grab his kit continued showing caution, circling around to my left as he hefted the weapon. The balance arcana hung in front of his forehead. Even trades, in-kind swaps, good matches. He looked me up and down, eyeing the cards suspended around my left hand, as well as the knife in my right. He hefted his club. “Mine’s bigger,” he said.

I made no response.

The half-orc pushed a step closer, and I gave ground. He continued. “I know who you are. Boss said you’d make a play here. But not so soon, and not dressed like a three-clip whore on wageday.”

He was trying to make me nervous. It wasn’t working, because I was way past nervous and well into terrified-as-all-hells territory. And I knew for a fact that Daimen charged two cunnings a toss to the upper city fops that came to see him. Still, I missed my Seeker robes. They weren’t armored, but they at least threw off an enemy’s aim.

He even opened his arms, leaving his chest vulnerable. “Come on. How about a free swing?”

It was a trap. An open invitation to a shattered wrist on the rim of his buckler. When my opponent realized that I wouldn’t rise to his taunting, he darted in. The mongrel moved faster than his size would suggest and feinted with the cudgel before punching out with his buckler. I barely managed to avoid having my face staved in by the steel face of the small shield, let alone finding an opening to strike back with the dagger, before the club swung down in earnest.

I sent my will into the deck, spinning the fan of cards to distract him as I dropped another shadow clone. The club smashed through the cards and the clone, and I took a stab for the orc’s throat. But he smashed my arm away with the rim of the buckler. If I hadn’t had the tower buff, I’m sure it would have shattered my forearm. As it was, I barely kept hold of the knife as my hand went completely numb.

Not interested in letting up the pressure, he struck at me with the spiked pommel of his cudgel. I slipped to his left, and he followed, cutting me off with another swing that I barely leaned back out of the way of. I brought my knife up from below, but he parried its edge with his buckler and grinned. He knew he had the upper hand in a face-to-face fight.

“Going to crack open your eggs and scramble them for breakfast, boy,” he taunted.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” I replied.

“You’re gonna’ fucking die! Does that make sense?”

He jammed the end of his cudgel into my midsection. I stumbled back, and the mongrel stalked to the side. He was toying with me, now. He kicked over the body of his comrade. Glassy eyes stared up. The orc spat down into the mud beside him. “I can’t believe these fools died to you. A fucking whore-dressed cunt with a short blade that can’t even fight proper.

I stumbled back, hand to my side while the orc laughed. I relied too much on Annalisa to do the heavy lifting in combat. Even with the training I’d been doing, I didn’t know how to get inside the reach of a longer weapon wielded by a skilled fighter. That’s not a great blind spot for a knife-user. It was the same problem I’d faced with the Mayazian swordsman. I needed reach. I needed something that could control spacing, instead of letting my opponent dictate it. And unlike the Mayazian web-mancer, I didn’t think the orc was going to let me stand back and flick cards at him. I called them back to my hand and fanned them out in the air again, anyway.

But maybe I didn’t have to throw them. I just needed them to reach past the cudgel. Or use them to get the mongrel even closer.