Troy Denning: The Sentinel

“I’ll do what I can,” Kleef promised. He thought about trying to persuade the urchin to leave, but then realized a boy alone wouldn’t be much safer on the open road than he was on the familiar ground of the city. He took a few more Watch flans from his belt pouch and gave them to the waif. “I suppose every man has the right to face his doom how he will. The Watch will be looking for bolt-loaders to help man the walls. You could join them, if you decide you want to make your death count for something.”

The urchin looked at Kleef as though he were daft. “Thanks, but I won’t.” He closed his hand around the meal tokens. “Can I go?”

Kleef nodded. Fighting to overcome a rising tide of bitterness and despair, he started back toward Jang. Raised in a household devoted to Helm, Kleef had joined the city Watch as soon as he was of age. Like his father and grandfather before him, he had dedicated his entire life to bringing Helm’s Law of Service to his fellow watchmen. But the corruption of the order’s founders simply ran too deep. After three generations of effort, the Kenric line had nothing to show for its faith but the knowledge that they had stayed true to the teachings of a dead god. If the inhabitants of Marsember had no interest in helping to save their city, the Watch had only itself to blame.

Kleef returned to Jang’s side.

“I have seen no sign of any Shadovar,” the Shou said. “I hope you learned something.”

“I did.” Kleef motioned for Jang to follow him, then started plowing through the crowd, angling up Starmouth Way. “It seems the woman and her manservant are headed down Backstabber Alley.”

“A bad choice for someone who is fleeing a Shadovar,” Jang said. Backstabber Alley was aptly named, for it was a crooked and narrow gauntlet, lined with dark doorways and crannies where trouble invariably lay waiting. “They must not be familiar with the city.”

“Probably not,” Kleef agreed. “We’ll circle around fast and take Rover’s Way, then catch them at the other end of the alley. That way, we can take them by surprise-and the Shadovar spies, too, if they’ve caught up.”

“ Spies ?” Jang asked, slipping to his side. “There is more than one?”

“That’s the way it sounds.”

They reached High Bridge Road. It was filled with foot traffic, all flowing away from Starmouth. No doubt most of the pedestrians hoped to detour around the jam in Wilhastle Square. To make up for lost time, Kleef did his best to run along the edge of the street, shouting, “Make way for the Watch!” while shoving dawdlers aside with well-placed forearms. He and Jang often had to bound over handcarts, and twice, Kleef found it necessary to throw a slow-moving crone over his shoulder and carry her a few paces until he found a safe place to deposit her. By the time they reached Rover’s Way, a narrow cross-lane that led to Backstabber Alley, both men were sweating and breathing hard.

Kleef slowed to a walk and slipped his greatsword, Watcher, off his back, then unsheathed it and returned the empty scabbard to its place. Jang drew his own blade-a slender Shou katana-off his hip, and together they turned the corner into Rover’s Way. Though the lane was nearly ten feet wide, it was so littered with discarded belongings that a donkey cart could not have passed through. Pushing their way past all the paupers picking through the refuse, Kleef and Jang advanced nearly a hundred paces before they finally saw Backstabber Alley opening onto Rover’s Way on the right.

As they approached the mouth of the alley, Kleef listened for screams or the sound of running boots, anything to suggest the Shadovar had caught their quarry. He heard only the nervous murmurs of the paupers on Rover’s Way, who were quick to shy away from two watchmen with drawn blades. In normal times, Kleef would have also heard the bang of slamming shutters overhead and the thud of crossbars falling across doors, but times were not normal. The residents of Rover’s Way had already fled, leaving their homes open to the urchins and thieves in hopes of one day returning to find the doors still hanging on the hinges.

The two watchmen were a dozen steps from Backstabber Alley when a small cone of blue radiance flared in front of Kleef. Stunned, he dropped into a fighting crouch, his eyes scanning left and right for the source of the spell.

When he found none, Kleef’s blood ran cold.

He removed a hand from Watcher’s hilt to wave Jang back. As his other hand rebalanced the sword, rolling it slightly downward, the blue cone faded to a glow. It was only then that Kleef realized the blue light was emanating from a decoration on the crossguard of the sword itself: a blue agate surrounded by the etching of a large eye- Helm’s Eye .

Kleef’s jaw dropped. Watcher had been in his family since the time of Ildool, and there was no doubting its magic. In the hands of a true Kenric, it was as light as a dagger, yet no one outside the family had the strength to wield it. A set of runes etched into the blade read STAY TRUE AND SO WILL YOUR STEEL, a motto that had proven itself accurate time and again as the greatsword cleaved oak shields and steel armor. But as far as Kleef knew, that was the extent of the sword’s power. Never had anyone mentioned a blue light, and Kleef had never seen the agate glow as it did now.

Jang touched his shoulder and whispered. “What does that mean?”

Before Kleef could reply, a trio of dusky figures stepped out of a doorway opposite Backstabber Alley, all three with the lambent eyes of shades gleaming beneath their cowls. The figure in the lead swung a hand, and a scythe of darkness swept across Rover’s Way, slicing through a half-dozen paupers who had been scurrying up the lane ahead of Kleef and Jang.

A panicked voice, nasal and male, rang out of Backstabber Alley. “Go back! We’re trapped!”

By then, the three shades were springing toward the mouth of the alley, and Kleef and Jang were charging up Rover’s Way to attack the trio’s flank.

Kleef arrived first, bringing Watcher around in a chest-high strike that took the nearest shade from behind. The blade dragged a bit as it sliced up through the warrior’s shoulder. Kleef pivoted, putting all his strength into the attack, and felt the sword drive the rest of the way through. The shade’s torso came apart in a spray of blood and darkness.

Jang was already on the second shade, his slender katana hissing and whistling as he attacked high and low, severing first tendons, then limbs, and finally rising toward the neck.

Kleef glimpsed the third warrior spinning to attack Jang from behind. Kleef stepped forward, using a shoulder to bull the shade off balance, then leaned away and brought Watcher up in a one-handed slash. The blade entered beneath the warrior’s armpit and did not stop until it was halfway through his chest. Kleef used his free arm to knock the dying shade off his sword, then brought his weapon back around to send the fellow’s head tumbling.

Like the rest of the Watch, he had been told to behead a shade every time, that it was the only way to be sure that the shadowstuff would not heal him. He glanced over and found Jang already spinning away from his headless foe, putting his back to the wall on the far side of the alley mouth. Kleef did the same on his side, and by the time the third body had hit the cobblestones, he and Jang were flanking the mouth of Backstabber Alley.

From inside the alley came the sound of running. Two sets of feet-one clumsy and loud, the other light and graceful. Kleef caught Jang’s eye and waggled two fingers, then held his palm open and level, indicating they should let both runners pass.

Jang nodded, and the odd little man Kleef had glimpsed earlier burst from the alley. Gaunt and round-headed, with bulging eyes and thick lips, he was clutching a gray satchel to his bony chest. He hopped over the carnage in the street with no hint of revulsion or surprise, then turned right and raced up the lane without a backward glance.