David Dalglish - Cloak and Spider

After a curve, a yellow orb quickly came into view. It was a single stone, shining a puke yellow, but the light was enough for Thren to see that it shone directly above an intersection of two tunnels. Stopping beneath, Thren looked down all three passages, but they were nothing but empty walls of black. He tried to scan the ground, but there was no way to tell in what direction Carr had gone.

Curling his fingers into fists, he smashed them against the dirt and let out a bitter cry. Using the intersection for space, he turned around and crawled back to Marion. When he stood at the secret latch, he found several members of his guild standing around, waiting for him. Their weapons were bloodied, and many of the men were wounded. From the other room, Thren heard sobbing, and it took no guessing to know who it was.

“I’m sorry, Thren,” said Senke, one of his more promising recruits. The handsome man reached down a hand, helping Thren climb out from the tunnel. “Grayson got us here too late.”

Thren nodded. Feeling like a stranger in his own body, he stepped out into the other room. Grayson huddled over Marion’s body, cradling her in his massive arms. Her eyes were closed. She did not move.

“Grayson…” Thren said. “I’m sorry. I should have known better. I should have…”

The man looked up.

“Damn it, Thren,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You’re not as good as you think you are. No one is, and now my Marion…now my little…”

Still holding his sister’s body, he yanked the gray cloak off his shoulders and tossed it to the floor.

“I’m done with you,” he said, rising to his feet, Marion’s weight seemingly nothing as he held her. “You never listened, you bastard. Never thought someone could beat you. Maybe you’ll learn again, maybe not, but I won’t be here to find out. Take the whole damn city if you want. I’m gone.”

He stormed out of the house, leaving Thren alone with the handful of his men.

Thren’s fists shook as he closed his eyes and collected himself.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Warehouse was empty,” Senke said. “Grayson didn’t seem surprised at all. After that, we were going to return back to our hideout, but then we found this…”

Thren opened his eyes and accepted the offered item. It was a gray cloak, stained red and cut into several pieces.

“Grayson sent a runner to the safe house we had Carr’s family locked up in, found it smashed open. The cloak belonged to one of the men stationed there. That’s when Grayson sent us hurrying here. Managed to kill the rest of the Scorpions, at least those that didn’t get away.”

Thren crumpled the cloak in his hands. No doubt Carr had expected to get in and out of the home without being noticed, taking Marion with him. The cloak at the warehouse had been his way of taunting Thren, making sure he knew every single step of his plan had been expected or countered in some way.

“How many of you are there?” he asked Senke.

“Fifteen of us,” the man said.

Thren drew one of his swords and scanned the faces of those with him. When he saw one in particular, he couldn’t believe the audacity. Taking a step forward, he grabbed Pennell by the neck, yanked him to his knees, and then jammed a knee into the man’s stomach.

“Carr tell you to stay and watch?” he asked as Pennell lay on the ground, clutching his waist. “He want you to tell him how miserable and beaten I was?”

“I don’t know what you’re…”

Thren kicked him in the teeth, silencing the lie. Reaching down, he grabbed Pennell’s left hand, stretched it out, and then slammed his sword through the palm. It pierced the wood of the floor as Pennell screamed. The rest of the Spiders stepped away, some stunned by the revelation, others furious.

“Listen to me, you little shit,” Thren whispered into the man’s ear. “Someone will suffer my wrath tonight. It can be you, or it can be Carr. Now you fucking think long and hard about who you’d rather it be.”

“The Raven’s Claw,” Pennell said, his face turning pale. “The upper levels, they’re all Carr’s. He’ll be there, I swear!”

Thren stood, flipped his other short sword so he could grab the hilt with the blade downward, and jammed the blade down through Pennell’s mouth. He let go of both his swords so he could stand and watch as Pennell convulsed. At last, when he was dead, Thren freed both weapons and cleaned off the blades.

“The Raven’s Claw is a tavern in the far south,” he told the men with him. His face felt flushed, yet his hands and feet like ice. “We’re going there, now. I don’t care who you see when we attack, whether or not you think them innocent. When we step inside their door, everyone dies. Everyone but Carr and his family. We take them alive. Do you understand?”

The hard eyes of hard men met his gaze, and they all nodded.

“Good,” Thren said. “Then let’s go.”

They ran through the dark night streets, weapons drawn, cloaks fluttering behind them. The few who saw them coming fled quickly out of the way. No doubt many were in league with the Scorpions, but the Spiders ran too fast, too straight. No one would beat them. Thren wouldn’t let them. Heart pounding, he let the blood coursing through his veins push away his thoughts of Marion, of the betrayal in Grayson’s eyes. The chill of the night was a bitter kiss on his skin as the sweat ran down his neck.

They turned a corner, Thren still in the lead. The Raven’s Claw tavern was in sight, a two-story construction lurking over the nearby homes. Lights shone through gaps in the curtains of the upper floors. Three burly men leaned against the front and side, looking bored. Guards, Thren knew, disguised as vagrants or drunkards. There was no disguising their panic when they saw the mass of gray cloaks come storming toward them.

“Never slow, never stop,” Thren shouted as he drew his swords. “Faster than the night. Faster than the dead. Let the blood flow!”

The guards had fled inside by their arrival, but Thren wasn’t worried. His mind had no space for worry. They’d come too fast, too hard. Carr couldn’t outthink Thren at a game Thren was no longer playing. Arms crossed before his face, Thren slammed into the door, using his weight and momentum to smash it inward. As wood splintered around him he rolled, dodging frantic swings of swords by men on either side of the door. Pulling up from his roll, he lashed out, slicing out the throats of two men unlucky enough to be drinking at the table beside him. As they collapsed, Thren jammed his elbow onto the curved table, tipping it over as he fell once more. Arrows thudded into the table above him, fired by three men on the stairs with crossbows.

“Move!” Thren screamed at the door behind him. Glass shattered as his men smashed in through windows, others lunging through the doorway with their daggers drawn. The guards there were quickly overrun, and as the rest of the patrons drew their own weapons, Thren let out a laugh. What were they to him? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

The men on the stairs were busy reloading when several Spiders flung their daggers, killing one and wounding the two others. Thren saw this while glancing around the table, and with their threat over, he returned to his feet, short swords held out at either side of him. Behind the bar was another door, and pouring through it came members of the Scorpion Guild, all carrying long daggers or maces. Thren met their eyes as they leaped over the bar, trying to overwhelm the Spiders. This was the best they could do? The first to near him offered a clumsy thrust in an attempt to disembowel him, but Thren slapped it aside, stepped closer, and rammed his sword through the man’s stomach.

“That’s how you gut someone,” Thren whispered into the man’s ear, as if he were a dying lover. A twist, a yank, and the sword came free.