David Dalglish: A Dance Of Death

“I wanted you alive for questioning.”

Torgar looked back to the hallway, listening for sounds of battle.

“Next time, use the pointy end,” he said. “Stay in here, and bar the door.”

A trio of guards approached, and Torgar saluted with the hand holding the bloody bandage.

“Any clue where the fucker is?” he asked.

“Toward the front,” one said. Torgar’s ears were still ringing from the blow, his vision so blurred he couldn’t make out the man’s face. He took a wild guess at his name, not caring if he got it right.

“Stay here, and guard them with your lives,” Torgar said, nodding toward Laurie’s door. “Gary, you’re in charge.”

“Where are you going?” asked the one on the left.

“To make him pay for this,” Torgar said, gesturing to his nose. He rushed toward the front half of the mansion, and sure enough he heard sounds of battle. His gut sank at the noise. This was no normal assassin sent to smother a sleeping man or pour poison into a bottle of wine. The guy could fight. Torgar listened for steel hitting steel, or people dying. All around him, he heard doors locking, the servants barring their rooms and staying inside like he’d trained them. Good. Last thing he needed was a bunch of frantic idiots crowding the halls.

As he neared the front entrance, he stumbled upon five corpses of his guard, their blood staining the blue carpet. Torgar could hardly believe the sight. Surely it wasn’t just one man doing all this?

And then he heard a scream.

“Taras,” he whispered, his blood running cold.

It took him a moment to remember the way. Gods, what he’d give to be sober. He passed by three more dead guards, confirming his dread suspicion of the assassin’s target. Despite the pain it caused, he screamed as loud as his lungs were capable.

“Everyone to Taras! To Taras, now move your asses!”

At his friend’s bedroom, he found the door already open. A dead guard was propped against it, the wood’s white paint stained red with gore. Heart in his throat, Torgar stepped inside. Despite his years of training, warfare, and executions, he was still not prepared.

The assassin knelt amid the carnage, his sword deftly slashing at a bare spot on the floor. Torgar must have made a noise of some kind, for the assassin looked up. His face was hidden by a heavy black hood, his body wrapped in cloaks. Torgar lifted his sword.

“Come on,” he said, wishing he felt as tough as he sounded. “Come die, you sick fuck.”

The assassin stood, and his head shifted so Torgar could see a faint glimpse of his face in the dim moonlight streaming through the broken windows. He was smiling.

“Not tonight,” the man said. Smoke burst at his feet, flooding the room. Torgar coughed as it stung his eyes and throat. He slashed wildly a few times, but no attack came. When the smoke cleared, the man was gone. Torgar walked to the center of the room, creating footsteps in the drying layers of blood. His sword shook in his hand.

Taras and his wife Julie lay dead, and in pieces. Their maidservant’s body was slumped against the closet door, her throat opened by a gash that went from ear to ear. As Torgar’s heart caught in his throat, he heard a horrific sound break the silence-their newborn girl, Tori, wailing. Guards flooded the room as he picked up the child from the stained bed sheets. Her wrappings were bloodied, but she was unharmed.

“Where’d he go?” a guard asked as the others gasped and cursed at the sight.

Torgar shrugged, having no answer.

“Like a damned wraith,” said another. “We’d see him, and then he’d be gone.”

Hearing a cry, Torgar looked back to see Laurie fall to his knees before the doorway. Madelyn stood behind him, her face like glass but for the tears that ran down her cheeks. They dared not enter, for there was no reason, no way to clutch the bodies to their chests. The massacre was too horrific. Too complete.

“Who?” Laurie asked. “Why?”

Torgar looked to the symbol at his feet, drawn in Keenan blood.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Give her to me!” Madelyn cried, her sudden outburst startling.

Torgar carefully stepped across the gore-coated floor, gladly handing Tori over. All he felt was rage. Having a child in his hands didn’t seem right.

“I’ll find out who did this,” he said. “I promise I’ll make him pay a thousand times over.”

Little comfort for any of them, but it didn’t matter. The assassin had left his calling card, and because of that, it would be his death. Few crossed a member of the Trifect and lived. As Laurie and Madelyn were led away from the scene, Torgar stabbed his sword into the very center of the symbol, which seemed vaguely familiar. He’d seen it before, years ago, or at least heard it discussed. And then it hit.

A single open eye, drawn in the victim’s blood.

“The Watcher,” whispered Torgar.

Haern pulled his hood low over his head and tied his sabers to his belt as the leader of the mercenaries, the wizard Tarlak, sat at his desk and watched.

“Do you want our help?” Tarlak asked, picking a bit of dirt off his yellow robe.

“No,” Haern said, shaking his head. “This one needs to be a message for the underworld of the city. I’ll do this on my own.”

Tarlak nodded, as if not surprised.

“What about Alyssa?”

Haern tightened the clasp of his cloak. They’d heard word that Alyssa planned some sort of retaliation against the thief guilds, though the reason had been unclear. Their source was fairly respected in the Gemcroft household, so much so they had to take it seriously. There was to be a meeting to discuss the circumstances at their mansion, at some unknown point in the night.

“After,” Haern said. “I’m sure you understand.”

“I do,” said Tarlak. “Good luck. And remember, I can’t pay you if you die on me.”

“I won’t be the one dying tonight,” Haern said, feeling the cold persona of the King’s Watcher coming over him.

He left the tower and ran the short distance toward the city. A dozen secret passageways, ropes, and handholds were available to him as a way to cross the wall, and he drifted to the southern end before climbing over. Alyssa’s potential conflict with the thief guilds was a greater threat in the long run, but Haern could not bring himself to focus on it just yet. His target was a piece of scum named Brann Goodfinger. He operated in the far south of the city, and it was there Haern went.

Normally he felt pride as he traversed the rooftops, carefully observing the doings of the various guilds. Ever since the thief war ended, the factions had settled into an uncomfortable truce. The first few months had been the worst, but Haern’s sabers had spilled the blood of hundreds. Through sheer brutality, he had brought both sides to their knees. He was the silent threat watching all, and tolerating nothing. But this accomplishment felt bitter. For the first time, his plan had been turned against him in a most cruel, personal way.

Thieves who stole from the Trifect died. They all knew this. And so Brann had recruited children, a bold dare against the Watcher’s threat.

“Where is it you hide?” Haern whispered as he lay flat atop a roof. For two days Brann had eluded him, and his children had gone unchecked. No longer. He spotted one of their youngest, a boy surely no older than seven. He was exiting the broken window of a shop, a handful of copper coins clutched to his chest. He ran, and Haern followed.

The boy tried to vary his pattern, as he’d no doubt been trained to do, but against someone like Haern it was a minor inconvenience, nothing more. Haern kept far out of sight, not wanting to alert him to his presence. Twice he’d tracked Brann’s child-thieves, but one had spotted him, abandoned his ill-gotten coin, and fled. The other had been killed by a different thief guild before he could question him. Children bled out on the streets of Veldaren. The Watcher’s wrath would be terrible.