Jeff Crook - The Thieves’ Guild

The battle raged around the mainmast fore and aft Kolav’s sword took chip after chip from the mast’s hard timber as Cael used it as both shield and foil. Brute strength battled unrivaled training in the sword and its tactics, but even the elf could do nothing more than forestall his doom.

The minotaur began to limp more acutely from the wound in his leg. His attacks grew more savage. His tulwar flashed and stabbed relentlessly. The minotaur handled it as easily as a fencing foil. His leg wound, though, stopped him from lunging. The elf took advantage of this, staying just out of reach, and by attacking the minotaur on the side of his wound. Alynthia’s thrust had bought him that little advantage. He only hoped he had the strength left to capitalize on it.

The storm mounted in fury. The ship began to slam against the pier. Again and again, just when the minotaur seemed to have cornered the elf, the ship lurched, forcing him to pause and allowing the elf to dodge. Finally, Kolav could bear no more injury to his pride. With a bellowing roar, he rushed across the deck, timing his charge to a mounting wave. In his weariness, Cael didn’t move in time. The ship’s deck rose up behind the beast. His charge became more of an onrushing fall, and Cael staggered back against the rail, unable to avoid the inevitable collision.

With a triple report the ship’s moorings broke. The ship righted itself suddenly, sending the minotaur sprawling and flipping Cael backward over the rail and onto the pier. Alynthia had crawled across the slick deck and was poised to follow, but her husband caught her by the wrist and dragged her back.

Kolav regained his footing and vaulted after the elf. Cael was nowhere to be seen. The minotaur peered between the dock and the ship but saw nothing other than broken bits of wood. All along the pier now men shouted from the decks of ships, while sailors worked to secure moorings, and ropes snapped and went writhing into the air like aroused serpents. And at the shore end of the pier, a cloaked figure was running, a gleaming sword in his fist The minotaur bellowed a battle cry and limped after him.

Captain Oros glared at his wife, but she returned his gaze with a black accusing stare.

“Now you will have to kill me yourself, my husband,” she spat.

“No, I won’t. The Guild will do it for me,” he returned. He dragged her across the deck to his cabin door. The contents of the room had been tossed about when the ship’s moorings broke. The sea chest lay open on its side. “You are a traitor to the Guild and you will suffer the punishment you richly deserve,” he snarled as he heaved her inside.

She fell on the floor. Pain twisted her face, but anger fought for control. She jerked the empty chest upright. “It is not I who betrayed the Guild!" she cried. “Cael has the Reliquary as proof!”

Oros staggered back, clutching at the door. He slammed it shut, locked it quickly, then rushed forward shouting orders to the frightened, sleepy-eyed crew of the Dark Horizon as they stumbled from their forecastle quarters, at last aroused by the commotion.

The storm was tearing the ship and the pier apart.

Leaning into the wind against the lashing rain, Cael scuttled across the wide empty cobbles between two towering warehouses. His cloak rippled out behind him, and lightning streaked across the sky, arcing explosively over rooftops, spires, and trees.

He crossed Fishmonger’s Street and paused at the entrance to Palisade Lane, looking back. The constant lightning flashes showed him the jerky progress of his limping pursuer. Cael was weary down to his bones, but a grim determination drove him onward.

He dashed under the relative protection of Palisade Lane’s balconies. For a moment, he considered hiding in the shadows here, in the mad hope that the minotaur might pass him by, but he knew better than to trust his luck. He hurried along, reaching the street’s end where it met Horizon Road. There he heard the minotaur bellow and, glancing back, he saw to his dismay that the distance between them had been halved.

Cael’s one thought was to somehow circle back the Dark Horizon , while at the same time losing the minotaur in the twisting streets of night-darkened Palanthas. He knew that the best place to lose him was Smith’s Alley. He turned onto Horizon Road, headed for the gate there, beyond which lay the northern entrance to that noisome lane.

Now for the last leg of this race, he thought, seeing the massive gate towers rising before him into the storm-lit sky. He forced himself into something resembling a sprint. In his left hand he carried his sword, in his right, beneath his rain-soaked cloak, he clutched the silver dragon Reliquary. The gates loomed darkly before him. He hurried down the road.

A light flared before him. In a sheltered glow beneath the gate, two Knights of Neraka warily observed the darkly cloaked interloper. Seeing him rushing toward them with drawn sword, one dashed through an open door into the tower, while the other drew his blade and prepared to meet the elf’s charge. A bell clanged somewhere above. Down the short gate tunnel, more torches flared as Knights poured from the guardhouse built on the New City side of the gate.

Cael slowed, but upon hearing the familiar roar behind him, he renewed his pace. The young guard performed a Knight’s salute, and in that foolish moment, Cael veered through the open tower door.

His dash surprised the guard. The man fumbled at his sword, gaping at the elf, who vaulted up the tower stairs. The Knight started after him, but a cry of pain brought him around. Before the young man could raise his sword in defense, Kolav burst into the chamber and in one slash of his massive sword cut him down.

Cael reached the first landing of the stair and paused. He glanced quickly around, seeing that the stair continued upward, vanishing in the shadows above. To his left was a stout wooden door, barred from the inside. He knocked the bar free, kicked open the door, and dived through.

Once through the doorway, Cael found himself atop the city wall. There was nowhere else to run. To his left he was offered a plunge of thirty feet or more to the nearest rooftops, to his right a crenellated battlement overlooked the trench between the inner and outer wall. The trench was filled with soft dirt turned to deep mud by the violent autumn storm. Ahead, the wall curved gently to the south in the direction of the Temple Row gate, where more Knights of Neraka waited. Behind him, the tower door burst open. Kolav ducked through and strode out onto the rain-lashed parapet. Lightning illuminated his monstrous form. His tulwar dripped with the blood of the man he’d just slain.

“I barred the door below so that we should receive no more interruptions,” the beast growled as he limped toward the elf. From somewhere below, Cael heard the Knights pounding on the tower door and yelling angrily. He backed along the wall, keeping his naked blade at guard while carefully watching his footing.

“It is time we settled this, you and I,” Kolav continued. His tulwar whistled through the air above his head.

“Indeed,” Cael agreed. Everything depended on one perfectly timed, perfectly placed lunge. He released his hold on the Reliquary, letting it fall from his cloak. It landed at his feet.

A deep growl rumbled from the minotaur. “A thief to the last, I see,” he said.

Cael readied himself. Kolav limped closer. Another wary step, another.

“No longer can you hide behind that beard,” Kolav said. “I shall cut out your heart and eat it raw.”

Cael lunged. His sword sang through the air. Kolav blocked the attack and trapped Cael’s sword against the crenellated wall with his own weighty blade. A sledgelike fist sent the elf sprawling back dangerously near the parapet’s edge. His sword flew from his hand, slid a few feet over the rain-slick stone, then toppled over the edge. The clang of steel against stone below sounded the death knell.