by Noah Layton
‘I respect that.’
‘Anyway, stop changing the topic,’ Grimdrom said. ‘What is this woman to you?’
‘She’s a friend who helps me track down bounties… Who I also happen to be sleeping with.’
‘There’s the answer I’m looking for. So you’re together? Man and wife?’
‘Not exactly. There’s another girl.’
‘You’ve got two on the go at once? Maker! What the hell are you going to do when she finds out?’
‘I don’t need to worry about that. We’re all… Kind of shacked up together.’
‘What?! I knew you were good with the ladies, Drake, but never did I think you would be able to tend to the needs of more than one!’
‘It’s not like that,’ I laughed. ‘She’s just a maid who lives with us… Who also keeps eyeing me up and seems to enjoy bathing me.’
‘Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.’
‘I’m also in the process of hunting down and killing my old guild after they tried to have me killed, so there’s that too.’
‘I knew there was a reason you were coming to see me. Aside from killing a dark elf gang member, that is.’
‘Actually it hadn’t crossed my mind, but if today goes well how would you feel about helping me take out some other ne’er do wells when the time comes?’
‘I think I’d say yes, just as long as you’re willing to take the blame in case we get caught.’
‘If there’s one thing I know it’s this business. I know how to avoid detection, and I know how to stay off the grid. Trust me, I’m going to make this work.’
‘Make what work?’
‘Building the finest bounty hunting guild that nobody will ever hear about.’
‘Well if anybody can do it, I’ll bet it’s you, Drake. You’re smart and you’re patient, which are deadly when combined. Not to mention you’ve got some compassion, which stops you from straying too far into the realms of being a total asshole.’
‘Thanks for that.’
‘Don’t mention it. Besides, before we go plotting any other assassinations, let’s make sure I don’t go blowing us to smithereens during this one.’
‘I thought you said that it was perfectly safe in your hands.’
‘It is. Mostly…’
‘Mostly? You’re giving me mostly?’
‘There are always risks when carrying out any action, Drake. There’s a risk of falling over and breaking your ass when you stand up from a barstool after too many mugs of ale. There also happens to be a very high risk of this product of mine being set off by a stray spark.’
‘Oh, god, I’m going to die,’ I said, only half-sarcastically. ‘And it’s down here with you.’
‘Could you really ask for better company?’
We journeyed through the winding sewer tunnel until a dead-end seemed to appear before us. The trail had ended horizontally, but we weren’t going ahead – we were going up.
‘This is where they must have stopped building,’ Grimdrom said, marvelling at the view ahead. They had tunnelled through and closed it up with a series of shoddily-welded sheets of steel. Stacks of crates had been left behind, rotting in the darkness.
‘I can’t believe they just left it like this,’ I said in disbelief.
‘Fortunately this works in our favour. We can use those boxes to make it to the upper level of the tunnel.’
I helped Grimdrom lift the barrels out of the cart, being careful not to drop them, especially after we had come this far.
We heaved them up the stacks of old crates to its peak and set them upright, ensuring that they were safely in place.
From there my dwarf companion quickly got to work. He fumbled into his satchel and begin running lengths of fuse between the barrels. He worked with the minute detail of an artisan.
Fortunately that gave me a little more faith in the notion that I would still be alive in a few minutes’ time.
My job was simply to keep the torch held high and stay well clear of the barrels. If even a single ember flew their way, it was game over.
‘There,’ he said. ‘When do you want it to activate?’
‘An amount of time that gives us long enough to get back up the tunnel, for you to swap places with Cassandra on lookout, and for me and her to get back up the tunnel to the secondary passage.’
‘Thirty minutes should do it. Damn, this is going to take a lot of fuse. Hopefully we’ve got enough…’
Grimdrom ran out the ream from a seemingly endless spool of slow-burning fuse, then cut the wire and admired his work from a distance.
‘Do you mind if I do the honours?’ He asked, nodding to the flaming torch.
‘Be my guest,’ I replied, handing it over to him.
He took a few deep breaths, pressed the flames to the tip of the fuse, and it began to crackle.
‘It’s going to be beautiful,’ he smiled, watching it burn.
‘I’ll bet,’ I agreed. ‘Just one question; why are we still standing here?’
‘Oh, right. Grab the cart.’
‘I thought you were transporting it.’
‘I brought it here, plus now it’s empty. Now grab the cart and stop being a little bitch.’
Before I could even come up with a comeback he took off back up the tunnel. I took control of the cart and quickly wheeled it around, pushing it up the tunnel after him.
In no time we arrived back at the entrance. Cassandra swapped places with Grimdrom, but not before I could supply him with a gift.
‘Here,’ I said, offering him my telescope. ‘It’ll give you a decent view of the explosion.’
‘Thank you kindly, Drake, although I don’t know if I’ll need it. This explosion will be seen for miles.’
‘Still, you might want to see the damage it causes to the guys occupying the place.’
‘That’ll do,’ he smiled, taking the telescope from me, handing me his crowbar, and heading up the ladder.
Cassandra joined me a moment later, dropping down the rungs three at a time with perfect grace and landing on her feet next to me.
‘How did it go?’
‘Well I’m still alive, so…’
‘I would call that a victory.’
‘Let’s go.’
Even if we likely had plenty of time before the fuse ran out, the sheer quantity of explosives lurking at the end of the tunnel was ringing constantly in the back of my mind.
And considering how close our destination was to the spot beneath Merliah’s villa, that paranoia was only getting worse.
We hurried at a quick jog to the exit and moved up the smaller tunnel, the torches in our hands the only weapons that were useful against the oppressive darkness. We followed it for another hundred yards before shreds of light came into view up ahead.
The tunnel came to a dead end. We looked up to see another ladder grafted into the wall, leading up to a grating covered in grass so tall it had slumped over the entrance.
We would be well-hidden.
We put our torches out and climbed the ladder up to the grating. Using Grimdrom’s crowbar, I jammed the end into the gap and mustered all my effort to lodge it out of place.
All it took was an inch, and fortunately this one had escaped much of the rust that the first was victim to, but I still had to put my entire weight behind it to shift it loose.
‘Got it,’ I grunted, sliding the crowbar through the gap and wrenching the grating far enough to the side that we could slide through.
I climbed out, keeping low and offering a hand to Cassandra as she slinked through the gap.
We both kept down in the tall grass. Quickly we checked our weapons, before peaking our heads up slowly above the tips of the green blades that surrounded us on all sides.
The villa was only a hundred yards off. From our new hiding place I didn’t need the telescope that I had given to Grimdrom; it was easy to see the four guards waiting just outside of the building, as well as Merliah’s smug ass atop the first floo
r balcony.
He was still stood on the edge of the balcony, smoking a large cigar as he looked out over the land below. I ducked down a little, just in case he would be able to spot us.
Cassandra and I both pulled on our goggles to protect our eyes from the blast.
‘So how long until this thing blows?’ Cassandra asked. ‘Grimdrom seems to have given plenty of time, thank god.’
‘I know. I’ve never used explosives before and I really didn’t want this to go wrong.’
‘No, it’s not that,’ she said, tracing one of her gentle fingers over my cheek and turning my face towards her. ‘I was just worried that he would end up accidentally blowing the pair of you up. I don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet Drake, but… I kind of like you.’
Of all the times for this beautiful foxgirl to display a moment of weakness and sensitivity, she had to do it while waiting in a field for three barrels of explosives to go off.
And for some weird reason, it really turned me on.
‘I kind of like you too,’ I said, kissing her perfectly soft lips.
‘Look at us,’ she chimed, smiling at me just an inch from my face as her ears twitched, ‘talking like first-time lovers even when we’ve already fucked like crazy.’
‘Maybe some things come to me more easily than others.’
‘I think I might have the same problem. Fortunately I’ve got that incredibly talented dick of yours to bring me around…’
BOOM.
The moment collapsed entirely, but it wasn’t the only thing that had crumbled.
We both jumped at the sudden explosion. Even though I knew it was coming, Cassandra’s entrancing eyes and perfect lips had distracted me from it entirely.
The ground rumbled with the force of the blast as I peaked out over the tall grass again.
The ground floor of the entire building had exploded outwards from the force of the explosion. The bricks had been eviscerated, crumbling into a million rocks as they flew out.
The guards had been so badly hit that I couldn’t even see them; vaguely through the smoke there were long streaks of blood and red matter staining the ground, the only things left of them.
A stampede of horses emerged from the smoke and dust. They quickly split up, bounding away and into the tall grass, abandoning their masters.
Suddenly a huge plume of smoke and cement exploded through the ceiling of the villa.
That wasn’t part of the plan.
Odasa was nowhere to be seen. Killing him was one thing, but I had to prove that he was dead, and without a recognisable face let alone a body there was no way that was going to happen.
‘Shit,’ I muttered as the dust clouds filled the air. ‘Come on, we’ve got to find this guy… Or at least what’s left of him.’
Cassandra and I emerged from the grass and rushed across the field. She readied her throwing knives while I retrieved my sword.
I was intent on finishing off any of the guards that were still lurking around the house, even if it was unlikely that any would be left alive.
Still, I had to keep myself and Cassandra safe.
We pulled up our masks to give our lungs a little protection from the roaming clouds of dust that echoed in the air.
‘Holy shit,’ Cassandra said. I could only agree with her.
The two-story villa had been reduced to a crumbling one-story structure. The entire ground floor had been eviscerated, and the upper floor was now struggling to stay up right as it rested on the wreckage of its fallen base.
The guards had been reduced to blood and bone, and as I approached the balcony which now rested only a few feet above the ground, I anticipated that I would find Merliah to be in a similar state.
‘Damn it,’ I muttered as I approached what was left of the balcony. ‘Well, at least this is a start to shoving it to the gangs, even if we don’t make any coin out of it.’
‘Nice to know you’re a glass half full kind of guy,’ Cassandra said, moving to sheath her twin blades before freezing up as she stared towards the balcony. Her face contorted, as if she didn’t know whether to be happy, confused, angry, or somewhere in between all of it. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…’
‘What…?’
I turned to look over at the balcony and saw a figure standing among the dust, staggering to his feet.
‘Ughhh…’ He groaned, clasping a hand to his head. ‘What in the fucking fuck was that?’
‘No way…’
As the dust cleared a little around him, Merliah’s scratched, dust-stained face came into view. His clothes had been shredded to pieces and half of his hair had been singed off, but he was most definitely alive.
What followed was overwhelmingly awkward. He stared back at me with a confused expression that could match my own one of disbelief.
Then he ran.
The dust was settling but much was still hanging considerably in the air as we chased after him, rounding the side of the house as he rushed over the balcony’s remains and scrambled over the collapsing roof of the house.
I dashed around the side of the building, sprinting ahead with my sword in hand. To my right I could hear Merliah’s parallel movements as the remaining roof tiles tumbled down beneath his feet.
Elves were taller and naturally much faster than humans like myself; by the time I reached the back of the house with Cassandra closely following me through the dust, Merliah had already jumped from the roof and was high-tailing it through the tall grass, moving further into the fields.
I emerged from the dust and swiped at the air to clear a line of sight towards him. He had already made it 40 yards, and that distance was increasing every second.
‘Shit,’ Cassandra muttered.
‘Hang on,’ I said, pulling my rifle from over my shoulder and loading a single round into the chamber.
‘You really think you can hit him from this distance?’
‘It’s our only chance at taking him down. There’s no way we can catch up with him now.’
I dropped to one knee and rested my elbow against my thigh, suspending the barrel of the rifle and holding it steady.
I peered down the sight and acquired my target. He was running in a straight line directly away from me, but there was a high wind on the air.
My finger twitched on the trigger. I took a deep breath, held it, and waited… Until the wind finally settled.
I squeezed the trigger.
The small explosion from the chamber up this close was enough to match that of the blast. My ears rang, but only after the sound of the bullet striking its target, a guffaw of pain and a slam reaching me as he hit the ground.
‘Holy shit, Drake, you got him!’
I shook my head wildly and jammed my palm against my ears one after the other, then returned the rifle over my shoulder.
‘Did you see where I hit him?’ I asked. ‘I couldn’t make it out.’
‘I think it was his shoulder.’
We hurried through the grass and stopped ten yards clear of Merliah’s form. I could just make him out from here, and from the bloodstain I surmised that Cassandra had been right.
The bullet had hit him straight through his left shoulder, passing clean through his skin.
My new rifle may have only provided me with a single shot, but it was enough to stop him.
I retrieved my sword while Cassandra readied her twin blades. We spread out and approached Merliah as he groaned, lying on his front.
‘That’s enough, Merliah,’ I commanded. ‘I’m here to take you in.’
‘Ughh… What, just so the High Council can execute me?’
‘Well, that doesn’t tend to happen when you use a firebomb to incinerate one of the city guards. What did you think would happen?’
‘Same thing that always does. Shit gets forgotten about and I go back to getting rich and controlling the streets with my gang.’
‘Not anymore,’ I panted. ‘Now, you wanna do this the easy way or the hard way? Becaus
e there’s a bounty post right over that ridge. You can walk, or I can carry your head.’
‘I’m dead either way.’ He rolled onto his back and held up his hands. Cassandra darted over and pulled his rapier from the sheath at his waist, throwing it into the grass well out of reach. A self-satisfied grin rose to his lips. ‘What was that you said about a firebomb?’
‘That was what you used to kill that guard, wasn’t it?’
‘Please, do you think a guy like me would stoop to using homemade weapons that goblins cook up to cause trouble in the streets? I would hope that you think of my gang much more highly than that.’
Merliah’s eyes suddenly lit up with an orange fire. His grin grew wider, and he drew in a deep breath.
‘MOVE!’
I leaped to the side, diving roughly into the grass while Cassandra took off to the left. Our opposite paths barely avoided a huge plume of fire that blew onto the air.
It had emanated from Merliah’s mouth. He laughed manically as he pushed to his feet.
Magic-user. They were damn rare because the spells that granted the powers carried too much of a risk of blowing up the user.
That explained how the Spire City guard had been immolated.
‘I can never understand,’ Merliah panted, as Cassandra hopped back up and backed away in the opposite direction to me, both of us attempting to put some space in between Merliah and ourselves, ‘Why anybody would not wish to use spells. The power that it grants you… You should have seen the fear in that guard’s eyes right before he went up in smoke.’
A ranged attack was the only way to take this guy out, but I had already spent my rifle shot, and Cassandra couldn’t throw her daggers either. She might have been able to take him out, but on the chance that she didn’t she would be completely open to attack, and Merliah was just as swift as her.
‘Not giving up, are you?’ Merliah continued.
‘Not until you’re dead or in shackles,’ I shouted back.
‘You’ll be waiting a long damn time,’ he retorted, spitting a mouthful of blood to the ground. ‘Well, if you won’t back off, I guess I’ll let you stay right here with me. Hope you don’t mind if I turn up the heat a little, though.’
Merliah drew another breath, and a huge plume of fire burst from his mouth and nostrils. Flames ignited the dry grass immediately, creating a vicious wildfire that spread along further patches by the second.
