Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  “Started early again, I see?” Shay Redwood said. The petite, dark-haired Oweilaun woman kept her voice low but it was no less cutting for it. “Or is it that you just haven’t stopped?”

  The archer regarded his interrogator with half-focused eyes, wobbling backward slightly. Hands planted firmly on her hips, Shay stared solidly back up at him, though her expression was not so much accusing as concerned.

  “The second one,” Slowhand burped after a second. In all their time together he still hadn’t worked out why he couldn’t help but be honest with the woman. “The ‘not having stopped’ bit, I guess.”

  “Fark, Slowhand. You know this can’t go on.”

  “Can’t see any reason why not.”

  “No?” Shay said. She plucked the archer’s quiver from the dressing table and extracted one of the arrows. She used the tip of one to prick the soft flesh of her thumb, which took no pressure at all. “These things aren’t toys.”

  Something flared in Slowhand’s head, an old memory, but he kept control of it. “I know that,” he said steadily.

  “I’m no toy, either,” Shay responded, unphased. “Slowhand, it’s me out there, in front of your arrows, and the only thing that stops me dying at the hands of a drunk is that what you do comes naturally to you, like breathing. You’re just too good an archer to ever miss.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “You. You’re the problem, can’t you see that? Look at you! You’re stagnating here. You jump through the same old hoops every day, not because you enjoy it but because it stops you thinking of anything else.”

  “The only thing I’m thinking of is paying my keep.”

  “Yeah? That’s not what I hear when you talk in your sleep. Talk of traps and treasure, of long lost secrets. And night after night, without fail… Kali Hooper.”

  Slowhand hesitated. “Sorry. It… she… doesn’t mean anything. It was a long time ago.”

  “It was a year ago, ’Liam. Only a year. And I think you have unfinished business.”

  “Shay, I promise you, I’m not –”

  Shay placed a hand on his cheek. “I know you’re not, lover. But clearly you were involved in something back then that just isn’t letting you go. Think about it, eh? Maybe it’s time for you – for both of us, if you’d like the company – to find out what.”

  “I’d have no idea where to go.”

  “Maybe you’ll know when you get there.” She cocked an ear as there was an announcement from the ring. “But for now, Mister Thongar, what say we get this show on the road?”

  She went on before him, disappearing through the vorgang with a smile and a flourish that was greeted with rapturous applause. A few moments later, the chanting began. And then the drums. And then the screaming.

  The screaming was his cue and – glancing at the bottle but forsaking it – Slowhand pulled in his stomach, put on his best heroic grin and followed his partner into the ring.

  There, Shay was already in the grip of the orcs. They weren’t real orcs, of course, but Griffin, Mosk, Thane and the rest of the crew in moth-eaten and less than convincing orc costumes, but that didn’t matter as neither he nor, he was willing to bet, anyone in the audience had ever encountered a real orc in their lives. It was a matter of debate whether the creatures existed on Twilight at all.

  The whole act was the grand finale to the show and presented as a set piece in which he, Thongar, had to rescue Shay from a sacrificial ritual orc-estrated, as it were, by the supposed beasts of the mountains. To his surprise, it had become a runaway success. Maybe with that thing – the Hel’ss – hanging in the sky people, despite what the Filth told them, needed to believe they could still cope with the unknown and, in however small a way, he was satisfying that need. Despite the scenario’s pure fiction, it had, ironically, been only a few performances in when he’d realised he’d gladly sacrifice himself in order to rescue Shay for real. Ever since they’d met in that tavern in Scholten – she persuading him to run away to the circus, just for fun and just like kids, that very night – the pair had grown closer and closer, their relationship blossoming until he had begun to think of them as soulmates. He would have been more than happy to forget that he had even had a previous life, if it hadn’t been for the dreams.

  The dreams.

  As he’d had to night after night for months, Slowhand quashed the lingering images of the dreams by throwing himself into his act with gusto. As the crowd cheered him on, he leapt from papier-mâché rock to papier-mâché rock, despatching the monsters who threatened Shay with a dazzling display of bowmanship. As Shay struggled against the bonds on the sacrificial frame built on the highest rock, his arrows thudded into the orcs from all directions, and Griffin and the others made their pratfalls on cue, roaring as they clutched the shafts embedded in the thick padding of their costumes, tumbling to their deaths. That they, as much as Shay, trusted him to deliver his arrows with unwavering accuracy said a lot about the bond he had developed with them all and, as usual as the climax of the act approached, Slowhand was concentrating so much as to not let them down that he had forgotten his dreams completely.

  The last of the marauding orcs fell and the climax of the performance arrived. It was the most difficult shot of the evening, one that required him to be static, and he struck a suitably heroic but steadied pose on a rock halfway up the fake mountainside.

  In his sights was an orc shaman dancing directly behind Shay, and the arrow he was about to fire was firstly to sever the chain holding Shay’s arms aloft, and then continue to strike the taller shaman in the chest, punching him off the rocks and ‘killing’ him triumphantly.

  Slowhand tensed. Despite the gap of only inches between Shay, chain and shaman, it wasn’t the aiming of the arrow that presented problems but the power with which it was delivered. Too little and the chain would not shatter; too much and it would puncture the padding of Thane, his friend. Slowhand’s grip on his bowstring tightened. His eyes narrowed. On the summit of the fake mountainside, Shay winked and smiled.

  Her eyes were filled with the same absolute trust when they jerked wide in shock, and then almost instantly glazed over. As Shay slumped on her chains, she did not react at all to the pulse of dark blood that ran down from the centre of her forehead and over the bridge of her nose to drip onto the papier mache rock.

  A rumble of unease ran through the audience, and then came deafening silence. All eyes stared at the projectile embedded firmly in the centre of Shay’s forehead, registering part disbelief and part expectation, benumbed by the fact that the shot had been so perfect, so unwavering, so exact, that it couldn’t be a mistake. In other words, it had to be part of the act, and the great Thongar had amazed them again, if only they could work out how.

  Slowhand himself simply stood there, Suresight hanging at his legs. The sights and sounds of the ring – that place of smoke and mirrors, of unreality – seemed suddenly painfully loud and vivid. He saw crew and fellow performers move to him from backstage and through the crowd, their movements slowed as if in a dream, cries of shock coming as drawn out drawls. Bent Dez Fagin, Little Jack The Giant, Five Ropes Lucy, none of them could believe what had happened.

  Slowhand didn’t know what to think. All he knew was that Shay had trusted him, and had died at his hand. He raised that same appendage, his arrow hand, palm up, before his eyes, and stared at its shaking form as if it were nothing to do with him at all. It took him a second to realise that in his other hand, hanging as limply as Suresight, the arrow remained.

  Did it matter? Shay wasn’t to know that, was she? She would have had no time to realise that the projectile that had instantly snuffed her life and thoughts had not been unleashed by him, for there was no reason why she would think there should be another. In one stunned moment his love would have gone to her grave believing, however infinitesimally fleetingly, that he’d failed her and the drink within him had let them both down.

  But it hadn’t. He hadn’t. The arrow was still in
his hand.

  Slowly, with a rush of pressure in the ears, the world about him returned to normal. The first thing he heard were the screams from the audience – screaming not because of what had just happened but because they, like his friends, were being manhandled out of their seats and propelled towards the exits. The people doing the manhandling were strangers, but there were a lot of them, and all dressed in black. It wasn’t difficult to guess who they were but, if further proof were needed, the black spheres that moved through the air between them provided it.

  Filth, Slowhand thought. Then, feeling the slightest disturbance in the air, he instinctively span as a projectile identical to the one that had killed Shay – a crossbow bolt, not an arrow – sheared by him to thud into the fake rock on which Shay slumped. His archer’s expertise immediately calculated the arrow had not been fired to take him out, too, but only to incapacitate by hitting him in his drawing arm.

  Slowhand’s eyes narrowed as he stared at a figure clad in black standing on the opposite side of the circus ring to him. Unlike the others – males – the black she wore hugged a lithe and supple figure with flowing red hair, and her crossbow was raised and primed once more, and she smiled as she fired.

  The smile faded as Slowhand instantly brought up Suresight, re-notching his arrow as he did, and released it without a moment’s hesitation or calculation. It split its opposite number in two as it came.

  As the broken halves of the bolt and Slowhand’s arrow dropped to the sawdust of the ring, Suresight was already primed to fire again. But across the ring his attacker had jettisoned her crossbow in favour of twin swords that she drew from sheathes on her back, and even as Slowhand’s arrow sped through the air towards her, the swords moved, reducing the arrow to slivers.

  A trick reciprocated, the smile returned.

  “Who are you?” Slowhand hissed.

  “Someone employed to do a job. A real job, that is, not this posturing and preening that passes for your excuse of a life.”

  That sounded personal, Slowhand thought, but now was not the time to explore why. “What kind of job?”

  “Shepherding. If you weren’t so out of the loop, you’d know that most of your heretic friends are now guests of the Final Faith. You took a while to track down. I volunteered for the job.”

  “Is that so? So what happens now?”

  “I deliver you. I get paid.”

  “Confident. But you just killed my girlfriend, so I think I’ll have to spoil your plans.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You really don’t have a lot of choice.”

  The girl nodded and, out of the corners of his eyes, Slowhand was aware of Faith moving down the aisles between the now empty seats, closing on the circus ring. A second later, he was surrounded by a solid wall of crossbow wielding robes. The message to him was clear – you’re outnumbered, archer. You might take down some of us but you’ll never stop us all.

  No? Slowhand thought. And in that instant heard Shay’s voice in his head.

  It comes naturally to you. Like breathing.

  Maybe Slowhand didn’t need telling, but he might have needed reminding, and he moved in a blur, plucking arrow after arrow from his quiver and unleashing them before his newly found circle of friends had chance to react. Six of them went down with arrows embedded in their throats or through their hearts, three more with tips positioned as exactly as had been the bolt that had killed Shay. Slowhand moved as he fired, allowing none of the figures to draw a bead on him while at the same time circling the ring so that the girl and her swords could not draw close. Despite this, his accuracy was undiminished, and the eyes of those who were not felled by arrows widened as much in shock as those who were.

  But Slowhand was not quite as invincible as he appeared. Though his archery prowess was indeed undiminished, the physical effort it took to maintain was already starting to take its toll, and Slowhand found himself uncharacteristically breathless. There wasn’t really the problem, though, because while he could nevertheless maintain the pace needed to eventually finish off every single one of his attackers, he carried a quiver stocked not for battle but entertainment.

  In short, he didn’t have enough arrows to go around.

  Slowhand felt the contents of the quiver as he plucked the next arrow from it, confirming, as he’d calculated, there were only four arrows left. Three of these he used to drop twice as many Filth, each arrow shot with such force that it passed through two men at a time. The last arrow he withheld. The smile returned to the girl’s lips and was echoed on the faces of the survivors as they saw the archer’s predicament, and as one they began to move in.

  Slowhand turned in a slow circle, bowstring creaking, the arrow pointing at each Faith in turn but not released, until it was aiming directly at the girl’s heart. Still, he did not release it, holding her gaze as she sensed victory and her smile grew. Then, as she raised her swords, he swung Suresight directly upward and released the tension that had kept the arrow from play.

  The arrow shot high above the ring, tearing through canvas and anchoring itself, and Slowhand rose on the whizzline attached to it. He leapt from it into the web of rope rigging that filled the hemisphere, that part of the Big Top where the aerialists performed, and sat like a spider in its nest. His attackers now far beneath him, Slowhand saw there were nine of them left, ten with the girl. She was already angrily despatching her men towards various ladders and poles that accessed the upper tent, but Slowhand was ready for them, clambering swiftly along the ropes to the centre of the hemisphere, where lay the riser ring through which most of the Big Top’s rigging was tied off. The band that encircled the king pole – the central support of the whole tent – was a confusing snake’s nest of thick and intertwining guy lines but, as everyone mucked in together on the road, he was no stranger to them and knew precisely which to loosen or untie to create the utmost havoc beneath him.

  His new friends were about to discover just how dangerous a place a Big Top could be.

  Two ropes brought down the gantry from which handlers controlled the trapeze lunge ropes, and another one of the wheels from which hung the cloud swings, the ropes on which support performers swung out over the audience to hold their attention while the next aerialist ‘trick’ was readied. Both structures first collapsed sideways, dropping to forty five degree angles as their guy lines whizzed through their pullies, then, as they whipped free, both fell to the big top’s floor, those Filth who were using them as a means to reach him falling with them, screaming. Slowhand’s satisfaction on hearing the crunching impacts of his attackers’ bodies was, however, short-lived, as three crossbow bolts thudded into the king pole next to his head, and he immediately dropped down through the rope spiderweb, grabbing onto one of its strands and swinging rapidly, hand-to-hand, down it towards its connecting quarter pole.

  The quarter pole – and the seven others that ringed the arena – were the medium supports of the Big Top, positioned where they were to prevent sagging, and each rose to a point where the Big Top’s triangular roof flaps were lashed together, separable in case of an emergency. This, Slowhand reckoned, qualified as an emergency and, dangling by one hand, he quickly undid the lashings on one side, then rapidly shimmied, crossbow bolts thudding about him, along the skirt of the tent to the other. He undid the lashings there, too, and the entire section of canvas roofing flopped inwards, dropping down like an exhausted dog’s tongue. From the expressions on the faces of the Filth it headed towards, climbing the tower to the high-wire, it was clear they thought it an inconsequential threat, but they had seriously underestimated the weight of such a section of canvassing – wet or not – and were slapped from their positions with another bone-crunching thud and appropriate screams as the flap hit them, almost overbalancing the tower itself.

  Slowhand needed to gain height once more, and he flipped himself from the guy rope into the air, grabbing onto the lip of the flap adjacent to the one he had dropped, then heaving himself onto the r
oof of the Big Top. Dressed as he was, he hissed against the cold and hammering rain, and his bare soles slithered frustratingly on the buoyant canvas as he pounded determinedly up, but eventually he reached the Big Top’s cupola, and, through the gap in the roofing, out of which projected the king pole, flipped himself back inside once more.

  The last of the Filth – the girl aside – had now managed to reach the spiderweb of guy lines some twenty feet below him and, spotting his return, were aiming crossbows, but Slowhand had already worked out what he needed to do. He dropped from the cupola onto one of the guy ropes that made up the spiderweb, the impact of his landing sending a tremor throughout the lines, and the Filth staggered, one of them involuntarily loosing a bolt he’d primed into the chest of a comrade-in-arms on the line next to him. The skewered Filth fell, clutching the line desperately for a moment before dropping away, and the resultant second tremor gave Slowhand all the time he needed to work his way across the web and boot his unsteady opponents from their perch.

  Far below, the girl side-stepped the falling bodies as they exploded beside her, and raised her gaze slowly upwards. Eyes locking with Slowhand’s, she smiled and then made her way to the ladders that would eventually bring her to him. Slowhand’s jaw tensed, knowing his final opponent was in a different class entirely to the rest, and his eyes darted around the hemisphere, working out the moves he would need to counter those she would doubtless bring. Unarmed, dressed in nothing but his thong, the possibilities seemed limited, but then, almost unwillingly, he remembered a phrase that had many times been used by Kali Hooper.

  Make it up as you go along.

  Slowhand calculated the girl’s route and made his way to one of the surviving lunge gantries, drawing in a trapeze on a guide rope. As he’d guessed, she was already doing the same, stepping onto the horizontal swing, intending to use it to reach him. She didn’t get the chance, Slowhand bringing the fight to her by kicking off at the same time she did.

  The two of them clashed in the heart of the hemisphere but, neither practiced on the acrobatics tool, did so clumsily, and the wind knocked from the pair of them, they were sent spinning wildly in opposite directions. Slowhand struggled to bring the trapeze under control, the Big Top and, more threateningly, the girl looming in his vision in a series of skewed, disorientating and vertiginous flashes, and then the two of them impacted again with a thud and an explosion of air and spittle. The collision was slower this time, accidental, but that didn’t stop the girl taking a swing at him with one of her swords, and Slowhand only just escaped decapitation by dropping from his standing position to grab the trapeze bar with his hands.