by Tom Lloyd
‘They’re comin’,’ he growled to his comrade. ‘Dozen or more – three flights down.’ He waved towards Irato and Enchei. ‘Go, all o’ you. Senten, send word to the rest.’
‘They’re tough,’ Enchei warned as he passed, one hand under Kesh’s arm as she staggered up the last stretch. ‘Trained killers.’
The smaller man nodded, not bothering with bravado in the face of such numbers. He turned to follow but then paused as he saw Narin stop at the top and fumble with the crossbow as he tried to fit a bolt. Using the corner as cover, he rested his left arm on the stone wall as best he could to steady his aim.
‘You mad, law-man ?’
The Investigator shook his head, still too tired to speak. Eventually fitting the bolt in the groove he readied the weapon with shaky hands, taking great heaving breaths as he waited for the goshe to come. The thug watched him with an inscrutable expression, but once it was clear Narin was going to face them alone he went to the wall again and looked over.
‘Last flight,’ he said quickly. ‘Coming fast.’
‘Thanks,’ Narin muttered. He felt a strange sense of guilt that he was thanking a criminal, but the man had already disappeared up the half-dozen steps leading into Coldcliffs itself.
A figure rounded the corner and Narin slipped his finger onto the trigger, making sure they were wearing goshe clothes before firing. The bolt caught the masked goshe square in the chest and knocked him backwards, crashing into one following close behind and both falling to the foot of the steps.
Those following darted back, anticipating another shot at any moment. Narin dropped the end of the crossbow to the ground and ratcheted back the string as fast as he could, one eye watching the foot of the stair for the goshe to return fire. The weapon’s catch clicked into place, sounding ominous as it echoed down the stone stairway. After that there was a moment of complete silence. The goshe would have heard the sound of him reloading and that made them hesitate a few heartbeats longer. Tough they might be, Narin had just proved they weren’t invulnerable and they knew that the first to run round that corner was getting the same.
A face peered briefly around the corner, a woman’s face with hanging black hair. Narin brought the crossbow up almost in the next moment and she ducked back as he took aim.
There you go, take a moment, he thought, fatigue and fear provoking a manic light-headedness in him. Decide amongst yourselves, who’s coming first ?
At the foot of the stair the goshe he’d shot squirmed feebly. Narin ignored him and the tentative hands that reached out to drag him back into cover. One heartbeat of uncertain quiet turned into two, then three and four. At last the woman eased around the corner again and Narin pulled the trigger without thinking, knowing he couldn’t let her line up a shot. She flinched back and the bolt glanced harmlessly away, but Narin barely registered that as he abandoned the bow and raced for the last stairway.
The precious moments of standing had let him recover enough to sprint that last stretch. In seconds he found himself staring wildly around at an alley no more than two yards wide, just the space between two piecemeal shacks opening out onto something resembling a street. He ran forward and looked left and right, registering nothing at first. Then he realised there was a child squatting in an alcove between two shacks off to the left, staring straight at him while it defecated into a bucket. No more than five or six, its sex impossible to determined behind the grubby clothes and grease-smeared cheeks, the child pointed towards another alley with one finger.
Realising he didn’t have time for questions, Narin just obeyed the child’s directions. Hoping he’d find the gang member around the corner there, he rounded to find himself presented with just three curtained doorways and two more alleys branching away. An old woman squinted up at him and jabbed a thumb towards the left-hand of the alleys so again Narin did has he was told, aware the goshe would be up the stairs by now.
He raced forward, still not seeing anyone he recognised but content to lose himself in the unfathomable, lawless tangle that was Coldcliffs.
*
Synter reached the top of the flight ahead of the rest of her troops, blades drawn and lashing out as she rounded the corner. The walkway was empty bar a discarded crossbow. She bit back a curse and headed up the handful of steps that took them into Coldcliffs itself. The stink of refuse and mud hit her like a slap around the face as she came out onto a narrow street and looked left and right. Their Blessings varied in effect, but the Hunter’s Nose was one that remained active throughout the day and it was startling to be able to smell a slum as its stray dogs could.
At least they’re interested in what they smell, Synter thought privately.
She strode forward towards a young girl who had frozen in the process of wiping her behind.
I can’t even follow his scent through all this – doubly useless. Let’s try the old-fashioned way.
‘Which way ?’ she demanded, putting the point of her long-knife to the girl’s neck. ‘Quick or I cut your throat.’
Wordlessly the child pointed down the dirt-packed street to Synter’s right. She removed the blade and turned to her troops emerging from the alley. The Eagle, Jaril, had four of his team left and five thralled goshe – most still masked despite the brightening day. Her own team had just grabbed whatever they had to hand, but each would be dangerous even unarmed.
‘Three teams – Uttir, you Uster and Frayl take one of the thralled and go left. Caric and Ushernai, and you,’ she pointed towards one of the thralled goshe at random, ‘we’ll take right. Jaril, you and the rest spread out through these alleys in case they’re holed up nearby. Head towards the exits and hold there as long as you can without attracting House or Lawbringer attention.’
She set off without waiting for a response, the three she’d chosen falling in behind. Weapons ready, they trotted down the street scanning left and right for their quarry – Synter all too aware they couldn’t check all of the houses and alleys without giving Irato plenty of time to escape. It was bright inside Coldcliffs compared to what she’d been expecting, the white stone roof largely resistant to the combined effects of smoke and time. A stratum of sunlight streamed in over the shacks like the incoming tide, interrupted only by occasional buildings above one storey, while smoke from the communal fires was swept briskly away by the breeze.
The street curved left and forked, the left path heading deep into the heart of Coldcliffs and the right towards the soaring, wind-swept view over the Inner Sea. Faces appeared at half the windows she could see as she hesitated there, mostly locals but already she’d seen faces from four or five other Houses too.
At her side, Ushernai still looked out of place, the big man from Leviathan unusual anywhere apart from their sparsely-populated district, but dark-haired Caric would have only needed to dirty his clothes to fit straight in. No one approached them down the street, the handful of passersby immediately turning tail at the sight of them. Gesturing left, to head into the centre of Coldcliffs, Synter kept her eyes on the path ahead – trusting her men to watch their flanks.
The distinctive thunk of a crossbow discharging made her dart to one side even as she turned to follow the sound. She saw Ushernai reel, a bolt in his upper-arm, while the thralled goshe gave a cry and darted into a nearby alley. As he disappeared from view, there came a clatter and scuffle of feet while Ushernai’s growl of anger echoed around the enclosed street.
‘Shit,’ Synter muttered as she plunged after the thralled man.
Caric stayed where he was, covering his comrade while the pale giant checked his wound. In the alley there was a flurry of noise as she hurtled around a corner, knives raised but barely able to turn the wild lunge of some long weapon. Before her attacker had the chance to react Synter knocked it loose and chopped into the man’s neck so hard she almost severed his head. Blood sprayed across the alley and cut a scarlet arc across two men driving daggers into the goshe she’d been pursuing.
Before they could withdraw their we
apons she was on them, stabbing each simultaneously. She kicked the first off her blade and brought that around to open the throat of the second even as her first victim began to cry out in pain. He fell backwards, dragging the goshe with him. She didn’t bother checking if the thralled man was still alive, stabbing down into the first attacker’s heart before retreating back to the street. All around her she heard running feet, some ambushers fleeing alongside the locals most likely, but she didn’t want to wait in case it was reinforcements.
Back in the dim street she found Ushernai wrapping a binding around his bicep with practised movements. Caric watched him with one eye, hatchets at the ready, but the Leviathan clearly needed no assistance until he gestured for Synter to snap the wooden shaft.
‘You’re good ?’ she asked once there was only an inch or two of wood protruding from his arm.
Ushernai nodded, a slight wince crossing his near-albino pale face as he flexed his fingers. Clearly, the result satisfied him and with a shake of his white hair the Leviathan’s expression turned to his usual savage glower.
Synter retook her place at the front and upped the pace, not wanting to give their attackers time to regroup. The street seemed to darken as she headed deeper into the slum, further from the open outer edge that was only punctuated by a supporting pillar every thirty or forty yards. After twenty paces the street seemed to end abruptly, a handful of alley-entrances and open doorways clustered around a stone trough of filthy-looking water. Over the shacks she could see a tall stone building marked with gang colours ; old and filthy like everything inside the slum, but more permanent than anything else they’d seen thus far.
‘Reckon they’re holed up there ?’ Caric said, seeing her look.
Synter shook her head. ‘Too obvious. Irato’s more likely to find a hovel next to it and watch us attack the tower.’
‘How do we find him in all this ?’
Synter went to the nearest shack and grabbed its patchwork wooden wall, shaking it hard. The wall rattled and bowed, but didn’t fall entirely. ‘We’re better on rooftops,’ she said by way of explanation, ‘so maybe we can cover the ground better that way. Keep clear of ambushes more easily, anyway.’
‘They’ll hold me ?’ Ushernai asked, casting an appraising look around at the ramshackle structures.
‘Keep to the walls, not that most have much in the way of roofs anyways,’ Synter said. ‘We play to our strengths – the locals’ll pick us off one by one if we get lost in these alleys.’
Ushernai grunted and gripped Caric by the shoulder, nodding toward the wall behind him. Caric nodded and sheathed his weapons, making a cradle of his hands to boost the big man up. Even with the head of a crossbow bolt embedded in his arm, Ushernai got up there easily and balanced at the corner while Synter and Caric jumped up after him.
Synter glanced around. The air seemed clearer up here, the filth and stink of the slum less all-embracing as the clean sea-breeze rolled overhead. The streets and alleys unfolded before her, a madcap maze that no longer constrained them.
‘There.’
She pointed off to the east, past a fat tree-trunk-like pillar that spread a dozen branches up to meet the undulating ceiling and support the level above. The two men followed her finger – a pair of pillars, these ones slender and arched inward. It had to be the eastern exit of Coldcliffs, the bottle-neck that was their last chance to catch Irato. Synter broke into a staccato sprint across the houses, quick little steps along walls and long strides to cross each alley.
Away to her left she heard a crash of splintering wood and steel ringing on steel, but in moments she was past the commotion. The distance between her and the stairway cut into the bedrock seemed to evaporate with every passing step, the tight network of tiny houses providing her with a free path all the way across. In a matter of minutes she had reached it and dropped back down to the packed earth that covered the ground.
There was an open stretch of ground around the arch, on the north side of which stood a solid-looking tavern ; dirty brick walls framing an open front where the bar was hidden behind shutters. A thin trail of smoke rose from its chimney, almost immediately whipped away by the breeze. Three long tables stood in front of the bar, penned by roughly-built walls intended to keep the breeze off, and at the nearest sat five men – all armed and heavily tattooed with swirling gang markings from shoulder to wrist.
Synter raised a hand to tell her comrades to hang back and advanced towards the men, carefully looking around just in case Irato was hiding in the shadows somewhere.
‘The fuck you think you’re going ?’ the largest of them called, a broken-nosed lump as wide as he was tall.
There was a tint to his skin that didn’t seem to match his features and Synter guessed he was mixed-race rather than some House she didn’t recognise. Most likely that meant he was doubly-tough in the eyes of the rest, given the disdain most felt towards anyone not of pure blood, but still she sheathed her weapons as she approached.
As one, the men rose but their leader also motioned for the rest to wait, clearly not wanting to look like he needed backup to deal with a woman. ‘You ain’t welcome round here.’
Synter looked him up and down. A nail-studded club the length of her leg dangled from his pudgy fingers.
‘And here was me looking for love,’ she replied eventually. ‘Doing so in all the wrong places yet again.’
‘Oh you’ll get more’n enough o’ that from us,’ he said with a fat grin crossing his face.
Synter sighed. When men were trying to look tough in front of a woman, they were pathetically predictable. His mind distracted just for a moment, the man was still grinning like a hero of virility when she planted her boot into his crotch hard enough to lift him off his feet.
The man gave a strangled squeal and Synter caught hold of his club just long enough for his brain to catch up with what had happened. He briefly tried to wrench the club from her grip, but in the next moment the pain properly hit him and he stumbled backwards, spewing vomit down his front.
With a deft yank Synter turned him back around and grabbed him by the scruff of his oversized neck. That her hand couldn’t reach far around it proved immaterial as fingers as strong as a steel vice pinched into his flesh. With little apparent effort she held him upright between her and the rest of his men.
Synter drew a long-knife and put it to his throat in case any of the others got ideas, but they were all frozen with surprise.
‘Now boys – give me answers and I might let you all live,’ she announced breezily as Ushernai and Caric moved up beside her. ‘Who hired you all ?’
There was no response other than the big one puking again. She wrinkled her nose – ah yes, he’d shit himself too.
Maybe I kicked him a bit harder than necessary, she reflected. Ah well.
‘I haven’t got all day,’ she warned them, slicing a shallow furrow into the man’s fleshy throat. Blood sprang out of the wound and she saw one of the men flinch at the sight, another grabbing his shoulder to hold him back.
‘This your dad ?’ she asked, looking at the one who’d flinched – one of the youngest there but still marked as the rest were.
The man nodded.
‘Then start talking now or say goodbye to him.’
‘We weren’t hired,’ the man blurted out, gaze on his father until he reluctantly dragged it up to meet hers. ‘We heard you were making a move on our turf is all.’
‘Who heard ?’
‘Dunno, the Knight just gave the order to ambush anyone coming in force.’
‘Knight ?’ Synter said. A cold feeling slithered down her spine even as she realised the man wasn’t talking about the Ascendant God, Lord Knight, but some self-aggrandising criminal.
‘He runs Coldcliffs, no one gets a knife round here without his say so.’
‘Well your Knight got played for a fool. We’re not moving on you, just got a bit of business with the people we chased in here. You know if they’re coming this way ?’
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The man shook his head, glancing at his fellows but getting nothing of use from them. ‘Don’t know nothing about that, we just got told to wait here. No one’s come this way.’
Synter thought for a moment. The fastest way to get her blade off his father’s throat was to say their quarry had already run down those steps – but the truth came easier than a considered lie. If they hadn’t come this way they might still, but she didn’t know her way through the slum and doubted Irato did either. If they’d made some sort of deal with this Knight, most likely he’d be leading them through and seeing to his payment personally.
‘Take him,’ she said, shoving the big man towards his son, ‘and get out of my sight or I’ll gut the lot o’ you.’
They didn’t need telling twice. Two of the gang members tentatively approached to grab their leader and help him away, while the others fled. In moments they were alone there, any bystanders having run at the first sign of violence. Synter turned to Ushernai and Caric.
‘You two wait here ; find yourselves a nice corner to hide in. Most likely they were never coming this way, but I want every exit covered.’
‘And you ?’ Caric asked.
‘I’ll head for one of the others, see if I can sniff our man out – or that bloody Investigator. If they’ve split up he might be lying low.’ She raised her voice. ‘Someone here must be keen to earn some coin ! I’ve gold nobles for anyone who leads me to my traitors !’
With that she walked off, heading for an alley broadly in the direction of the north stairs. No voices spoke up so when she reached the alley she leaped back up onto the nearest sturdy-looking building and set out, this time at a slower pace. Moving almost silently, cat-like and predatory, she headed out across the slum, the glimpsed face of a local man in Investigator robes fixed firmly in her mind.
