Or, if he was being completely honest with himself, he didn’t want to take the chance of failing at such a huge task. This would really make a name for them, Johan thought. And before now, he didn’t really give fame much of a thought. But now with a chance to take down a major criminal, no, the major criminal of the continent, he found that the concept wasn’t all that unappealing. After all, Sir Aldir had been a world-renowned hero, hadn’t he? And he had to start somewhere. This could be the start for Johan and his men. Suppressing a sudden urge to smile, Johan rode with the others, doing his best to put such distractions out of his mind as he thought through ways to infiltrate a fortress.
After a few hours of riding by torchlight, the Outriders left the main road, dismounting and walking their horses through the thick woods that lay in almost all of western Tethis. They extinguished their torches and Ryker watched as Toma drew out his small tracking lantern that spilled its light only where Toma pointed it. It was an extremely expensive tool, and Ryker had remembered Johan agonizing over its cost, but it had proven its worth in the past. And tonight it allowed the Outriders to follow Toma as he led them through the forest in the moonless night.
Eventually, Toma turned to the rest and gestured for them to stop, his body a near-silhouette as he held the light. Ryker tied his horse up, as did the other Outriders. Once he had finished himself, Toma left them there as he silently went ahead, dimming the light of his lantern significantly, to the point where the other Outriders could not see him. While he was gone, the other Outrider sat down amongst the leaves and heather and took out their bedrolls. Vegard helped by taking out his own small alchemical light. It produced a very weak, shaky light, but it was enough for them to make camp. Exhausted as they all were, none of them dare slept until Toma returned, which took about a half hour. He hunched down amidst the group, his lantern extinguished.
“Okay,” Toma began, his voice hushed. “The manor is about a quarter mile to our west. There are quite a few windows still lit, and I could make out at least four different guards moving inside. I also saw movement on the roof. Two concealed lookouts, armed with bows, possibly crossbows. So there’s at least six guards. Kian said there’s probably twice that many, so they must be operating in shifts. I didn’t see any sort of lighting out in the fields, except for their worker’s building. That is a good mile from the manor itself, so if we get lucky, we won’t have any interference from them in the morning. At first, anyways.”
“Alright,” Johan said. “What about any type of patrols?”
Toma shook his head. “I didn’t see any other movement. Honestly, security seems pretty low key, which is something that probably works in their favor most of the time.”
“Yeah,” Ryker said, “nothing shouts ‘we are suspicious!’ like hordes of armed men milling around a farm at night.”
Johan nodded. “Okay, lets rest up then. We’ll split the watch in two. Three up, three down. We’ll hit the manor in five hours. Toma, Ryker, and Vegard sleep first.” He paused as he grinned at the men, oblivious to the darkness around them.
“We are going to have one hell of a morning.”
Chapter Twelve
Two shadows raced across the rooftops of Bellkeep, all but imperceptible in the dim starlight. They ran with grace, their footfalls silent but sure. No one had caught even a hint of their passing. Those manning the high walls surrounding the city who looked down had dismissed them as a trick of the eye, a mixture of shade and wind. Under her hood, Nerthus smiled. There were few things she loved more than running silent and free.
Beside her Edda kept up with ease, the other agent’s longer legs moving with a dancer’s finesse. They both wore their dark leathers from the night before, with their tools and weapons concealed under small flaps of cloth attached to their form-fitting clothing. They ran as fast as they could without making a sound, closing the two-mile distance between their inn and the warehouse district in under fifteen minutes. Not their best speed, but factoring in stealth, climbing, and being weighed down with weapons and assorted toys made Nerthus feel a little better.
Leaping from one rooftop to another, the two women were running parallel to one of Bellkeep’s main thoroughfares leading into an area of the city devoted to merchant houses and their warehouses. Both of them wore Trace bracelets, the dull metal hidden underneath dark leathers. They hadn’t vibrated once yet, but the two agents were still a row of buildings away from their destination.
The last building they needed to scale loomed above them. It was twenty feet taller than the rooftop they were currently on. Not breaking stride, the two women silently separated, Nerthus running to the left, Edda to the right. Both of them leaped and found purchase, Edda hauling herself up the uneven bricks that jutted out while Nerthus shimmied up a round weather-beaten iron chimney. They reached the rooftop almost simultaneously, sprinted to the opposite end and crouched down. Below them was Horace Logun’s warehouses. Nerthus felt her heart rate quicken slightly as the Trace bracelet she wore on her wrist began to vibrate with a life of its own. At last they were making progress.
Logun had three large single-story warehouses in a walled off corner of the area. It provided him easy access to the docks along the Ivy River, which ran along the western edge of the Commerce and Warehouse districts. Nerthus suspected the river access was key to his import/export trade, as well as any shady dealings he would partake in. It also meant that her and Edda had an emergency escape route if things went to pot.
The narrow ends of the warehouses all faced each other, the buildings forming a “Y” shape, with a small space between them that held a firepit and the entrances to each warehouse. The warehouses themselves, and the small plot of land they were built on, were surprisingly well-lit. Each corner of the warehouses had small chemical lanterns, casting strong, pale light around the walled in space. It made things depressingly easy for Nerthus to count the guards, who stood with startling discipline two at each warehouse’s entrance. She saw only the six men, but the way they stood nagged at her. She pulled out a tiny spyglass from a pouch, and Edda did the same without a word. Through the tiny glass, they saw that the men all stood parade ground straight. They weren’t even making small talk with each other, which was odd. Usually the guards who pulled overnight duty were the most lax in discipline. Nerthus also saw that Egveny’s assessment of the guards was correct. Only three of them wore the attire of the Bellkeep Town Guard, wearing their green tabard and chainmail combination. The other three had the look of typical hired muscle.
“No bell or any other way to raise an alarm,” Edda whispered, peering through her own glass. “Who knows how many are inside though.”
“Let’s hope we don't find out,” Nerthus whispered back, putting away her spyglass. “We’ll hit the warehouse closest to the river. If things don’t go well, that will be our escape route. If we need the others, we flash our Morning Sun and let the cavalry come in. This is definitely the place though.” She held up her wrist. “This thing has finally woken up.”
Edda grunted a quiet approval and launched herself forward off of the rooftop. Gone was Edda’s usual flair for flashy or impressive movements, Nerthus saw. Taking part in these clandestine missions gave her partner a focus on efficiency that few other things did. She watched as the forward momentum of Edda’s jump carried her to the top of the wall separating the warehouses from the rest of the city. Not stopping, she then sprung off of the wall, hitting the ground in a silent roll and coming to a crouching position. It was impressive, and Nerthus did her best to mimic it, landing right beside her.
The two women got to their feet and ran towards their target, staying out of eyesight and the pale alchemical light with ease. As they ran, they saw no side or back door into the warehouse, but a number of boarded up windows at random intervals along its side. They halted underneath one of the windows, and without missing a beat Edda leaped up onto her shoulders in a fluid, well-practiced moved. Nerthus struggled only slightly under the weight of her partne
r. Somehow the gods damn woman was light as a feather, she thought with a scowl. There was a series of soft hissing sounds, and then Edda dropped off of Nerthus’s shoulders, three small boards in her hands with acid burns along their edges.
“Something about this place feels off,” Edda whispered as she placed the boards on the ground. She then took Nerthus’s natural hand in hers and placed it up against the wall. At first, Nerthus didn’t feel anything peculiar, merely the rough texture of the brick and mortar wall through her glove. She was about to open her mouth to speak when she caught it. A chill began to make its way through her glove and into her hand. She looked at Edda, who nodded. “When I took the boards off, a gust of cold air hit me. Piking strange.”
“We’ll figure it out once we are in there,” Nerthus said, cupping her hands as a foothold again. Edda nodded and climbed back up Nerthus to the window and crawled her way through it. Nerthus was right behind her, leaping upwards and just catching her fingers on the window frame. She hauled herself up and through the window, dropping lightly to the floor beside Edda. The dirt floor. That was strange…
The two women had deposited themselves in a small, dark room. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust from the quasi-light from outside. Nerthus pulled out her tiny tracking light and removed its cover. Instead of a flame, the lantern held a bright chemical stone that shone with a dull orange light. The cylinder-shaped housing helped focused the light so it cast a circle of light where the bearer pointed it. Shining the light around the room, Nerthus saw nothing of import, save a door leading to the warehouse proper. By the time the two women made it to the door, the temperature around them had dropped to the point where their breath was visible in the lantern light. The sweat that had begun to accumulate across Nerthus’s skin as they ran through the city now turned to beads of cold, and she had to suppress a shiver. She stood to the side of the door and grasped the metal door handle with one hand, hiding the light of the lantern held in the other. Edda crouched on the opposite side of the door and drew her two long daggers. Softly, delicately, Nerthus turned the knob without a sound, feeling the gentle clinking of metal in her hand as the door pushed free of the latch and swung slowly into the next room.
Nerthus went still as stone for a moment, her ears attuned to the slightest sound. Nothing stirred beyond the door. She moved like a shadow through the open doorway, immediately hugging the wall to her right as she scanned the room. Nerthus’s eyes smarted momentarily from a bright blue light that came from the far side of the room. As her eyes adjusted, Nerthus turned to watch Edda follow her, taking the wall to the left as a hand went to her eyes to block the sudden influx of light. Eventually Nerthus realized the blue light was actually quite dim, allowing them to see only the shadowy outlines and silhouettes of the warehouse’s contents. The chill of the warehouse was now the stinging cold of a winter morning, and Nerthus felt goosebumps hopscotch across her body. The vibration of the Trace bracelet was now a heavy drumming on her wrist.
As Nerthus and Edda stalked along the walls of the warehouse, a growing sense of dread took hold of them both. Though she couldn’t explain why, the shapes that were partially illuminated by the pale blue light horrified Nerthus. There were dozens of them lined up in an orderly fashion, suspended from the ceiling by chains that sparkled with frost. Some were gently swinging back and forth in the frigid air, the soft, rhythmic creaking of swinging chains coupled with the quickening of pulses from the Trace bracelet added to the growing tension, almost panic, in Nerthus.
Ignoring for a moment the cold, Nerthus followed the pulses of her bracelet. She was close to someone. Close enough where just turning her body caused the bracelet to either intensify or dull its pace. The bracelet reached its peak as she stood in front of one of the black silhouettes. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Edda freeze in place next to another of the swinging shapes, one arm up next to the shape in a mirror image of herself. The only difference being Edda was facing the lit side of the shape. Even in the dim lighting, Nerthus could see the other woman’s eyes were wide with horror.
All at once, realization crashed down on her like an avalanche. The suspended shapes. The freezing cold. They were in a meat locker. Moving around the hanging shape to face its illuminated side, her worst fears were confirmed. In front of her, hanging by a harness and partially wrapped in familiar looking cloth, was Janice Helley, one of their missing agents. Just one of dozens of packaged bodies.
From the look on Janice's face, she looked to have been frozen while in the middle of a nightmare. Her skin was the faint blue of someone suffering from exposure, and Nerthus couldn’t tell if it was because of the cold, the blue light, or a combination of the two. Her legs and lower torso were crudely wrapped in cloth, with her upper body naked and blue. Extremely tiny needles, far thinner and longer than sewing needles were embedded in deliberate patterns along Janice's chest, glittering with a light sheen of frost in the pale light. Holding her mecharm to Janice’s neck, Nerthus could detect an extremely slow pulse. Searching Janice's body, to her relief, Nerthus also saw that the harness that held Janice was a simple affair, and was tight enough only to keep Janice from falling out. But before she did anything else, Nerthus was at a loss. Those needles in Janice's chest. Should she pull them out or leave them in? Just what the hells did they do?
Giving herself just a moment to make her decision, Nerthus left the needles in. If someone is stabbed, pulling out the knife can make things a whole lot worse much quicker. With agile fingers, Nerthus was able to loosen and rip the harness enough for Janice to fall out. Catching the unconscious woman and gently swinging her waist over one shoulder, Nerthus hurried back to the small room they had entered from. Behind her was Edda with a partially wrapped man slung over her shoulder in a similar condition.
“It's Tom Acorn alright,” she whispered after setting him next to Janice. “Don’t know what these piking needles do though.” She looked at Nerthus, fear in her eyes. “Inferno’s Flame Nert, what have we gotten ourselves into?”
“No piking clue,” Nerthus whispered, her voice trembling. “But we are getting out of here soon. We...we have to go back in there, see just what the hells they are doing in there.”
Edda nodded and the two of them ventured back into the freezer. They did not separate this time, moving among the hanging bodies as a team. But after a few horrifyingly long minutes, they could not find any clue as to what was happening to the victims in there. What they found instead was the source of the light and cold. In the center of the room, amidst the hanging bodies, was a glowing blue crystal. The ground surrounding the crystal was coated in a glistening sheen of hoarfrost, and the bodies hanging closest to the crystal were covered in rime. When the two of them tried to get close to it, the arctic chill emanating from the crystal became painful to the extreme, cutting them to the bone. They instead retreated back to the small room, closing the door behind them.
“We need to get these two out of here,” Edda said, rubbing her hands together.
Nerthus nodded. As she searched her pockets for the small tube containing her package of Morning Sun she felt her teeth chattering against her will. In the cold silence of the warehouse, just the sound of chattering teeth seemed loud. She found the tube and stood up. “Okay, I’ve got our backup plan ready if we need it. Let’s get them out of here.”
The process was easier said than done. Edda went out the window first, while Nerthus struggled to push Acorn through the window. Slowly lowering him down to Edda was agonizing, and Nerthus’s arms and shoulders screamed at her that they were too cold and tried to deal with this. Janice was easier to lower, but Nerthus still needed a minute to rest after climbing out of the window herself. Edda crept away while she caught her breath, and returned a short time later.
“The guards from the front of the warehouses still haven’t budged,” she said, her voice hushed.
“Good. Let’s get these two to the river. Carpey and Sailey should be there to take them off of our hands.”
Slinging the two unconscious people over their shoulders, Nerthus and Edda sprinted to the river, no longer caring if they passed through the light. Running along the wall, the two agents made it to the wooden dock set up for Logun’s enterprise. Here they set down their people, and Nerthus cursed herself for being sloppy. The large stone wall extended out into the river past the river bank. There wasn’t any room to walk around it while carrying Helley or Acorn. She had assumed the wall would end at the riverbank. Apparently Logun was more paranoid about security than she gave him credit for. They’d have to swim fifty feet into the Ivy River before they could pass the wall, against the current, and then another fifty feet back to the shore where Carpey and Sailey should be waiting. It wasn’t going to be pleasant. Nerthus was still inspecting the wall when a shrill howling cut through the night.
“Uhh, Nert?” Edda whispered. “ Looks like we didn’t get away unnoticed.”
Nerthus turned back towards the warehouses. She could see people moving around the grounds randomly, searching for something. Some of them had torches in their hands from the firepit, and were heading towards the docks.
“Pike me,” Edda whispered. “That’s a lot more than six piking guards.”
Nerthus felt her stomach drop. Edda was right. Just in the light from the warehouse lanterns, she could count over twenty people moving around. Ten or so people were also holding torches. She counted eight figures moving towards them. The figures moved slowly, casting the torches about here and there, so they hadn’t been discovered. Yet.
“We’re going into the water,” she hissed, picking up Janice.
While the docks were built up to accommodate the decks of larger ships, they did have a small staircase leading down to the water’s edge underneath. Nerthus and Edda hurried down these stairs and slowly waded into the river, pulling their unconscious cargo behind them. Nerthus cursed as the ground dropped out from under them after only a few steps in, and she struggled to swim while keeping Janice afloat behind her. Edda sputtered and cursed herself as she dealt with the much heavier Acorn. Over the sounds of their swimming they could hear the rough thumping of boots on wood as the search party reached the docks. The water around them suddenly lit up orange, and without looking back Nerthus knew they had been spotted. Another shrill howl split the air, and the sounds of heavy thumping grew louder as more guards joined the others. Yet there were no voices, no shouts of challenge or pursuit. Nerthus stole a glance behind her and saw at least a dozen figures, some holding torches, staring at them from the docks. Only some of them were the guards from before. The other silent figures were misshapen, shrouded in cloth and tattered coats. The horror spread when she realized they were the same types of monstrous men from the previous night.
Chasing Down Glory: The Outrider Legion: Book Two Page 21
