It was not late, nearing seven thirty in the evening, and a single, flickering light could be seen coming from a steady flame in the hearth of the praying room at the top of the cathedral’s bell tower. The city never rested, but most workers were home from a day’s frenzied labor, preparing for the goblin invasion due in a week’s time. A few groups of students were quietly discussing classes and their futures on the lawn outside the dormitories of the Holy Orders.
All was quiet and peaceful.
Nobody saw the three darkly clothed figures climbing the exterior of the bell tower. The constant Twilight created recesses of shadow all along the edges and alcoves of the elaborate exterior decorations of the bell tower that a typical moonlit evening would never have allowed.
And the bodies moved in utter silence.
The interior of the high room was bare except for a single high-backed chair facing the flames with its back to the twin tall windows that looked out upon the city and harbor. The corners of the room were in deep darkness, and only a twenty-foot radius out from the low flames provided any light at all.
Gentle breathing came from the opposite side of the chair, suggesting that someone lightly dozed or was praying in quiet solitude.
The three shadows entered the windows. The first two entered from either side and landed upon the cobblestone floor like a gentle caress. The last entered through a window just as silently, but landed upon a single pebble that gave a scraping sound as it was ground between foot and floor.
The sound was barely noticeable, but the steady, silent breathing ended, and an elderly voice remarked from the opposite side of the large, winged chair, “I have been expecting you.”
The three acted together in a blurred, fierce motion. Each threw long daggers that hissed in the air and struck deep into the back of the chair. A second set of three daggers was sent flying before the first had even struck.
A soft, tearing sound of ripped layers of cloth was followed by six dull, metallic clangs when the daggers met some resistance on the other side of the chair.
The voice chuckled, but without malice. “Excellent marksmanship. But I sensed that only three of the four of you struck.”
The three shadows looked at each other and one replied in a rasping voice, trying to hide its true sound, “There are but three of us and you. You miscalculated, old man.”
“Not true. Your master is here in the corner to ensure the deed is done. Is that not true, Max?”
A fourth shadow, dressed much as the other three, emerged from where he had been silently waiting for over an hour. He had witnessed the young acolyte build and light the fire and the Bishop’s entrance when he seated himself unarmored, but placing a thick metal shield at his back as he settled, uncomfortably, into the chair.
“I feared the young ones would find you more trouble than they anticipated,” Max replied, nodding to the bishop as the elderly man smoothly stood up from where he had been seated.
Max held up his hand to forestall another round of venom-coated daggers from the three master assassins, who were startled and unnerved that the guildmaster of assassins had been hiding in their midst just feet from their entrance.
“We do not have long and will be unable to join you for a conversation, Bishop.” Max continued. “In fact, it is highly unusual that such a conversation occurs.”
The bishop chuckled again. “I daresay it is. And I appreciate the chance to share some thoughts with you. You know of my peculiar talent, I presume.”
Max looked at the three assassins and gave a single hand signal to them. They began to fan out around the room, offering each maximum distance among them and a clear line of sight to their target.
“I am aware of your gift, long since we first met during the time of the Great Necromancer,” Max replied.
“And I have long been aware of your vocation and deception around the daughter you had hidden.”
Max was himself surprised, an event that happened so rarely that he did not even recognize the emotion that rose in him immediately afterward until it settled on him heavily.
It was fear.
To cover, he said, “You know that you cannot possibly leave here alive.”
The bishop nodded. “If I cannot talk you out of this foolishness, I acknowledge that I will not leave here on my own volition, but neither will three of the four of you, either.”
“You lie.” One of the three said in a hiss.
“Not so. While you make a practice of deceit, I do not. It is a true sight. A possible future if I cannot appeal to your better judgment.”
The three masters chuckled, but in a far more sinister voice than the bishop’s gentleness. Their laughter was hard-edged and dripped with scorn and impending violence.
The bishop continued, realizing his time was short. “An infernal leads the goblin horde coming to our city. A hundred thousand goblins and more will fall upon our city with only one mission: to destroy every living creature, innocent or assassin. Surely you know that you cannot serve an infernal. While you have been a master of distraction and deceit for more than five decades, the infernal has done so for far more than five thousand decades. You cannot outwit this servant of evil or its fallen master. You must see this, Max. Work with us to save the city and the innocents within her.”
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Silence fell upon the room.
Max knew that his chosen assassins, having heard the words of the Bishop, could not be allowed to live. They did not understand the words, but he could not chance later understanding that might threaten him and the master plan. He also knew that the Bishop’s words would be true. But as long as he was the one out of the four who departed, the successful completion of the commission and the elimination of witnesses worked for him.
The bishop sighed, “I forgive you, Max, but there is a judgment greater than mine that you and yours must face, and if mercy is withheld here, it will be withheld there as well.”
Max never said a word; he just made another hand gesture, and all four leaped forward.
Outside the high room of the bell tower, no sound emerged, but a brilliant flash of light illuminated the entire bell tower for an instant. Eyes across the city looked to the cathedral, wondering what the flash might mean.
Raised voices among the students drew eyes toward them, and moments later, the briefest of shadows flickered unseen at the window, disappearing into the darkness of the night around it.
One of the students ran toward the cathedral, and another toward the faculty residences of the brothers in the dormitories.
But help would not arrive in time.
The Wharf was unusually empty and quiet this evening. A few dockworkers continued to load or unload cargo, but most were absent, resting before the big surge to load the ship with supplies, children, the elderly, and the infirm on the morning tides.
One exception was the small bundle of clothes wrapped in an old horse blanket that sat upon a stack of crates overlooking the most northwestern of the dock walkways.
The tiny Irregular, Ears, was thin and little, so the cool evening breeze cut through him more severely than it might a larger boy or man. But he sat still, shivering occasionally in the cold breeze off the harbor. His eyes were glued to the bay. The Twilight restricted evening sight, but the water accentuated sounds, which was one of his special talents.
He listened.
Sometimes he heard sounds that others missed. Sometimes, his listening skills allowed him to hear voices that others could not perceive. Tonight, he was listening to both, and what he heard caused him to stare hard and deeply into the dark of the bay.
Around seven thirty in the evening, a thick fog began to roll in. Several of the dockworkers commented on the oddity. Their experience of the bay and weather shifts suggested that this fog was unusual, and they began to shift away from their work and to huddle together near the city lamp posts.
Move away from the lights. Ears thought to them urgently. But the men remained where they were. The sound of creaking wood and oars in the water drew the men’s attention.
“Someone is trying to dock in this fog!” One shouted.
Another replied, “Add some more lights, they can’t see in this pea soup!”
A hissing sound drew the men’s eyes upward in time to see, but not to react, to the dozens of arrows that came out of the darkness and fog to strike them.
Not a single wharf worker stood a few seconds later.
Ears looked around. Nobody was left to raise the alarm.
The first of three ships broke the fog and steered into empty docks. Its deck was lined with glowing red eyes shifting in all directions, seeking targets for their waiting bows.
Ears knew that if he moved, he would be seen.
Taking a deep breath for courage, he stood and drew his slingshot, a poor response to the dozens of bows that swung in his direction at the first sign of his movement.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a slingstone. It was the one given to him specially by the Patron himself, who said it had been magicked for hardness and accuracy.
As he raised the slingshot and turned toward the glowing sphere behind him, fifteen yards away from the crates where he stood, he drew back on the elastic strap as he felt the first of three arrows strike him while others clattered around nearby. He knew as he started to fall that he would not rise again.
He pulled back a little farther to create maximum tension and let the magical stone fly loose.
As darkness closed in around his vision, he saw the stone strike, and a burst of sound and color exploded skyward.
He smiled, fell, and was still.
The meeting started promptly at seven o’clock in the evening. Red was usually a stickler for timing. Some of the other students teased him about it because he had a reputation for always coming late to classes. But when he was motivated about something, his detail skills, as evidenced by his over-the-top pranks at college, were legendary. And the twice-daily Patron strategy meetings of the Keelwell Special Services were a top priority.
“All present, Patron. The floor is yours.” Red said to Gwydion.
“Of course, the floor is his; he owns the shoppe,” Adric remarked, a favorite jibe of the young archer at Red. They had become fast friends over the past day or so.
The others moaned good-naturedly.
“Okay,” I began, “Let’s get our sixty-second updates.”
The team leaders had begun to compete with each other to see how much useful information they could share in as little time as possible. Nobody wanted a repeat of the long, painful first meeting, as everyone settled into their roles with lots of repetitive questions and very few actionable outcomes.
Fifteen summaries were given in as many minutes.
“Now let’s dive deep with some more details as submitted by a few of you for action. We can start with the jokester, again.” I turned to Adric, “What progress has been made in archery?”
“We have tripled our number of fletchers to thirty-three, thanks to alumni archers not conscripted into the Watch or marines. We have completed over nine hundred arrows, and forty-nine of them are exploding.” He held up his hand, “It fell short of the goal. We ran into issues. Today I expect to triple the total number of arrows, and with Aldreim and her team’s help in marking and engraving, we will easily surpass a hundred exploding arrows if we can get enough time with mages to enchant them.”
I looked at Aldreim, the lead for the engravers' team, based on her immaculate skills in calligraphy and teaching. “Do you concur?” I asked her.
“I do. Adric has an ample supply of fletching materials, we have tons of blanks for arrows, and I now have eleven engravers working in shifts on the runes, along with your and Lady Starla’s help. I am confident in each of them to make exact runes as required. I also have another twenty-two candidates to interview who have volunteered. We will use them all, but only the top talent will make the exploding rune engravings, so we have no accidents. We will soon ramp up to hundreds, and in a day or two, we should be able to produce these in the thousands.”
She nodded to Starla. “And with our Rune Lord present and the journeymen enchanters who also know the exploding rune spell, we should have the magical castings we need to make these happen. The bottleneck will move from crafters to casting points over the next twenty-four hours.”
I had deliberately made a small error in an engraved rune and set it off on a desk full of paper, glasses of water, and a couple of bags of flour to demonstrate just how dangerous a misstep could be for either the engraver or the archer. It left an incredible impression on everyone. It also cost me a third of my health points. It had been more damaging than even I had expected. Bella was able to create an illusion replay of the event for our new recruit training.
It had the desired effect.
“Perfect, Aldreim. I think you tied Adric in words.”
The others grinned. The brother-sister team worked amazingly well together, but there was some serious competition between them.
Adric stated out loud, “We have a new motto for the archers.”
“I hate to ask, but what is it?” I asked.
“Our probes are to die for!”
The room was silent.
“I think you need to work on that,” I said.
“Don’t you get it? It’s like Auntie Boo’s pies' slogan: Our pies are to die for! Boo. Boom! Get it?”
His sister said, “Did you come up with that during a late shift pie snack?”
“Well, maybe. You all have no sense of humor.” He pouted.
And that got a lot of laughs.
Auntie Boo did make some great pies. And along with the cookies from some of the Watch spouses, it filled in between meals very nicely.
The evening meeting was going really well, and I was happy. A lot had been happening, and it was nice to just have a few minutes of normalcy around here.
