The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER THREE

Shadows on the Dwarf Roads

Murder was always better conducted under moonlight. This night the moon was shaped like a sickle, curved and sharp like Sevekai’s blade as he pulled it silently from the baldric around his waist. Unlike the moon, its silver gleam was dulled by magwort and edged with a verdant sheen of mandrake.

Fatal poisons, at least those that killed instantly, were a misuse of the assassin’s art in Sevekai’s opinion. Debilitate, agonise, petrify; these were his preferred tortures. Slaying a victim with such disregard was profligate, not when death inflicted upon others was something to be savoured.

Crouched with his shadowy companions behind a cluster of fallen rocks that had sheared from the looming mountainside, Sevekai considered something else which the moon was good for.

Stalking prey…

It was a bulky cart, high-sided and with a stout wooden roof to protect whatever was being ferried. Two stocky ponies pulled the wagon, its wheels broad and metal-banded to withstand the worst the dwarf roads had to offer.

In truth, the roads were well made. An army could march across them and have no blisters, no sprains or injuries to speak of at the end of many miles. Dwarfs were builders, they made things to last.

Some things though, Sevekai knew, would not endure.

As the trundling wagon closed, four guards came into view. Like the driver, they were dwarfs with copper-banded beards and silver rings on their fingers. Fastened to a hook next to the driver hung a shuttered lantern that spilled just enough light to illuminate the road ahead. The dwarf had kept it low so as not to attract predators. Unfortunately, no manner of precaution could have prevented this particular predator crossing his path.

Sevekai took the driver for a merchant — his rings were gold and his armour ornamental. It consisted of little more than a breastplate and vambraces. Each of the guards wore helmets, one with a faceplate slid shut. This was the leader.

He would die first.

Heavy plate clad their bodies, with rounded pauldrons and a mail skirt to protect the thighs and knees. No gorget or coif. Sevekai assumed they’d removed them earlier in the journey. Perhaps it was the heat of the day, a desire for cool air on their necks instead of stinging sweat. So close to home, they had thought it a minor act of laxity.

Sevekai smiled, a cold and hollow thing, and silently told his warriors, Aim for the neck.

The hand gesture was swift, and heeded by all.

Most of the dwarfs carried axes. One, the leader, had a hammer that gave off a faint aura of enchantment. Sevekai was not a sorcerer, but he had some small affinity with magic. Some had remarked, his enemies in fact, that he was lucky. Not just average good fortune, but phenomenal, odds-defying luck. It had kept him alive, steered him from danger and heightened his senses. For a murderer, a hired blade whose trade was killing other people, it was an extremely useful trait to possess.

Other than the hand weapons, a crossbow with a satchel full of stubby quarrels sat within the merchant’s easy reach. It was leant against the wooden back of the driver’s seat with the lethal end pointing up. That was another error, and would increase the merchant’s reaction time by precious seconds once the ambush was sprung.

Six dwarfs, three of them.

The odds were stacked high against the stunted little pigs.

Cloud crawling overhead like ink in dirty water obscured the moon and for a few seconds the road turned black as tar.

Sevekai rose, as silent as a whisper in a gale, his shrouded body dark against darkness. The sickle blade spun, fast and grey like a bat arrowing through fog, and lodged in the guard leader’s eye-slit as the wagon hit a rock and jumped.

With a low grunt, the dead dwarf lost his grip on the side rail and pitched off the wagon. To the other guards, in what few breaths remained to them, it would have looked as if their fellow had fallen off.

‘Ho!’ Sevekai heard the merchant call, oblivious to the fact there was a black-clad killer arisen in his midst and but a few feet away. Hauling on the reins, the dwarf drew the wagon to a halt with a snort of protest from the mules.

That was another mistake.

In the time it took for the merchant to turn and ask one of the other guards what had happened, one of Sevekai’s warriors had crossed the road. Like a funeral veil rippling beneath the wind, the warrior crept along the opposite side of the wagon and rammed his dagger up to the hilt in a guard’s neck. Sevekai couldn’t see the kill, his view was obstructed by the bulky wagon, but he knew how it would have played out.

Kaitar was a late addition to his band, but a deadly one.

Two guards remained. One had dismounted to see to his leader; the other looked straight through Sevekai as he searched for signs of ambush.

You have missed… all of them, swine.

Sevekai drew back his hood for this dwarf, let him see the red and bloody murder flaring brightly in his dagger-slit eyes.

The dwarf gasped, swore in his native tongue and drew his axe. One-handed because of the rail, he should have gone for his shield. It would have extended his life expectancy by three more seconds. That was the time it would have taken Sevekai to close the gap, draw his falchion and dispatch the dwarf with a low thrust to his heart.

Instead he threw his second blade, already clutched in a claw-like grip.

Bubbling froth erupted from the dwarf’s gullet, staining his lips and beard a satisfying incarnadine red. He gurgled, dropped his axe and fell face first into the dirt.

The colour spewing from the dwarf’s neck reminded Sevekai of a particularly fine wine he had once drunk in a lordling’s manse in Clar Karond. Generous of the noble to share such a vintage, but then he was in no position to object given that his innards had become his out-ards. Hard to take umbrage when you’re fighting to keep your entrails from spilling all over the floor.

The last guard fell to a quarrel in the neck. It sank into the dwarf’s leathery flesh and fed a cocktail of nerve-shredding poison into his heart. Death was instantaneous but then Verigoth was an efficient if predictable killer.

That left the merchant who, in the brief seconds that had been afforded to him, had indeed reached and gripped the crossbow in his meaty fist.

Sevekai was upon him before the dwarf had drawn back the string.

‘Should’ve kept it loaded,’ he told the snarling pig in a barbed language the dwarf wouldn’t understand. The message Sevekai conveyed through his eyes and posture was easy to translate, however.

You shall suffer.

He cut the dwarf beneath the armpit, a slender and insignificant wound to the naked eye.

After a few brief seconds during which the merchant’s grubby little hands had constricted into useless claws and a veritable train of earthy expletives had spat from his mouth, the dwarf began to convulse.

Sudden paralysis in his legs ruined the dwarf’s balance and he collapsed. Eyes bulging, veins thick like ropes in his cheeks and forehead, the dwarf gaped to shout.

Sevekai leapt on the dwarf like a cat pounces upon a stricken mouse it has nearly tired of playing with. Before a single syllable could escape the lips, he cut off the beard and shoved it down the dwarf’s throat. Then he stepped back to watch.

The dwarf bleated, of course he did, but they were small and pitiful sounds that would scarcely rouse a nearby elk, let alone bring aid of any value or concern. From somewhere in the low forest a raven shrieked, emulating a death scream the dwarf could not make.

‘Even for a race like ours, you are cruel, Sevekai.’

‘It’s not cruelty, Kaitar,’ Sevekai replied without averting his gaze from the convulsing dwarf merchant. ‘It’s simply death and the art of crafting it.’

Teeth clenched, upper body locked in rigor, choking on his own beard, the dwarf’s organs would be liquefying about now. With a final shudder, a lurch of defiant limbs still protesting the inevitable, the dwarf slumped still.

Sevekai knew he had no soul, save for something cold and rimed with frost that inhabited his chest, and he regarded the dwarf pitilessly. Despite the artistic flourishes, this was simply a task he had been charged to perform. The theatrics were for the benefit of the others to remind them of his prowess as an artful killer.

Satisfied with the deed, he addressed the night: ‘Leave no sign,’ and the two assassins on the road stepped back as a slew of arrows thudded into the dwarf corpses.

Pine-shafted, flights woven from swan feather, the arrows were not typical of Naggaroth. Not at all.

When it was done, four more warriors dressed in similar black attire stepped into view.

Sevekai was stooping to retrieve his sickle blades, replacing them with elven arrow shafts, when Kaitar asked, ‘And this will fool the dwarfs?’

‘Of course, they won’t bother to look for subterfuge. They want a fight, Kaitar,’ Sevekai explained.

‘What of the poisons?’

‘Gone before the bodies are found.’ Sevekai looked up as he punched the last arrow through the dwarf leader’s eye. ‘If you hear hooves, what do you think of?’

‘Horses,’ said the deep-voiced Verigoth, a smirk on his grey lips. Like the others, he’d descended from the ridge to appreciate the carnage.

Sevekai smiled, colder than a winter storm. ‘And when you think of arrows?’

Now it was Kaitar’s turn to smile. ‘Asur.’