In the hands of this archer, there was no such concern. The bow remained steadfast and its aim true. Everything was perfectly still, the only sounds in the flue where he hid the subtle creaking of wood and his soft, measured breathing. His concentration was sublime. Where others' gaze would have long ago started to wander, their vision to blur and lose focus, his blue eyes remained focused and alert, waiting for the moment — the one, fleeting moment — that he knew would eventually come.
Man and weapon were the best there were.
It was why the bow was called Suresight.
And why the archer went by the name of Slowhand.
The moment arrived. A small flicker of shadows betrayed motion some twenty yards outside the flue, framed in the one inch square formed by four bars of the iron grille through which his arrow was aimed. Despite the imminent arrival of his target, Slowhand's breathing remained calm. All that changed was that he smiled.
Smiled because this was not the first time in the last few days he'd waited for the perfect shot, and depending on how things went it might not be the last. For the last thing Slowhand intended was to kill the man whose shadow approached — that would be far too easy. He did not want Querilous Fitch to die quite yet.
Oh, Querilous Fitch. Slowhand so much wanted the psychic manipulator to suffer. He wanted him to suffer in the same way the corpse-like bastard had made Jenna suffer, stripping from his sister everything that had made her who and what she was. It might have been Slowhand himself who had given the order to fire upon her airship, and consequently end her life in a flaming crash, but in truth it had been Fitch who'd ended it long before. Independence, spirit, freedom of wilclass="underline" Fitch had taken them all until Jenna was nothing more than a puppet of the Final Filth. Slowhand did not have the abilities that Fitch possessed, of course — to literally stick his filthy little fingers in unspeakable pies — but he had his own, and so far they were working just fine.
During the past days, wherever in Scholten or beyond Fitch had been, he had been also — unseen, undetected, undetained. And on each occasion he had sent Fitch a message to let him know he was there, an arrow despatched from whichever hiding place he had used which could almost, but not quite, have dropped him dead where he stood. By these means he had gradually robbed Fitch of the very same things the bastard had taken from Jenna, reducing him to his current state — a furtive, quivering hostage to mortality, unable to do anything or go anywhere without the presence of the living shield of bodyguards he had so desperately employed.
There the bodyguards were now, Fitch huddled in their midst. The passage along which he walked was one that rose from the cells and torture chambers beneath Scholten Cathedral to the central level of the Final Faith's sprawling underground complex. It was a route Fitch followed daily at roughly the same time, depending on how thoroughly he had attended to his 'guests.' The fact that he had not varied his routine was probably reflective of the fact that he considered himself safe in the bowels of the secret stronghold, but the time had come to prove him wrong.
Slowhand waited until Fitch was outlined in the dead centre of the one inch square and let his arrow fly. It cut perfectly through the grille, flew through the narrow gap between supply crates that blocked the flue from view and then embedded itself solidly into the wall next to Fitch's face. The psychic manipulator and his guards fell into immediate, blind panic; Fitch, clearly torn between gathering them more closely about him or sending them in search of the origin of the arrow, settled for half and half. Some guards pounded towards the flue, while others bundled Fitch away, swords raised defensively as they attempted to get their charge out of sight.
As the first batch of guards kicked open the flue and examined its interior, Slowhand was already gone, having slipped out and replaced the grille the moment he'd released the arrow. Now he circled the crates, keeping out of sight but, as the opportunities presented themselves, unleashing more arrows in Fitch's wake, until a line of them dotted the wall of the passage along which he fled.
Turning with a look of horror each time one hit, Fitch made the decision that might make these his final moments after all. He ordered his protectors to guard his flank.
No problem, as far as Slowhand was concerned — he simply clambered up onto a stack of crates, leapt for a support beam and passed over the guards' heads.
Fitch, he thought, you really should have invested full gold and bought in decent mercenaries from Allantia. The kind with brains, because you only get what you pay for.
It was just him and the psychic manipulator now. As Fitch fled into the warehouse and distribution area, Slowhand followed, passing the Faith workers there unopposed, creating confusion as they hurried through. Once or twice Fitch looked to his rear, trying to defend himself by unleashing fireballs, but, born of haste and panic, they ricocheted wildly off the walls.
Querilous Fitch reached the other side of the central area and entered one of the railway tunnels that fanned off it, dodging between the couplings of stationary wagons. The expansive network of tunnels that spread far across the peninsula — beneath both Vos and Pontaine — were thought to be the remains of dwarven mines which the Faith had extended into a transport network, and the cable-driven, funicular trains which rode their rails simply developments of the ore-collectors once used. It was what the Faith did — purloined technology and then adapted it for their own insidious purposes — but it gave Querilous Fitch no advantage here.
Just the opposite, in fact. In his panic, Fitch had clearly neglected to take into account what lay some distance into the tunnels — and Slowhand knew what lay there because he'd had to bypass one to enter the Cathedral.
Since last Slowhand had been here with Hooper, security had been upped dramatically on the surface, and without offing every guard between himself and Fitch he would have had the pits' own job of reaching him undetected. But, as was so often the way, when security was increased on one front, it was often left vulnerable on another. Instead of heading for Scholten Slowhand had made his way to a tiny and purposefully underwhelming Faith mission some leagues east. The Church of Divine Intervention was more than it seemed, the fact that it had never been open for worship a clue that it had another purpose more fitting to its title. The mission was but a hollow shell concealing an access shaft to one of the Faith tunnels that led from Scholten to Volonne.
The mission also had only one guard, and he was swiftly despatched with an iron-tipped arrow to the helmet that concussed rather than killed. After that it had been easy to gain entry to the shaft and drop onto the first train heading back west. The train had been carrying naphtha for the cathedral gibbets, and he had used some of the oil mixed with grime to apply facial camouflage before he reached the complex.
But before the complex, of course, had been the shields.
Fitch had forgotten about the shields.
Slowhand smiled. The tunnel along which the psychic manipulator now fled was not the one through which he had rode the train — appeared, in fact, to be long unused — but that didn't matter, for its defences would be the same. He allowed Fitch his rein, letting him increase the distance between them, exhaust himself as he fled into the darkness. Slowhand followed at his own pace, knowing he had all the time in the world.
Fitch now gasping and staggering had negotiated most of a broad bend in the tunnel, and the blue glow that he could see illuminating the walls seemed to him to be some kind of salvation, a heavenly exit, perhaps, which would end this dark pursuit. It was nothing of the kind, of course, and as Slowhand appeared along the tunnel behind him, the stark reality of what he faced hit home.