“You hear?” Krot said. “Is madman, you know? Fights hundred men, so they say, and he wins. Is king of Luskan by deed if not word, they say.”
Ansie, his wife of convenience and coin, stuck out her tongue at that. “Must be a bloody legend, Krot-now give us something to eat, dear? You be saving, no?”
“Isn’t nothing,” he said with a shrug. “The Dogtooths, they take the rest.”
“Not yet, we haven’t.”
The door to Krot’s shop pushed open, admitting three filthy men in jerkins of matted fur. Their leader-a many-times scarred man with a spiked collar around his neck-leered at Krot and Ansie. “You been holding out, Chultan,” the Dogtooth said. “You gives it here or we take what we like.”
Krot reached slowly for the war pick that hung on a hook, but one of the Dogtooths threw a knife that thunked into the wall an inch from his fingers.
“Ah-ah,” said the leader. “None of that now.”
A gloved hand appeared around the handle of the still trembling knife and wrenched it from the wall. A man in gray stood among them, naked steel in his hands. None had seen him coming and his sudden appearance evoked loud gasps.
“It’s him!” said Krot. “Shadowbane!”
Ansie gaped.
“Go back to your tavern,” he said to the Dogtooths. “You get one chance.”
The scarred leader of the Dogtooths stepped forward, eager to prove himself. He puffed out his chest. “Tluin you-”
The air rippled and a woman appeared in the chamber, her axe spinning. The haft slammed into the lead Dogtooth’s face. He flipped over in the air to land on the floor, clutching at his shattered jaw.
The other gang members drew back as the woman stepped toward them. Her eyes and skin were black as coal. Lines of darkness curled along her skin like veins. Her face bore no expression, but she stepped toward them hungrily, her ugly axe turning in her hands. She bent, curled and ready, like a poised snake.
“Sithe,” Shadowbane said. “Remember what I said of mercy.”
The woman hesitated. “Very well.” She straightened and drew back toward the wall.
“Return to your tavern with this message,” Shadowbane said. “Luskan is my city, but I plan give it to over to a king on the seventh day of Flamerule. Until then, violence will be met with violence, pain with pain, death with death.” He hurled the blade back at the leader of the gang. It sank into the floorboards next to his hand. “Understand?”
The Dogtooths did not need to be told again. They hurried out of Krot’s butcher shop without a glance backward.
The big butcher turned toward Shadowbane. “Eldath’s blessing upon-you? Saer?”
Shadowbane had bent over, supporting himself with a hand on the wall. His other hand grasped his chest. “Heh,” he said, blood in his teeth. “The big one at our last stop hit hard, eh?”
“You should have dodged,” Sithe said.
“No argument.” He spat blood on the floor. “You ready for what’s next?”
The dark woman stared at him as though he had asked a ridiculous question.
Krot looked at Ansie, then at the two visitors to his shop. “You-?”
“Stay inside,” Shadowbane said. “Rats will come with food. Wait.”
“Rats?” Krot blinked at him, perplexed.
“Wait,” Shadowbane said again.
They pushed out the door into the night, leaving Krot and Ansie staring blankly after them. “What did he mean, you think?” he asked. “He couldn’t mean-”
Within moments, the door opened again, admitting three weasel-faced men with the red sashes of Dead Rats. One of them twitched his nose, then stalked forward. “You be Krot, aye?”
“Aye,” the big man said.
“Compliments of Shadowbane.” The man gave him a glower, then plopped a sack on the counter. They left.
Tentatively, Krot opened the sack and gasped at its contents: half a loaf of bread, dried meat, and a hunk of cheese. The Dead Rats had given it, free of payment or favor. Ansie stared at the generous prize without comprehension. Krot started weeping.
“King of Luskan!” he said. “King of Luskan!”
2 FLAMERULE (NIGHT)
Shanyi had experienced worse days in Luskan. Though, as she lay huddled under a heap of blood-stained clothes in the wardrobe-one eye blackened, an arm broken, bleeding from a gash across her cheek, and hiding as best she could as people screamed all around her-none of those days came readily to mind.
Duulgrin’s consort certainly had it better than some of the Dustclaws. She trembled to think about the screams outside the wardrobe and … and the other sounds. She trembled also at the bellows that roared through the corridors and at the heavy clashes of a maul against the walls. Swish and crack-swish and crack.
Duulgrin was angry again.
The last tenday or so at the Dustclaws tavern had been worse than any in the previous year. Shanyi had come to Luskan like many others: not because she’d wanted to, but because she’d had no choice. Neverwinter held only vague, tentacled nightmares for her, and she could not go back there. Trying to get to Waterdeep had ended with her beaten and left for dead in a ditch by the road. Coming here had been just another instance of the same pattern in her life: find the nearest, biggest, scariest man she could, slip into his bed, and hang on for protection. With Duulgrin, she thought it had worked.
Until he went mad.
Ten days ago, he had beaten one of his own men to death with his face, and after that, it only got worse. Being a Dustclaw used to mean protection from the mad half-orc. Now, it meant lining up with his other victims. He’d started taking out his rage on the gang yestereve and she’d been hiding ever since she eluded his initial attack.
Shanyi heard a noise and it took all her considerable will and skill at mummery to compose herself. She closed her eyes, flinching away as the closet door swung open. Someone had found her, but she didn’t want to see death as it fell.
A leather-gloved hand closed over her mouth and she sprang nearly out of her skin. She flailed at the hand, trying her best to drive it away. She’d never learned to fight but, given the choice between death in battle and the one Duulgrin offered, her body apparently preferred to fight. At least there was some chance she could get away-
“Shh,” said a voice.
The man crouching before her wore black leathers and carried two long daggers sheathed at his belt. He wore a helm but it was open to reveal his weathered, handsome face. He had a thick badland of stubble, pale eyes, and a look of aching weariness.
She could not speak, only whimper, and she hated herself for that.
“There is no shame in fear,” he said, as though he heard her thoughts.
The door across Duulgrin’s chambers shattered open and a dark silhouette filled the smoky portal. The half-orc stood hulking and snarling in the doorway, his great spiked maul dripping blood at his side. He slammed it into the door jamb, sending cracks skittering up the wall of the already ruined room. The chamber was a battered, scorched realm over which the mad half-orc king held sway.
“Kur guhl kthra,” he said in words that came from no language Kalen could name. It might have been Dwarvish or Giant or just madness.
Shanyi’s savior rose, hands on his dagger hilts. “I am Shadowbane and Luskan is under my protection,” he said. “You will remain here, in your tavern, until the seventh day of Flamerule.”
Duulgrin stepped farther into the light, sending reflected radiance off the crystallized flesh growing on his ankle where a madman had bitten him. The infection has spread all across his flesh. His muscular body had become a morass of sores, lesions, and blisters, pocked with crystal growths.
“He has the Fury!” Shanyi said. “Run! Run while you-”
“Hragh!” Duulgrin lashed out and sent splinters of a table flying at Shadowbane.