The Dark Elf kicked harder, but the finned Sharlak glided easily through the water and closed the distance. He had twenty feet to go, but they were within ten. He kicked so hard he thrashed. He made it another bare six feet before he was surrounded.
The Sharlak swiped at him with outstretched claws. He turned around and studied their movements. He spun and rolled just barely evading their swings. He pulled out his knife and stabbed a Sharlak between the ribs. He yanked his dagger out and blood mushroomed from the shark-man’s side completely obliterating his trail.
The other Sharlak turned on their kin and began tearing it to pieces.
Shade paddled warily away. He reached the ladder. He pulled himself up and slipped out of the water no more than a shadow lost in the darkness.
Shade stole silently down the walkway. He knelt and squeezed blood out of the wound on his shoulder. He allowed the blood to trickle to the floor and form a small pool. He stopped just before he grew lightheaded. He took a moment to retrieve a small tin medical kit he kept in his belt-pouch. He treated the wound with gauze and a strong douse of alcohol to hide his blood scent. The wound burned with pain.
The assassin tightly wrapped the wound. He glanced back at the ladder. The three Sharlak had emerged from the sewer water and walked around sniffing the air. The assassin knew he could slay them easily with three quick dagger throws, but he would not risk giving away his position to Lewd’s Hand again. Instead, he left the pool of blood behind him.
He sprinted down the corridor and took a running leap over the canal. He landed noiselessly on the opposite walkway back at the four-way intersection. There, he spun around and knelt silently under a small crumbled nook in the wall. He waited; concealed in his Shadow Magic, from here he could maximize his vantage points. He glanced down the right corridor then checked the left, then swept back to the south corridor where he had left the Sharlak.
The shark-men had found the pool of his blood. They knelt, sampling the Dark Elf’s blood, but appeared by their confusion to be having a difficult time locating him. ‘Good,’ he thought, ‘that will hold them for now. With any luck my quarry will play into my hands.’ He unsheathed his most finely honed weapon yet—patience. Time passed with nothing, but the sound of rushing waters and the strange gurgled chattering of Sharlak.
Shade watched the shark-men methodically search the walkways for any sign of their lost prey. He watched as they scoured one end of the sewers to the other. He saw them sniffing, babbling and then bickering amongst themselves.
Hours passed with still no sign of the Hand. Shade grinned. He admired his new foe. Perhaps, at long last he had found a worthy rival. Another hour passed and yet still the Drakoran assassin betrayed nothing. Shade had challenged him and Lewd’s Hand had gladly accepted…a duel of patience…to the death.
Shade guessed it was about early evening when the Sharlak lingered some forty paces away on the same walkway where he currently hid. The shark-men leapt and swiped at the ceiling, their gurgled ranting grew increasingly erratic and nearly slurred into words. The Dark Elf waited, watching, poised and prepared. The tallest Sharlak burbled an order at the others. The pair split off in opposite directions.
Shade’s hands tightened around his daggers as one sea creature scampered past him. The Sharlak disappeared around the corner and came back a minute later carrying an old wooden crate. The other Sharlak had already fetched two crates to their companion’s one.
The Dark Elf watched as the Sharlak stacked the crates and began climbing up towards what appeared to be a six-foot wide hole cut in the ceiling—a duct of some kind. Shade’s jaw dropped. How had he missed it?
Suddenly, a large winged figure dropped from another duct, between Shade and the Sharlak, not twenty paces away. It was the Hand and he left his back exposed. The Dark Elf rushed out of hiding just as the Drakor slashed the first Sharlak across the back. The other two shark-men spun around. The Hand ran one through the heart and he snapped the other’s neck with a lash and a twist of his half-severed whip.
Shade plunged his dagger into the Hand’s back and drove it straight into his spleen. The Drakor fell backwards into the Dark Elf’s arms.
Shade wrapped his left arm around the Hand’s neck and braced himself to hold his victim’s weight. He brought his right dagger up to the Drakor’s cheek and whispered, “I had hoped you would be the first to escape my blades.” Shade dragged the blade lightly across the Hand’s cheek. “It appears I thought too much of you,” he hissed in disgust. Shade plunged the dagger into his foe’s heart. He smirked evilly, “Go tell the gods who sent you to your grave.”
Chapter Thirteen:
Pledge of
the Moons
Shade strode briskly down the empty corridors of the Old Mino Quadrant to the neutral meeting place he and Lewd’s messengers had discussed. He was escorted by Yessheeran who carried a torch and led him down the faintly lit passageways. Old candles burned down to nearly the wick and set in bronze sconces provided scant candlelight. The Dark Elf watched in growing disgust as the Syssrah’s scaled tail slithered over the grimy, weathered brick passageways. The air reeked of raw sewage and betrayal.
The assassin had followed the ducts discovered by the Sharlak and found them to be part of a complex network of emission channels that ran under the entire city of Kurn. The passages were small and he had to crawl on his belly through most of them, but he had indeed found a way into the warlord’s palace. He had left the Drakor’s head lying on Lewd’s throne with a note that read: Lewd’s hand. Next time it will be his head. Shade grinned in dark amusement. It appeared the warlord had got the message.
Warlord Lewd had summoned him under the Pledge of the Moons. The pledge was a custom of Shade’s people. When two warring Faelin wanted to meet and talk under a banner of truce, one would offer the other a black cloth sewn with the motif of the three moons. The three moons stood for a sign of unity among the Faelin and was the binding symbol of the pledge. Upon acceptance, the enemies met unarmed under a moonlit vigil. If either Faelin broke the sacred pledge and attacked his foe, he was eternally damned to burn in the flames of the sun under judgment of the moon gods.
Shade conveniently left out in his reply that he wasn’t a practicing Faelin. He decided to show up on Lewd’s terms on a matter of principle. The pledge was also a sign of respect, the sender saying to the recipient he had found a worthy enemy. Shade’s profession rarely afforded him the opportunity to meet a mark face to face. He had grown far too used to not seeing their faces until those last few telling moments, when he watched in cold indifference as their life slipped away.
He suspected the pledge might be a trap. After all, Lewd was no Faelin and had no fear of the moons. What bound him to honor the terms of the agreement? But then again Lewd wasn’t aware that Shade wasn’t a practicing Faelin either, a gravely overlooked detail that could cost the warlord his life. Shade almost wished for a trap. Life was growing dull these days. He had not found the challenge he had hoped for. Only Lewd’s Hand had pushed his abilities and with that hope dead, the chance of a trial by fire was fast slipping through his fingers.
Yessheeran led Shade into a large deserted storeroom. Overturned and smashed rotting wood crates lay on their sides long since stripped of their contents. Rats squeaked and scampered out of the way as the pair made their way to the center of the room. A pointy-eared figure sat alone at an Ebonwood table under a shaft of moonlight pouring in through a small rusted grate in the ceiling. Shade could hear the bustle of the city streets above.