This much strength was usually enough to topple a minor lord.
Today they were carrying a girl.
As expected, they’d succeeded. The heir of House Marcellis didn’t look like an heir anymore. She hung upside down over Jerris’ shoulder, wrists bound, eyes and mouth covered. Her green hair fell in a loose braid and brushed against his back with every step.
The powder from Ternoid had done its work. One breath over her tea and even a strong Sixth Ascension [Mage] like her had gone from reading on a balcony to slumping face?first into her cup.
It had been almost disappointingly easy.
They had watched the routine for three days. The maid who poured the tea. The way the Lady liked to drink it in that same corner of the inner hall every morning with no armor, no guards closer than the door. One quiet approach in the servant corridor, a smile, a lie about a “warming tonic” to help with long councils. The vial emptied into the pot. The maid none the wiser.
When the girl collapsed, Jerris had been waiting on the other side of the door. Cloth over her face to catch the spill, ropes already knotted. Two of Rauk’s men walked out with her between them while the others shouted for healers and played at being concerned guests.
By the time anyone realized she wasn’t lying on a bed upstairs, the Shadow Snatchers were outside the walls and fading into the flank of the valley.
Rauk had done uglier work for less gold.
The first letter, written in a neat hand on heavy paper, had come from the Count Velkor of Ternoid. Make an accident for Lady Ilyra Marcellis while riding, Master Rauk. Must have no witnesses, and no body on our land. Payment as agreed.
The red wax bore an iron boar. The second letter had used the same seal but a different hand. The script was quicker, the lines less steady.
My father wastes good opportunities, he’s growing old. Deliver the Lady alive if you can. There are lessons a future wife should learn before an unfortunate fall. If she fails to survive, his wish is granted all the same. Your fee will increase.
Old lord wanted a rival’s heir dead. Young lord wanted to enjoy her fear first, for they were engaged and even if the girl hated him, delaying the marriage until she was 25, he didn’t want to waste his long wait. House Marcellis would suffer either way.
Alive paid more than dead. That was all that mattered to Rauk.
He checked the bundle once with a glance. The ropes still sat in place. The gag hadn’t slipped and her chest rose and fell shallowly. She was a strong girl. Most nobles would have choked by now under that much powder.
In case she turned out to be too strong and woke up too soon, Jerris carried another cloth at his belt. They were well prepared.
“We’re halfway,” Rauk said over his shoulder. “Another hour and she’s in a wagon with iron boars on the doors. After that, anyone who wants her back needs more than a horn and a badge.”
They just had to reach the narrow ravine ahead after crossing this forest, that was where Velkor men waited with fresh horses and that warded box. Once the wheels crossed into Ternoid soil, Maricall’s riders would have to decide whether they wanted an international incident more than they wanted their girl. After all, they wouldn’t even have proof that it was Velkor who captured their daughter.
“Boss!”
The shout from the rear cut across his thoughts.
Rauk dropped down onto a lower shelf of rock and waited. The scout coming up toward him kept his breathing under control, which Rauk liked. His eyes were too bright, which he didn’t.
“Well?” Rauk asked.
“Someone’s got our trail,” the man said. “Two of them. They have been after us since near the outer ditch I think. I looped back twice. Lost sight for a bit, found them again. They aren’t farmers.”
“Then?” Rauk frowned.
“One’s a big white?haired bastard with an axe, massive muscles,” the scout answered. “The other’s a red?haired woman with a club and ink up her arms. They move like they like fighting.”
Rauk’s mouth thinned.
“Must be the Valtherians we saw in the mercenary guild,” he said. “Wonderful.”
During their three-day stay in Maricall, they’d noticed those two. It was difficult to miss them, after all. Rauk had heard the stories. Volcanic island barbarians with bones like iron and too much muscle on top. Good if you were the one paying them. Annoying if they were behind you.
“...Spread along the trees,” he ordered with a grin. “Three to my left, three to my right. Keep each other in sight. Stay in the green until they step off the road. We cut the woman’s legs first, then see how long the man can stand on his own.”
“And the girl?” Jerris called.
“You stay above with her,” Rauk said. “If this goes sideways, you run for the caravans waiting for us and don’t look back. The young lord can scream at me. He can’t cut my throat if I’m dead.”
His men slid away between trees and stone. Rauk settled into the shade of a twisted oak and let the world narrow to the sound of boots on gravel and the faint shimmer of power where the Mantle of a Valtherian might flare.
****
Every scrape and rustle stood out as I forced my senses to focus. I heard the creak of a wagon somewhere behind us on the main road, the wind dragging past scrub, and also under that, I heard soft feet landing on branches where no honest farmer would walk.
Levels granted a general boost in everything, including senses, but Valtherians received more in the physical department. That included sight and hearing. Ragna pushed herself up and reached for her club in the same motion. She came up on one knee with her eyes on the treeline.
“I see seven,” she said.
“I hear six,” I told her.
I poured more Mana into Dragon’s Eye, which slid into focus. Heat bled out of the shadows, turning bushes into people if you knew how to look. Six crouched along the branches in a wide arc.
One further back with a limp body over his shoulder, green braid hanging down.
We didn’t need to say anything else.
I grabbed my axe and jogged toward the trees. Ragna fell beside me with her club across her shoulders as if we were heading to another practice yard. The moment our boots left the packed dirt of the road, the people in the branches stopped pretending to be birds.
They dropped.
Cloaks blurred as they slid down from ledges and trunks. They landed light and sure, spreading out just far enough that none of them blocked another’s line.
Dragon’s Eye gave me the numbers as they moved.
[6th Ascension]
Every single one.
The leader came forward with lazy confidence. Under the hood, I noticed a narrow face that would disappear in any crowd. No weapons in his hands, which meant he had too many hidden everywhere else.
“Why did you come down? Ugh. Keep her behind cover and breathing, Jerris” he told his man without looking back. “The man I’m answering to paid for her alive. Try not to get clever.”
The subordinate nodded quickly and walked behind a slab of rock with the green-haired girl, who must be Ilyra, in his arms. Her braid dragged a dark line over the stone. Her chest still lifted and fell, slow and small.
The leader’s attention settled on us again.
His gaze measured my height, Ragna’s shoulders, and the way we both stood on our feet as if the ground belonged to us. “Well,” he said. “You two really are Valtherians. I was wondering who in this soft little valley thought they could keep up with us. Why are you following us?”
A fight against them will be troublesome, I realized after noticing how strong all of them were. I wouldn’t back off, but before the fight begins, I should fish for some information.
No sane assassin would leak any information just because asked, but this one was weird. He could have kept running but he chose to drop and face us instead. I had to act stupid with him and he’d speak.
I let my posture soften. Dropped my shoulders a little and took a slow breath as if I needed more air than I did. When I spoke, I flattened the words and clipped the grammar.
“We see you steal green?hair girl,” I said. “Girl from big stone house. Big stone man will pay good if we bring her back. You in the way.”
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Ragna tilted her head, playing along. “He’s not wrong,” she said. “You picked the worst person in this valley to kidnap if you wanted peace and quiet.”
A small smile tugged at the assassin’s mouth.
“You’re a long way from your volcanoes, barbarians,” he said. “Here, men in towers decide who lives and dies. A lord with an iron boar on his banners wants this girl. He paid well. You don’t even know whose boots you’re standing under.”
“Iron boar?” I frowned as if trying hard to picture it. “Ugly pig?man with good coin. Still just a man. He wants girl. Stone?house man wants girl. We pick the one closer to us.”
One of his men snorted under his mask. The leader’s amusement sharpened.
“Simpletons,” he said, bursting out laughing. “In your case, that’s an advantage. Here’s a simpler version. The old lord pig wants the Lady to suffer a tragic fall. Young heir thinks a few days in his bed will make the lesson stick before she takes it. We’re the ones carrying her there.”
Acting stupid paid off. I was happy with the information. I just had to go back to the city and find out which house had an iron boar in their banner. There was no need to talk to them more.
Ragna’s fingers clenched around her club at the bed line. She had never been good at keeping anger off her face. In this case, she didn’t have to. “So you’re just the delivery boys,” she said. “Men who drag women to pigs and pretend it’s just work.”
“Men who get paid,” he corrected. “What happens after she’s in a wagon is not my concern. And hey, he might appreciate a big bitch like you too. Interested?”
That was as much as he was going to give. It was already more than I’d expected. Stupid barbarians were good at making people talk. I let my eyes lose focus and rolled my neck as if I hadn’t followed half of that.
“You fools really need to learn how not to talk too much,” I said. “We don’t care about some pig bastard and his bed. We care about gold gins and bringing the girl back. Give her to us.”
His smile went away. He looked confused for a bit at my clear speech, and then scowled in annoyance. He’d been had. “You should have kept walking,” he grumbled. “Last offer. Leave now, and I don’t have to throw your bodies into a ditch before I cross the border.”
That was a lie. The moment we showed our backs, they’d kill us.
“Ragna,” I said quietly.
“Mhm?” She didn’t take her eyes off him.
“Try not to kill all of them before I get a turn.”
The leader raised his hand. “Kill them,” he told his men.
I moved while his fingers were still lifting. Elemental Fury rushed down my arms. Heat and static bloomed under my skin. Three long strides swallowed the space between us. The assassins around us blurred outwards, but he was still the closest shape.
He slid sideways in a sudden burst of speed. I dragged my swing after him, following the weight of his presence rather than the smear of his cloak.
Steel met flesh.
He twisted enough to keep his throat. The axe bit into his shoulder instead, deep and ugly. Blood splashed over my arm. He staggered back a step with his good hand clamping down on the wound.
He didn’t look invincible with red all over him. “You arrogant bastard,” he hissed. “You think you can stand toe?to?toe with Shadow Snatchers?!”
“That’s a stupid name,” I said.
He bared his teeth. “Put him down,” he snapped.
His men vanished from any straightforward angle.
They didn’t disappear completely, no, my Dragon’s Eye stopped them from doing that. But they still slipped to the edge of my vision, into the places where shadows and roots met. One heartbeat they were in front of us, and the next they were movement at my left ankle, my right shoulder, behind my knee.
Blades rasped against the air.
Steel kissed my ribs, light and quick. Another line burned along my thigh. They were testing reach and response now, looking for where to dig in. I needed the ground to hate them as much as I did.
“Ragna,” I called for her.
“I know,” she answered.
I let the Mantle rise.
Power burst out of me like someone had pulled a cork from a press. Crimson flared up my back and arched over me in a shape that was more cloak than wings, like a red storm. The air pressed down and the grass flattened. Even Ilyra’s braid stirred in the wash of it.
The assassins felt it.
Their next steps dragged as if they had picked up ankle weights. Not by much though but half a blink. Half a muscle twitch. Enough to turn perfect timing into almost.
Valtherian blood hammered in my chest in answer to my own aura. “It’s already game over, you know?” I told them. “Even if you somehow kill us, that red light has already given your position away. Even if you run right away, we’ll chase you, and you’ll also be carrying a noble heir across somebody else’s fields with half the county in the saddle behind you.”
The leader’s eyes flicked up at the Mantle and then back to me.
“Then we run faster,” he said. “After we break you. Jerris, drop the girl, let’s take care of these two fools fast.”
Jerris did as asked, putting the girl on the ground. He and his boss vanished like the rest. They came in from seven angles. One went low for my legs on the right, blade scything in. I jumped, letting steel slice the air under my boots, and tried to bring the axe down onto the blur.
He was already gone.
Another appeared behind my shoulder, reaching for the gap at the base of my skull. I ducked and drove my elbow back. Something hard and wrapped in leather met it with a dull crack. He choked and slipped out of sight.
They were faster than anything I’d fought. This wasn’t good. Strength I could match, but speed? Dammit, I must be careful. Last time I’d faced someone super fast was the minion of Vorlag the Juggernaut, and after killing him I managed to snatch his skill. Maybe if I do that this time too…
Blades kept drawing lines on me. Arm, side, and thigh. None deep yet, but scars had a way of adding up badly.
The Mantle pushed at their nerves and bones, but Sixth Ascensions knew how to fight under pressure. They adjusted on the fly.
I watched their feet. One of them had a pattern. Three light steps and a heavier fourth as he pushed off into a burst of speed that bent light around his legs. He used it twice from my right, then tried it from my left.
On the next pass I stepped toward him instead of away.
The axe went high to draw his guard, then dropped at that heavier step. Steel met bone. His lower leg left his body and spun away into the grass. He screamed and went tumbling.
I followed him down before he could blink out, and the axe came down with both hands and all my weight. His chest and the stone under him cracked together.
The System chimed.
[You have slain an Assassin – Level 79.]
[You’ve leveled up!]
[You’ve reached Level 58!]
[You’ve activated Osmotic Evolution (X)!]
I didn’t wait and activated the skill. The world washed to grey.
Everything stopped where it was. Ragna’s club hung half a finger’s width from another assassin’s ribs. A blade near my hip froze in the air. Even the dust hung.
Text floated over the corpse at my boots.
[Assassin, Level 79]
[Which Trait do you want to borrow?]
- Shadow Step [A],
- Veiled Reflexes [B],
- Bleeding Edge [B],
- Night Cloak [C]
There it is. I was always grateful for this skill, it was such a lifesaver. The choice was simple since I didn’t need more ways to hide. I needed to be where these bastards were the moment they decided to be there.
I chose Shadow Step.
[Selected Trait: Shadow Step.]
[Osmotic Evolution (A) - Shadow Step.]
[Loading the Trait into your physiology…]
Something sharp tugged at my tendons, then settled. I became uncomfortably aware of where my own shadow lay under me.
The world snapped back.
One of the assassins flickered in at my flank, dagger already cutting down at my neck. Old habit would have turned and hoped to be fast enough.
I stepped sideways into darker ground.
My shadow stretched and swallowed my foot and then I was inside it, gone from where my body had been and stepping out a pace to the left. The blade cut nothing but air.
The man’s eyes widened. I came up under his ribs with the axe and turned the swing into a rising cut. Lightning curled along the metal as Aura and Elemental Fury bit with it.
He folded around the steel and fell.
[You have slain an Assassin – Level 84.]
[You have gained experience points.]
Ragna was making her own mess on the other side of the little clearing. She had two on her, and as a 4th Ascension she was having trouble. Both tried to circle and nip, counting on speed. She called up a skin of scales without thinking, a patch of Draconic Aspect over her arms and jaw. It helped her defence a lot. One assassin darted in too close for a quick cut and met her club instead.
She hit him square in the chest. He left the ground, hit a tree sideways, and I jumped to steal the skill before he could get up. My axe severed his head clean and he stopped moving.
[You have slain an Assassin – Level 76.]
[You have gained experience points.]
“Hey, that was mine!”
The leader tried to intervene, but I was too fast. So he could only watch me kill his subordinate with his fingers digging into his bleeding shoulder.
His gaze kept counting. “I’ll kill you, bastard–!”
His words were interrupted by a horn that sounded from the direction of Maricall’s walls. One long note, then another, closer.
So someone had finally bothered to look at the sky, at the crimson mantle. People got curious, and given the count’s daughter who’d gone missing, such curiosity was enough to call forth the knight order.
“Not good,” the assassin snarled. His head snapped toward Jerris, who was fighting Ragna. “We’re done here. Fall back! Get her out of here. We’ll cover–”
Ragna stepped between Jerris and the slope without giving him time to finish. Her club slammed into the ground in front of the man with a thud that shook dirt up into his face. He jerked back, barely moving to pick up Ilyra.
“You move a step with her and I break your legs off,” she said. “You’ll still be alive for your master’s temper. Just not useful.”
The remaining assassins tried one more rush. One opened a hot line across my forearm before Shadow Step took me behind him and my boot planted his face into a rock. He vanished in a puff of thin smoke before I could pin him.
The leader pulled a small pouch from his belt and flung a handful of beads at the ground. They cracked open in sharp pops, spewing out thick, stinging smoke. My eyes burned. My lungs hated me.
Even with the Mantle shredding at the cloud, I lost sight of him.
Hoofbeats crashed toward us through the haze.
By the time the smoke thinned, the survivors were gone. No figures on the forest. Only the dead on the grass, and Ilyra lying pale and still. Ragna had managed to stop Jerris from taking her away.
The knights chose that moment to arrive.
They burst into the clearing in a rush of green and white tabards, their horses slipping a little in the churned earth. Spears and swords pointed outward, then snapped inward when they saw us.
Two barbarians in the middle of the mess. My axe still wet. Faint traces of red Mantle still fading from the air. Lady Ilyra Marcellis on the ground between us.
Every weapon swung our way as if pulled on a string.
“Drop your weapons and step away from the Lady!” the front knight shouted. His voice carried more fear than authority.
“Relax, knights, we’re friends,” I lifted my hands away from the axe and let the Mantle go completely. The pressure eased. My cuts ached in the sudden lightness.
“Put your hands down, Thorvyn,” Ragna said in annoyance, resting the bloody club on her shoulder. “These stupid knights got some nerve,” she glared at them. “You not only show up late to your own Lady’s kidnapping, but then point steel at the two people who stopped her from getting dragged over the border! Impressive work.”
That earned us a few curses and at least one spearhead edging closer to her chest. The lead knight nudged his horse a step nearer. He lifted his visor so we could see his eyes.
“You’ll explain this,” he said. “Immidiately. Before I decide if you’re rescuers or the last of the trash that took her.”
“You’re going to do no such thing, Sir Julius!” A new voice said, as a shorter, more elite knight group entered. It was Elayne. “That’s Thorvyn and Ragna Valteria, treat them as guests.”
Well, it seemed the situation wouldn’t get any more fun. Oh well.
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