The once elven city of Caervyn was much the same as Zoran Sable remembered it. He could not believe that forty years had passed since he had first walked down its busy streets and embraced the culture of its people – the grand architecture of the kind found only in the most beautiful elven cities made him feel as though he had never left. Memories of his many prosperous years in this city came flooding back and he found his feet taking him along his favorite avenues.
Caervyn stood on the border between the ancient elven nations of Gorran and Esgarth. Once, elves had lived right from the Boundary Ranges to the southernmost reaches of Gorran. They had been very powerful, courageous and prosperous, but centuries of pressure from an ever-growing human world had diminished their numbers and spirit. Elven civilization had receded to two main sanctums: Eoryil, a mountain fortress tucked away in the Argyl Ranges; and the Great Southern Forest, a thick, tangled maze of ancient tree dwellings and cottages, stretching for leagues beyond any road men ever walked. Elves no longer showed their faces freely to humans, and those who claimed to have seen them were often laughed away. The humans were coming to forget the age of the elves, and some doubted there were any elves left at all. In another one hundred years, most would doubt they had ever existed.
Zoran had seen his fair share of elves – too many – but never spoke about them. He had come to Caervyn to try to forget the events of the last year – the contempt he felt for the now deceased duke of El Smials and the attempt made by Mayor Challan to hire him to kill King Samian. Subsequent reports had assured him that the king was still alive, but the anger with which Challan had responded to Zoran’s refusal convinced him that he had not heard the last of the scheming politician.
He sat himself down at the bar of one of his former regular taverns and ordered a large firewater. The barman’s brow furrowed and he looked suspiciously at Zoran’s face. His hood was up but his mask was gathered around his neck, revealing his smooth chin and thin mouth. His kohled eyes looked up wryly and he managed a small smile. “I gather you still sell the stuff,” he added.
“Aye, but only to those who can pay,” the bartender said, still not moving to fetch a tankard and bottle.
“How much are you charging?” Zoran asked. “Three, four, five pfenns?” He chuckled and reached into his cloak pocket. “I can pay you whatever you charge. I’m also after a room, if you’ve got one to spare.” He held up his pouch of coins and shook it slightly, letting the man hear the chink of coins. The barman’s eyes glimmered and Zoran withdrew the pouch quickly.
“Fifteen for starters?” He withdrew three silver coins and stacked them on the bar before sliding them forward. “And I’m hungry. What’s your cook serving?”
An hour later, Zoran was finishing off a large piece of steak pie and draining his second mug of firewater. He stretched his long legs out in front of him and dropped his cutlery onto his plate with a clatter. He had already seen to his bags and was quite content to spend the rest of the evening watching and listening to the locals. Perhaps the reason for his ease was the fact that, this time, he had not arrived in Caervyn a fugitive. In the past, circumstances had occasionally forced him to move on to another city, the local authorities hot on his heels. He had left El Smials of his own accord, with no price on his head, as town criers had shouted from every street corner that one man from each family was required to sign up for the Imperial Army. Zoran had known then that work would quickly grow scarce and had departed.
“Yeah, by a whore apparently,” a man on one of the nearby tables said, chuckling. “Not a nice way to go!”
“Serves him right for never taking a second wife. You can argue all you like that having different women every night is a thrill, but when one sticks you with a knife, you’ll wish you’d had an old crone in your bed instead!”
Zoran half turned his head in the direction of the conversation a couple of tables away. Reports of crime always piqued his interest.
“I heard she got caught and all,” the first said. “Tried to fight her way free!”
“Well, Carter always liked the wild ones, so I’ve heard,” the second man said and laughed. “The rumors say he even sent across the sea for his women. Liked them dark.”
“Won’t be doing it now, that’s for certain!”
“Eh? When did this happen?” a third asked.
“Ain’t you been listening? It’s been news for weeks, but you know how long it takes for updates to get here from the trading offices.”
“So a whore killed General Carter, huh? That’s got to hurt.”
Zoran felt every one of his muscles beginning to tighten in anger.
Challan. The bastard. The scheming little bastard!
Having failed to find someone prepared to assassinate King Samian, he had hired a whore to bump off the Ayon General instead. The fool. He’d just given the Ayons the perfect excuse to begin their assault. Challan must have returned with haste to Te’Roek and immediately made preparations to ship his assassin north after Zoran had turned him down. There was nothing he could do – the Ayon general was long dead and the investigators would surely be doing their job.
I ought to turn the fool in. There should be a reward for any information. After all, my gold won’t last forever.
However, Zoran had no way of contacting the Ayon officials to give them the information they desired without traveling for weeks across Ronnesian territory. A letter would be intercepted and destroyed. And what would be the point, really? The two empires were already at war. Sooner or later, one would bow under the other’s power. It did not matter to him which one would stand above the other.
He walked to the door and strode out onto the street, pulling his mask up to his eyes. Forty years earlier, he had made a name for himself as the most gifted shadowman in the area. He wondered, as he slipped into the darkness of the familiar alleys and passageways, whether any still remembered him. Leaping up and grasping the windowsill of a dirty terrace house, he began to climb. Being above the streets, especially at night, gave him a heightened sense of the way society worked. Looking down on those who hid in the shadows, waiting for any unsuspecting wanderer of the night, he felt almost like a god. He could stop the criminals who lay in wait, but he chose not to. The assassin still remembered the old hideouts for the men he had once called colleagues and, as he spotted the high, slanting roof of the warehouse on the silhouetted skyline, he smiled. He crouched and prepared himself for the leap that would propel him through the air onto the neighboring rooftop.
His memory of the roofs proved almost perfect and he only slipped once, sending loose tiles clattering to the street below. His strong muscles kept his momentum going so that he was flying from rooftop to rooftop. His smile widened to a grin as he ran along the tiles of one building, using the slope to power his next jump. He grasped ledges with his hands and flipped his body over time and time again.
Finally, his feet landed on the weather-stained panels of the warehouse roof and he scrambled up to the hidden trapdoor. His fingers found the sides and slipped beneath them, lifting up a one-yard-square section of roof. Below was nothing but darkness and silence. If the warehouse was still used as a hideout, there should have been men in the room below playing cards and drinking.
He sniffed and caught the unmistakable scent of smoke from a freshly extinguished candle. There were men in the room below, waiting for him in the shadows, hoping to catch him off-guard. He dropped into the warehouse room and landed lightly as a cat. He could see nothing but his keen ears alerted him to the attackers as they surrounded him. Within seconds, he felt hands grasping at him and he lashed out with his fists, knocking two arms away with one swipe and catching a face with the next. Spinning around, he extended one powerful leg and knocked another man off his feet.
“Stop, all of you! Let our guest catch his breath!” a familiar voice bellowed from the shadows.
“I thought you’d have a little more control over your cubs than this, Master Hjorta,” Zoran said, rising to his feet and brushing himself down. “And light a candle so our old eyes can see one another.”
“S-Sable?” the voice asked, shocked. “Zoran Sable, is that you?”
There was a spark to his left as a piece of flint was struck and, within moments, a lantern was burning dimly. An aging man stepped into the sphere of dull light and examined Zoran with a look of disbelief. Zoran raised his hands to push back his hood and then lowered his face mask.
“Bless my soul, it is you! Damn it, Sable, you haven’t aged a day since I last saw you!”
“Yet I’ve felt each long and dreary hour, same as you,” Zoran said, and held out his hand for Hjorta to shake. Hjorta laughed and knocked the hand away. Grasping Zoran’s shoulders, the old man drew him into a brief but hearty embrace.
“Forty bloody years and not a word! You’d better have a damn fine explanation for leaving the way you did. We had to find seven men capable of your talents in a single night just to meet our requirements! I tell you, Sable, I sprouted my first grays that evening and have been going white ever since!”
Zoran chuckled. “I had a fair few reasons for leaving.”
“Your own lot?”
“Yes, Captain Lenn’s lackeys. I had attracted too much attention to myself. I had to move on after that encounter.”
Hjorta grunted in understanding, then motioned for the two of them to walk. “You left a great selection of weapons behind when you scarpered. I had them all cleaned and sharpened, awaiting your return, though I suppose, after all these years, they might be a little dusty.”
“I’m surprised you never sold them.”
“Many of my current associates were just boys when you left, but none of them have forgotten their champion. Not a month has passed without hearing someone speak of you. They would never let me sell any of your possessions, even if I wanted to, Sable. They’re yours whenever you ask for them.”
“Indeed? Fortunately, I’m getting sick of traveling from place to place, finding new snitches and discovering trustworthy suppliers. Just give me a city full of scheming rich bastards, Hjorta, and I’ll be set.”
“Funny you should say that,” the aging man said, patting him on the back. “See, I’ve got this whistleblower in the City Watch dungeons. None of my men want to risk their hides trying to get in to talk to the man, but you…”
“My bags are in a room at the Stallion Inn.”
“Bit of training for one of my little rustlers. He’ll fetch them for you.”
“Have you got firewater close at hand?” Zoran asked. “I can’t talk business without it.”
“Right this way, my old friend.”