The Assassin King

Elias had always prided himself on his courage. It was the trick he used to keep himself brave. But his stock of it had already been called upon heavily today, and he felt sick with fear as he made his way through this winding ancient necropolis in the knowledge that a murderer could well be waiting in ambush for him behind any of these raised tombs, or lurking on the other side of each doorway. It grew so draining that he told himself that it was okay to stop and wait for backup, that nothing bad would happen in the extra few minutes it would take. Yet he kept moving forward all the same.

He reached an ancient morgue with columns of tombs cut into its walls, and skulls, ribs and long bones scattered like spillikins across its floor, the whiteness of their joints suggesting that they’d only freshly been pulled apart. Anna would never have done such a thing, or even countenanced it, meaning that Merchant had done it himself, presumably while hunting for her. Maybe, then, he didn’t have time to waste.

He tiptoed between the bones, doing his best not to touch them, yet carrying the burden of them into the next crypt and beyond. He began hurrying ever faster, goaded by the memory of how Anna had, without a second thought, left the comparative safety of the Twin Otter’s cabin for the platform step, to press the stun gun against Andrei’s cheek and so save his life. And suddenly he found himself blurting out her name, less to let her and Merchant know that he was on his way than to remind himself of why he was doing this. And having done so once, destroying any small hope of surprise, he called out her name again and again, a battle cry to give himself heart.

He left the necropolis behind, arrived at a fan of stairs down into a flooded chamber still rippling slightly from a recent disturbance. Two pairs of shoes and socks had been left on the steps, confirming that both Anna and Merchant had been this way and were likely down here still. He didn’t bother to take off his own but simply plunged into the water and waded over to the first of the two accessible passages. But it proved to be an ancient chapel, and the water in it looked so undisturbed that he turned and went back the other way instead.

‘Anna!’ he shouted. There was no answer, so on he marched, sending waves splashing against the walls and then rebounding to clash with the ones behind, creating confusing patterns of light that kept making him think someone was right behind him, so that soon he was turning circles. ‘Anna!’ he shouted again, despite the anxiety in his voice advertising not just his presence but his state of knowledge too.

He hurried along a passage of empty storerooms, its gentle gradient soon taking him out of the water. His shoes began to squelch. He kicked them off and continued in his socks. He could see wet footprints on the dusty stone floor. The smaller ones were almost dry but the larger ones were still fresh. He was getting close.

‘Anna!’ he cried.

More storerooms. An ancient armoury. His shirt and trousers were clinging wet and chilly enough to make him shiver. He had to stoop as the passage neared its end. A final storeroom. This was it, he was sure of it, if only from the frantic pounding of his heart. He stood outside its doorway and pointed in his torch. It looked as empty as the others, except for the gaping hole in its far wall. He didn’t call out any more. He tried not to make any sound, indeed, though his torchlight had surely already betrayed him. If Merchant was in any mood to come forward, he’d have done so by now. No, he was waiting in ambush either on the other side of this outer doorway or more likely in the chamber beyond.

‘I’ve got more people coming,’ shouted Elias. ‘They’ll be here any moment. Give yourself up while it still matters.’

His words echoed back at him, then fell to silence. He gave it a few more seconds then crouched down low to roll his torch along the floor into the outer chamber. He put his forearms up over his head and went charging in. But the outer chamber was empty. He picked his torch back up. He’d have felt absurd had he not been quite so scared. He approached the hole in the far wall on the balls of his feet, like being back in the ring again, his senses zinging, his reflexes sharp as knives. The fear somehow left him too, displaced by a concentration so intense that it felt like nothing could disturb it. But then he arrived at the far wall and his torchlight fell upon such an astonishing array of treasures that it robbed him of his focus for just a moment, and he reached his torch forward to shine it left and right before he could quite stop himself.

Everything then happened in a blur. A limestone block came slamming down upon his wrist, knocking the torch from his hand. Pain arrived in shocking waves. He cried out and tried to snatch back his hand, but Merchant was too fast. He grabbed hold of his forearm and tugged him so violently forwards that he found himself tumbling head-first through the hole, crashing onto an earthenware bowl that shattered beneath the impact, scattering gemstones across the floor, while his fallen torch rolled back and forth among them, casting kaleidoscopic colours onto a pair of silver platters leaning against the back wall, and from there up at the ceiling.

He rose to his knees and threw up his forearms to protect his head, only for the next blow to smash into his already injured wrist, crushing it against his skull and knocking him back down. A third blow now. He twisted around so that it caught him on his shoulder rather than his cheek. He heard as well as felt his collarbone snap. Merchant came to stand over him, panting hard from exultation as much as exertion. He was holding a limestone block in both hands and he crouched closer to Elias before swinging it a fourth time, bursting through his feeble defences and catching him on his temple.

Merchant tossed the block aside then knelt upon Elias’s shoulders and clasped his hands around his throat. Elias tried to twist and buck him off, but he was too heavy and too strong, his thumbs digging into his windpipe, making him struggle and writhe for air. He scrabbled at his wrist with his left hand, then flung a fist at his face, but it was hopeless. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. The strength drained inexorably from his arms. His hands flopped uselessly to the floor. His mind began to drift. He had the strongest sense that his beloved son Marcus was standing nearby, in clothes as sodden as his own. Tears streamed from his eyes. This was what he deserved. It had been a long time coming, that was all.

His vision grew increasingly blurred. He couldn’t tell any more what was real and what was hallucination. His torch was still casting its gemstone colours onto the two platters, only now he had the strangest impression that those platters were parting like the silver gates of heaven, as if in welcome. And then, impossibly, Anna appeared between them, her tousled loose dark hair tumbling to her shoulders as she stood up tall and hoisted a gleaming long blade with a broken tip high above her head, for all the world an avenging angel come to deliver justice. Now Merchant heard her too. He turned and saw her face and the fierceness in her eye, and he realised what it meant. He saw her face and, with a groan of dread and knowledge, he froze for the vital moment that might yet have saved him.