| abstract
| - Vasilus Pordus was a dead man. He was sure of it, as soon as the stranger came jumping straight at him, from the shadowy corner of his bedroom. The twin daggers the assailant held, glistened with a sickly green color, some substance, no doubt poisonous, dripping from their edges. Vasilus stumbled backwards, barely dodging the slashes aimed at his exposed throat, and with a yelp of surprise, quickly turned and ran. Damn that hyrkanian. He had promised, promised that Vasilus would be safe, and out of harm’s way. Yet here he was, forced to flee, like a rabbit running from the fangs of a stalking fox... a fox with wicked, serrated fangs, dripping poison. He grabbed a chair as he ran past it, and threw it to the floor behind him, hoping that it would somehow get entangled in the would-be assassin’s legs, and trip him. Cruel laughter was the only reply his actions got him, as he kept running, down the stairs and towards the front door. Damn that hyrkanian and his promises! Here he was being toyed with, like a cat chasing a mouse at a leisurely stroll. He should never have given those mercenaries his money, but they had seemed so honest, despite their rugged nature. Rounding a corner, his heart pounding in his chest, Vasilus would have allowed himself to yell out, in elation, had he only had the breath for it. There it was, his front door… leading to the streets and the guards patrolling it. He chanced a glimpse back, the stranger was taking good time with catching up, and had a broad smile on his face, almost as if he knew some funny little secret, that Vasilus was not party to. Vasilus spat at him, even as he grabbed for the doorhandle and heaved, sniggering at having escaped the dangerous man behind him. He got the door open, and bolted for the street, only to run headfirst into a massive wall of flesh. Shaking his head, he looked up, directly into the face of a grim and brutish man, smiling back at him, in a way that made Vasilus feel like a rat caught under the scrutinizing stare of one of the Setites fouls serpents. “Goin’ somewhere?” the brute snarled, and grabbed Vasilus by the throat, hoisting him clean of the ground, and raising him to his face. “Me friend has a little gift fer ye..” Vasilus blinked, the sweat pouring into his eyes, and the lack of oxygen as well as blood trapped by the giant mans steel grip making his eyes bulge out, and his ears thump in a slow roar...a roar that, in some strange way, kept growing and growing. Then he was free, and falling, as a resounding sound of steel against flesh heralded the arrival of another person to the scene. The giant of a man was thrown clearly into the room, flying over the now prone Vasilus, and landing heavily on a table, splintering it under his weight. Vasilus looked up. A tall northerner, clad in heavy mail, and with a great steel shield blocking most of his body, starred down at him for a moment, then he nodded at Vasilus, and stepped over him, the sword in his right hand rising into a position of readiness, as he gazed as the brute and his dagger-wielding friend, his face devoid of emotion. With a snarl, the smaller man took three steps forward, and lifted his dagger to strike, only to stop in midstride, as a red feathered wooden shaft sprouted from his chest, with a twack. Vasilus blinked, as three more arrows, in rapid succession, zipped past the unmoving northerner, and into the assassin’s torso, making him stagger backwards and dropping one of his poisoned blades. The man stopped, looked down at his new appendages with astonishment, and then toppled backwards, to lie still at the bottom of the stairs. “Falthras?” the brute managed, trying to rise, and at the same time steady his abused body. Then the northerner moved again, and with two fluid sweeps of his sword, sent first the right arm, and then the upper part of the brutes head, flying through air, to land at Vasilus feet. Drying his sword of, in the clothes of the dead, the northerner then turned towards Vasilus and nodded once more, to the figure appearing in the door. Vasilus looked, with a mixture of fear, admiration and revulsion, from the two dead bodies, and to the warrior, and next the hyrkanian he had hired, who now stood, leaning slightly on his odd, curved bow. “Jagathai apologizes for the late arrival…” the hyrkanian began in his strange singsong accent, and reached for the leather pouch hanging at his side. “There were more of them, than he had anticipated. He offers some of the gold back, if friend-Vasilus does not think the contract properly fulfilled.” At that point, Vasilus allowed himself to faint…
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)