Assassins' Dawn (3 page)

They were in a reception room. An animo-painting swirled on the far wall and ornate floaters waited for occupants. Lifianstone pillars carved like vines climbed from floor to distant ceiling in a mockery of nature, curling and spreading when they reached the balcony that overlooked the room. Beyond the balcony, the Hoorka could hear the sounds of a struggle, and then the wall opposite the railings began to smoke as a line of blistering paint ran quickly across it in a ragged diagonal. A hand laser, then. The thought did little to comfort Aldhelm. Standing in the room, they were exposed to anyone caring to glance over the balcony rail.

Aldhelm moved to the staircase (carved mermen waved flippered hands at carved fish in a frozen ocean: the railing), and Sartas followed quickly. They ran quietly up the stairs.

“I don’t like this. We’re not armed or protected for a laser fight.” Aldhelm glanced back at Sartas.

“You
want to go back and explain all this to the Thane? This would be a cleaner death.”

“He’s going to be upset no matter what happens.” Aldhelm exhaled deeply. “Dame Fate keeps playing Her hand against us tonight, and I don’t like that.”

Aldhelm crouched down and glanced around the corner at the top of the staircase. Nothing. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s find out who these fake guild-kin of ours are.”

This floor of the house was built in a semi-circle around an interior garden redolent with tropical flowers. Across the open space, Aldhelm could see the focus of the fighting. The four cloaked men had taken shelter behind a convenient sculpture and were firing into a darkened archway that led farther back into the interior of the house. Someone was returning their fire with a projectile weapon. Aldhelm could hear the whine of shells and see chunks of masonry flying as the bullets struck the walls. The Hoorka began moving to one side of the battle.

“Damned clumsy people, these counterfeit Hoorka,” muttered Sartas.

“They’re not particularly alert. We could take them easily enough. Go around to the left. I think we can circle the garden and come out somewhere on the other side of that arch.”

“They’ve enough firepower to destroy the house. Clumsy.”

“Yah,” Aldhelm agreed. “But let’s stay out of their way. If we can get around them, maybe we can get to Gunnar first. I don’t like the thought of someone’s blood-feud interfering with our contract.”

They had no chance. There was a sudden flurry of movement as three of the intruders rushed the archway while the other kept his laser activated and pointed at the corridor beyond. Then the three were past the arch and the sound of a physical struggle intensified. A high scream, like tearing velvet, rose and died. The last of the intruders ran through the archway. The Hoorka waited.

Nothing.

Aldhelm strode quickly across the garden, heedless of the painstakingly-arranged plants he was trampling underfoot, and Sartas followed. At the archway, they paused, peering inside cautiously. A purplish fog filled the corridor and wisped about the lamps set in the wall. A woman’s body, wrapped in a gauzy dress, lay on her side, crumpled against the wall with an odd lack of blood. The intruders were gone. Aldhelm gestured to Sartas to stay, and went to examine the body. He turned it over gently—it was Ricia. He didn’t need to check the pulse to know that she was in Hag Death’s domain.

The Hoorka followed the path of the intruders through the house—the trail of a running battle. Here were charred draperies, there a vase overturned and broken. They passed through a series of bedrooms, an expansive dining area where a stray bolt had evidently hit a power circuit and dumped the table, set for dinner, onto the floor. Silver utensils littered the tiles, slivers of crockery crunched underfoot. They went through a kitchen, then were back outside again. And when they found themselves out of the grounds and back in the entangling clustering of houses, they came upon an apprentice Hoorka waiting for them, out of breath.

“The Thane sent me, sirrahs.” A gasping intake of breath, fish-mouthed. “He has learned that Vingi (breath) has sent some of his guard (breath) force to kill Gunnar.”

Aldhelm and Sartas glanced at each other, then Aldhelm grimaced and nodded. “So Vingi doesn’t trust the task to Hoorka. Well, he’s managed to foul it up for himself. We have to track Gunnar again.”

The apprentice clutched his sides and crouched slightly. “I saw Gunnar leave this house as I came here,” he said as he straightened. “He began moving toward the river, and he seemed to know the ground well. Vingi’s guards—at least I assume the men I saw were of the Li-Gallant Vingi’s guild—had a short meeting in the garden near the ippicator skeleton. They left in the direction of Vingi’s keep.”

Sartas shook his head at Aldhelm. “I told you they were incompetent.” The Hoorka chuckled.

“The Thane won’t be laughing if we fail to meet the contract.” Aldhelm turned to the apprentice. “Tell the Thane that we’ve already had a problem with Vingi’s guard. You can also tell him—but step back when you do so—that Gunnar is still alive. Then run, neh?”

The apprentice grinned and nodded. He bowed his salutation to the Hoorka and was off. The sound of his running could be heard for some time in the sleeping city.

•   •   •

That had been hours ago. Now they were finally in sight of Gunnar again, having tracked him through the twisting streets. Aldhelm could see the man clearly. Gunnar was breathing heavily, his right arm extended as he leaned against the understructure of the tenements. His head was bowed, his knees were slightly bent. The muck of the river had caked his shoes—he’d been easy to follow since entering undercity.

The ooze glistened coldly with slats of blue-white light. The seams of the flooring overhead grinned with age. Aldhelm could hear the indistinct rise and fall of murmured conversation above him, punctuated unevenly with the breathing of Sartas and himself. A voice complained loudly of the abundance of sandmites as the Hoorka began moving.

The mud that had so clearly marked this stage of Gunnar’s flight also aided him. Even Hoorka assassins, adept at silentstalk, were not immune to chance, as this night had amply proved. The river-filth sucked greedily at the soles of their boots, relinquishing them with a liquid protest. Gunnar’s head snapped up: they were still thirty meters from him, under the next dwelling. The man ducked instinctively, and the Khaelian-made dagger only creased him, drawing a burning line from shoulder to mid-back before burying its ultra-hard point several millimeters into the metal pillar behind him. Even as Gunnar looked up, weighing the chances of grasping the dagger, it began to wriggle and loosen, the electronic devices in the dagger seeking to return to the homing pulse from the Hoorka. Gunnar floundered to his feet and ran, weaving from pillar to pillar.

(And Aldhelm cursed under his breath, reproaching the Goddess of Chaos for tipping the scales of chance so unequally, and praying that She of the Five would hold back the sun—dawn at Underasgard would give Gunnar his life.)

The Hoorka knew Gunnar would be praying to his own gods for the light, for Underasgard was but fifty kilometers distant and the sun would touch the dawnrock at much the same time as dawn here in the city of Sterka. Then—unmoved and uncaring, at least outwardly—the Hoorka would be bound to let the man live. Already the morning sky was luminous with that promise.

Aldhelm, knowing this, sought to end it quickly.

He loosed another dagger. It clattered from a pillar and, twirling, struck Gunnar handle foremost. Silver glimmered as the weapon turned and arced back to the Hoorka.

Pursuer and pursued ran, ignoring the banded pain that constricted their chests and stabbed in their lungs. Sartas threw: the dagger found a pillar at Gunnar’s right, and the man feinted left and dove as another Hoorka blade fountained mud at his feet. Gunnar slipped, coating himself with umber goo, and regained his footing. The stench of decaying vegetation made him gag, and he slipped again, retching and struggling. Mud blinded him. He scrabbled frantically at his face.

The Hoorka stood over him. Gunnar lay in the mud, and Aldhelm watched the man flailing in panic, knowing Gunnar could feel the pressure of his gaze, knowing the man was waiting for the cold rape of a blade piercing his body, twisting deep into his entrails . . .

But the relays had told them that morning had touched the dawnrock with its delicate fingers. Aldhelm looked about him. It would be so easy to kill Gunnar despite the Hoorka code. No one would see, and it might save future trouble with Li-Gallant Vingi. He sighed, glancing at Sartas, weighing the choices in his mind. Sartas shook his head, sensing Aldhelm’s hesitation.

Dawn was a tepid light on a misty morning. They helped Gunnar to his feet, grunting with the man’s limp weight.

“Come on, damnit. You can stand.” Aldhelm’s voice was neither ice nor fire, not devoid of emotion but rather so full of it that the individual nuances were indistinguishable with surfeit.

The Hoorka watched composure slowly return to Gunnar’s drawn, haggard face. He wiped vainly at his soiled clothing, looking as if he were about to speak. But he lowered his eyes and looked at the ruin of his pants.

Aldhelm spoke again. “Our admiration, Gunnar. Your life is your own once more.” His voice, without the inflections that might have turned it mocking and bitter, spoke of the ritualistic completion of a ceremony. “You may go with the light.”

“Ricia’s dead.” Gunnar’s voice was cracked and dry; his eyes were wild, puzzled.

“M’Dame Cuscratti was not killed by Hoorka. That is a matter of bloodfeud between yourself and another. You will bear the truth of that.” For a moment, Aldhelm’s eyes glinted angrily in the dawnlight, then he half-turned. “Make your way home. Your path is safe,” he said. Aldhelm motioned to Sartas, and the assassins were gone, slipping into the twilight gloom of undercity.

Gunnar stood: dripping and covered with filth, gasping with tortured lungs, confused and thankful both. He glanced at the landscape around him, then stared at the ruddy arc of sun above the line of trees across the river. He breathed deeply and walked away.

•   •   •

The house stood well away from the river and its urban banks. Unlike the majority of Neweden buildings, this one disdained the pillared, flighty architecture, and squatted dourly on the earth, attended by a cluster of outbuildings. It straddled the crest of a low hill that was the first outcropping of the Dagorta Mountains, and it was similar to the other dwellings of this fertile land in that it too had ranks of gardens and trees shielding the Neweden soil from the sunstar. Sterka, the city, lay in the blue-tinged distance, just visible from the highest point of the rise: the city was a massive grouping of buildings, with the outlying burghs arrayed before it like a shield, a buffer against the wilderness. As a panorama, the view wasn’t exceptional—the most common scenes of a hundred worlds of the Alliance were more pleasing aesthetically, and Neweden herself had better, but it satisfied those who normally dwelt here. It reeked of sylvan, pastoral quietness. Unassertive, it seemed strong.

Through this display of verdant order, a man moved, stumbling and slow. His hair was matted and gleaming with sweat, his tunic torn and coated with mud now dried and caked to a sienna lamination. He walked clumsily, drunkenly, nearly falling now and again, as if he weren’t fully awake or aware of his surroundings. The sun glazed the air about him, and drone-beetles made desultory circles about his head, flying lazily away with every step. He raised his head to stare at the cluster of buildings on the rise, focusing his attention on the main house with its mirror walls reflecting the heat-wave of the guard shield around it. The windows were opaqued and empty. He stood, as the sun inched itself infinitesimally higher in the cloud-choked sky, and some animal hooted disconsolately in the nearby woods. Then he lowered his head and resumed his ambling, slow progress toward the crest.

He reached the guard shield and halted again. He stared at the house, his hand shielding his eyes from the reflected sun-glare as the walls threw back the image of his surroundings. Nothing moved, nothing acknowledged his arrival. Shrugging—dried mud fell from the sleeve of his tunic to the ground, revealing purple cloth—he placed his hand on the butler post and let it scan his fingerprints. The guard shield coalesced and drew back from the butler, leaving him room to pass through an opening defined by a sparking perimeter. He moved through and onto the manicured lawn beyond.

“A good morning, sirrah,” the butler said as the shield collapsed back into position. The man didn’t reply. After a pause, the post spoke again. “Sirrah Potok will be glad to see you.”

“No doubt he told you to expect me.” The man’s voice was weary.

A moment’s silence as the butler scanned its small memory. “I’m afraid not, sirrah. You, of course, are always welcome here. Should I inform the house?”

But he’d already moved on. The butler, uncaring, lapsed into silence.

He performed the same ritual at the door, placing his hands before the entry plate and allowing the mechanism to identify and clear him. The door dilated silently, and he was inside.

The room he entered was small and made even more claustrophobic with furniture and racks of books and microfiche. He sighed, taking in the familiarity, allowing himself to relax for the first time that day. The same flat paintings, the well-used and scarred malawood desk with flimsies scattered over it in a paper avalanche, the holotank stolid in isolated dominance in the center of the room, floaters arranged before it for an invisible audience: all of this evoked calm and comfort. Home.

From the meeting room just beyond the archway to his right, he could hear the basso, garbled drone of filtered and shielded speech. He moved toward the sound, pushing open the intricately-carved doors.

“Gunnar!”

Potok, rotund and florid, his minister’s garb in its habitual disarray, rose from his seat at the head of a long table. The four remaining people in the room looked up in surprise, glancing first at the astonished face of Potok and then following his eyes to where Gunnar stood, leaning against the door. Potok shook his head and one pudgy hand went to smooth non-existent hair. He spoke with obvious relief in his voice.