Secrets of Arkana Fortress (4 page)

Morjat tilted his head. ‘You’re a half-breed?’ he whispered in astonishment.

Without a word, the woman grabbed her bow and nocked a feathered arrow, aiming the projectile point-blank at the now frightened Morjat.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he exclaimed, his hands palming the air.

She remained silent, her secondary eyelids blinking slowly as she pulled back the string.

‘Oi, old man, tell her to stop,’ he implored, fear gripping his voice.

Kelken massaged his forehead before looking up at him. ‘Why should I?’

Morjat looked to the woman then back to Kelken. ‘What about that contract you mentioned? I’m sure we can cut a deal.’ He laughed hesitantly; nervously.

‘Oh yes… the contract. I forgot to tell you what that was all about.’ Kelken’s body language suddenly changed; it was as if he had not been drunk at all. He walked up to Morjat, flexing his arms calmly. ‘The contract was for your life; I neglected to tell you.’ He smirked and waved his hand.

The tainted water on the cobbles stained Morjat’s hair and clothing as his body toppled backwards like a falling statue; the sheer force of an antiquated-style arrow cracking open his skull, spilling the contents onto the floor.

Kelken breathed a sigh of relief and fought back another resounding burp, but to no avail. ‘S’cuse me.’

The woman swung her bow around and caught the thickened length of it on his belly.

Kelken leaned forward, wheezing heavily. ‘For the love of the gods will you stop hitting me?’

‘And what are you going to say? Same as last time? “Have some respect for your father”? Stop fucking me about when we do these contracts then.’

He stood up, still rubbing his tummy, and swallowed hard. ‘OK… I’m sorry, Breena, and I mean it this time.’

There was an eerie sincerity in his tone that Breena had rarely heard in her 22 years of being alive. ‘That’ll do… I suppose,’ she sighed.

He placed a hand on her shoulder, and then held her apologetically. ‘Let’s go back to the tavern and freshen up,’ he said softly.

Breena stared at the body then nodded.

As they left the bloody scene, the street fell back into its silent decay. The scuttle of hungry rats could be heard in the stillness of the blood filled air as they homed in on the fresh meat that had been left behind by the two figures.

This had been the most activity to happen on this street for days. The rodent population was the only non-gang presence in the low-town area, always searching for scraps of food whenever the food goods of the thugs passed through and was carelessly handled.

Morjat’s soul was bound to the hellish middle realms – the gangs would just toss his body in a gutter, leaving it to rot in the infected slush of old bodily remains, rotten food, and stagnant water.

The innocents longed for a reprise, but it never came along. They had been left to suffer in an unimaginably forced silence.

Chapter 3

She ran, ran fast; ran faster than she had ever done before in her entire life through the winding back streets of Donnol.

              The complex maze of alleys and dark corners would have normally been a reason to go into a panic for most people, but Evie had lived here since she had been born. She was used to slinking her petite figure into the nooks and crannies to avoid ambitious guards looking for praise from their commander by catching an outlaw on Donnol’s ‘Detain and Execute’ list. This was a list that nobody wanted to be on; there was no sweet talking or negotiating with the law forces – you were caught, charged, and then killed publicly as a sign that Donnol was not a city where you broke the law.

              Evie was lucky enough to have evaded arrest a number of times throughout her many months near the top of the catalogue of names. Every encounter with the lawmen had ended up in a sleek and easy getaway through a carelessly ajar door or window, a swift turn into a blind alley, or a hastened climb up a drainpipe. This was her city.

              Unfortunately this escape was proving to be quite a challenge. She had been caught poking around looking for information in the offices of some of the government’s top figures – on what subject the information was, the guards didn’t know – and the alarm had gone out quickly; low pitched ringing running its way around the bustling market place and its immediate vicinities. People angled their head upward to the sound, their senses alerted to the commotion.

              This was proving to be one of her hardest escapes yet as the high number of customers and sellers posed a problem… how was she to disappear if there were thousands of eyes roaming around on the lookout? Most of the unoccupied city guards had been turned out to track her down, some employing the use of sniffer dogs and the like.

              She trampled over a mound of broken bottles and splintered wood, the crunch echoing down the alley. Shouts came up from around the corners as the guards homed in fast. Where was there to hide? Evie was quickly running out of options, and she reiterated this fact when she skidded to a halt half way down a path. A set of three guards and a dog were bounding their way from the other end.

              ‘Shit!’

              Her feet scrambled about and she moved back on herself only to stop yet again as a troop of similarly sized guards came the opposite way. The options had run out. Through the pants and wheezes she managed to stifle a defeated laugh as she bent forward to catch her breath. She looked up and through the fringe of her scuffed black hair she saw a thick oak door that sealed off another avenue of escape between the corners of two buildings.

              She slowly stepped back and pressed her body against the hard granite wall, looking both ways at the guards and hearing their victorious remarks and leering taunts.
‘You gots nowhere to go now, bitch’
and
‘we’re gonna give you a good seeing to before we hand you over’.
The words hit stone as Evie launched herself forwards and scrabbled up the obstructing door with all the grace of a swan; fluid and majestic. She landed onto her feet on the other side, luckily enough, and coughed as dust billowed up around her. Through the haze she heard the guards’ vile curses as they began to slam into the door in an attempt to break it down.

             
‘Bitch!’

              ‘Fucking whorebag!’

After waving away the clouds, her viridian eyes went wide with alarm – she was gazing upon the late afternoon market. Shit. The last thing she needed was to publicise her presence, but there was no other choice. She quickly peeked around the corner of a dilapidated house and breathed in sharply, the faint smell of old urine hanging in her nostrils like a reluctant sneeze. There were crowds of felines, reptilians, humans and a couple of other races she had no idea about. Where was she to go now?

The shouting and banging from behind her jerked her out of her trance as quickly as she had entered it. Her legs started to tremble and her heart raced up and down her ribcage like a distressed rodent. She breathed slowly and looked around.

She was off.

***

She left a group of screaming female fabric sellers behind her as she dived over their stand in an imaginative move as two guards came crashing after her. She had never worked so hard to vanish before.

              More alerts had been shouted about the marketplace as the slender young woman powered her way through crowds, jumped around patrols; and slid through small gaps between stalls, each time receiving hurls of abuse and the distant shouts of irate sellers and customers.

              She gladly exited the ward full of textiles and fabrics and wound her way through a large group of tavern goers who were swarming like bees around a honey pot in an enthusiastic attempt to get cheap beer. This would provide some form of cover for a few minutes – all Evie needed was a couple of seconds most of the time.

              A punch caught her in the shoulder as she flew through the middle of a couple of drunks settling an argument about some mundane subject. She spun in mid-air and tumbled to the floor, the connecting thump with the gravelly concrete winding her. Her lungs strained to work as the rest of her body continued on autopilot and lifted her up from the sea of feet. Through gritted teeth she wiped off the stones that had embedded themselves into her face like molluscs before she skidded around a small band of elderly feline scholars, receiving some startled watery eyes from them. There was no time for consideration.

              More and more guards chased after her like attack dogs, barking out blue language and angered snarls. She moved this way, that way; every way she deemed plausible, her stomach knotting up with each heated exhale. She looked behind momentarily and swallowed hard – an uncountable congregation of guards and attack dogs were hot on her tail. She could feel her pace decaying along with any glimmer of hope she had of escaping.

              ‘Get out the fucking way!’ she screeched.

              She toppled to the floor, her arms flailing forward wildly. The man crumpled down along with her, dropping his bag of market-bought goods. Through the winces of pain, he began muttering under his breath.

              ‘What the hell is your rush, miss?’ he asked in a smooth tone that was surprisingly tinged with concern more than aggravation.

              Evie said nothing as she untangled herself from the pile she had created. Before she had chance to set off again she was pulled back by a firm yet soft-handed grip. Her free hand batted the man’s chest as she yelled for him to let go. Yelling soon became begging. ‘Please let me go… please,’ she pleaded as her eyes met his. She was shaking like a leaf in a violent storm now.

              The man tilted his head to one side slightly and allowed his grip to loosen enough for her to wriggle free, but it was too late.

              Her collarbone was felt by the diamond-hard steel of a gauntlet as the guard landed his fist onto it. He shoved her forcibly against a nearby wall and kept a hammerlock tightly upon her arm.

              ‘I hope you like the afterlife bitch,’ he whispered into her ear.

              Evie thrashed and screamed under his vice-like hold and was promptly smacked in the temple. She was turned around and through smoky eyes she watched as the man she had been on the floor with was handed some silver coins for his trouble. How could this have happened like this?

              She soon blacked out.

***

‘What the hell just happened?’

              The commander stood in front of the young girl who had just slammed into the market goer at an ungodly speed.

              ‘Evie Ranliss,’ he began as he unfurled a small scroll and starting reading it from inside his helmet. ‘You are hereby charged with numerous accounts of spying, vandalism, resisting arrest, civil unrest, and, most heinous of all, theft of official documents belonging to the parliamentary house of Donnol.’ He paused for a moment, the severity of his words sinking into the skins of all who were standing around watching this spectacle. ‘You are therefore sentenced to be tortured before being publicly executed. The method will be death by magic constriction.’

              He waved his arm and they took the unconscious girl away to be locked up in one of the cramped death-row cells near the jails. The commander turned around and looked at a bewildered Mikos in the eye. ‘Many thanks from the people of Donnol, kind sir.’ He departed without any show of concern.

              Mikos looked at his palm, still crossed with little silver discs, and tried to fathom out what he had seen in the girl’s face – it was desperation mixed with determination, but the most troubling of all was the look of pure terror adorning her very soul. For that brief, but lasting glance into her dark green eyes, he had felt something more than just sympathy towards her – it was almost a desire to help her. This had not been a feeling he often felt, especially with a stranger who had inconvenienced him like that.

              His legs had locked in an unfathomable stiffness as he looked at his belongings strewn all over the ground. He raised his eyebrows as he noticed something he had never seen before now. He bent down, picked it up, and then looked it over. It was a small bracelet made of some unknown metal, undoubtedly precious in appearance, and decorated with elaborately designed, cage-like charms, each one of them containing a magnificent and entrancing coloured stone. There was something mystical about them, but what on earth was it?

              He shrugged off his question, pocketed the puzzlingly designed piece of jewellery, and collected his purchases back up from the floor, placing the odd couple that had trickled out back into the bag. He continued on his way back to the Wattle & Wood Inn, his mind sluggishly turning back to the thought of a hot meal. Mikos had an urge for some fish and roast vegetables; maybe some tender pieces of cod and tuna, or maybe a salmon steak in herb sauce. His tummy rumbled as he walked his way to the south side of the city.

              He couldn’t help but wonder who the girl had been. The charges that were read out had been pretty dire to say the least – why did she commit them all? Was there a reason for it? Why was he suddenly questioning himself over what had happened?