Chapter 4 - Part 6

Delegado tied the silk rope around the chimney, then checked the gnoll again. It was still out cold. He took its alarm whistle and left everything else. By the time Ois was done climbing up the rope, Delegado had removed the piton-laden gloves and special boot tips that had aided his climb.

“Is the gnoll dead?” she asked him in a low whisper.

“No,” he said, uncorking a flask. He poured the stiff whiskey into the gnoll’s mouth while pinching the thing’s muzzle. Reflex action made the gnoll swallow. “I have to come back to this place sometimes, not interested in leaving a trail. A dead guard says infiltrator. A drunk guard says nothing. Coil your rope.”

Ois removed the silk rope that she had just climbed, and coiled it quickly with a practiced hand. She studied the unconscious gnoll warrior for a moment, and then concentrated. Delegado watched as she slowly turned into a copy of the gnoll, albeit a slightly smaller one, mimicking its armor with hers as well. “Hand me his flail.”

He tossed her the flail and she stuck it in her belt. He knew that she could use it, but her primary strength lay in her hidden knives. “This way,” he hissed jerking his thumb.

They crept across the roof and got to a service door. It was unlocked, but the hinges were rusted. She took out a can of oil and began to carefully apply it so that the door would open silently. “Where’s Feather?” she asked curiously.

“At the enclave, I wasn’t willing to risk him here,” he told her. He squinted at the town wall, making sure that no one was looking their way. Too many moons were visible for his comfort.

She finished with the oil, then took out a slim pick of some kind and disabled a wire that ran behind the door. He didn’t ask what it did. In seconds they were inside.

The building interior was grim and only barely painted. There were some shutters, but only the occasional candle. He took her hand and led her, his orc-blessed darkvision guiding them.

They came to a door and he slowed to a crawl. The planning room should be on the other side, a tall place if her schematics were correct. He listened and heard only two voices. One was giving instructions on keeping in contact with the forces putting down the riots, and the other was saying a lot of ‘Yes, MiLord’s. The second voice was a gnoll’s. The first voice was mostly orc, but with a creepy undertone that spoke of echoes of other places. He turned and put his lips by her ear.

“He’s in there with one other,” he said with the barest of sounds. Her hair smelled wonderful. “I’m going down and around to the lower entrance. Count to a hundred before you enter.” She nodded.

Delegado slipped around the corner, his feet barely brushing the floor. He stepped light as new grass, making no sound. Up ahead was a stairwell if Ois’ maps had been correct.

They had been. Delegado pulled out his bow and set an arrow, ready to draw. He crept down the stairs, listening carefully. There! The gnolls was leaving the planning room. Delegado heard the heavy wooden doors open and then close. The gnoll was saying something to another gnoll, a patrolling guard. Delegado slipped down the stairs.

Peeking around the corner, Delegado could see that the patrolling gnoll had been sent to the stables, whereas the other gnoll, the one going to implement Shaidan’s instructions, was walking his way. Delegado waited two heartbeats and then stepped around the corner. The gnoll’s eyes widened and he scrambled for the axe at his belt, but Delegado had already sent a pair of arrows into him. The first hit the gnoll in the chest, punching right through the armor to come halfway out of its back. The second went into the gnoll’s neck, and the creature collapsed onto the floor.

Delegado stepped carefully around the pool of spreading blood, another arrow already set, looking around. There was no other sound. The half-orc moved down the hall towards the door to the planning room.

Checking around one more time, he placed his ear against the door. Ois had just opened the balcony door, and was asking for permission to leave post and investigate something in the courtyard. Delegado slowly moved the door open, moving as quietly as he did when stalking game.

The planning room was big, maybe forty feet by forty feet, and it was two stories high. Bookcases and cabinets lined the wall in a haphazard fashion, and three braziers hung from the ceiling. Shaidan had his back to Delegado, staring up at Ois who stood within the balcony doorframe, looking and sounding exactly like a nervous underling.

Delegado’s hands moved quickly, sending arrows flying. The first one was the orc bane arrow, and the next two had adamantine tips. By the third one Shaidan had recovered enough from the shock to whirl around and dodge.

“You!” the infernally-born orc growled, raising a black greataxe whose edge gleamed. Blood rushed to Shaidan’s face, making the arrow scar stand out. “You were a fool to come, Delegado!” He roared as he charged at the half-orc.

Delegado swore and moved backwards. The arrows had harmed Shaidan, but not dropped him. The extra bane enchantment seemed to have accomplished nothing special, and the thing’s innate supernatural toughness let it ignore most of the wound. The greataxe whistled towards him, and Delegado did his best to avoid it. But Shaidan was faster, even faster than when he first faced Delegado. The axe bit through the chain shirt that Delegado wore, ripping a wide and deep cut in the half-orc’s side. Delegado managed to roll with it and not get severed, but the pain was enormous.

Delegado dropped his longbow, barely holding back the urge to fall to his knees and vomit. He held onto his wounded side with his left hand while he drew his adamantine longsword with his right. He cut through the mithril armor of his opponent, slashing the shoulder into a gout of black blood. The fiend-born orc ignored it, so wrapped up in his rage that he did not even notice.

Ois jumped down the stairs and a dagger appear in her hand. As she threw it the blade lit up with the holy light of the Silver Flame. The point of the dagger went right between the waist joints of the breastplate armor.

The dagger didn’t go in very deep, but it bit the flesh enough to light Shaidan up internally. Delegado gaped to see his opponent lean back and scream in pain, the silvery light filling his mouth from the inside. Shaidan staggered and turned away from Delegado.

“Since when do gnolls worship that pathetic little fire?” Shaidan demanded. “What are you?” He stepped towards Ois, but did not swing his greataxe. Instead he raised a hand and a greasy, ugly miasma of darkest energy burst forth from him, covering Ois. The changeling shrieked, gasping as bruises and bumps formed on her, and blood gushed from her nose and ears. She steadied herself and spoke some words of beseechment. A flurry of silvery flame surrounded her and drove the darkness away.

Delegado felt some pity for her, but blamed her anyway. The unholy could only harm those who had sworn to the holy, and vice-versa. He swore to neither, and was determined to live past all of it. He gripped his longsword in both hands and swung it with full force at Shaidan. Shaidan turned, trying to parry, but Delegado’s sword pierced his wing, tearing the mithril open and driving deep into Shaidan’s flesh.

“You filthy humanspawn,” Shaidan choked. Blood spurted from the wound, an artery having been cut. Shaidan was moving on sheer emotion now, but he was a dead man walking. “I will finish you!” The axe came in, driven by Shaidan’s inhuman strength and speed, and Delegado screamed in pain as the other side of his torso was torn open. He felt a lung quit working, and his throat was filling with blood. He staggered backwards.

Then it was Shaidan’s turn to scream, as Ois pulled another dagger out and sank it into the wound that Delegado’s sword had made. This one made of metal that possessed a lustrous purple sheen, the one metal that ignored the genetic enchantments that protected Shaidan. “Long before I could wield the flame I knew how to find a weak spot in opponents,” she told Shaidan as he slumped forward.

Delegado collapsed, still conscious, but feeling his life slip away. On the floor in front of him, literally inches away, was Shaidan’s face. Delegado spit on it as Shaidan’s eyes closed. The spit was bloody.

He felt Ois’ hands on him. He heard her praying, imploring that even an unbeliever needed the healing of the flame, especially if he fought the enemies of good. Suddenly energy crackled through him, and he twitched, standing up. He spit the rest of the blood from his throat, but it was old blood, not new. His lung was whole again, and what had been deep gashes in his torso were now shallow cuts. Painful ones, but not debilitating.

“You see,” she was telling him. “There is power in faith and –”

“Same power in a bottle,” he told her, pulling a flask from his belt and sucking it down. The spell encased within the potion was released, and his wounds closed completely. He took out another flask, this one containing amber oil, and he sprinkled that over his armor. The chain links reattached themselves where they had been severed, sliding back into place. “And look, the bottles fixed my armor, too.”

She shook her head at his cynicism, and then turned to stab Shaidan’s body a few more times. While she used her dagger, Delegado steadied his blade and chopped Shaidan’s head off. Part of it was he agreed with her sentiment of making sure Shaidan was dead, and part of it was he wanted to bring Shaidan’s head to the gatekeepers and collect the bounty.

“Okay, we need to destroy his axe,” she was saying, patting Shaidan’s decapitated body down. “It is a weapon of evil that –”

“We need to get out of here,” Delegado said, looking around for a bag that would hold Shaidan’s head. “Don’t expand the mission. Keep it simple. Come on!” She raised an eyebrow at his hypocrisy, but let go of the axe and moved onto more practical things.

“Here,” she said, handing him two potions that she had dug out of Shaidan’s belt pouch. One had a House Jorasco healer’s stamp on the bottle, the other had a stamp that looked like an archery target. “You may need these.” She took a third potion, this one also with a Jorasco stamp, and downed it. The bruises and cuts on her skin faded away.

“We would have had trouble if he would have drunk them,” Delegado noted. “I don’t know why he didn’t.”

“One,” she explained. “He wasn’t ready, they weren’t easily accessible. Two, he saw my faith and he felt he had to respond with his own. I am lucky he tried his spell. If he had used the axe on me I would likely have been dead.”

“Lucky us, can we go now?” Delegado implored, closing the door that he had barged in. “Someone must have heard something, and even if not they’re going to find the guard I popped eventually.” He still didn’t have a bag large enough to carry the head. He’d left his game bag behind in the Tahrashk enclave, not planning on anything more than some loud drinking and boasting in a tavern. Maybe the druids could use some kind of a spell to know that he was being truthful about Shaidan’s death.

“A minute,” she said. “Here take this.” She handed him a small crossbow that had been held in Shaidan’s belt loops, a tiny thing that fit in one hand.

“What the heck is this for?” he asked. “Knitting?”

“Check the head of the bolt and tell me if you recognized the gray paste,” she told him while pulling off Shaidan’s boots.

“Ah,” he said, carefully pointing it at the floor. “And what do you want me to do with it? I’m not used to this little thing.”

“Drink the potion with the target on it right before you fire and it won’t matter,” she told him. She took out a dagger and cut the heels off of the boots. “Ah-hah!” She pulled a tight roll of notes from a hollow place in the heel.

“The dirtbag’s head would have been more lucrative,” he grumbled.
“But this is lighter, and will expose the activities of the Lords of Dust,” she explained. She spent a second scanning the notes and then stuffed them into a pocket. “Alright, we can go.”

A heavy gong rung from somewhere below. Then again.

“F’test,” Delegado said softly.

“An alarm?” she asked worriedly. She began to shift form, trying to match Shaidan’s features for some kind of bluff.

“No, an announcement,” he said quietly. He turned and began to run up the stairs. “Tzaryan Rrac is here. Come on!”