Lucan and Tomis tightened the straps of their leather armor, then fixed pouches and small blades on their belts. Tomis left his bow unstrung, though he held a handful of arrows strapped together by thin vine. The boy, Venn, watched them with wide eyes of wonder, watching their preparations as though committing them to memory.
The door swung open and Ryder stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. He pushed a sheathed sword towards Lucan.
“Good steel?”
“The best coin could buy,” Ryder said. “Plenty of good smiths in the city, but little time for them to forge you a sword.”
Lucan shrugged, drawing the sword partway. The sheen of polished steel met him, and he nodded. It would do. He still didn’t want to draw his goldsteel unless necessary. He would carry both of them, and hopefully, there would be no need for him to use his enchanted blade. He looked at Ryder. “Are you prepared?”
“Aye.”
“Then it is time we go,” Lucan said, turning towards Venn. “You will stay in this room until our timely return. Do not move, not for food, not for curiosity, and not for restlessness.”
“I won’t, master,” Venn said, looking at them hopefully.
Lucan acknowledged his answer with a nod, then gestured for his men to follow. They descended the stairs and headed for the back door of the inn. Most of the inn’s patrons had cleared out, though the innkeeper caught sight of them, giving them an incredulous look. The three of them wore voluminous robes that hid most of their arms and armor. Ryder had brought robes that merchants of much wider girth would normally wear, but they hoped that they would be enough to keep away the inquisitive eye.
It mattered little, however, since it was nearly midnight, and only the homeless, the drunk, and guards would inhabit the streets. Tomis led the way since he had the keenest of their senses, choosing streets and alleys he was certain were abandoned for the time being. They crept with the half moon barely illuminating their next footstep, but they advanced at an acceptable pace.
They soon reached the warehouse, and only then did they hear the muffled midnight bell ringing from the market. The lane his men had led him into was rather run-down. Rickety wooden walls barely sheltered their occupants in squat buildings, and ancient two-storey homes seemed on their last legs. Lucan wondered if anyone had the courage to take those as shelter. There were some places here and there, however, that had obviously been restored. He heard the raucous laughter coming out of an establishment he couldn’t see, and he imagined that wherever the gambling den was would be in better shape than his surroundings.
It mattered not, however, for their quarry was in sight. Ryder led them into a half-collapsed building across from the warehouse. Oil lamps illuminated the warehouse’s doors. Two guards stood there, one of them leaning against the wall, half asleep, and the other fiddling with something in his hands.
“There is a window to the right,” Ryder said, pointing around the corner of the entrance.
Lucan nodded, eying the entrance carefully. A few men burst out of the wide doors, excitement empowering their steps. The sleeping guard didn’t seem bothered by the commotion as the men hurried towards the establishments they frequented. A few more of their kind slipped out of the warehouse, and the fiddling guard only looked up to argue with one of his comrades, returning to his fiddling soon after. Lucan counted a dozen men to have left the warehouse, and he could only imagine that the Green Scars were a rather large gang if they had this many men in one warehouse.
After a brief wait, they decided to move, expecting no one else to come out of the warehouse. Ryder led them across the street and around a small house, through an alley, and then to the side of the warehouse.
The first thing Lucan saw there was a shape on the wall painted in white and green. The white paint was in the form of a mouthful of elongated teeth, biting down on a green line that looked like a bleeding cut. Lucan supposed that it was the Green Scars’ symbol. Beside it was a window, too high up for a man to reach, though it was open, which made Lucan question the wisdom of this gang. If there was something of great value inside, sealing the place appropriately would have been prudent.
Ryder knelt down, and Tomis hopped onto his shoulder, stealing a peek through the window, then pulling himself up and through it. Ryder glanced up and nodded for Lucan to do the same.
In two quick steps, Lucan jumped off his man’s shoulders and grabbed the ledge of the window, pulling himself up. Through the window, he realized he had to lower himself onto some crates that were thankfully high enough not to cause noise. There, he found Tomis waiting with his bow already strung. Lucan’s robe snagged on the window, and he threw it off, creeping up beside his man-at-arms.
Tomis took out a loop of thin rope and handed it to him, and Lucan threw it through the windows, bracing himself with a foot against the wall and pulling as soon as he felt Ryder’s weight on it. The man-at-arms quickly climbed through the window and landed beside them, nearly sending Lucan tumbling as his weight on the rope disappeared.
They turned inwards towards the open ground of the warehouse. A few candles and oil lamps illuminated the surroundings of a table and a cage near it, not unlike one in which a wild animal would be kept. Inside it was a man, grizzled and unshaven, his hair a black mane dotted with sparse gray strands. He was holding a triad of cards in his hand and looking at the man outside the cage with sharp eyes.
The man outside was one of three who seemed to be guarding the warehouse and its contents, including the prisoner, whoever he was. Two of the men were sitting around the table, drinking, and the third was sitting across from the prisoner, apparently playing cards with the starved man.
“Remember, if I win, you pass me one of those drinks,” the prisoner said, eyes shifting between his cards and the brute.
“And if I do.” The brute grinned. “You get a good and proper kick to that ugly mug of yours.”
“And I shall take it with an open heart,” the prisoner said, smiling.
“Then you'd better prepare yourself,” the brute threw down his cards. “I win.”
“Not quite.” The prisoner threw down his own cards and returned the man’s grin.
The brute got to his feet with a furious frown, and the prisoner softened his grin into a smile. “How about that drink then?”
Suddenly, the brute’s foot found the prisoner, though he missed his face as the latter had moved even faster and ended up getting a stomp to the chest and flying into the bars behind him instead.
He coughed as the brute gathered the cards in his hand, then reached out with a hand as though trying to catch mist. “Don’t give me the drinks, but let me have my cards. Please. They’re my cards.” The guard ignored him and continued. “I will play again, and I don’t want a drink. You can kick me as many times as you wish, but give me my cards.”
The guard scoffed and picked the last of the cards up, walking back to his comrades. He argued with his peers in a suppressed voice as he arranged the cards on the table.
Lucan rarely saw playing cards. They were costly to buy, and he had no love for the game, though he’d seen some noblemen carrying decks of quality matching the one he saw in the guard’s hands. He wondered who the man in the cage was, and if he knew where the Orb was. He supposed he’d find out soon enough.
Lucan gestured to himself, then to Ryder, pointing down to the ground. He then gestured for Tomis to stay and prepare his bow. Meanwhile, he lowered himself off the crates and onto the ground. The lamps and candles being near the guards meant Lucan and his men could see the guards, but the guards couldn’t see them, not without trying at least.
Ryder followed him down, his feet lighter on the ground than his. They circled around, sticking close to the crates that lined the square walls of the warehouse. Lucan raised his hand for a halt once they were eying the backs of two of the guards, the brute who’d been playing cards and one of the two sitting at the table. He paused for a moment, pondering whether he should begin a blood feud today. So far, he and this gang had fostered enmity, but no blood had been shed. They had somehow sent the guard after him and his men, but they hadn’t attempted to kill them, though he imagined they might have had they had the numbers at the time.
Tomis would wait for his signal before loosing any arrows. He stood at a crossroads, to attempt to subdue them and hazard being overheard by the guards outside, or to silence them swiftly and for good.
After a few moments, he decided that he would hazard being overheard rather than planting an unneeded seed of vengeance here. He doubted the gang would let bygones be bygones if he took their Orb, but he would have to find it first. Besides, who they truly were was still unknown to these ruffians.
He gestured for Ryder to follow him and crept forward, very slowly drawing his dagger. Once they were too close to go unnoticed, he nodded to Ryder, and they both used their Skills. Lucan’s Star took him behind the brute, who only had a moment to chuff in surprise before he had one hand pulling his chin up and the other resting the dagger’s blade against his neck. “Don’t move.” His eyes shifted to the third ruffian, who sat at the table. “A bow is lin–” Before he could finish his threat, the man kicked back his chair and yelled, then an arrow sprouted out of his chest.
Lucan exchanged a distressed glance with Ryder as they heard the commotion coming from the two guards outside, and the ones in their hands began to struggle. Together, they jerked their arms, slitting the men’s throats and drawing their real weapons.
“We must end it quickly,” Lucan told his man. “Lest the commotion brings the ones farther away.”
With a grim nod, Ryder advanced beside him. They dashed towards the large doors as they were being pushed open, and then they both used their Skills again. Lucan moved and was upon the guard before the latter could bring his weapon–an axe–to bear. It was easy, too easy, to cut apart their opponents. He wondered if any of these men had gotten past Copper in their Blessings.
Lucan looked at Ryder only to find the man-at-arms looking back at him. He pressed his lips and nodded towards the cage. They closed the warehouse doors and marched towards the imprisoned man, who was quick to perk up at their approach.
“Who are you folk?” He leaned against the steel bars, pressing his head between two of them.
Lucan threw the man a glance but decided not to answer yet. He didn’t know who he would be speaking to. Perhaps he was simply from a rival gang of the Green Scars. They approached the cage, apprehensively observing its steel lock.
“It’s on that one,” the man said, pointing at the brute, then seeing the question in their eyes, he continued, “The key.”
Ryder searched the brute, coming up with a key that indeed fit in the lock. As he unlocked it, Lucan looked at Tomis, who was still by the window on the crates. He tilted his head, and the man-at-arms shook his head. He hadn’t heard anyone approaching, though he soon pulled himself up to the window and looked outside, landing back down and shaking his head at Lucan again.
Lucan then turned to see the cage open and Ryder leading the man out of it at the end of his blade. “On the ground.” The man knelt at the man-at-arms' command. “What name do you go by?”
“Just Georg, good men,” the man said. “I believe we have the same enemies. That makes us allies.”
“Not by necessity,” Lucan spoke for the first time. “Why were you in the cage?”
“Well.” Georg chuckled. “Those folk did not much like me.”
“As is quite obvious,” Lucan said. “But why did they go to the trouble of caging you instead of slitting your throat?”
Georg glanced cautiously at the open throats of the two dead men on the floor. “Well…you see, I refused to give them something they wanted.”
Lucan cocked his head. “Would that thing happen to be an Orb?”
Georg frowned, looking at him incredulously. “Orb? What Orb?”
Ryder knocked him upside the head with the pommel of his swordbreaker, though it didn’t seem to deliver much pain through his thick mane.
“The Orb the Green Scars are looking for,” Lucan continued. “Do not pretend. We know of the God Orb. It is time to speak. We do not have a cage to put you in, and we are certainly not as patient.”
“I know of no Orb, I swear it!”
Ryder muttered just then, “Perhaps the boy was lying.”
Lucan gave him a sharp look, and the man-at-arms realized his mistake, looking as bashful as ever.
“The boy?” Georg perked up. “You have the boy?”
“There’s no boy,” Lucan said.
“You know of the boy.” Georg looked at him intently. “You have him. Do not lie to me.”
“You don’t seem to understand where we stand.”
“Venn is his name. If you tell me about him, I will tell you about the Orb.”
“So there is an Orb.” Lucan raised a brow.
“Yes.”
“Why do you wish to hear about the boy?”
“He matters to me.”
Lucan hummed for a moment. “The boy is well. He is with us, but not here.”
“Take me to him.”
“Only when you tell me where the Orb is.”
“I don’t have it.” Georg shook his head. “I know the Green Scars have been seeking it in the old districts. Perhaps it’s there somewhere.”
“If you neither have it nor know where it is, then why did they hold you here?” Lucan nodded towards the cage.
“They didn’t believe me.”
“And why should I?” Lucan said. “You told us yourself that you were in the cage because you wouldn’t give them what they wanted.”
Georg shrugged. “They wanted the boy too.”
“Venn?”
Georg nodded.
Before Lucan could say more, he heard Tomis hiss and looked at him. The man-at-arms gestured someone’s arrival–no, many people’s arrival.
Lucan turned to Ryder. “We must be on our way.”
“Take me with you!” Georg jerked under Ryder’s blade. “I swear, I will aid you, and Venn knows me.”
Lucan looked at him thoughtfully. Time was fleeing them now, and any moment, the rest of the gang could be upon them. He nodded to Ryder. “Bring him.”
Georg thanked him profusely, then reached up and snatched the deck of cards off the table. “If you give me a weapon, an axe, I could fight by your side too.”
Lucan snorted at that and ascended the crates until he was beside Tomis. Ryder pushed Georg ahead of himself until they were both up and beside them. They jumped out of the window, and Lucan saw the light of several lamps around the corner.
They didn’t wait to see how many men were returning to the warehouse, choosing instead to flee down the alleys Tomis led them through.
They rushed through the streets of Varencourt, heading back to the inn, where they would have to sit with the boy again. Venn had a lot of questions to answer.
Except he wasn't there to answer them.