Excerpt: Godswarrior

Prologue

The assassin swung himself onto the balcony easily, landing softly on the balls of his feet. It was a clear, moonlit night - more light than he liked to work with, but not enough that he thought he'd be spotted if he moved slowly and carefully.

He crouched down below the level of the balcony railings as he examined the door. It opened outwards, to his relief. He pulled out his toolset and gently worked the latch with a file. The latch gave without any protest. As quietly as possible, he pulled the door open and slipped inside behind the curtains. The target slept alone. By the assassin's calculations, he would have been abed for three hours now. Plenty of time to have fallen into deep sleep. The assassin wasn't expecting any trouble.

He stopped to listen before closing the door behind himself. He could hear nothing beyond soft snores. He slipped a finger between the two curtains and gently pulled them apart until he could see into the room. The target had left a single candle burning by the bedside. The target was asleep in the bed, his back to the balcony door. So much the better.

Something odd caught his eye, and the assassin froze. In the far corners of the room he made out two shadows that should not be there. Human shadows.

The assassin wished he had been less hasty in closing the door. Trying to re-open it without disturbing the curtains and alerting the guards to his presence was a tricky proposition. The guards seemed to be asleep but he couldn't rely on that being the case, not for a second.

For one brief, glorious moment, he thought he had it, but the catch gave way with an unseemly snap. He felt, rather than heard, the guards snap to attention. No time for stealth now, he threw himself through the door and back out into the cold of the night.

The assassin was almost over the balcony when the guards caught him. With his back to them and hands occupied with the rope, he didn't even have the chance to pull out his knife.

He had to hand it to them, they knew what they were doing. They had his hands bound behind his back and his knives in a pile on the floor with an efficiency that was worthy of a master thief.

The guards bundled him back into the room and dropped him unceremoniously on the floor. One of them kicked at the assassin's side. The assassin drew in a sharp breath involuntarily, but didn't cry out.

"You caught him?" came a nasal, unpleasant voice. Lord Cardry. The target of tonight's excursion. "I was worried. For a moment it seemed he was getting away."

"Moves like a cat," said the guard. "But he's no match for trained warriors."

The assassin remained still. Were they going to turn him into the town guard? That would be inconvenient, but he could probably get out of it without too much bloodshed. Bloodshed was occasionally a necessary part of his job, but it seemed unfair to kill those who were just trying to do their own job.

"Bring him into the workroom," said Lord Cardry, climbing out of bed and pulling on a robe.

"Wouldn't it be better to wait until morning?"

The assassin held his breath. Lord Cardry was known for experimenting with magical artefacts. He didn't like the implications of being taken to Lord Cardry's workroom.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Lord Cardry. "We can't give him the chance to escape." He swept out of the room, not passing within reach of the assassin, leaving the door open behind him.

The assassin hoped that the guards would kick him to his feet, force him to follow them and possibly give him the chance to undo his bonds and fight his way to freedom. To his disgust, they picked him up by the wrists and ankles and carried him. The swinging from side to side and resulting disorientation made his stomach twist.

A short journey that the assassin did his best to memorise through the house later, the assassin was dropped on the floor again. The impact caused a fresh flare of pain from where the guards had kicked him earlier.

"Sit him up, tighten the bindings, tie him to that chair," said Lord Cardry.

The assassin made their job as difficult as possible, keeping his body limp and difficult to move, holding his breath so that the bonds would be loose on him, but despite his best efforts he soon found himself trussed to the chair.

"So," said Lord Cardry. "You are the so-called Spider of Nevarre?"

The assassin remained silent. If they didn't hear his voice, it would be that much harder for them to identify him later.

"You're not much to look at. Short. Scrawny." Lord Cardry sniffed. "Hardly the appearance of a legend. Take off his mask."

Short and nimble was an advantage in his line of work, and as for the other accusation, not everybody had the advantage of regular meals of fine food as the nobles. The assassin stared at Lord Cardry neutrally. He'd been told he had an unnerving gaze.

The first guard pulled the assassin's mask off without ceremony. According to the rule of his guild, the assassin should kill them all now. He still held out some hope that he'd get the opportunity.

"Well," said Lord Cardry. "You're younger than I thought. Hardly a beauty, but passable. Not that it matters."

The assassin still said nothing.

"I suppose you're wondering what we're planning to do with you," said Lord Cardry. He was aiming for casual, but the assassin could see excitement and anticipation behind it. Lord Cardry was looking forward to what was coming up.

The longer the lord talked, the more time the assassin had to come up with a plan. He silently willed the lord to continue. The workroom was not large, but it had several windows. If he could get them to leave him alone in the room he was confident of his escape.

"It so happens that I've recently come into an artefact of some repute," said Lord Cardry. "It's a goblet. It has the reputation of providing immortality to those who are pure of heart, and death to those who are not."

The assassin was intrigued in spite of himself. The goblet seemed old, the intricate designs framing the cup worn to indistinct swirls. Such an artefact should not still exist. The gods had ruled to eliminate all powerful magic from the world many centuries ago. Even with the risk of death, he could not imagine that hopeful, death-fearing people would not be taking their chances with the goblet whenever the opportunity presented itself. Most probably the artefact was a fake.

"I thought to myself, how best to test this? Immortality is not the sort of power that is easy to test, if you know what I mean." Lord Cardry paced around the room for a moment. "Logically, I needed to test the other power of the goblet - that of poisoning the impure of heart. And what could be more impure than one who kills for money? A thief may have a heart of gold, but an assassin?" Lord Cardry laughed unpleasantly. "And what better choice for an assassin than the most notorious in Nevarre?"

The assassin had been set up. His client must have been one of Cardry's cronies. He made a mental note to have words with the guild if he ever got out of this. They should screen their clients thoroughly before sending them to him.

Lord Cardry's route brought him back to a large bench in the centre of the room. He picked a simple goblet off the side closest to him and poured some kind of liquid into it from a tall bottle. Wine, by the smell of it.

"Tilt his head back," said Lord Cardry. "Hold his nose until he opens his mouth."

There seemed to be little point in holding his breath since it would only prolong the experience, but the assassin put up the fight they were expecting. When the wine poured into his mouth, sour and cold, he let it run out and over his chin until he swallowed compulsively.

He felt a little light-headed as the wine slipped down his throat. It was difficult to think through the wool clogging his brain. His mind drifted to his earliest memories - his early childhood as a thief on the streets; his capture by the head of the assassin's guild when he attempted an ill-advised pickpocketing; his training when the guildmaster recognised some natural talent in him; the slow establishment of his reputation as the Spider, the best assassin in Nevarre. Was this what death was like?

Abruptly his head cleared. If it was a poisoning they wanted, a poisoning they would get. He let out a horrible scream and twitched against his bonds. With his tongue, he split the capsule on the back of his teeth that contained his death-imitation poison - it had saved his life more than once. He continued to twitch and wail as if in terribly agony until the familiar numbness washed over him and his vision turned black.

--

When he regained consciousness, the assassin took stock of his body as comprehensively as possible. He was still tied up, although the ropes seemed to have loosened. Pain flared up at several points - he suspected he had not been moved gently. His ribs ached the most. He was cold all over and his fingers were numb. The floor below him was hard, uncarpeted. He listened for a moment before he opened his eyes slowly.

He seemed to be alone in a different room to the one he had fallen unconscious in, but his vision was too dark just yet for him to make out anything more than the rough size of the room.

Getting free of his bonds was not going to be a fun experience. Dislocating his thumb and effectively putting one hand out of commission would make his escape that much harder. He pulled at the ropes, trying to get a feel for the knots. No luck there. Perhaps there was something in the room he could make use of?

What little light in the room there was was leaking in through a tiny window at the top of the far wall. The assassin waited patiently until his vision adjusted properly to the lack of light and he could make out the details of his surroundings.

He seemed to be in some kind of storage room. There were shelves on three of the walls, stocked high with baskets and piles of linen. Was there crockery? He might be able to break something to use to cut his bonds, although it would be a noisy endeavour and potentially risky.

He shuffled over to the shelves as best as possible, drawing his knees up to his chest. His rips complained bitterly at the movement. He hoped nothing was broken - that would take him out of commission for weeks.

Movement outside the door made him freeze. Heavily booted feet were approaching quickly. He recognised the voices of the two guards.

"He must have got it in when he was drinking from it," said the first guard. "We underestimated him." There was a thump, as if the guard had kicked the wall in anger.

The assassin was in the process of attempting to lie down in the centre of the floor again when the door was flung open. "He's moved," said one of the guards. He spat on the ground. "Filthy cheating dirty son of a whore."

One of those booted feet made connection with the assassin's side again. Well, if his ribs weren't broken before they were certainly broken now.

"How did you do it? How did you get the poison into the goblet?" There was another kick, this time to the other side. "What is the poison?"

Now that didn't make any sense at all. The only poison the assassin used was on himself. Poisons were inelegant and slow, too easy to counteract if they found the target in time. Poisons were only necessary when the death was to look natural, and the assassin wasn't much for taking those jobs. He much preferred the quickness of a knife.

"Answer me!" Another kick.

The assassin breathed heavily for a moment. He swallowed, trying to moisten his dry mouth. The death-imitation poison always left him thirsty. "What--," said the assassin. His voice was rough. "What are you talking about?"

"The poison in the goblet," said the guard. "What kind of poison is it? Tell us the antidote!" He stepped roughly on the assassin's hand.

The assassin groaned in pain. "What poison?"

"The poison you used in Lord Cardry's goblet. The one that he drank from."

The assassin managed to summon a laugh before dissolving back into rough coughing. "You mean it didn't make him immortal?"

The comment only earned him another hard kick. The assassin saw stars bursting behind his eyes. "Answer us. What's the antidote?"

"I poisoned nothing," said the assassin, amongst coughs. "Perhaps... Perhaps Lord Cardry is not as pure of heart as he believes?" What fabulous irony, if the lord had been judged and found wanting. But the assassin didn't believe in magical artefacts that bestowed immortality.

His joke didn't go unnoticed, but there were no signs of amusement from the guards. They were completely loyal to Lord Cardry, then. "We're wasting time with this scum," said the guard. "Slit his throat."

It was a threat, rather than an order. They wouldn't kill him just yet. "It's cialisin," said the assassin quickly. "The antidote is a mixture of--"

One of the guards stepped on his other hand and ground it into the hard stone of the floor floor. "Liar," he said. "We know cialisin. It causes foaming at the mouth."

The assassin racked his brain for another poison. He wished the guards would give him more hints as to whatever condition had afflicted Lord Cardry so that he could come up with a convincing lie. "Hotensia," he coughed out.

Another kick. "Everyone knows you cannot dissolve hotensia in cold liquid. Try again. This time tell us the truth."

The guard was right. Stupid. The assassin decided to abandon that line of attack. He couldn't think for the pain, and it seemed his knowledge of poisons was sorely lacking. He cursed himself out for letting that knowledge lapse. Knowledge was a weapon too, and you should train yourself in every weapon possible so that you were never caught unprepared.

The guard picked up the assassin's hand roughly, causing a hiss of pain that the assassin couldn't hold back, and drew a knife. "The truth," he said.

"I told you the truth," said the assassin. He could barely get his voice above a whisper and his vision was swiftly turning black. "I used no poison."

The guards didn't believe him. He could see it in their eyes, in the set of their shoulders as they readied themselves to injure him more.

The assassin closed his eyes, and that was why he never knew what caused the sudden, incredible flare of pain and resulting loss of consciousness.