Excerpt: The Kin

Marolith crouched in the dusky alley as the raindrops fell steadily and heavily from the weeping, grey skies. He had been waiting there for nigh on an hour, yet his opportunity had still not presented itself. But an hour was nothing to one such as he, trained in the art of waiting. The time would come when it was time, and no amount of wishing otherwise could change that fact.
For now, he continued to watch the inn across the street, noting every passerby and person who went in or came out of the establishment. Each person was a distinct picture in his mind, though it was not so much the people he sought, but rather, a lack of persons in the street. Of course, no one had taken any notice of the shadow lurking in the alley, for there was nothing remarkable about the narrow gap between the rows of shops and townhouses. Indeed, one would have had to have been an expert on all the nooks and crannies of the city itself and the many labyrinthine passages that connected the different quarters behind the whitewashed façades on the street. And besides that, the rain kept most people occupied.
The rain. It was both a friend and enemy today. Marolith was surprised how many people were out and about considering the inclement weather, yet it was the rain itself that helped conceal him from sight. Still, the constant pattering of droplets on the shingles overhead and the gurgling that chuckled through the gutters made it difficult to hear approaching people, especially patrols of Nightguards.
He did his best to suppress a shudder, though it was not just the sudden gust of cold wind that caused his involuntary tremor. He frowned at what he perceived as a sudden slip in control, a moment of weakness for anyone to exploit. But though the wind was cold, what made him colder still was the reality he now faced: The Kin was scattered across Farandred like the leaves blowing limply along the rain-soaked street before him, and he was alone in a hostile and far-flung city in a foreign land. From what he could decipher from his last contact, while he had been away completing a mission for the Kin itself, the unthinkable had happened at home.
King Lyonin had been assassinated- a shock in itself considering how popular a ruler he was- but even more chilling was the idea that the Kin itself was involved in the murder. Of course, any political leader faced the possibility of death, but Marolith could not fathom what could motivate someone to kill the kindly and just king of Farandred. Besides this, it did not make sense that the note implied Kin involvement. It was simply impossible. How could the very men sworn to protect the king be his murderers? But no, if all of Marolith's experience had taught him something, it was that nothing was impossible, and the more he considered the idea, the more he realized that it was the perfect cover up.
His musings were interrupted by the sudden awareness that there were less people in the street at that moment than had been all morning. Trusting the inner sense, that intuition he had gained after many years of such work, that the time was indeed right, Marolith sprang into action.
Stepping casually from the alley into the street, he made his way toward the looming, four-storied building across the street. Head down and hood up as if to ward off the rain, he took long purposeful strides, ever careful not to appear to much in a hurry, but still enough haste to give the impression he could not wait to get out of the rain.
Glancing from side to side from beneath the cowl, Marolith confirmed that there was no one about for the moment. Just before reaching the main doors leading into the inn, he ducked off the street and into the stable yard adjacent to the building, where visitors' horses were admitted and taken to be unsaddled and groomed. Even the stable hands were nowhere to be seen, and a quick glance towards the kitchen entrance with its wooden door shut firmly against the cold and rain confirmed that no one was coming out anytime soon.
He hurried under the cover of the stables and walked straight towards a horse he had chosen earlier when he had initially scouted out the building. It had not arrived that day, and so it had had sufficient time to rest- a vital element of his plan if he were to get away with his life. Reassuring the animal with soft sounds, Marolith quickly saddled the horse and began leading it out into the stableyard. He could not believe how well his plan was going when suddenly, the kitchen door swung open just as he was walking past.
The suddenness of the action was so unexpected, he actually stumbled for a second, but time and training had taught him to continue on no matter what. If you believed what you were doing was perfectly normal, perhaps others would as well.
"Hye, where are you off't with that hoss?" came a voice behind him, clearly belonging to one of the absent stable hands.
Knowing the jig was up, Marolith ignored the question and instead swung nimbly up into the saddle. Digging his boots into the animal's flanks and clicking his tongue, he set off at a gallop into the street with the cries of the stable hand ringing an alarum behind him.
He cursed under his breath at his bad luck, hoping to disappear from sight before anyone from the inn could be alerted to the theft that had just taken place. Just as he was rounding a bend in the street, a patrol of Nightguards was coming in the opposite direction. Before he could stop the horse, Marolith collided with the front-most ranks of the soldiers, men hurrying to get out of reach of the confused horse's flailing hooves as it reared backwards.
Shouts and cries of surprise echoed off the houses and shops lining either side of the street, but Marolith was already spurring the startled mount down a side street. He could not believe how quickly things had gone from bad to worse. Risking a glance backwards, he was dismayed to see one of the quicker soldiers standing at the entrance to this street and pointing the direction he had fled. Just before he turned back to focus on where he was going, Marolith saw the others join their companion and give chase.
Now, he had to focus all his efforts on escaping the city gates before they sounded a city-wide alarm and trapped him. Knowing he was in the northwestern quadrant of the city, he turned his horse down another street that headed west. Some of the people out and about hurried to the sides of the street and gave him dark glances from beneath their hoods, but no one tried to stop him... yet.
As he passed an intersection, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a uniformed rider another street down to his left. Pulling on the reins, Marolith swerved onto a different street, even narrower than the one he had been on. Frightened pedestrians scattered as the horse's hooves rang off the cobbled stones of the market he was passing through. He glanced back to see if the soldier was following him and turned back around just in time to make his horse jump over a table filled with wares blocking the entire street, which was little more than an alley at this point. He had no sooner cleared the hurdle than he was forced to duck beneath lines of laundry hanging between the cramped upper stories to either side. After a brief stretch where he could barely lift his head past the horse's neck, the street finally emptied out onto a main boulevard, one of the main arteries of the city that connected directly to the gates themselves.
He slowed the horse to a walk for just a moment, hearing cries and crashing in the distance. It was obvious the Nightguards had not let the outdoor market stop them either. There was no time to tarry here.
The street was more crowded here, but the rain had prevented it from assuming its usual clogged flow of traffic. Still, he would have to navigate around slow-moving oxcarts and people walking to and from the walls of the city. To his right, far in the distance, he could make out the imposing outline of the city walls through the drizzle, and at the end of the boulevard, the gatehouse looming out from the rest of the wall.
Suddenly, an arrow whizzed past his ear from the alley behind him. Without even looking back, Marolith spurred the horse forward, the start he had felt causing him to dig his heels in even harder than he normally would have. The cries were louder now, and he was sure that the Nightguards were spilling out of the alley he had just left. Fortunately, the first few hundred feet were clear, and after a few seconds, the horse was galloping at full tilt along the broad avenue.
As he raced past startled peasants trudging along, he lashed the reins and shouted, as much to urge the animal onwards as to alert those in front of him to his presence.
Now, he was only a few hundred yards from the gate, but to his dismay, he could see Nightguards hurrying about the portal, preparing to stop him while the portcullis began to lower behind them. It was now or never, and he did not intend to spend the rest of his days being tortured in a Saehl dungeon by these sorry excuses for soldiers.
Bracing himself, he crouched low on the horse's back as he urged it forward in one last heroic burst of speed, flicking open his palm and lowering his arm to his side as he did so. The Nightguard standing ready to impale his horse on the end of his spear suddenly staggered back and to the side, clutching his chest where a scarlet stain blossomed across his dark purple uniform. Then, Marolith was racing through the narrow gap he had created, swinging his other arm wide and slicing the throat of a Nightguard who futilely tried to leap forward to slash at him with his sword, unaware of the hidden blade protruding from the sleeve of Marolith's robe.
For a moment, time seemed to slow and Marolith thought he could feel the sharp tip of the portcullis scrape his back, tearing a long rip in the back of his cloak just before slamming down into the stone with a deafening, metallic clang. Then for a split second, he was racing at breakneck speed again, but he had not anticipated the drawbridge across the moat, which was also going up, the huge links of the chain rattling and the wood of the bridge moaning as it heaved upwards slowly. Then, nothing but the hollow drum of the horse's hooves on the planks before the eternal silence save for the wind rushing past his ears as they hung suspended over the dark waters below for an instant.
Then, the explosive clatter of hooves on the stone of the road, sparks flying from the pavement as time rushed back to its normal speed. He reined in exhausted mount, which was blowing and heaving beneath him, reminding him suddenly of the blood pounding in his ears and just how heavily he was breathing himself. He turned and looked at the gatehouse behind him, now completely closed as if to keep him out, and whispered a prayer of thanks for the delay it would cause the soldiers in leaving the city to chase him. A cry on the battlemented walltop alerted him to one of the Nightguards angrily pointing towards him and aiming a bow, though he was out of arrowshot by then.
With a laugh, Marolith turned and galloped away to the west, towards Farandred.