Blade Archer ~ Forty-Eight

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The sun was warm against Kael’s back as he waited, but it wasn’t the sun that made him swelter. He thumbed at the blades strapped across his chest, flicking at the metal with his thumb nail to make it ring comfortingly in his ears. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use them, but he wasn’t so naïve to think it the better option to leave them behind.

He wanted to be at the palace when they released him. He wanted to know where the bastard was right now, but he had to trust that Aen and Ynuk followed his plan.

He had laid his trail that morning before going to training. The hood he had been wearing for a year and a half now, stabbed by his faithful old dagger to the minister’s front door with a letter.

I’ll be waiting with an army. Best bring yer own.

He had directed Minister Dukiya to his old home in the Seventeenth District, where he now waited, cross legged on the roof.

The few locals who looked up onto the roof passed him by with little regard. A group of boys tried to engage him in conversation, asking if they could watch while Kael did whatever he was going to do with his blade belts. Kael shrugged and said nothing. The boys sat with their backs against the wall opposite for a time, but coon grew bored with waiting and ran off to find entertainment elsewhere. Kael had been just like them a decade ago, he mused.

As he watched the rooftops, a figure came into view, darting across the roofs in athletic leaps.

‘On the way!’ Aen shouted. ‘Ye got ‘im ruffled, fer sure. He’s drummed up all the support he’s got left, twenty-seven in all, loyal or no. Reckons numbers’ll be enough fer ye.’ He stopped on the roof opposite, hands on his knees as he panted and looked over his shoulder. ‘All in their hoods, including him. He’s the tall bloke in green. Ynuk’s tracking ‘em now. They won’t be long.’

Kael nodded. ‘Get inside. Start making me army look good.’

Aen grinned and pulled his hood on with an army salute, thumping his chest with his fist before straightening arm and fist towards Kael. ‘Yes, General!’ he answered, then swung down from the roof.

Kael watched the rooftops for only a few minutes before he saw the first of the hoods skim across and drop between houses. He spied another sliding down an alley, and a pair walking boldly down a wider street. An army they may be, but even now they slunk through the streets as assassins.

Kael took a careful breath. He knew they meant for him to see them. If they wanted to remain perfectly hidden, they would have done so. They wanted him to think there were more of them than there were. He knew, because he was aiming to do just the same thing.

He saw Aen’s own hood flash between buildings. He and his own team of shadows, too, were shifting between the buildings to make it seem there were more than just the five of them. When the crunch came, though, when steel was inevitably drawn, he was taking a gamble. He had to hope the Talons had done their job well.

‘This is yer army?’ he shouted, sounding far more disdainful than he felt. He hadn’t yet seen the tall bastard in green, but he could see Ynuk slinking low over the rooftops, and knew his brother had eyes on the foreign minister.

‘Only what you can see of it.’ The voice that replied came from somewhere to Kael’s right, nowhere near where he could see his brother. Kael almost smiled to think he had outsmarted them, but he daren’t allow himself such a luxury so early.

The shadows began to blend. Three here emerging from an alley, another four flowing one by one onto a roof, two prowling around the foot of his mother’s house. One he caught signalling—five fingers flashed twice, and followed by another three. More than he had, but less than he hoped they might suspect him of.

‘And where’s yours?’ the figurehead asked.

There he was. A tall man in a dull green tunic and dull, undyed pants. Kael turned a hard glare on him, pointedly ignoring the spokesman. ‘And here I were, thinking ye liked to keep yerself hidden, Minister,’ he sneered. His fear was blown away by the storm of hatred that swelled at the sight of the man who had ruined his life. ‘Ye’re that confident of yerself ye’ll face me in the open? Brave man.’

The minister spread his arms, but didn’t remove his hood. ‘And now you’re here to kill me, all on your lonesome, it would seem.’

‘I’m alone?’ Kael scoffed and shook his head. He took a careful breath as he struggled to hold his voice steady. Talons, come through just this once, and I’ll forgive ye all the times in me life where ye hasn’t. ‘Talon Thainu,’ he began, reading from a list he had memorised months ago. ‘Talon Ghilah. Talon Qor. Talon Lira. Talon Denyala.’

Minister Dukiya folded his arms and rested his weight on one foot, a move far too casual not to be conscious. The minister was nervous, though whether it was because his anonymity was being torn apart or whether he suspected something of his closest agents, Kael couldn’t know.

‘Talon Hani, and Talon Penagi.’

Minister Dukiya clapped his hands slowly. ‘Well done, street rat, you know all the Talons in my pocket. A pity you hadn’t pointed them out months ago.’ He turned to the hood closest to him. ‘Kill him.’

Now, Kael silently urged as the shadows began to surge forward. He clenched his jaw to keep the fear from showing on his face, half-wishing he still had the hood.

With no visible sign that Kael could see, the shadows broke. The seven Talons he had named drew swords and tore off their hoods. From his perch on top of the roof, Kael watched as they turned on the minister’s hoods, cutting down three of them before they even realised what was happening. Aen’s own small army shot out from the surrounding doorways, though of Aen himself Kael saw no sign.

‘Kael!’

He spun his head to where he heard his brother roar his name, and saw him dashing off across the rooftops.

Without a moment of hesitation, Kael followed. The coward minister was running! He flew across the narrow alleys between houses as his brother raced ahead, glancing every now and then down through the gaps in the shade cloths to try and spot the fleeing minister.

As soon as Dukiya was in sight, Kael pulled two triangular blades from his belts. The force of his training with his weaker fingers tried berating him into practicing more with them now. He shoved the thought aside and gripped them between middle finger and strongest forefinger, forefinger and thumb. He charged on, blades tight in his grip. He could guess where the minister was trying to run now, but he knew these streets far better than the northerner. It wasn’t long before he caught the man up.

He paused just for long enough to steady himself. Feet apart, hold a breath, follow the wind. He flung both blades at once and smoothly grabbed another two of the long, slender blades, throwing them with almost the same motion.

Something hit, enough to make the minister stumble, but not keep him from running around the next corner.

Kael swore and pelted after him, another two blades ready. He threw them with little thought this time, only the angry desire to end the torment this man had caused him. With his death, Kael would finally be free.

Dukiya stumbled again, this time falling to the ground in a heap. Kael aimed a three-cornered blade at his knee, threw and missed.

Ynuk was on him in a heartbeat. Kael watched in rabid satisfaction as his brother crouched over the minister’s flailing form. He shoved a knee heavily into his back, drawing a strangled cry from his victim. He couldn’t see past Ynuk’s shoulders as he bent over the minister’s head.

Minister Dukiya’s body fell limp. Ynuk’s blade sprayed crimson drops of his blood over the hard-packed street, spattered an empty flowerpot and misted over the mud brick wall of the building Kael was standing in. Two drops, he saw, landed on his toe, one on his skin, the other pooled in the middle of his toenail. They glistened there in the sunlight, small enough to remain perfect circles in the dust covering his feet.

Kael’s legs shuddered underneath him. He allowed them to give way and fell with a wave of impossible relief to his knees. Two more triangular blades clattered, forgotten, to the street below.

Ynuk still knelt against Dukiya’s back, his breaths coming in short, intermittent shudders, almost as though he had to remind his body to take them. The pool of blood underneath him grew almost imperceptibly larger. Kael watched as the edge of it crept towards a pebble, touched it, ringed around it and left it an island amongst the man’s death.

Ynuk stepped back, held the back of his wrist to his mouth and turned to look up at Kael. His dagger was still in his hand, dripping blood. His face and shirt were spattered with the stuff. At the sight of his younger brother watching down on him, his face wrinkled in a smile half-hidden by his bloodied hand.

It was then Kael realised he was reacting to Kael’s own smile.

‘We win,’ he said, his voice scratchy and hardly his own.

Ynuk nodded and looked back down at the body of their shared suffering. ‘We win.’