By the time midnight rolled around, Drake had all the information his people could obtain about the mercenaries who’d abducted Darion, the boat where they were holding him, and the (visible) defenses they’d erected. A few hours after that, after a spirited and illuminating strategy session with his people, he had an actual plan to rescue Darion without getting his people killed or causing enough damage he’d get censured by the noble court.
They might actually pull this off after all.
It took another hour to get permission from the temple guards to leave the temple and “take a nighttime tour of the city”, but eventually, either the guards had run out of excuses or they had people shadowing him from the rooftops to keep an eye on him. Drake suspected both, but he was fine with that. The more witnesses that said he hadn’t started this, the better.
An hour after that, he was crouching on the docks of Korhaurbauten. Street traffic had been light and the sunrise remained a few hours off, which made it possible at least some of these mercenaries might be asleep when they arrived. Drake doubted it. His luck wasn’t that good, and they’d be on high alert until Lord Redbow showed up to retrieve his prize.
Waiting any longer hadn’t been an option. These mercenaries would be stupid to not check on the crew who’d been holding Lark hostage every few hours, and since Lark had killed the mercenaries holding her hostage, the enemy mercenaries would know she was free and had gone for help. They’d be on high alert and ready for any attack, but the less time Drake gave them to prepare, the less time they’d have to ready themselves for battle.
Or get additional mercenary reinforcements from Lord Redbow.
Drake’s new plan was a bit risky, but what plan wasn’t? The most important part of it was that it put his people at less risk than if they confronted the mercenaries directly. He wasn’t dealing with amateurs any longer. Every person in this mercenary group was a seasoned warrior with a powerful rarity and absolutely no reason not to kill those who crossed them.
Drake knew that confronting these mercenaries directly would be dangerous because, thanks to intelligence gathered by Nicole, Sachi, and Samuel, he now knew who led them. She was a real piece of work that one of his people had a personal grudge against.
The leader of this merry mercenary band was the Asp, the ruthless acid-throwing lady who Robin desperately wanted to kill. She’d served Lord Redbow by entering Fort Graystone and waiting there until he posted his fake bounty. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have surprised Drake that a powerful mercenary devoid of scruples would abduct people for Redbow as well.
The Asp had also slaughtered Robin’s entire village, which had naturally caused a bit of a ruckus when Robin learned the woman was right here in the city. He’d been glad he’d already made the decision to confront the Asp and free Darion, because if he hadn’t, he might not have been able to stop Robin. Yet as much as Robin had pleaded for Drake to just murder the Asp in cold blood the moment she showed her face, he couldn’t do that.
At least, not if he struck first.
If Drake attacked the Asp without cause, he would be committing assault and possibly murder. While manor lords could murder whoever they liked in their own territory with impunity, their authority was limited in the capital city. Keeping manor lords from simply killing anyone they liked inside the capital’s walls was the only way to maintain the city’s neutrality.
Still, the laws of the city only forbid him from attacking the Asp first. If she attacked him, she would be striking directly at a manor lord. The noble court wouldn’t stand for that, and Drake would be fully within his rights to murder her ass... or, more likely, to order his cadre of powerful battle maids to murder her ass for him.
Still, if all went well with his brilliant plan, no one would get murdered today. The Asp’s mercenary company would get pissed off and humiliated, and be out a good bit of money, but hopefully they’d take their financial losses as a sign not to fuck with Lord Gloomwood in the future. They’d move on. If they didn’t, well... he already had no shortage of enemies in this world. It wasn’t like one more band of mercenaries gunning for him would change things.
The salty smell of the bay joined the gentle lapping sounds of waves as Drake paused in the shadow of a large warehouse on the docks. This was the closest warehouse to the stretch of dock leading out to where the Asp’s battle boat was tied up and moored. It was a low-slung, sleek-looking vessel with an armored hull and glistening metal doors leading to the cabin. The only way to reach it was to walk down an open dock with no cover for fifty paces or more.
A tall main mast led to a crow’s nest in which a single shadowed figure sat motionless with a clear view of the entire docks. The gently bobbing boat sported no cannons—gunpowder wasn’t something they had in this world yet, fortunately—but it did have four prominent crossbow turrets mounted at the fore, aft, left, and right. Those crossbows were big enough Drake suspected they could send a bolt clean through a zarovian.
While those weapons were intended to kill people, Drake suspected a big enough bolt fired at the right portion of a boat could also cause it to start sinking. He didn’t see any other weapons besides the crossbow turrets, but the Asp wouldn’t need those. Samuel had told him she could fling her acid a good ways, almost as far as Carl would throw his meteor kabooms.
Then, of course, they were the Asp’s mercenaries, which the intelligence his people had gathered told him numbered at least eight... each with a rarity comparable in power to that of his battle maids. While Samuel hadn’t been able to find out what all of them could do, at least one was a shifter and another could shoot firebolts from his fingers. All bad.
Finally, these mercenaries would, of course, be fully equipped with silverweave outfits over which they would wear ferrocite armor. Most rarities and weapons would have very little effect on them. So if it came to a fight between them, Drake would just have to hope his “uniquely targeted rarity”—Suck’s rarity—could bypass their defenses and drain their blood.
At least he knew Suck’s rarity was now functioning. He knew because every time he looked at someone, he saw a brilliant yellow glow embedded inside their head. He could feel blood pumping inside whoever he looked at. It was the creepiest feeling ever.
Also, like with Anna’s rarity, he instinctively understood how Suck’s rarity would work. If he mentally concentrated on the glow inside someone else’s head, he’d start sucking their blood out through their eyes and mouth. He hadn’t dared test this new rarity on any of his people. Suck had killed Thak the zarovian quickly even when his rarity wasn’t burnished.
So, he had the burnished rarity of a now dead Gilded Blade. He had Magnum strapped to his back and loaded with a full quartet of bolts. And he had some very powerful people on his side. He was confident he and his people could give a good accounting of themselves if it came to battle... but not that some of his people wouldn’t die.
Which was why they were doing this the clever way.
He glanced back at the crew he’d chosen to act as the decoy team. Lydia and Emily were present, of course, but Valentia and Nicole weren’t. They had other jobs to do. Gaby and Carl were here, for offense and defense, and both looked somewhere between thrilled and terrified to be on their first official mission as Gloomwood Manor thralls.
Finally, six zarovians in ferrocite armor were with him as well, including Korrag. They formed a sizable vanguard that looked like they could beat the shit out of anyone who crossed him. They were here for their skill in battle, their intimidation factor, and to make the Asp think she knew where his zarovians were... so she wouldn’t wonder where Cresh and the rest were hiding.
Robin (with Sachi to keep her in check) would even now be creeping across the rooftops of the warehouses on the dock to get a good angle on the mercenary boat. Sadly, even having two talented archers on the high ground wouldn’t improve their chances against the Asp’s crew in a straight up brawl. Arrows could not penetrate ferrocite, but at least he’d have eyes up there to warn him if Lord Redbow’s people came at him from behind.
Finally, Raylan was with Drake’s party as well. The man looked more than a bit nervous to be out in the field in a place where he could get murdered, but with an acid-throwing lady in play and all her other powerful mercenaries with her, Drake needed at least one healer close on hand. His battle maids would be too busy fighting for their lives to heal others.
Samuel, naturally, was stuck back in the temple. If Drake’s entire party got wiped out today, the title of Lord Gloomwood would pass to Samuel instead of the Asp. The manor would remain in good hands. That was a comfort on a night when not much else was comforting.
He had his people. He had his plan. And he had to move out and rescue Darion before Lord Redbow reinforced the Asp or came himself. Drake knew he could defend himself from random mercenaries and kill them if they attacked him, but directly attacking Lord Redbow or his blood thralls was a different matter entirely. He still hoped to avoid that.
“Any questions about the plan?” Drake asked. “Last chance.”
No one spoke. They’d gone over the plan and accepted it. He appreciated his people’s faith in him. It was time to go be a fucking manor lord.
“Form up,” Drake said. “Let’s go say hello to the acid lady.”
Drake rose as Korrag led two zarovians around the group and out of the shadows. Drake fell into step right behind the wall of muscle and armor they formed with Lydia on one side and Emily on the other. Gaby was right behind him, followed by Carl and Raylan. The last three zarovians formed a loose wedge around them, completely encircling the group.
In that way, Drake and his vanguard walked straight down the middle of the docks in full view of the waiting boat. A piercing whistle told him the lookout in the crow’s nest atop the main mast had warned the others. The lookout didn’t descend from his position, which suggested he either had a rarity that worked from up high or was keeping an eye out for others.
By the time Drake’s vanguard stopped about ten paces from one of the two tall posts around which ropes attached to the Asp’s boat were moored, her gangplank was already up and most of her crew was already on deck. He counted six visible figures plus the one in the next. That made seven. So was that all of them? He glanced at Emily.
“Three remain below, lord,” she said quietly. “Two are moving. One is not.”
The soul who wasn’t moving was likely Darion in his cell. The two moving souls would be patrolling mercenaries in reserve in the cabin. They were the people Drake needed to get up here on deck before his plan would work. He had to force the Asp to call for reinforcements.
Worse, unless he wanted everyone in Korhaurbauten to know he could speak words he didn’t believe—exactly what Lord Redbow had accused him of doing earlier today—he couldn’t use his ability to lie. He had to use doublespeak and good old fashioned guile. Even if he killed the Asp and everyone with her after, his own people would know he’d lied.
A tall woman with a flowing red hood and robe under a patchwork of ferrocite and feathersteel armor sauntered into view. She placed one boot on the low-slung railing of her boat and leaned dangerously over the edge, arms crossed. This must be the Asp. Her hood shadowed her face, revealing only her narrow, brown chin and her bared white teeth.
The five figures on deck with her were dressed in similar garb, silverweave overlaid with armor. All wore hoods as well. Drake could see a faint yellow glow in each of their heads even through their silverweave, but that didn’t mean he could suck them dry. Also, all of them appeared entirely concerned by his arrival. He hoped that was an act.
“Lord Gloomwood!” the Asp called from her boat. “Are you in need of my services? If you are, you should know that I and my people don’t work cheap!”
Drake wasn’t surprised she’d recognized him despite the full suit of feathersteel he wore and the silverweave beneath it. He had, after all, shown up with two battle maids and a vanguard of zarovians. That was kind of Lord Gloomwood’s thing.
So now all he had to do was bullshit her long enough to steal Darion away.
By the time midnight rolled around, Drake had all the information his people could obtain about the mercenaries who’d abducted Darion, the boat where they were holding him, and the (visible) defenses they’d erected. A few hours after that, after a spirited and illuminating strategy session with his people, he had an actual plan to rescue Darion without getting his people killed or causing enough damage he’d get censured by the noble court.
They might actually pull this off after all.
It took another hour to get permission from the temple guards to leave the temple and “take a nighttime tour of the city”, but eventually, either the guards had run out of excuses or they had people shadowing him from the rooftops to keep an eye on him. Drake suspected both, but he was fine with that. The more witnesses that said he hadn’t started this, the better.
An hour after that, he was crouching on the docks of Korhaurbauten. Street traffic had been light and the sunrise remained a few hours off, which made it possible at least some of these mercenaries might be asleep when they arrived. Drake doubted it. His luck wasn’t that good, and they’d be on high alert until Lord Redbow showed up to retrieve his prize.
Waiting any longer hadn’t been an option. These mercenaries would be stupid to not check on the crew who’d been holding Lark hostage every few hours, and since Lark had killed the mercenaries holding her hostage, the enemy mercenaries would know she was free and had gone for help. They’d be on high alert and ready for any attack, but the less time Drake gave them to prepare, the less time they’d have to ready themselves for battle.
Or get additional mercenary reinforcements from Lord Redbow.
Drake’s new plan was a bit risky, but what plan wasn’t? The most important part of it was that it put his people at less risk than if they confronted the mercenaries directly. He wasn’t dealing with amateurs any longer. Every person in this mercenary group was a seasoned warrior with a powerful rarity and absolutely no reason not to kill those who crossed them.
Drake knew that confronting these mercenaries directly would be dangerous because, thanks to intelligence gathered by Nicole, Sachi, and Samuel, he now knew who led them. She was a real piece of work that one of his people had a personal grudge against.
The leader of this merry mercenary band was the Asp, the ruthless acid-throwing lady who Robin desperately wanted to kill. She’d served Lord Redbow by entering Fort Graystone and waiting there until he posted his fake bounty. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have surprised Drake that a powerful mercenary devoid of scruples would abduct people for Redbow as well.
The Asp had also slaughtered Robin’s entire village, which had naturally caused a bit of a ruckus when Robin learned the woman was right here in the city. He’d been glad he’d already made the decision to confront the Asp and free Darion, because if he hadn’t, he might not have been able to stop Robin. Yet as much as Robin had pleaded for Drake to just murder the Asp in cold blood the moment she showed her face, he couldn’t do that.
At least, not if he struck first.
If Drake attacked the Asp without cause, he would be committing assault and possibly murder. While manor lords could murder whoever they liked in their own territory with impunity, their authority was limited in the capital city. Keeping manor lords from simply killing anyone they liked inside the capital’s walls was the only way to maintain the city’s neutrality.
Still, the laws of the city only forbid him from attacking the Asp first. If she attacked him, she would be striking directly at a manor lord. The noble court wouldn’t stand for that, and Drake would be fully within his rights to murder her ass... or, more likely, to order his cadre of powerful battle maids to murder her ass for him.
Still, if all went well with his brilliant plan, no one would get murdered today. The Asp’s mercenary company would get pissed off and humiliated, and be out a good bit of money, but hopefully they’d take their financial losses as a sign not to fuck with Lord Gloomwood in the future. They’d move on. If they didn’t, well... he already had no shortage of enemies in this world. It wasn’t like one more band of mercenaries gunning for him would change things.
The salty smell of the bay joined the gentle lapping sounds of waves as Drake paused in the shadow of a large warehouse on the docks. This was the closest warehouse to the stretch of dock leading out to where the Asp’s battle boat was tied up and moored. It was a low-slung, sleek-looking vessel with an armored hull and glistening metal doors leading to the cabin. The only way to reach it was to walk down an open dock with no cover for fifty paces or more.
A tall main mast led to a crow’s nest in which a single shadowed figure sat motionless with a clear view of the entire docks. The gently bobbing boat sported no cannons—gunpowder wasn’t something they had in this world yet, fortunately—but it did have four prominent crossbow turrets mounted at the fore, aft, left, and right. Those crossbows were big enough Drake suspected they could send a bolt clean through a zarovian.
While those weapons were intended to kill people, Drake suspected a big enough bolt fired at the right portion of a boat could also cause it to start sinking. He didn’t see any other weapons besides the crossbow turrets, but the Asp wouldn’t need those. Samuel had told him she could fling her acid a good ways, almost as far as Carl would throw his meteor kabooms.
Then, of course, they were the Asp’s mercenaries, which the intelligence his people had gathered told him numbered at least eight... each with a rarity comparable in power to that of his battle maids. While Samuel hadn’t been able to find out what all of them could do, at least one was a shifter and another could shoot firebolts from his fingers. All bad.
Finally, these mercenaries would, of course, be fully equipped with silverweave outfits over which they would wear ferrocite armor. Most rarities and weapons would have very little effect on them. So if it came to a fight between them, Drake would just have to hope his “uniquely targeted rarity”—Suck’s rarity—could bypass their defenses and drain their blood.
At least he knew Suck’s rarity was now functioning. He knew because every time he looked at someone, he saw a brilliant yellow glow embedded inside their head. He could feel blood pumping inside whoever he looked at. It was the creepiest feeling ever.
Also, like with Anna’s rarity, he instinctively understood how Suck’s rarity would work. If he mentally concentrated on the glow inside someone else’s head, he’d start sucking their blood out through their eyes and mouth. He hadn’t dared test this new rarity on any of his people. Suck had killed Thak the zarovian quickly even when his rarity wasn’t burnished.
So, he had the burnished rarity of a now dead Gilded Blade. He had Magnum strapped to his back and loaded with a full quartet of bolts. And he had some very powerful people on his side. He was confident he and his people could give a good accounting of themselves if it came to battle... but not that some of his people wouldn’t die.
Which was why they were doing this the clever way.
He glanced back at the crew he’d chosen to act as the decoy team. Lydia and Emily were present, of course, but Valentia and Nicole weren’t. They had other jobs to do. Gaby and Carl were here, for offense and defense, and both looked somewhere between thrilled and terrified to be on their first official mission as Gloomwood Manor thralls.
Finally, six zarovians in ferrocite armor were with him as well, including Korrag. They formed a sizable vanguard that looked like they could beat the shit out of anyone who crossed him. They were here for their skill in battle, their intimidation factor, and to make the Asp think she knew where his zarovians were... so she wouldn’t wonder where Cresh and the rest were hiding.
Robin (with Sachi to keep her in check) would even now be creeping across the rooftops of the warehouses on the dock to get a good angle on the mercenary boat. Sadly, even having two talented archers on the high ground wouldn’t improve their chances against the Asp’s crew in a straight up brawl. Arrows could not penetrate ferrocite, but at least he’d have eyes up there to warn him if Lord Redbow’s people came at him from behind.
Finally, Raylan was with Drake’s party as well. The man looked more than a bit nervous to be out in the field in a place where he could get murdered, but with an acid-throwing lady in play and all her other powerful mercenaries with her, Drake needed at least one healer close on hand. His battle maids would be too busy fighting for their lives to heal others.
Samuel, naturally, was stuck back in the temple. If Drake’s entire party got wiped out today, the title of Lord Gloomwood would pass to Samuel instead of the Asp. The manor would remain in good hands. That was a comfort on a night when not much else was comforting.
He had his people. He had his plan. And he had to move out and rescue Darion before Lord Redbow reinforced the Asp or came himself. Drake knew he could defend himself from random mercenaries and kill them if they attacked him, but directly attacking Lord Redbow or his blood thralls was a different matter entirely. He still hoped to avoid that.
“Any questions about the plan?” Drake asked. “Last chance.”
No one spoke. They’d gone over the plan and accepted it. He appreciated his people’s faith in him. It was time to go be a fucking manor lord.
“Form up,” Drake said. “Let’s go say hello to the acid lady.”
Drake rose as Korrag led two zarovians around the group and out of the shadows. Drake fell into step right behind the wall of muscle and armor they formed with Lydia on one side and Emily on the other. Gaby was right behind him, followed by Carl and Raylan. The last three zarovians formed a loose wedge around them, completely encircling the group.
In that way, Drake and his vanguard walked straight down the middle of the docks in full view of the waiting boat. A piercing whistle told him the lookout in the crow’s nest atop the main mast had warned the others. The lookout didn’t descend from his position, which suggested he either had a rarity that worked from up high or was keeping an eye out for others.
By the time Drake’s vanguard stopped about ten paces from one of the two tall posts around which ropes attached to the Asp’s boat were moored, her gangplank was already up and most of her crew was already on deck. He counted six visible figures plus the one in the next. That made seven. So was that all of them? He glanced at Emily.
“Three remain below, lord,” she said quietly. “Two are moving. One is not.”
The soul who wasn’t moving was likely Darion in his cell. The two moving souls would be patrolling mercenaries in reserve in the cabin. They were the people Drake needed to get up here on deck before his plan would work. He had to force the Asp to call for reinforcements.
Worse, unless he wanted everyone in Korhaurbauten to know he could speak words he didn’t believe—exactly what Lord Redbow had accused him of doing earlier today—he couldn’t use his ability to lie. He had to use doublespeak and good old fashioned guile. Even if he killed the Asp and everyone with her after, his own people would know he’d lied.
A tall woman with a flowing red hood and robe under a patchwork of ferrocite and feathersteel armor sauntered into view. She placed one boot on the low-slung railing of her boat and leaned dangerously over the edge, arms crossed. This must be the Asp. Her hood shadowed her face, revealing only her narrow, brown chin and her bared white teeth.
The five figures on deck with her were dressed in similar garb, silverweave overlaid with armor. All wore hoods as well. Drake could see a faint yellow glow in each of their heads even through their silverweave, but that didn’t mean he could suck them dry. Also, all of them appeared entirely concerned by his arrival. He hoped that was an act.
“Lord Gloomwood!” the Asp called from her boat. “Are you in need of my services? If you are, you should know that I and my people don’t work cheap!”
Drake wasn’t surprised she’d recognized him despite the full suit of feathersteel he wore and the silverweave beneath it. He had, after all, shown up with two battle maids and a vanguard of zarovians. That was kind of Lord Gloomwood’s thing.
So now all he had to do was bullshit her long enough to steal Darion away.
