The gold and silver weighed like the earth itself, and the burden of tens of thousands of coins seemed to crush men's bones with every step in the dark. The journey through the damp tunnels of the old sewer turned into a torture of burning muscles, trembling knees, and muttered curses between clenched teeth. Alistair, Silvio, and Kaelan hauled the final reinforced oak chest, their faces bathed in cold sweat and the soot melting into black streaks under the exhausting strain.
– If I don't die from an arrow in the throat... I'll die from a hernia in my guts... – growled Silvio, his teeth clenched as he gripped the chest's iron handle, which was cutting into the skin of his palms.
– Shut your gob and pull, Silvio – panted Alistair, his shoulder creaking under the weight. – Silver weighs heavy, but the overseer's rope weighs heavier.
When they finally crossed the crumbling stone mouth of the old sewer, the cold, damp night air hit their chests like a blessed relief. The ravine of the dry stream was plunged in deathly silence, covered by a thick mist that muffled the sounds of the upper city.
There, hidden among the black willows and the ravine's darkness, Orlan waited with two high ashwood wagons and horses covered in dark blankets, looking more like motionless shadows. Around the strategist, nine hard-faced mercenaries in waterproof cloaks stood with their hands resting on the hilts of their swords and halberds, their breath pluming in white vapours in the freezing air.
The plan, against all odds and the gods watching over the night, had gone off without a hitch. There had been no bells ringing, no screaming garrison alarms. Up in the citadel, the false priest Roderick must still be entertaining the Great Hall with psalms and demands, while the Viscount's treasure now lay in the wagons, ready to be carted off.
Orlan took two steps forward, his dark cloak dragging through the wet grass. Beneath the hood, his face looked carved from bone and shadow, and his cold, calculating eyes swept over the chests piled high on the wagons.
– Is the cargo complete? – asked Orlan, his voice calm and toneless, cutting through the murmur of the mist.
Gabriel, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his black tunic and letting out an euphoric sigh of relief, stepped forward with a wide grin lighting up his filthy face.
– Down to the very last silver coin, mate – replied Gabriel, resting his hand on the rim of a chest sitting on the first wagon. – The Viscount's left without a copper to pay for…
The sentence was never finished. In a terrifyingly swift movement, devoid of any hesitation or warning, Orlan stepped forward, the icy gleam of a narrow-bladed, triangular-profile dagger appearing from inside his cloak. Without a single shift in his expression, Orlan drove the steel beneath Gabriel's ribcage, burying the blade up to the hilt, straight into the liver.
The sound was a visceral, muffled thud of tearing flesh and cartilage. Gabriel let out a choked gasp, a dry rattle of air being ripped from his lungs. His smile froze into a mask of incomprehension and sheer terror. When Orlan yanked the blade out with a sharp, raw jerk, Gabriel collapsed to his knees in the cold mud.
Blood – black against the night gloom and boiling hot – gushed in violent, uncontrollable spurts. Gabriel brought both hands to his side, desperately trying to stem the fatal wound, but his fingers were instantly soaked in his own life fluid ebbing away into the earth.
– Or... Orlan... – stammered the lad, his voice turning to a red gargle as his eyes searched for his brother's.
– GABRIEL! – Silvio's scream tore through the night air like an axe blade splitting dry wood, breaking the group's paralysis in a startle of pure shock. Silvio flung himself to the ground beside his brother, his hands desperately covering the warm, viscous blood spurting from Gabriel's fingers.
With a calm motion devoid of any haste, Orlan grabbed the leather buckle at his neck and let his thick travelling cloak drop into the mud. Beneath the damp cloth, there were no simple strategist's robes, but rather the grey, icy gleam of full plate armour, reinforced with chainmail and a polished steel gorget. At the same time, in a synchronized, rehearsed gesture, the nine men accompanying him ripped off their dark cloaks, revealing iron breastplates, steel bracers, and closed helms, raising heavy shields and long-pointed halberds.
Alistair felt his stomach shrink into a knot of ice when he saw that the scene before him was a death sentence: they were completely trapped in a narrow ravine, with no room to manoeuvre, wearing only light tunics of dark wool and thin leather, armed for a stealth raid rather than a pitched battle.
Gabriel was dying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, Silvio was blinded by grief, Lucius was just a lad with a dagger in his hand, and Kaelan carried only his skinning knives. Facing ten men-at-arms covered in steel and ready for the slaughterhouse was suicidal madness.
– Kill them all – ordered Orlan, his voice muffled by the iron gorget as he took half a step back. – Leave only the carcasses for the dogs.
– YOU WON'T KILL US WHILE WE'VE GOT STEEL! – yelled Alistair, ripping his bastard sword from its scabbard in a silver hiss that cut through the mist.
What followed was no knights' duel or test of honour, but a carnage of desperation and raw fury. Deprived of armour, Alistair, Kaelan, and Silvio turned into true gods of war, moving with the terrifying speed of men who knew the only alternative to victory was the grave.
Silvio rose from the mud with his face transfigured by the madness of mourning. Ignoring a spear point that ripped through his thigh, the nobleman lunged into the reach of Orlan's first man-at-arms, driving his hunting dagger through the visor gap of the helm. The steel pierced the man's eye with a sickening crack of breaking bone, and Silvio spun his body, using the falling corpse as a shield against a halberd strike.
At the same time, Kaelan leapt like a wild cat onto the ridge of an oak chest. His red hair seemed to burn in the gloom as his two short blades turned into a mortal whirl, seeking the joints of the armour, slashing tendons behind knees, and driving iron into the unprotected armpits of the mercenaries.
Alistair, for his part, wielded the bastard sword with both hands, making the Ferralian steel blade sing in the air and leaving a trail of sparks with every impact against enemy shields and plates, moving in a trance of blood and steel, but his flank was dangerously exposed by the lack of his shield.
It was then that Lucius became his guardian angel in the dark. Despite the terror freezing his spine, he refused to fall back and stayed glued to Alistair's back, acting as his eyes and ears in the combat confusion.
– Behind you, Alistair! To the left! – yelled Lucius, his voice hoarse with desperation.
Whenever a mercenary tried to slip past Alistair's sword for a treacherous blow to the back, Lucius lunged like a viper, and with agile steps over the slippery mud, the lad batted away the heavy blades and drove his fine dagger through the metal chinks – in the groin, beneath the armguards, and at the attackers' necks – opening gaps so that the devastating sweep of Alistair's sword could finish the job, decapitating and severing limbs in a grotesque spectacle of flesh and iron.
The air in the ravine already reeked of viscera and fresh copper when the distant echo of heavy boots and the clinking of chainmail shattered what remained of the night. From the top of the slope, where the old sewer emptied into the citadel's lower courtyard, burst an unruly mob of armed men, wielding torches whose red flames danced violently against the mist.
At the front came Hector, Roderick – still wrapped in his mud-stained sacred robes –, Rian, Marcus, and Tito. Right on their heels, with drawn swords and faces shaped by a mix of wine and fury, came twelve guards from the citadel. You could see that the farce in the Great Hall had collapsed, and that the noise of iron against iron in the dark had drawn those who should never have known they'd been robbed until the next morning, when the first patrol checked the Viscount's strongroom.
Upon seeing the mess of torches and steel approaching, Orlan – his plate breastplate gleaming beneath the flickering firelight – took three steps back and raised his sword, pointing at Alistair's group with a voice that echoed like the blast of a war horn.
– Guards of Verdejante! – roared the strategist, his tone carrying the authority of a man who had commanded men for nearly two decades. – Kill these dogs! The Mad Dog Brigade is trying to steal the treasure of your lord, my father, Viscount Lorenzo! Kill them all, for the honour of Verdejante!
The revelation hit like a thrust to the chest, but there was no time to process the treachery. With a shout of rage, the twelve citadel guards charged down the ravine, joining their steel with that of Orlan's surviving mercenaries. The ravine turned into a chaotic maelstrom of clashing blades, torches falling into the mud, and the screams of men being run through by death.
Hector, seeing the tide of iron bearing down on them and realizing their position was an open grave, delivered a devastating blow with his sword to a guard, hacking his shoulder to the bone.
– RETREAT! – roared the captain, his beard flecked with blood and sweat. – To the tunnels! Back into the fucking dark! Now!
Alistair and Kaelan began to fall back step by step, covering the escape of Lucius and everyone else towards the stone mouth of the sewer... everyone except Silvio, who remained on his knees in the cold mud, his arms locked around Gabriel's body, trying in vain to hold back the life draining from his brother.
– Silvio... – Alistair muttered, grabbing the man by his pauldrons and trying to haul him up. – You've got to come! There's no time!
– I'm not leaving him! – screamed Silvio, his voice breaking into a hideous cry disfigured by grief, as he shoved Alistair's hand away. – I'm not leaving him here for these dogs to chop to bits!
It was then that Gabriel's trembling, icy hand, coated in black blood up to the wrist, slowly reached up and grabbed the collar of Silvio's tunic. The younger Cardo brother raised his eyes, already clouded by the grey veil of death, but suddenly lit by a final, terrible spark of clarity.
– Go... – Gabriel choked, a pool of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and painting his chin. – Don't... don't make me die knowing you killed yourself for me, brother... Run... Live... For me...
The words came out in a ragged breath, and Gabriel's hand lost its strength, falling limp onto the wet mud. The spark in his eyes went out, fixing on Verdejante's starry sky.
– Gabriel... no... please, gods, no... – sobbed Silvio, his chest heaving as if Orlan's steel had run through him as well.
Alistair, offering no apology given their predicament, threw his arm beneath Silvio's chest and yanked him off the ground with desperate strength, dragging him back towards the sewer mouth. All around, you could see the Brigade fighting with the blind fury of men who knew the only alternative to the darkness of the earth was the hangman's blade as they beat their retreat. The rain of steel fell without pause; the sound of metal shattering shields, the cries of treachery echoing in the ravine, and the smell of opened guts drenched the freezing night air.
Rian and Tito, moving like two iron demons in the gloom, held the rear. With an axe, the Isolarian giant lopped off arms and spears with the ease of a man threshing wheat, while Rian's agile blade sought the guards' unprotected throats. Step by step, dripping blood and sweat, the band managed to fall back into the masonry mouth, swallowed one by one by the tunnel shadows with Orlan and his guard in hot pursuit.
The moment the last man of the Brigade crossed the threshold and set foot in the gallery mud, Hector halted the march. He dropped his sword and seized the ancient oak support bracing the entry's stone vault. The veins bulged in his neck like thick ropes; the muscles in his arms and chest roared against his breastplate as he threw all his body weight and near-inhuman strength against the pillar.
The rotted timber cracked with a dry protest, and with a beast's roar, Hector tore out the central post, triggering an immediate, deafening cave-in. Tons of rock, crushed stone, and black earth collapsed in a brutal avalanche, drowning out the guards' screams and Orlan's voice in a sharp thud that shook the very ground beneath their feet. A suffocating cloud of dust and saltpetre rushed through the gallery, blinding them and filling their throats with the bitter taste of ground earth.
After that... silence... a deathly, thick, suffocating silence fell over the surviving tunnel, broken only by the frantic gasps of men fighting for air in total darkness. No one lit a torch; no one dared utter a word as the dust settled over their torn clothes and wounded flesh.
As their heartbeats slowed, the crushing weight of defeat settled over every single one of them like a lead shroud.
The mission had failed. There was no gold, no glory, no victories to celebrate at The Velvet Kennel. The Viscount's treasure had been left behind, likely back in its original resting place. Gabriel, the lad with the quick smile who hours before was honing his knife at the tavern table, now lay dead and bloody in the ravine, abandoned to the dogs and crows. Yet the deepest blow of all – one that no steel could heal – had been dealt from within: Orlan, the man everyone trusted to chart their paths and strategies, had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be the blood of the Viscount himself, the traitor who had led them straight to the slaughterhouse.
The march back to The Velvet Kennel was made in silence, as if death itself accompanied them single file through Verdejante's alleys. Their black cloaks were soaked with sweat, blood, and mud; their faces covered in soot and saltpetre dust. The euphoria that hours earlier had fuelled the promise of riches and a defying future had evaporated in the dark, replaced by a thick, heavy grief that impoverished the air with every breath.
They crossed the tavern threshold without a single torch flame betraying their arrival. In the upper-floor rooms, the silence was absolute, cut only by the muffled dragging of boots and the creak of wooden bedframes where broken men tried to tend to wounds that dirty linen could barely cover.
In a corner, leaning against the damp stone wall, Silvio let himself slide down to the floor. He didn't scream, nor did he curse the gods; he covered his blood-stained face with his hands and wept in devastating silence, his shoulders trembling under the weight of a soul shattered by the loss of his brother.