Two years ago

  He had awoken that morning with the usual excitement that came with a trip to the market with his brother. Not only did market day mean no chores around the farm, if they did well enough Aelfredd always let him spend some of their profits on sweets from the other market vendors.

  But this market day had gone all wrong. Aelfredd had always warned him to be careful when they were in the city proper. That there were bad people there to be avoided, people who would rob and cheat him. The threat had always seemed like a remote, distant concept though to Turgeon until today. Now he found himself bound and gagged in a musty cellar somewhere in the city.

  He remembered his excitement when they set out from the farm that morning, it was harvest season and they were hoping to do well at the market that day. The night before he had helped Aelfredd slaughter and butcher two pigs, and they had bushels of vegetables from the fields to sell as well.

  They had set up in their usual stall, which they shared with a rug maker who occupied it during the week and rented it to them for the weekly market day. The market was more crowded than usual, but typical for an autumn market day. The Barg’s Market was the largest in the capital city of Falkaria, and as such one of the largest in the entire kingdom.

  The crowd a harvest market day drew was both large and diverse. On a normal market day Turgeon was used to seeing villagers from all across the farming region surrounding the capital visiting the city to buy, sell and trade wares. At today’s harvest market Turgeon had seen fur-wearing warriors from the mountain tribes, leather clad men and women with oddly curved bows and quivers full of brightly fletched arrows from the horse tribes of the great wastes and even foreigners garbed in unusual clothing he didn’t even know how to describe.

  These distractions had so fully occupied his attention he was nearly knocked completely off balance and into a puddle that didn’t smell like water when his brother lightly cuffed him aside the head.

  “Oi! Quit daydreaming and help the customer with his order, Turge.”

  Once he caught his balance Turgeon looked over and saw the customer waiting impatiently for the crates of vegetables to be loaded into a waiting cart.

  The middle aged woman had bright red hair and was dressed in servant’s clothes, but these were very high quality servants clothes. The fabric looked to be softer than anything Turgeon owned, and the stitching was impeccable. With a shock of excitement he realized she must be a servant from the castle.

  While Turgeon loaded the crates of vegetables – it seemed she had bought most of their stock for the day – the servant woman and Aelfredd stepped into the shadows of the stall to confer quietly, raising Turgeon’s suspicion even further. Fortunately his keen ears were able to pick up most of the conversation, especially Aelfredd’s side. He could try to whisper but his deep voice carried nonetheless.

  “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have come,” it sounded as though Aelfredd was chastising the woman, strange given how much she must have spent on these vegetables.

  “Relax, I’m just another castle servant purchasing goods at the market to feed our hungry guests. There are so many this time of year…”

  With a stolen glance Turgeon saw that the woman appeared to be gently patting Aelfredd on the cheek, and for some reason he was accepting this patronizing gesture.

  “You look well, Aelfredd. And the boy too.”

  “I know,” Aelfredd gruffly replied, and pushed her hand away, “but now that you’ve seen me, and your vegetables are loaded into the cart you must be going.” He raised his voice to a normal level as he walked out of the shadows of the stall “Thank you for your custom, ma’am.”

  The woman’s shoulders slumped and she promptly left the stall, gesturing to the porter boy that accompanied her – who had been too distracted by the market goers and busy stalls to aid Turgeon with the loading, much less have noticed the odd exchange – to take up the now much heavier cart and return to the castle.

  “Who was that Aelfredd?”

  “None of your business, boy. Get back to work.”

  “But there’s no work to be done. She bought almost all of our goods!”

  “Fine, go buy yourself some sweets then,” Aelfredd grumbled and tossed him a few shiny coins fresh from the castle supply.

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  Elated at this turn of events, Turgeon accepted the coins without question and ran off to find sweets to purchase with them.

  He had been approaching one of his usual candy vendors across the market from their stall when something hit him, hard, on the back of the head and everything went black for a while.

  When he woke up, he found himself draped over the shoulder of a very large and very smelly man who was moving quickly through the streets. It was difficult, but he managed to bend his neck and look around at their surroundings. He tried to scream but the rag they had stuff into his mouth gagged him and nothing but a muffled mumble escaped.

  Before today he would’ve sworn he knew the city well from frequent excursions with Aelfredd. But Aelfredd had never taken him to see the parts of the city these men had taken him to. Mean, dirty, narrow streets in permanent shadow from the tall tenement buildings that crowded them. Rusting iron balconies were strung with clotheslines that were draped with colorful clothing. These dank alleyways stank of rotting garbage, nightsoil and urine.

  As the smell slowly brought Turgeon back to his senses he began to catch snatches of his captors’ conversation.

  “Eh, Raegbert, we’re going to get that arsehole good for what he did to Jalyain,” cackled the man carrying him in a voice as rotten sounding as the smell coming off of him. “I ain’t scared of any so-called Red Death. It’s a stupid name for a quickman anyway.”

  “Yah, this’ll bring him into our web trap for certain. Heheh heh.” Raegbert’s laugh was annoyingly nasal and even if he wasn’t in the process of being kidnapped by him Turgeon was pretty sure he would’ve disliked the man.

  Their path wound through neighborhoods like this, up hills and down hills for nearly an hour before they finally stopped in front of an unassuming door tucked under a staircase and mostly below the street level.

  Raegbert knocked on the door in what was clearly a deliberate pattern – knock knock, pause, knock pause, knock knock knock – and it was opened for them.

  On the other side of the doorway was a small, dark and dank basement apartment with sparse furnishings. There were no other doors that Turgeon could see as he was swung around and carried through the room. He was deposited on a pallet of straw in the back corner, his captors seeming to forget about him as they moved to the table and three chairs that were the only other furnishings in the room.

  A third tall, thin, weaselly looking fellow was already in the room and had presumably opened the door for them. He leaned in close to get a look at Turgeon and despite his best efforts Turgeon was unable to hold back the sneeze brought on by the moist rot in the room. The new crewmember’s eyes grew wide and he jumped back when he realized the boy was awake.

  “Dammit Halfyard, he’s conscious and he’s seen us all!” he exclaimed while jumping back. “I told you both this was a bad idea!”

  Raegbert and Halfyard turned back to Turgeon from whatever they had been doing at the table. Halfyard sighed and heaved himself back to his feet, approaching the boy cautiously.

  “This won’t hurt. Much,” he said calmly as he approached the cowering child, “And if y’know wha’s good for ya, this time you’ll stay out!” His last statement was emphasized with both fists brought down on Turgeon’s skull and everything went black again.

  *****

  When he awoke, shivering on the straw pallet in the dank cellar apartment, it was to the sound of the room’s only door being smashed down.

  With blurred vision he struggled to understand what was happening, but he could make out a figure moving into the room and quickly approaching the two men seated at the table, one large and one tall and thin, Halfyard and the weaselly looking man who had let them into the cellar.

  Halfyard was caught completely by surprise, and the new arrival removed his head from his body with one downward cut of the side sword he wielded.

  “Fuuuh… urgle…” the Weasel started to stand but was stopped abruptly as the sword erupted through the back of his neck, the result of an elegant thrust from the man who had brought death to this place. Turgeon’s vision was clearing and adjusting to the dim light but this man was still a hooded blur of dark clothing, somehow fuzzy around the edges.

  Blood fountained from the Weasel’s throat as the blade was withdrawn, and when the body hit the floor it landed in a puddle and splattered a shocked and shivering Turgeon.

  For a brief moment, the room was calm and quiet.

  Chaos erupted in the form of Raegbert and another thug bursting from hiding behind or possibly within a cabinet on the far side of the room and rushing the assailant waving swords over their heads.

  Raegbert managed to bring his blade down in a close approximation of an attack on the still blurred figure, who raised his blade, point down and hilt up, intercepting and redirecting the cut behind him as he stepped into it and behind Raegbert, bringing his own blade inside the thug’s guard and parallel to the ground, then across the lout’s exposed throat.

  The fourth thug was still struggling to free his blade from where he’d managed to lodge it in the low rafters when he died with a blade through his chest.

  “Your crewleader was a fool, but you’re all bigger fools for dying for him,” the assassin’s harsh and gravelly voice was vaguely familiar.

  “This is for your own good,” the man leaned over Turgeon and when for a brief second the light penetrated the darkness of his cowl he was overtaken with a sense of familiarity despite the assassin’s face remaining fuzzy and obscured. Turgeon heard the assassin – he recalled the thugs had called him a “quickman” – take a deep breath and as he exhaled a cloud of smoke enveloped the boy.

  Choking and gasping as he involuntarily inhaled the smoke, Turgeon felt himself drift back into unconsciousness…