Chapter 27 Othic
OTHIC
My hand is fisted in the cut leather of the belt. Aurora is two steps behind me, her head bowed. I am a battering ram, shoving through the churning river of bodies in the Dark Market. The smell of cheap zhisk, unwashed bodies, and urine is overpowering, but we are out. We are clear.
My knuckles sting, still sticky with the naga’s blood. I forced the words from him: “Go north… find the monsters of your visage.” A trap. Almost certainly. A naga’s dying words are a final venom. It does not matter. It is a lead.
I scan the crowd. The Dark Elf guard from the gate is nowhere to be seen.
The lie about the shit seems to have worked.
For now. My first priority is to get Aurora out of this open cesspit.
We need a defensible room, a place to hole up, a place where I can find a real lead. I need to find my clan brothers.
I am halfway across the main thoroughfare, heading for a cluster of shacks that promise a grimy inn, when the door of The Drowned Rat explodes open behind us.
"DEAD! HE'S DEAD! THAT SAVAGE ORC KILLED MERSEY!"
The roar is from the second naga, the one from the corner, his voice a raw, furious shriek that slices through the market’s din.
The street-level noise dips. A sudden, terrible silence falls, thick and heavy. I feel dozens of eyes on my back. I pull Aurora closer, my hand moving from the belt to the hilt of the clumsy human sword at my hip.
"Keep walking," I hiss. "Do not run."
"Orc! Savage! He killed Mersey! He is getting away!" the naga screams again.
I see him. Twenty yards away, standing by the gate we entered. The Dark Elf guard. He is not smirking now. His head snaps toward the shouting naga. His ears, long and pointed, prick up. He scans the crowd. His eyes find me. They narrow.
He barks an order to the Minotaur beside him, his voice sharp and carrying. "Stop that orc! He is armed!"
I am still walking. Do not run. Running makes you prey.
But the nFaga is not the only one. The door to The Drowned Rat vomits out a half-dozen more patrons—a dfam elf, two human mercenaries, and another naga—all drawn by the cry of "murder." They are drunk. They are angry. They smell blood.
"There he is!" the dfam elf shouts, pointing at my back.
"Walk," I hiss again at Aurora, my hand gripping her arm.
We are ten feet from a narrow, refuse-filled alley between a tannery and a batlaz butcher. The stench is overwhelming, a wall of cured hides, raw sewage, and old blood. It is cover.
"Now," I snarl.
I grab Aurora and move, plunging into the alley.
The thud of heavy boots on the cobblestones follows us—the Minotaur guard.
He is roaring, a sound of fury and exertion.
The alley is dark, slick with filth. My boots slide on something wet and foul.
This is bad. I am in a confined space. I have no axe.
Just this clumsy human blade. I need to get to the cross-street, find a new crowd to melt into.
We burst out onto a slightly wider street. It is a market row—stalls of glittering, blue-flecked poisons, cages of snarling worgs, and carts of smoking, unidentifiable meat. For one, single heartbeat, we are just part of the flow. We blend.
Then a small dark elf child, no older than ten, sitting on a crate of caesin eels, points directly at me. His eyes are wide with a strange, delighted terror.
"There he is! Mother, there's the monster!"
All motion stops. A zagfer elf drops a crate of clattering bottles. The worgs in the cages go silent for a second, then erupt in a frenzy of barking.
The Dark Elf guard, his face flushed with anger, emerges from the alley behind us. He sees us. He smiles. It is not a smirk. It is the grin of a hunter who has cornered his quarry.
"Stop him!" he screams to the entire street. "A bounty for the orc! He murdered a merchant of the Market! Ten ipia for his head!"
Bounty.
He just put a price on my head. Now everyone is an enemy.
The world explodes.
I do not wait. I do not think. I roar. I grab a wooden table piled high with the smoked eels and hurl it behind me. The table cartwheels, crashing into the legs of the Minotaur, who bellows in rage as he goes down in a clattering avalanche of wood and fish.
I keep Aurora's leash fisted in my hand, yanking her along in my wake. She stumbles, her boots sliding in the mud, but I do not let her fall. She is Iron Tusk. She keeps up.
"Ten ipia! Get him!" the naga shouts
He’s just told the whole market I am easy coin.
But, he is wrong. I do not break stride. I do not even draw my sword. I smash my free fist into his face. I hear his nose crunch. He drops.
We run, smashing through a stall of vibrant, shimmering silks. The fabric tears, billowing around us like colorful ghosts. "He went this way!" a shout.
I see a naga guard trying to cut us off.
I grab a hanging taura carcass from a butcher's hook and swing it like a battering ram.
The heavy, skinned body slams into the naga, sending him crashing into his own stall of caged vespids.
The cages burst open. The air fills with the high-pitched, furious whine of the insects.
The street behind us dissolves into new screams of panic, buying us precious seconds.
I need to get out of this main thoroughfare.
Too open. Too many eyes. I see another alley, a dark crack between two towering, rickety shacks.
I yank Aurora hard, pulling her into the darkness.
We are running on slick cobblestones, our footsteps echoing.
I hear the shouts behind us, growing louder. They are closing.
This alley is a maze. Left. Right. I can hear Aurora's ragged gasps behind me. The smell of the alley is rank, a dead-end filled with refuse and piss.
This is wrong. I chose poorly. The sounds are not just behind us anymore.
They are ahead.
I skid to a stop, throwing my arm out to stop Aurora from running past me. The alley ends. It is a sheer, twenty-foot wall of black, weeping stone, slick with slime. A dead end.
I turn, my heart a cold stone in my gut. My back is to the wall. I shove Aurora behind me, drawing the human sword. It feels light and useless in my hand.
From the mouth of the alley we just entered, the Dark Elf guard appears. He is not smiling now. His own elegant blade is drawn. The Minotaur fills the alley behind him, blocking all light, his horns scraping the walls, his eyes burning red in the gloom.
From the rooftops above, a sound of slithering stone. Two more naga—the one from the corner and another I do not recognize—drop down, landing silently, blocking the other exit.
We are surrounded.
Trapped. I am in a stone box with my mate, facing five armed enemies.
The Dark Elf guard takes a slow step forward, the tip of his blade tracing a line in the mud.
"Nowhere to run, beast," he hisses, the oily confidence back in his voice. "The bounty is mine."
I look at the small, pathetic human sword in my hand. I look at the terror in Aurora's eyes, hidden in the shadow I cast. I have failed her. I failed my clan. And now, I will die in a filthy alley, reeking of piss.