Mercenaries of Atlantis by Nick Cole & Chris Pourteau

Author:Nick Cole & Chris Pourteau [Cole, Nick & Pourteau, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2025-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Shadows, Squabbles, and Silver Tongues

The night was disturbingly bright for Mace’s taste. Or perhaps the moon and stars overhead weren’t so bad, merely seemed brighter after the tight, dank confines of the sewer. Either way, slipping from beneath the grate and into the vast openness of the alleyway was almost overwhelming. He felt as exposed as he had standing beside Jax with thousands of bearded, armored Sehtites charging toward him up the hilltop. The clouds had given up their efforts to obscure the silver moon, and an open sky of stars shone down on them, as though a disapproving god were daring the WarWolves to step from the shadows and into the light.

That, Mace thought, was likely how his companions saw it. Like all soldiers, they were superstitious, whatever they boasted otherwise to one another around a campfire. The starshine and round face of the moon would make them nervous, especially so close to dawn—just as they made Mace nervous.

Dawn. If they hadn’t won their mission objective by then, they’d all lose—everything.

Mace retrieved Kanja in her sling from Cazpar and, as before, found her companionable weight comforting. The dog was being very good. She appeared less agitated than her human companions. Mace envied her canine ability to know nothing else but the exact moment in which she currently lived. She was spared the need to worry about the future because she couldn’t understand the concept of anything other than now.

Working together like a fire brigade passing water from a well, one handing weapon, shield, and pack to the next man in line, the remaining WarWolves wriggled from beneath the grate and infiltrated the city proper. Hægin and Bugeye had the worst of it. Hægin with his great bulk barely fit, and Bugeye’s joints seemed to pop and creak as loudly as any armor scraping the sandstone. But then they were all through, and no squad of Sehtite guards had come running to surround them. No city alarm had sounded. Not even the distant hound, which seemed to crow like a cock at every prompting, appeared to notice the warriors’ infiltration of his master’s city.

“Well,” whispered Cazpar, “just one thing left to do.” He glanced from the axe, still holding firm, to its owner and back down again, his meaning clear. If Hægin wanted his axe back, he and Whore’s Bath would have to repeat their labors. With an empathetic, charming smile, Cazpar said, “A little more.”

Both men growling, the axeman and corporal took up position, one to either side of Akillath, and lifted. Cazpar displaced the double-bladed axe, and just as it pulled free, there came a laconic clip-clop from deeper inside the city. A mount’s hooves on a sandstone street, nearing close enough they could heard the horse’s snorting. Then behind that, the slurring of its rider—what sounded like a bar ditty, given its cadence and insinuations, sung in Sehtian.

Hægin and Whore’s Bath froze with the grate in hand, half-crouched, their breathing harsh grunts of heavy effort.

“Into the shadows!” Kess hissed.

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