Daemon Ashford's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Three days after the guards swept their row, Daemon Ashford knew the crew would starve or hang. The king's bounty hunters watched every road now. They stopped carts, searched sacks, and checked faces against a drawing of his own. He could not buy bread or blades in the open without being seized. Yet the heist needed rope, oil, and food for the long watch ahead. Grak Ironhide filled the loft doorway, axe on his back, tusks bared in a scowl. The half-orc had sworn to split Daemon's skull if he betrayed the crew, and he looked ready to start early. "We rot up here while your king's dogs sniff the roads," Grak said. "I didn't join a corpse." "We don't use the roads," Daemon said. "Hunters watch men, not goods. A supply wagon rolls past the market at dusk. We take what we need before it reaches the gate." Grak's yellow eyes narrowed. "Robbery. Now you talk sense." They waited in the shadow of a shuttered stall. The wagon came slow, two guards walking beside it. Daemon counted their steps and timed the gap. He slipped under the awning and cut the rear ropes while Grak stood ready in the dark. A guard turned. He saw Daemon's hands on the crates and shouted. Grak moved first. He drove his shoulder into the man and knocked him flat, then swung the flat of his axe against the second guard's helm. Both dropped. Daemon hauled down a sack of oil flasks and two coils of rope. Inside the wagon, wrapped in straw, sat a small carved rabbit of clear ice that gleamed even in the dark. A nobleman's trinket, worth coin. Daemon took it too. "Run," he said. They ran through the narrow lanes and reached the loft winded. Grak dropped the supplies on the warped floor and breathed hard. For the first time he looked at Daemon without hate. "You kept your word," he grunted. "Took what we needed. Left the rest." "I keep my words," Daemon said. He set the ice rabbit on the sill, where it caught the last light. But one guard had seen Daemon's face plain. By morning the hunters knew more than a drawing. They knew a half-orc rode with him, and they knew the dead prince struck from the market stalls themselves. The reward doubled. New notices named the loft's own row. Grak heard the criers from the window and turned. "They don't hunt a thief now," he said. "They hunt this house." Daemon looked at the supplies they had bled for. Enough for the heist. Not enough to stay. The crown's dogs had their scent, and the loft that hid him was no longer safe. He had the tools to rob the vault at last. He no longer had a place to plan it.