Damian FINUCANE's Arc

Chapter 29 of 57

Damian and his master reached the distant city after five days on the road. They found the enemy's house behind a high wall. Damian watched it for two days. He never saw the man leave. Guards came and went. Hired swords, all of them. The man himself stayed inside, safe, and paid others to do his killing. Damian knew the truth now. He could kill a hundred guards and never touch the man behind them. "He will not fight me," Damian told his master that night. "Parker fought. The tower man fought. This one hides." "He has hidden for twenty years," she said. "He buys blades. He does not lift one." "Then I must make him lift one." Damian stared at the wall. "A man who never fights has one weakness. His pride. His greed." The next morning Damian bought a chest at the market. It was gold, its surface carved thick with knots and patterns. It looked like a fortune. Inside he placed common stones wrapped in cloth. He sealed it and paid a porter to carry it to the enemy's gate. With the chest he sent a letter. He wrote that a dead man's hoard had surfaced. The runed blade and the old master's gold, he claimed, were his to sell. He named a price. He named a place at dawn, alone, no guards. He signed it as a thief who feared the man's reach. His master frowned when he told her. "He will send killers instead of coming himself." "The chest is bait," Damian said. "A greedy man does not trust a servant with gold he can see. He will want to open it with his own hands." At dawn Damian waited in an empty court beyond the wall. The gold chest sat closed in the center. He knelt behind a low pillar with his gemmed sword drawn. His master watched the far gate. Footsteps. Not many. Two guards entered first and checked the corners. Then a third man came. Older, plain-dressed, soft hands. He walked straight to the chest and knelt. His guards stood back at the wall, bored, sure this was easy money. The man reached for the latch. Damian stepped from the pillar, blade up. "There is no gold," Damian said. "Only me." The man froze. His hand went to his belt and drew a short sword. The guards started forward. Damian's master moved from the shadow and cut them off. Steel rang against the far wall. The man swung wild. Damian turned the blade aside, calm, the way he had trained. No rage. Just work. He struck the sword from the man's hand. It skidded across the stone. The man stood unarmed before him at last. No wall. No hired killers. Just the two of them, and one drawn blade between. "Twenty years you hid," Damian said. "Now you fight or you kneel." The man looked at the empty chest, then at Damian's steady hand, and understood he had been drawn out.