Rogues Gallery (18 page)

There were rumors that the assassins wanted to finish Jerrod for good, had a contract out for him. Whether Zandor was behind it, Marko did not know. But if they came for him in this state, Jerrod had no chance. They would kill him as easy as a newborn babe.

A wolf howled somewhere outside in the distance, and Marko saw the image of the animal in his mind, fierce and powerful. That was what Jerrod had been, a predator, a vicious killer. He was wounded some, messed up in the head. But everybody was that was raised on the streets of Murder Haven.

“Boss, I thought maybe we could—”

“Hey, you want some smokes? I got a new roll a few weeks ago. Never had a chance to use ‘em until now. It’s nice to have some time off, ain’t it?”

Marko accepted the rolled up cigarette. It was thick as his thumb and had a nice earthy smell to it. It was a premium brand, which indicated another reason to back Jerrod. The man had access to great things. Money, good booze, quality smokes; more than any street dweller had a right to have.

Jerrod reached right into the fire and pulled out a burning branch to light their individual cigarettes. Marko nodded and took a long breath in. It tasted fantastic.

“Thank you, sir.”

Jerrod smoked his and chuckled. “You always were so damned polite. Never seen that before. How come?”

Marko’s brow crinkled because he had never considered that before. After taking another drag, he cleared his throat. “I dunno, sir. I suppose the same reason you aren’t; this is the way I was raised. It is a rare opportunity where being rude would be appropriate or helpful.”

If Jerrod took any offense at the veiled insult he did not show it. That was troubling to Marko because under normal circumstances, the man would be incensed at even the slightest slur; instead, he continued his two fisted approach to oblivion with smoking and drinking.

“Yeah, well, yer just a damn street rat like I am; just like me, pal. Don’t ever forget that, ya hear me? This is as good as it gets for us folks. This is as high as we climb, see? There’s nothin’ else for you and me.”

A sudden realization struck Marko. This was the longest conversation he had ever had with Jerrod.

“Why do you feel this way? You have power, real power! Men fear you like no one else I’ve ever seen. People do what you say, or they get hurt. You’ve risen above us all.”

Jerrod scoffed. “’Bout as high as a bug. So what if I’m king of the rats, who cares? No, force isn’t real power, son. Real power comes from… fuck, I dunno, signin’ a piece of paper and getting someone else to do your work for you. Men do shit for money and cuz someone better than them tells ‘em to. It’s simple. Leave me alone.”

None of it made any sense to Marko. People did what Jerrod told them to because they were afraid of him. His reprisals were legendary. He had killed Lord Falston, had run with Guild Master Castellan, they had almost taken over the entire city, and if not for Janisberg’s navy blowing the hell out things, they might have succeeded.

“Sir, I don’t understand what you mean. Why are you here and not helping us fight Zandor? Men are coming for you, they’ll kill you if you don’t.”

Jerrod grunted and tossed his bottle into the fire again; this time there was more alcohol inside and it caused a bigger flush of fire to ripple outwards from the pit. Marko jumped back while Jerrod stood still and let the heat wash over him. Bits of ash floated around his body, still trailing flame. It clung to his clothes and skin. It was eerie that he didn’t seem to notice.

He looked like a demon out of hell, wreathed in flame and ash.

“Are you deaf and stupid? Leave me alone, you little shit! I’m done with all that. Leave me to my drink and get the hell outta here.”

Marko stood his ground. Here was another crux, a moment to listen to what the man was saying and turn away for good, leave him to his misery. The people at Stern’s Place would get over their anger towards the gang, sooner rather than later. The fiasco at the arena would be forgotten and things would go back to normal.

But Jerrod would die. The assassins would come and kill him, or he might even kill himself within his stupor. Marko was not sure, but knowing how extreme his boss was, it could’ve happened.

There was no one else. He had to do something or lose his chance at doing something special in this life. He realized that was what he wanted and the real reason he followed Jerrod’s merciless directions so well without question. The man was destined for great things, to change the world.

Marko slapped him.

The look of shock on Jerrod’s face could not have been more extreme. His eyes bulged out of his skull, and a red hand print appeared where Marko had struck. His hand stung like mad, it was like striking a metal file. The stubble on his cheek was as hard and rough as a whetstone.

Jerrod stood still for a moment, his drunken stupor holding his tittering body in place. “You-you stupid mother fu—”

Marko slammed his fist into his jaw. Jerrod took the blow well. It didn’t even stagger him. He only shook his head as if to clear it from a splash of water or deep sleep. Marko thought his hand might’ve been broken. He had put most of his strength into the blow; the man was made of iron.

A new tactic was needed, so he launched himself forward at Jerrod’s torso, wrapping his arms around waist to tackle him to the ground. Or tried to anyway. Jerrod stood firm and bellowed in outrage, grabbing Marko’s torso from above and with a slight bend in his knees, tossed him across the small room.

Marko’s vision spun. Wood, fire, Jerrod’s blurry form, all flashed by his eyes in the split second it took for him to careen into the opposite wall. He tumbled to the ground, shock gripping his body, too stunned to move. He hurt bad. Cracked ribs, twisted knee, and perhaps a dislocated shoulder; there was no time to consider as Jerrod stomped forward, all fire and fury.

“You stupid son of a bitch!”

He sounded more sober. And pissed off. Not good. The larger man put his hands on him, and Marko tried to swat them away. Adrenaline leant strength to his battered body. Jerrod’s fingers were like the handle on a shovel, thick and hard yet dexterous and nimble. Marko threw a jab with his fingers straight at Jerrod’s throat in an attempt to slow him, but the man dropped his chin and the digits collided with the bone there. Bone snapped. One finger broke, another dislocated.

Marko gasped in pain, and soon Jerrod had those powerful hands around his neck, and he began to squeeze.

This was it. Jerrod would kill him soon. What a huge mistake it was to come here, to pick a fight with this master killer. Jerrod had lost some weight in the weeks of his seclusion, but he was still an enormous man, too heavy to push off. He settled his center over Marko’s stomach as if he did this all the time. Jerrod pushed down, gaining leverage with his long legs bent and his feet planted on the floor.

There was nothing the expert grappler Marko could do. Jerrod was too strong, too skilled, and irrational to either dislodge or reason with. As his vision dimmed and his struggles to free himself lessened from waning strength, Marko felt a strange sense of pride at the knowledge that such a powerful man would be the one who killed him.

Oblivion beckoned.

Chapter Seven

Jerrod sat in the only chair not broken in his cabin smoking. Marko’s body had stopped twitching around half an hour ago, but he had no idea what time it was. Sometime a few hours before dawn perhaps. It seemed like a lifetime ago when the young fool had come knocking.

The master assassin took a deep, long pull off his cigarette and let the familiar taste calm his nerves. It worked. His nostrils continued to blow steam, even after the smoke exhaled, due to the cold air. He had never been this shaken after a fight, but then it had been a month since he had been in one.

No man’s life was worth piss; never had been. But Jerrod had not meant to kill him. What had happened didn’t dawn on him until minutes later. He could remember sitting up, smelling Marko’s released bowels, like waking up from a dream, that initial disorientation that comes from troubled sleep.

The cabin was a mess. No wonder he had fallen into a drunken stupor in this kind of environment. It was embarrassing.

Well, no more. Time to put things right. Zandor had done something to the toughs. Something about the arena. Bastard. Fuck him. It was clear the son of a bitch whoreson was not going to leave him alone. The arena needed to burn. That cunt of an animal Thruck, the dirty ogre was there, plotting against Jerrod. They were all plotting against him.

Marko had said something else about men coming for him. The assassins some thieves’ guild up north hired for reciprocation for killing Turner, the former leader of Sea Haven’s guild. Fuck them too.

He hadn’t meant to kill Marko.

His first thought was to burn the arena to the ground. That would fix them good. They had precautionary measures in place to stop such a thing happening, some kind of fail safes to keep the wooden structure from burning. Zandor was determined to discover the source; even he didn’t know what it was, some kind of magic.

No, that wasn’t his first move. There wasn’t sufficient clout at the moment. His own mental state, body, and people were a disaster. But the toughs still had their uses.

Delios would be the assassin planning Jerrod’s demise. He remembered the last meeting he had with him in the alleyway before Jerrod set up Lord Cassius to teach him who really ran the streets in Murder Haven. Jerrod knew well assassins were loyal only to their money bags. The hit would come sooner or later.

It wasn’t like Jerrod was difficult to find. Most people that knew him knew about his cabin out in the woods. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t care. Let them come. But he was in a position of weakness. He needed food, rest, and to get into town and see what was what.

The first step was to clean up the interior of his cabin, and then drag Marko’s cooling corpse off to the side to lay it in a corner. Most of his furniture was broken. He stuffed a long board from his bed under the coals of the fireplace. If they got inside, he could jump on the board and give them a nice surprise. He would be outnumbered at least three to one, so whatever was around to use against them would help the chances of survival.

Perhaps he needed to make an appearance in town for more than just food. Maybe he needed to make some noise, see where his reputation stood, garner some confidence in his current abilities, and see if he still had it.

Marko, the only man in the whole shit eating town of lowlifes that had ever shown Jerrod even the tiniest bit of compassion, was dead by his hands. The only one in the entire cesspool of a rotting corpses they called Murder Haven that had ever shown him true respect, even awe. Marko had been… nice to him. Insane. No one was nice to anyone on the streets of that city.

He loosened up some floor boards on the porch, and from the side of his vision saw the corpse staring at him. The dark form was a blot in the corner against the wall, inert. The back of his head, a head that would never again have a thought, would never turn at the sight of a pretty girl, it caught Jerrod’s eyes.

Jerrod stood up straight and sighed. “Sorry, pal. You shouldn’t have slapped me. I’m a killer, it’s what I do… you stupid, stupid, bastard. Why did you come here? Guess you weren’t so tough after all, eh?”

His chuckle had no mirth. He felt hollow; hadn’t felt that way after killing someone since the first time he had done it. That time he had vomited his guts out and thought he would die along with the man in the alley. His gang’s initiation demanded one kill for entry.

Jerrod had done it alone, frightened out of his mind. The twelve year old boy had never held a knife before in his life, let alone stuck it in another human being. The homeless dreg hadn’t died with the first strike, and Jerrod thought he would shit himself. As the man came forward, Jerrod stabbed up and got lucky with a strike to the jugular. The dreg bled out in front of him, down on his knees, wonder and shock draining from his eyes as the life drained from his body.

He hadn’t meant to kill Marko.

One of the boards slipped out of his hands as he snapped it in two. He cursed and sucked a splinter out of his palm. Placing the board back together gave the illusion the porch was whole, a chance to catch his potential killers in a simple trap. If they came forward through his front door, they might have caught a between boards.

They might enter some other way he hadn’t thought of or not enter at all. Anything could happen. It was always that way. Things never happened the way it was planned.

Next was the door. He rigged it with a simple pulley system set up on the other side, holding up a large stone he braced with a log about the circumference of his wrist. It was an obvious play that they would expect, and that was what he wanted.

They knew his tactics, and he knew that they knew. And they knew that he knew that they knew. A strange situation. Jerrod always felt it came down to how well the plans were executed and who could improvise the best.

The bolt of adrenaline from the shock of Marko’s death had awakened some primal instinct of survival in him, always so strong to the man who had been the boy fighting for his life against the other gutter trash on the streets of Murder Haven. Scratching and clawing for scraps of food; heavier clothes when it was colder, bits of wood so they could build a fire, any boy with flint found himself in a coveted position. Jerrod had won most of those battles but not at first.

It was a hard climb out of the gutter, a climb that was ongoing. He had seen the top of the pile with Castellan and those fools on the city council, and it was nothing but more trash and refuse.

Inside the cabin there was a simple escape route. A panel on the wall sideways from the fireplace near the pantry that could depress a wooden lever that released a log in the wall. It would be easy to roll underneath and escape outside. It wasn’t much, and maybe they would block it from outside, but if he found himself trapped in the cabin, and they covered the other exits, it might surprise them.

Jerrod put himself into the minds of his foes. They might have been watching him for a week or more or not at all. It was important to leave the cabin for a while, make a showing about town, lead them back, or give them reason to come here free of his presence.

If they were allowed a false sense of security, they would be more likely to come, and then the initiative would be his. Jerrod would burn the sucker out and once out in the open, he would kill him. But Jerrod was a more reckless assassin compared to his brethren.

Outside, he looked around the perimeter of the cabin and wished there was time to dig some holes around the edge of the structure. They were easy traps to spot; even when covered with leaves, but once again it could add to the confusion. Any moment of hesitation was worth considering. Around at the treetops were some overhanging branches that had potential. There was a door on the inside that gave him roof access, and perhaps he could use it to run and jump onto a branch and escape that way.

Marko was dead. Jerrod breathed in the cool air and wondered why he cared, why the image of his twitching body came back to him so hard. It was an accident.

Dawn was coming fast. He looked at the porch, and the rickety rocking chair there. He thought of Marko’s corpse in the corner by the wall, cooling and still. He went inside to wrap it in a thin blanket but noticed then that the man had a pack with him, about the size of a man’s upper thigh.

Jerrod opened it. It was food. A large loaf of bread, some salted meat and some nice cheese. Marko had brought food for him the blasted fool. Jerrod sat at the lone chair and ate, his stomach feeling tight, his mind numb. It tasted like ash in his mouth.

His bed frame was cracked, two legs were broken off, but the mattress was still usable. He didn’t expect to fall asleep, but when he woke, it felt like an instant later. It was not. The light streaming in said late afternoon.

On his feet, he stretched and looked for his sword and proper clothes. His current set was soiled and filthy. He washed off outside with a bucket on a string and tilting mechanism. Much refreshed, it was time to go into town and visit some taverns, to see what was what.

Jerrod strolled down the lonely dirt path into town. He thought of all the slugs that would be getting off work, leaving their jobs to go to a local tavern and spend what little money they had. They would throw away money on bets at the tents or arena instead of feeding their families like they should have. People were all the same.

Except for people like Marko, he had the courage to fight for something more exceptional. A better life, with better pay, a life where a man would put his life on the line to get paid, rather than a fool who would eke out a living on scraps thrown down by their betters.

Damn blasted fool. He should have come when Jerrod was sober, at least then they could have talked. But Jerrod wasn’t sure Marko would have convinced him to get his ass out of the gutter and wake up. There was nothing like murder to get one’s blood moving.

There were a lot of taverns around the southern docks, scummy places with scummy people. A lot of the thieves had been making their home there. And many of the taverns were in competition with Stern’s Place. One in particular, called The Drunken Flagon, was known to be in direct competition with Tobias Stern. The owners hated each other over some feud few remembered.

The Drunken Flagon was Jerrod’s first visit. They had a double door front entrance that swung back and forth. It was a new design, meant to increase ease of ingress and egress from the establishment. Jerrod thought it superfluous; if a man wanted to drink, a door would not have slowed him down. Newfangled technology made little sense to him.

The brutal man spent a few minutes on the street watching who came and went. It was a slow night, but it was still early. The slugs worked long hours for little pay. That was what made them slugs and weaklings. After a while, he entered and grabbed a table near the back wall to watch any who entered.

A man at the bar stared at Jerrod and glared at him as if he had pissed in his beer. Good, someone recognized him. He ordered food but no alcohol.

Jerrod had lost a good deal of weight, even before his self-imposed seclusion at the cabin. He figured he had shed a good fifteen pounds and wanted to add back on some gristle. By the time he got his food and began shoveling in the pork and beans and potatoes, the man glaring at him came over to his table. He stood on the other side and put his hands on the edge.

The lout was big and beefy, fat turning to obesity, yet Jerrod spied the hard muscle underneath. He had a nasty scar on his left cheek and thick black hair with a scruffy beard. The man had been a fighter once. Jerrod could tell by the way he moved, perhaps even a retired arena fighter.

He was just what Jerrod wanted, someone to make an example out of.

“Yer one of those bastard toughs, ain’t cha?”

Jerrod continued to chew.

“Hey! I’m talkin’ to you, you pile of donkey dung! I heard you fellas got your asses kicked the other night at the arena. Some of ya even pissed themselves, they got so scared. My boys took care of ‘em easy.”

The man chuckled and turned back to a few of his cronies. They laughed and came up to stand behind him.

Jerrod took a swig of water and smacked his lips. Marko had said something about the arena, Jerrod remembered that. They must have gone there for some reason, Marko mentioned something about Zandor. Good to know.

He glanced at the pig in front of him and spit off to the side. “Let me ask you something, pal. You had yer dinner yet?”

The look of amusement and menace died in his eyes as the man’s eyebrows went up. “Waddaya mean by that?”

Jerrod snorted. “Deaf and stupid. You had yer evening meal yet? I like a man to have some food in his belly ‘fore I send him to hell. Seems only right to me. A proper send off and all that, like a last request when a man is hanged.”

After a moment it began to dawn on the man he was being both insulted and threatened. He scowled, and he leaned his considerable bulk off his knuckles on the table.

“Okay, mister tough, let’s say you and me go outside and—”

With one quick yank, Jerrod pulled his sword and slashed the man across the throat. The movement was so fast and smooth no one knew what had happened. The sword was out, cut, and back down at his side before they could’ve reacted. Even the loud braggart didn’t know he was dead until enough blood had poured down his chest to stain his shirt dark.

The corpse choked as his eyes went wide, and his knees buckled. A gurgle escaped his mouth, and he grabbed at the gushing wound. It was to no avail. His form dropped straight down, head banging on the edge of the table before plopping on the ground and sputtering in his death throes. People gasped, and his compatriots stood back from the table. A woman screamed.