“I’m sorry, Jon, I don’t mean to insult you all, but you’re just not cut out to do what’s going to be required to please the guild. I hope you do, but I’m not willing to risk my life on it.”
That said, Ryan left and disappeared into the night.
Jon turned sullenly back to the remaining group. “Ok folks, we have some planning to do. Anyone have any ideas?”
They all argued back and forth with different ideas and schemes long into the night. Azerick decided this was not his area of expertise and had little to offer so decided to wrack his own brain for ideas back in his room.
He only realized he had fallen asleep when dawn woke him in the morning. He went out to the common room where Maggy was sitting with Beth and William.
“Where is everybody; have they all gone out already?” He asked as he found a piece of bread and some cheese to break his fast.
“Aye, Jon and the others put some half-baked plan together to get their hands on some real coin and left early this morning,” Maggy replied unhappily.
“What are they going to do? Why didn’t they wake me?”
“Jon said to leave you out of it; that you were too young and too inexperienced for this kind of job.”
“I’m almost as old as Patrick and twice as quick!” Azerick insisted with indignation.
“I know, but that was what they decided and you’re probably better off not going. I hope I’m wrong, but I got a bad feeling about this.”
“I’m going out then, Maggy. I may not be able to help them on their run, but I can do something,” he announced as he got up and left Maggy and the two younger children.
Azerick traveled throughout the city looking and thinking about what he could do that would make a significant difference. He wracked his brain for hours before he saw his opportunity. The young thief found himself in one of the many market squares throughout the city.
Merchants of all sorts were plying their wares while hawkers yelled over the loud droning of hundreds of shoppers and merchants. He spied a jewelry maker’s stand at the base of a small rise in the street. Perhaps thirty or thirty-five feet up the slope was a cart laden with leather belts, bags, and other adornments. One wheel of the cart was chocked to prevent it from rolling down the hill and into the crowd below.
Azerick sidled up to the leather workers cart and waited for the artisan to become preoccupied before making his move. A large woman in fine wool and cotton garb asked to try the belts on to determine which one went best with her outfit.
“Best buy two and join the ends to get it to go all the way round,” Azerick scoffed to himself as he waited for the right moment to act.
The merchant had several belts slung over one arm as he handed them, one by one, for the woman to inspect. When the vendor stepped away from the cart to help the woman wrap a belt around her prodigious waist, Azerick kicked behind himself like a mule chasing off a stable boy and knocked the wedge holding the cart out from under the wheel. The cart began to roll slowly at first but quickly picked up speed as it started gaining momentum on the far side of the crest.
Seeing his livelihood suddenly rolling away, the merchant dropped his belts and ran after the cart shouting for help. Azerick also ran after the cart shouting for all he was worth to get people to notice the runaway cart and get out of the way. He feared that the errant cart would strike a pedestrian but he had chanced it anyway. He would never get another chance like this and he meant to make the most of it.
As luck would have it, the people were rather alert today and quickly dove away from the rampaging, leather-laden cart. Azerick was surprised at the force that the cart slammed into the jewelry maker’s stand. The knocked over tables sent wood and glass display cases crashing to the ground, and jewelry and leather items were scattered everywhere.
Azerick raced ahead of the leather merchant and was the first one to reach the cart and overturned jewelry stand. Before the Jewelry seller could recover from the shock, Azerick scooped up several pieces of shining loot along with several pieces of broken glass, which sliced into his fingers. He made a second grab at a few more pieces and then made a dash out of the square before anyone realized what he was truly up too.
Azerick ran for several blocks ducking in and out of alleyways and side streets to put as much distance between him and the accident scene. He decided that he would duck down one more alley then take a rest before making his way back to the others. He turned into the alleyway and ran into a large youth about three or four years older than himself and twice as big.
Both boys went sprawling from the impact and a few pieces of stolen jewelry went ringing onto the cobbles. Azerick looked up from where he lay on his back and saw the two friends already helping the larger boy back up. The other two boys were slightly older than Azerick by perhaps a year or two but were not nearly as large as their friend was. All three glared at Azerick as he got his own feet back under him.
“Hey, Hugo, this little squirt just knocked you down!” said a lean, red-haired boy.
“No kidding, Carrot, gee I hadn’t noticed,” Hugo said and clapped Carrot on the back of his bright orange head.
“Hey, look at what he dropped,” exclaimed Rolly, the other boy, as he reached down and started picking up the dropped bits of jewelry.
“That’s mine, give it back!”
“What else you got, worm?” Hugo demanded as he advanced on Azerick.
“Nothing, now give me back my stuff.”
“Hand over everything you got or you’re gonna get pounded real good right now,” Hugo threatened, smacking his fist into a meaty palm.
“Yeah, hand it over, chump, or we’ll pound you real good,” Carrot parroted.
Before Azerick could respond either way, the three boys lunged at him and tackled him to the ground. Azerick rolled with the hits and was able to get quickly back to his feet. He launched a quick right jab into Carrot’s nose and landed a solid kick into Hugo’s stomach. Hugo’s mass trapped Rolly beneath it as the larger boy went sprawling back to ground.
Azerick ran down the alley as fast as his feet would take him with the three young thugs in pursuit. He ran down alleys, through buildings, and even across the rooftops at one point, but he was unable to shake his pursuers.
Azerick was not familiar with this part of the city but it became apparent that his assailants were. They seemed to anticipate his moves and often were able to cut off his retreat, forcing him down differing alleyways. It occurred to him that the thugs were herding him like a sheep, but he did not know where to. The answer came shortly when he found himself at the end of a dead end alley.
“He’s trapped in the alley,” Azerick heard one the boys call out.
He looked around quickly but the few doors that emptied into the alley were solid and locked. The cornered street rat searched desperately for another way out. The three thugs ran into the now empty alley and looked around in bewilderment.
“Where’d he go?” asked Carrot?
Hugo looked up, then down before pointing to a sewer grate.
“There, he went into the sewer, let’s get him,” Hugo said as he made for the portal.
“Are you sure you
wanna
go down there?” Rolly asked, “We already got what he dropped, maybe that was all of it.”
“No, he’s got more or he wouldn’t have run, I know it, now let’s go.”
The three followed Azerick down into the sewers, that reeked as bad as only a sewer could, and looked around in the darkness.
“It’s really dark down here. Carrot climb back up and find something to make a few torches,” Hugo ordered.
Carrot came back in a few minutes with several planks of dry wood, some discarded burlap, and strips of canvas. Hugo took the strips of material and wrapped it around the pieces of wood before lighting them with his tinderbox. The torches gave off a weak flickering light since they had no pitch or oil on them, but they worked well enough for their purposes.
“Alright, come on, he couldn’t have gotten far without any light,” Hugo insisted.
Rats scattered at the light and noise of the three young men as they traversed their way through the muck. Meanwhile, Azerick was making his own way down the pitch-black sewers, running a hand along the slime coated walls and feeling his way along. He kept track of each turn he made and how far each run was between any turns in order to memorize his route.
The concern of getting lost was very real in his mind. Azerick ran his hands along the wall and figured out he had reach a dead end. He turned around to make his way back the way he came when he heard voices and saw a flickering of light.
He walked to the very back of the channel hoping that they would not come down the passage he now occupied but had no such luck. He could just make out the trio at the open end of the corridor he was in and they were coming closer.
Azerick began to feel blindly along the walls hoping to find a ladder rung and climb out. He was having no such luck and he glanced over and saw that the three thugs were getting closer. He was just about ready to set himself to fight when his hand touched a stone that gave a little. He pulled on the stone hoping that at least he could pry it out of the wall, throw it behind the boys, and distract them, maybe send them along a different route.
Azerick pulled the stone out but he couldn’t pull it away from the wall He realized that it was attached somehow so he gave it a twist hoping to break it free from whatever held it. He twisted the stone but instead of breaking off it rotated in his hand and he heard a slight scraping noise and felt a slight breeze on his face. He twisted the stone some more and a very faint light shone through a now revealed doorway. Azerick pushed the stone back into place, and without even pondering his good luck, he dashed through the doorway and found an iron wheel on his side of the door. He turned the wheel and the door slowly swung shut and closed with a light click.
A faint, yellowish-green light glowed from some sort of lichen growing on the damp stone walls. He made a small slash with his finger through the glowing substance. A dark line was now visible on the wall and his fingertip now had a slight glow. The light was very dim, only slightly better than darkness. Azerick carefully made his way along the narrow corridor, following the wall since he could barely see his own feet.
He had crept forward only a dozen feet or so when he felt a small section of the floor shift under his foot with an audible click and grating of rusting metal. Pure instinct drove him to the ground as a snapping sound preceded a clash against the wall just a couple feet over his prone form. He felt something light but solid ricochet of the wall and drop onto his back.
He reached back with his hand, plucked the object off his back, and sat up. The object was a rusty crossbow bolt with a shaft made of solid iron. Azerick continued his exploration on his hands and knees, carefully crawling along the floor feeling for any more triggers.
Azerick found three more trapped floor plates by the time he reached the first intersection. Each time he located a trapped floor stone, he wiped a bit of glowing lichen onto it to mark its location. He did not know how long the lichen would continue to glow after it was scraped from the wall, but he hoped it was long enough for him avoid the booby traps when he made his way back out. He came across more than one sprung trap where either time or an intruder had snapped the trip wire. He guessed it was likely the former as he saw no skeletons or traces of anyone injured.
In the few hours that passed, he was able to find three side rooms, a main chamber that was about thirty feet on each side, and two cleverly hidden doors that led to a narrow corridor that held the crossbow traps that fired into the hallways.
Unlike the crossbows, some of the traps, powered by a powerful tempered-steel spring, were still active. Coated in a tar and grease, the springs kept them still functional.
Azerick had no way of knowing how long the place had been abandoned much less how long it had been here, but he knew it had been a long time. Years at least, probably stretching back several decades given the amount of dust and the condition of some of the more degraded items he found.