Assassins' Dawn (2 page)

I panicked. Instead of finishing what I’d started, I eviscerated the book. I retained only the basic shell of the story and produced a novelette called “In Darkness Waiting.” I sent the story (still bleeding from the massive surgery) to
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
, and Gardner Dozois, who was the Assistant Editor there at the time, liked it enough to send me revision notes and a promise to look at the story again once I’d revised it. I made changes and sent it back, and Gardner (or George Scithers, who was editor at the time) bought it. It appeared in the October 1977 issue. (If you’re curious, it’s reprinted in my ebook short story collection A RAIN OF PEBBLES, along with most of the other Alliance Universe stories)

I continued to write and occasionally sell short stories for the next few years, but I was realizing that if I ever wanted to have any shot at actually making writing a substantial part of my income, I had to overcome my trepidation and write novels.

Being the eminently lazy sort, I thought: “Why not start with the novel you’ve already planned out?” I’d been smart enough—which is honestly a rarity—not to actually trash the notes I’d made. I began to reconstruct the novel, gluing back onto the skeleton of “In Darkness Waiting” all the material and ideas I’d trimmed away, rewriting the story from the beginning.

Early in 1980 I had a pile of paper that somewhat resembled a novel, which I titled SLOW FALL TO DAWN. I also had no idea how to market the thing to agents. Here’s where networking (of the pre–Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal variety, using letters and phone calls) came in.

Denise and I had begun attending the regional SF cons as well as the occasional Worldcon or big East Coast gathering. I’d met quite a few writers—most of them farther along in their career than me—and become good friends with some. I contacted a select few, asking if they knew of an agent they’d recommend I contact. George RR Martin suggested a relatively new agent he’d met, and was kind enough to say he’d send her a personal recommendation.

Just as good networking can lead to a “real” job, good networking can also lead to work in your writing career. People do tend to help other people whom they know and like.

I will point out before someone brings out the old cliché that “You see! It’s all just about who you know!” that networking only works to a point. Getting an introduction to someone via a friend might crack open a door you thought locked, but your fiction still has to do the heavy lifting—and that’s far more important. You can sell a novel without networking if it’s well-written and compelling; you
can’t
sell a poorly-written novel no matter how fantastic a network you have.

Fast-forward a few months. . . . The agent, after reading the novel, had agreed to represent me. At the time, I was running a bi-weekly RPG game—mostly AD&D but with lots of rule changes we’d made on our own. During the middle of one of our games late in 1980, the phone rang and Denise answered. She passed the phone over to me. ”It’s your agent,” she said. She gave me an eyebrow-raised look as I took the phone.

“I have good news,” the voice on the other end said. “Bantam’s made an offer on your book . . .” I don’t remember much of the rest of the night, except that I recall it involved more beer than usual and that I happily allowed the characters in the RPG to get away with far too much mayhem and treasure. Everyone went up a level or two.

I had sold my first book!

It did pretty well, too: had some good reviews, and
Locus
named it one of the Top Ten First Novels, and sales were good enough that my editor at Bantam wanted more books.

I realized that I wanted to follow the character arc of Gyll, my protagonist, through the rest of his story. I wanted to see what would happen if I took my ethical assassins and moved them
off
this peculiar little world of theirs and out into the greater Alliance.

Those speculations would lead to the sequel DANCE OF THE HAG as well as the concluding novel A QUIET OF STONE, the other two books that make up the omnibus edition you’re holding.

Over the years, I’ve often wished I could get these books back into print. Now, thanks to Sheila Gilbert and the other good folks at DAW Books, that wish has become a reality.

I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I enjoyed writing it!

SLOW FALL TO DAWN

for DENISE—
she knows why,
but still enjoys being told

Chapter 1

P
AUSE. And shiveringly inhale. The two Hoorka-kin gathered air for their complaining lungs. It had been a long run for Aldhelm and Sartas, far too long. Sweat varnished the skin under their nightcloaks, and their legs were cramped and sore. Still, the quarry was just ahead, and they could allow themselves only the briefest rest. Night-quiet, the two assassins advanced like shadows unseen in overlying murk; as deadly as the wind-spiders of the western tundra.

In but seventeen minutes, the photoreceptors on the dawnrock would signal Underasgard’s dawn and the end of their hunt. They ran, the Hoorka.

Aldhelm signaled Sartas to a halt in the comforting darkness cast by a high porch. Somewhere just ahead, Gunnar—the contracted victim—was enmeshed in the thick metal pilings that held the houses above the early rains and the cold flood that inevitably followed. These were the tenements of Sterka, the most temporary sector of a city that had not been meant by its founders to survive more than half a century and was now well into its second hundred years. Wooden beams lent support to the time – and rust-weakened pillars of metal. Decay, an odor formed of river mud and rust, filled their nostrils. Aldhelm fought the inclination to cough in the fetid air.

It hadn’t been an easy or lucky night for them.

•   •   •

The apprentices had done their work admirably. With six hours still to pass before the Underasgard dawn terminated the contract, Aldhelm and Sartas had taken up the trail within meters of Gunnar. They’d pursued him down the Street of Ravines, scenting an easy kill and an early night; the Thane would be pleased, for this was politically an important assassination. The street was deserted, the only light coming from hoverlamps spaced at long intervals, and Gunnar was already winded. But as the Hoorka reached for their daggers, Gunnar suddenly lifted his head, cast a frightened yet oddly hopeful look behind him, and ducked into a cross street to his left. A moment later, the two Hoorka heard the sound that had caused Gunnar’s optimism—the low-moaning chant of the Dead, a lassari sect. The Dead were the disenfranchised, the most depressed of the unguilded: the lassari. Their balm was ignorance, their unity hopelessness. Those of the Dead did nothing save to march and chant their melancholy mantras, accompanied by the scent of burning incense and finding catharsis in the act of marching. Their indifference to reality was legendary; the Dead paid no attention to pedestrians in their path, ignored the occasional assaults on peripheral members of their processions, and failed to notice their own members who would swoon and fall from exhaustion. They considered their lives already ended. Why should any lagging pain from the life they considered finished bother them? They marched to meet Hag Death, and took her foul embrace as they would that of a lover.

The Dead entered the Street of Ravines from the right of the cross street, and made a slow, agonizing turn toward the Hoorka. There were perhaps thirty of them, eyes closed as they chanted, their bodies—wrapped in simple cloth robes—filling the narrow street. Cursing, the Hoorka fought to make a passage through the press. The fuming censers filled their nostrils with acrid fumes, and around them the expressionless faces moved in the sibilant chanting, ignoring the Hoorka who pushed and shoved the unresisting Dead from their path. Aldhelm raised an open hand—the Dead One on his left was a young woman who looked as if she might have once been pretty—and pushed her away from him. Her eyes opened briefly, though she didn’t look at him, and then she resumed her chanting, stumbling as she regained her balance.

And abruptly, they were through. The procession of Dead, unruffled, continued down the street, their chant echoing from the buildings to either side. Gunnar had disappeared. The Hoorka ran down the cross street, searching the alleyways that led off from the street. Dame Fate rewarded their diligence. Aldhelm motioned to Sartas, beckoning. He gave inward thanks to She of the Five Limbs for her favor, and moved into a narrow, dingy alley.

The moons were yet to rise, but a pallid lemon-light filtered through a greasy window high up on one wall of the bordering structures. The window gave but a wan and uncertain illumination, but with the light-enhancers the Hoorka wore, it was enough. They could see Gunnar, halfway up a pile of packing crates that had been thrown into the alley, blocking it. Gunnar hadn’t yet seen the Hoorka, but in his haste to get by the crates, he sent them tumbling noisily to the ground. Sartas grinned at Aldhelm and loosened his vibro in its sheath. A victim so obviously frightened, so careless, was an easy kill.

But his very clumsiness saved Gunnar. The lighted window was suddenly flung open. Brilliant light washed over the alley, stabbing at the packing crates, the startled Gunnar, and the cobbled surface of the ground.

“Bastard!” a voice shouted, hoarsely. “Get away from those crates or I’ll have your manhood!”

Gunnar whirled, losing his precarious balance and sending more crates to the ground. He slipped, tumbling halfway to earth, and in that instant saw the Hoorka, momentarily blinded by the sudden overload of the light-enhancers. Sartas flung his vibro: a wild throw, it came nowhere near Gunnar. And as the Hoorka recovered their vision and moved toward their victim, the window was slammed shut again with a final curse. In the time it took the Hoorka to regain sight once more, Gunnar scrambled over and through the labyrinth of crates and into the maze of streets beyond.

Sartas picked one of the cobblestones from the alley, hefted it, and sent it crashing through the window.

“May all your children be lassari,” he shouted. “And if your pride is offended by my insult, see Sartas of the Hoorka. I’ll give you satisfaction
and
an introduction to Hag Death.”

Silence. After a moment, Sartas grinned. “He doesn’t answer, Aldhelm. Too bad.”

Aldhelm didn’t share his companion’s humor. “We have to find Gunnar, kin-brother. This is petty.”

“Let’s go, then.”

They found Gunnar again more because the apprentices had done their preliminary work than through any skills of their own. Gunnar’s mistress, Ricia Cuscratti, lived in the Burgh. As with most neighborhoods in Sterka, the rich lived in uncomfortable proximity to the poor, and m’Dame Cuscratti, a member of the Banker’s Guild, was rich. The Hoorka, having little recourse, made their way to her dwelling after ascertaining that Gunnar had fled in that direction.

The Cuscratti house was large, set away from the street and buffered by a well-lit garden. Parti-colored hoverlamps flickered above the topiary and illuminated the skeleton of a small ippicator. The wall facing the street was translucent—colors melted and collided in abstract patterns while the shadows of figures moved in the rooms behind. Aldhelm and Sartas paused, taking refuge in the shadowed recesses of a run-down warehouse adjacent to the house.

“We could wait for him.” Sartas’s voice was heavy with his breathing.

Aldhelm, in darkness, shook his head. “There isn’t that much time now. No,
if
he’s there, he’ll stay unless we set him running again. We’ll have to go in.”

“As you say.” Sartas shrugged. “I’ll want hot mead when we get back to the caverns. If Felling doesn’t have the cooking fires lit, I’ll use his bed for kindling.”

It took no great skill to loose the hoverlamps from the magnetic field powering them. The lamps fell like stunned fireflies, and in darkness the garden gave more cover than they required. The flowing colors of the wall cast oddly-hued shadows from the trimmed shrubbery. Drifting patches of shade twisted like pastel vines over the street and into the houses beyond. Aldhelm and Sartas were quickly standing near the doorshield. Aldhelm rummaged in his nightcloak, found the random field generator, and began to adjust the device, searching for the frequency that would dilate the shield and let them pass. The mechanism hummed loudly in the quiet of the garden.

In the night silence, the Hoorka heard the footsteps many seconds before anyone came into view. The assassins slipped into deeper cover and watched four men approach the house from the street. The figures hesitated near the entrance to the garden, and the wall threw mad images dancing behind them, animating the sleeping hulks of buildings. The intruders made no attempt at stealth, nor did they bother with any subtlety when confronted by the obstacle of the doorshield. One of the four brought a fieldgun to bear. Phosphorescent sparks arced, spat angrily, and expired on the rich humus of the garden. The translucent wall rippled patterns of alarm: billows of purple-scarlet welled outward from the shield and spread across the face of the house, growing larger and more saturated with color. Somewhere inside, a disconsolate siren wailed mournfully and shadow-figures raced from front to back, away from the disturbance. The intruders—Aldhelm could see them clearly in the aching blue-white glare of the dying shield—wore cloaks not unlike the gray and black nightcloaks of the Hoorka-kin, but these were no Hoorka. He signaled to Sartas, using the hand code.
Vingi’s people?

In the depths of some fanciful bird of shrubbery, Sartas’s hand moved in reply.
Probable.

A flick of a hand, a flashing of palm.
We’ll wait.

The shield died in orange and white agony. Flame guttered and died, running fitfully up and down the perimeter of the opening as the door dilated. The four ran quickly past the smoking ruin and into the house, weapons ready. Aldhelm unsheathed his vibro.

Now.
Aldhelm nodded to Sartas, and the two Hoorka swept past the wreckage of the shield.