Brave Men Die: Part 2 (2 page)

Thom glanced through the leaves looking for any movement from the guards, as he took his knife in hand. They hadn’t noticed. One thing he had learned over the years, a good assassin could dispatch the guards without raising the alarm, but a better one could sneak past the guards, kill the target and leave without anyone ever knowing.

The younger girl bounced up and down, her naked breasts clamped firmly down with her left hand as her right clawed at the King’s chest and teased the greying curly hair. Her mouth opened in silent moans as she did her best to rock back and forth against the old man’s erect cock. The old man thrust up as he came, throwing off her rhythm and casting her aside when he was done.

The girl rolled off the bed, grabbed her robe from the floor and quickly put it on under the King’s scrutinising gaze. Then she hurriedly fled the room, her feet barely touching the marble floor of the royal bedchamber.

The King watched her go, pulling the sheet over his lower body as he sat himself upright at the side of the bed. He ran his gnarled hand through his thinning grey hair as the curtain beside the window blew slightly revealing thin attractive legs.

‘You can come out now, she has gone.’

Madeline pushed aside the curtain and walked across the marble floor, her heels making a clicking noise with each step. Her hips swayed from side to side, her hands moved from her thighs up along her hips drawing the old man’s eyes.

‘These young ones have no talent. Whores, the lot of them.’

‘And what would you have done differently?’

‘Firstly I would have made you work for it, and then right when you were on the verge of finishing I would have teased it to last for hours more.’ Her hand traced its way up her flat stomach, past the jewelled ring in her belly button, up to the cleavage of her ample breasts.

The King inhaled deeply and Madeline believed that the thought flashed through his mind whether he was able to go again tonight and how long before he was ready to try it. Her hand went to her neck, pushed her hair back behind her ear and she left it there for a prolonged moment, capturing the royal pale blue eyes.

Madeline strutted over to the bed, letting her translucent robe fall to the floor as she sensually climbed onto the mattress, seductively moved behind him as her nails stroked the wiry chest muscle, tracing a curling pattern to his shoulder and up beside his neck. Madeline’s other hand slowly crept up his back and settled on his shoulder where she proceeded to gently massage his flesh.

Her lips kissed his neck as he tilted his head to the side, the trimmed grey hair of his goatee rubbed against her cheek. It tickled slightly but she ignored it as her lips pressed harder against his flesh and her nails dug in.

The old man moaned in a mixture of pleasure and pain as Madeline started dragging her nails across his flesh, scoring it with thick red marks. His hand reached behind him frantically for anything he could grab hold of, finally clutching at her firm thigh before moving his hand up to her fleshy cheek and pulled her closer until her breasts were firmly pressed against his back.

Reaching up into her hair, she elegantly pulled out the hairpin that was holding it up. The sharp, thin blade glinted in the moonlight streaming through the open balcony doors. Madeline’s free hand moved up and over his shoulder, around his neck, along his cheek. It was in the perfect position to cover his mouth as she sunk the hairpin into his neck, once, twice then her arm repeated the motion over and over again. Blood sprayed up to her elbow, splattered onto her face as she took delight in the brutality. The King fought back, one hand scratching at hers that covered his mouth, the other tried desperately to get the blade from her hand.

His head turned and Madeline pushed the hairpin through his eye, ramming it as hard as possible to make sure it punctured the brain. Letting go of the King’s head, it slumped back and the body dropped down onto the bed, then tumbled off the edge and landed with a thud on the floor.

Madeline walked to the small alcove in the corner of the room, leaving her robe on the floor and strutting naked across the marble. Closing the door behind her, she went straight to the basin full of water and plunged her face into it. Quickly scrubbing her fingers she rubbed the blood off her face before she moved her hands across her body, as the water cleaned her shoulders, neck and breasts.

Glancing down she judged she had removed it all and went back out into the bedchamber, her feet padding lightly on the floor as she walked to the body, putting her hair back up simultaneously. By the time she reached the old man’s dead body lying prostrate she leant down and scooped up her crumpled robe and checked that it was clean before putting it back on.

Madeline swept across the room, tracing her fingers along the curtains, gazing off the balcony at the open plains to the east of the capital, before moving to the stone wall beside the large wooden alcohol cabinet. She pressed a stone and entered the darkness of the hidden recess.

His fingertips clutched at the uneven wall and he felt his way for the next handhold. Pushing with his feet, Thom drew up another foot before he made a jump for the balcony on the east side of the apartment. Two storeys up, missing would have alerted the guards and ended the attempt, if not his life.

As his fingers gripped around the railing, his legs swung underneath him until he got them under control and boosted himself up and over the top. His feet landed silently and he ducked down to avoid the sentry’s eyes. Thom crept quietly to the door, put his hand on the handle and paused, listening for movement inside the room. All he heard was the soft slumber of two small bodies, their chests rising and falling with each breath.

Opening the door just enough for his body to squeeze through, he leaped up, slid through, and was closing the door as he returned to a crouch. His eyes darted around the room, looking for any signal that his intrusion had been heard. First one bed, then the other, he waited for movement, holding his breath. Within seconds he knew that he had not disturbed the two girls and looked around the room to get his bearings.

It was small, with two thin, short single beds, which were so close side-by-side that they could almost be touching. A desk lay in the corner of the room with a bench seat big enough for two to sit together and stare into the large oval mirror.

Thom moved closer to the beds. Both of the girls’ blonde hair lay covering their pillows like ivy growing up a tree. The younger of the two had her hand stretched out reaching for her sister. Pulling his dagger he set about his business for the good of the Empire. The royal line had to be terminated and that included the only granddaughters of the King, no matter that they were seven and four and would never be a threat.

He covered the mouth of the oldest as his blade pressed against her throat when her eyes opened in fright. Sighing, he dragged the blade across and held her still until she stopped thrashing and he moved to the younger. Repeating the process he felt a touch of remorse as the girl had no idea what was happening and her eyes opened with happiness and sparkles before the pain receptors went off and the tears streamed down her face. Kids always made him hesitate.

He wiped the blade clean on the bed sheets and made his way for the door, cautiously pressing his ear against it to listen for signs of the serving staff. The silence made him relax and he realised that he had been tensing his shoulders. He turned the knob and pulled the door open as someone pushed from the other side. With a silent gasp a woman fell toward him, startled that anyone was in her daughters’ room.

Thom’s blade punctured her heart before she realised, came out and went in a few more times before her hands came slowly to her chest and clutched at her blood soaked shift. Then her blue eyes bored into his skull momentarily, the intense scrutiny, the anger and pain, before they lost focus and blanked, rolling back as her knees gave way and she started to fall. Thom’s arms went out instinctively and caught the woman, then slowly and gently lowered her to the ground and laid her between her daughters’ beds.

Three down one to go, he thought, as he crept out into the hallway.

The palace was alive with gossip by the time Madeline made it back to her room amongst the other girls’, with the King’s personal guardsmen racing along the corridors. The girls themselves were alive with the buzz and talk of what could be creating such a stir at this hour, saying this, suggesting that.

Madeline smiled at the fools and their harebrained ideas and went walking past, she had never been one to stop to talk and chat. She was all business. The girls were all in varied state of undress, some having returned from some of the officials of the King’s court that provided them with attention when the King did not and offered life’s little luxuries.

Entering her room, Madeline felt refreshed after washing and wanted to relax, her muscles a little tense from the sudden burst of activity. It wasn’t like she used those muscles all the time as part of her day job, for that she used some others. Lighting a scented candle on her dresser, the smell of lavender soon filled the room and she went over to her bed, grabbed a manuscript from her bedside table, opened it to where the blue silk marker indicated and started reading until her eyes got heavy.

Madeline jumped awake at the thudding at the door, the book falling off her bosom, and the King’s guardsmen entered without waiting for an invite. She began to protest but saw the other girls being manhandled past her door and thought better of it. Sleepily, she allowed them to lead her to their destination, only once checking that her hair was still neatly put up and that she looked her finest in just about nothing.

All the girls in the harem were hauled into the palace ballroom, with guards manning every door. There was tension in the room as the girls huddled together, talking quietly, wondering what was going on. The guards refused to answer any of their questions and stood there in grim silence. Madeline pressed her back against a wall and waited.

Half an hour later the war council stepped into the room with a contingent of the palace guard. They strode purposefully into the middle of the room where Knight-General Dejeski, the oldest man on the council and a distant cousin to the King, stood quietly with his hands grasped behind his back. He was a veteran of wars, brawls, and skirmishes. A white scar ran down the length of his face through his left eye, its milky colour giving it a ghostly presence. The blue-grey eye stared at the girls and his voice carried across the giant ballroom.

‘You little sluts line up.’

The girls jumped to obey his orders as Madeline strolled over clasping her hands. She didn’t want them to think she was guilty of anything, at least not now.

‘The King is dead,’ Dejeski roared. ‘And one of you sluts killed him.’

There were gasps all around from the girls.

Dejeski, his voice strained. ‘Now we could stay here all night til we find out which one of you did it, but I have more important things to worry about. I’ve been guaranteed that every last one of you whores is in this very room.’

The girls murmured.

‘Kill them all,’ he ordered to the palace guards, who stepped forward, drew blades from their scabbards and stabbed the closest girls.

Panic ensued as some of the girls broke down and sobbed as the blades took them. Others dropped to their knees and pleaded, some removed their clothes and tried to bargain. There was no remorse, no sympathy, no quarter given.

Madeline glanced around the room, found the closest guard and went after him. It wasn’t going to end like this, not if she could help it. Her fingers reached into her hair and instantly the two thin blades were in her hands and her hair was falling down upon her shoulders. Within steps she was at the first guard, his blade through the chest of a girl younger than her, blood spewing over her pert breasts.

Driving the first blade up into his eye, the second into the back of his neck where the armour didn’t cover, the man went down screaming in agony. The response was immediate. The guards cut their way through to her, blood covered everything and everyone as they came at her. The blade in her right hand launched into the throat of the closest as she turned and pulled the guard’s short sword out of the young whore. With a jerk it came free and the blood dribbled down the steel as she held it upright before her.

Blocking the first blade with the sword, it was heavier than she was used to; she drove the hairpin into his hand and kicked him away screaming. Madeline blocked another and another before they had her surrounded. This was it. The remaining hairpin flew from her hand and took one man in the shoulder, as the rest of them closed in, driving their blades into her perfectly toned body. Madeline tried desperately to drive her short sword into one man’s chest but her strength failed and could only manage to drop the point and spear him through the thigh. Blood gurgled from her lips as she collapsed.

The surviving harem girls stood huddled in the corner of the room. They looked at the knight-general, pleaded with him, but he simply shook his head and signalled for the guards to finish them. The soldiers moved in with caution, slowly closed the gap, and brought their blades to bear.

The apartment was silent in the early hours of the morning. Even after all he had done there was not a murmur of alarm. The moonlight filtered into the darkened corridors as Thom made his way silently through the shadows. He made his way to the master bedroom around the corner from the children’s to find it empty and signs that only one body had been sleeping in the bed.

The possibility that one had been on top of the other flickered through his mind, but was easily dismissed as other telltale signs were missing. The blankets and sheets were too orderly, neatly pushed to one side as the occupant climbed out.

Leaving the bedroom, he systematically searched every other room on the top floor, only to find disappointment. The rooms were empty, even the study which he thought might occupy the Prince in these late hours. The large desk that sat in the middle of the room was awash with moonlight streaming in from the large bay windows behind it. Glancing over the papers on the desk, there was nothing of note that he could use and send back to the Empire.