Halflord: Thief

Chapter 1

I heard them coming up the stairs. Three of them. Trying to walk softly, hoping I wouldn't notice a group of armed thugs sneaking up on me in the middle of the night. Fortunately, I was already awake and waiting for them. Plenty of other patrons had wandered up and down the rickety wooden stairs of the inn this night, but I knew these three were coming for me because of the slow and careful cadence of their footsteps. The only time people sneak up a stairway is when they're trying to be sneaky. And soft walkers are never up to anything good. But I let them creep towards me, and I waited patiently in my room for them to stumble in, expecting me to be asleep and easy prey. They would be fatally surprised.

I leaned on the window sill of my darkened room at the Cataran Inn, already dressed, my pack lying on the bed, under the covers. I let my hand rest casually on the hilt of my sword, still in its scabbard. Moonlight streaked through the window, providing the only light in the room, but even that was obscured by clouds and by curtains. It would be dark when they came in, almost too dark to see. But that wasn't a problem for me. Having an elven mother meant I had certain advantages over these halfwits. I'd bundled up my pack, my cloak and a pillow under the sheets, to make it look as if I was still sleeping. It would be a silly ruse to most people, especially with any amount of decent light, and time to examine the scene, but my hope was that the men coming for me would have neither.

The creaking stopped, replaced by harsh whispers just outside the door. I eased the sword from my scabbard, making no sound, and held it out in front of me. I admired the moonlight gleaming off the perfectly polished blade and I sighed - quietly - because it would be covered in blood soon. Taking another man's life was a trivial concern for me. I was no murderer, but I would gladly slaughter an army of men if I thought they meant me harm, or if they were even considering it, and I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep about it. So it wasn't killing that troubled me. What did trouble me, was the mess that came afterward.

Cleaning the sword was the easy part. I would wipe all the blood and pieces of flesh from the blade, then polish it until it shined again. Then I'd sharpen it to get rid of all the nicks and scratches accumulated through parrying or clanging the damn thing off armor or shields. The real mess came later, when friends or relatives would come calling. They would want revenge, or money, or justice, or even just a hint that killing the man, or sometimes the woman, meant something to me. But it rarely did. To me, it was a means to an end. Just like tonight would be.

And that's why I sighed. Not for the blood, but for the mess.

The door cracked open, creaking, then stopped as the intruders waited to see if they'd woken me. Upon hearing no sound from inside the room, they probably assumed I was still asleep, and after some more animated whispering, they probably also decided that there was little value in sneaking in if the door was going to creak as loudly as it had. So they worked around that problem by barging into the room and literally leaping onto my bed to hold me down. A commendable plan, if I'd still been in bed.

I lunged forward, my blade slicing into the gut of the third attacker, the last one through the door. He'd hesitated while the first two found avenues to the bed, making him the most likely to see me standing in the darkness. There's a place in body below the ribcage, where if you strike just right, your victim loses the ability to draw a deep breath or to exhale heavily. They can still breathe, but it's shallow. More importantly, though, it's hard for them to scream. My aim was perfect, and I pulled my blade from his torso and kicked him back through the door. His cry was weak, hoarse, but the other two were so busy grappling with the bed that they didn't even bother to look back. A pity for them.

Killing blows would take time. If I lunged into the back of one of these men, the other would have time to turn on me before I wrenched the sword out. So I decided to play it safe and give them an extra few moments of life. Two quick jabs sliced through the back of their sword arms, rendering them useless. They cried out, and turned on me, but neither had the foresight in that pivotal moment to switch their weapons to their good arms. Once they were facing me, two more quick cuts opened their throats. One of them fell onto the bed, silently. The other actually tried to charge at me, flailing with his good arm, trying to grab my neck and squeeze the life out of me. I didn't want his blood on my clothes, though, so I jabbed my sword into his rib cage, and used the blade to keep him just out of arm's reach. It didn't take long for him to bleed out, collapse to the ground and die.