The blade hit plate steel before Darren understood what he'd done. The armor rocked. He grabbed it with his free hand before it could topple, held his breath, and listened. The contact had made a sound — low, but sharp in the silence of the night. He waited a long count. Nothing came. He exhaled through his teeth.
The tower opened into the castle interior through a long corridor of dressed stone. Two armored suits stood sentinel on either side of the door, like guards who had stopped moving centuries ago and hadn't been told to start again.
Darren kept his outline thin and moved forward.
The corridors inside were a maze — the castle was old, inherited from a prior death mage before it came to Ashton, and it had been built for someone who valued complexity over convenience. Four-sided, with towers at each corner, an open courtyard in the center, and a tangle of passages connecting everything under poor light that didn't improve with the hour. He navigated around gargoyles and ghouls twice — both types simply stood in place, mindless, reacting only to direct contact with their sensing range — and found his way toward what Todd had said was Ashton's practice room. The treasury was nearby.
Two gargoyles blocked the approach. Just outside their range, Darren noticed an unmarked door. The alchemy laboratory, by Todd's description. He was still deciding about it when a door at the far end of the corridor opened.
He moved without thinking, slipping through the laboratory door and pulling it nearly shut — leaving a crack to see through.
Evan came out of his practice room and walked the corridor. He'd finished his exercises and hadn't noticed that the castle had a visitor.
Or hadn't seemed to.
Halfway down the corridor, he stopped. His head turned — not sharply, not a search, just a small shift in attention, his eyes moving naturally over the laboratory door. Then he shook his head, gripped his sword-cane a little tighter, and kept walking.
Darren held completely still. The crack of light from the corridor was all he had. After Evan's footsteps turned toward the bedroom and faded, he pulled the door closed. Total darkness and the sharp mixed smell of chemical compounds he couldn't identify. He pressed his back against the wall and waited.
He waited more than an hour. The corridor stayed quiet. He opened the door, slipped out, and finished his survey of the castle — every room that wasn't blocked by gargoyles or ghouls, he checked. He found the main gate, tested it, and used his knife to cut almost through the bar from the inside, leaving a shell of wood that would hold the weight but not a shoulder.
Before he left, he found a lit section of corridor, took out charcoal and paper, and drew the castle's interior from memory — noting the guard positions, the main approaches, the places he couldn't reach. He folded the paper tight, retrieved the message-bird from inside his coat — a Bright-Eye Bird, a first-tier magical creature kept by scouts and thieves for exactly this purpose — tied the paper to its leg, and took it up to the tower. The gargoyle on the roof opened one eye at the sound of wings, closed it again when it registered a bird, and went back to whatever passed for sleep in a magical construct.
The bird flew. Darren smiled to himself and started looking for somewhere to wait.
He found the servants' quarters and made himself comfortable. The Lich would be occupied with its own concerns. When the attack came that afternoon, he'd come out from behind.
He was working through these plans when he rounded a corner and stopped.
A figure stood in the corridor. Black robes, a hood, the whole form swathed in darkness. A sword-cane in one hand.
Darren's sweat came up all at once. His right hand closed on his knife. "You're the Lich Nicolai Ashton. How did you spot me?"
Evan didn't answer. He'd found Darren not through any spell but through the habit of review — each night, before he stopped moving, he went over everything he'd experienced since the last time he'd lain down. Most nights it was uneventful. Tonight, when he replayed the moment in the corridor when something had seemed slightly wrong, and then cross-referenced it against the gargoyle memories he'd skimmed before bed, the pieces resolved.
He'd also seen the Bright-Eye Bird leave.
So the message was already sent, which meant incoming company. He hadn't cast a Wraith Eye until this morning, but when he did, it found Darren inside thirty seconds.
Now he stood here and looked at this young man — mid-twenties, hair an unremarkable grey-yellow, eyes that hadn't stopped moving since he'd appeared. Evan cleared his throat, about to speak.
Darren didn't wait. The moment Evan's throat moved, he became a blur of motion, his knife swinging for the neck in a single committed arc.
Evan's sword came out.
He hadn't decided to draw it. The motion had been repeated so many tens of thousands of times that the decision-making part had been bypassed entirely. The blade was already in the air. It found Darren's throat before the knife had covered half the distance.
Darren stopped. He looked down at the rapier with an expression of complete disbelief, then up at Evan. The knife was still a foot short of its target. He tried to produce a sound and couldn't.
He went down.
He had not expected to die to a sword. He had certainly not expected to die to a Lich's sword.
Out in the forest, the Bright-Eye Bird flew toward the mercenary camp like an arrow.