Wild Card (working title, subject to change)

It was well after midnight, and a dense gray fog had crept in off the Cimmura river to mingle with the pervading woodsmoke from a thousand chimneys to blur the nearly deserted streets of the city. The Pandion Knight, Sir Sparhawk, nonetheless moved cautiously, keeping to the shadows whenever possible. The streets glistened with moisture, and pale, rainbow-colored hues surrounded the torches vainly attempting with their feeble light to illuminate streets into which no sane man ventured in these dark, early hours. The houses lining the street were little more than vague, looming shapes of shadow shrouded in the murk, and Sparhawk relied more on his ears than eyes to keep wary of any approaching dangers.

This was a poor time to be out. By day, Cimmura was no more dangerous than any other city. By night, it was a jungle where the strong preyed upon the weak and the unwary. Sparhawk was, however, neither of these. Beneath his nondescript cloak, he wore mail, and a heavy sword hung at his side. In addition, he carried a short-hafted, broad bladed battle spear loosely held in his left hand. He was trained, moreover, in levels of violence no common footpad or cutpurse could match. His current mood was well suited to violence; bleakly, he hoped some fool might see him and attempt to attack. When provoked, Sparhawk was less than the most reasonable of men, and he had been of late severely and repeatedly provoked.

These urges were kept in check, albeit tenuously, by the urgency of his business. Much as he might have taken satisfaction in the rush and cut and slash of a meeting with unknown and unimportant assailants, he had responsibilities. His young queen hovered near death, and his duty demanded absolute fidelity from her champion. He would not betray her, and to die in some muddy gutter as a result of a meaningless encounter would ill serve the queen he was oath-bound to protect. And, so it was that he moved cautiously, his soft-booted feet as silent as those of any paid assassin.

Somewhere ahead, he saw the bobbing of hazy-looking torches and heard the measured tread of several men marching in unison. He muttered a curse and slipped sideways into the nearby, stinking alley, eyes half closed and ears perked to catch any further sounds.

A half-dozen men marched by, their red tunics bedewed by the smoky fog. Long pikes leaned slantwise over their shoulders, bobbing in nigh unison as the men tromped blithely by. "It's that place on Rose Street," their officer was saying arrogantly, "where the Pandions try to hide their ungodly subterfuge. They know we're watching, of course, but our presence restricts their movements and leaves his Grace, the Primate, free from their interference."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but we know the reasons, Lieutenant," a bored-sounding corporal said in reply. "We've been doing this for over a year now."

"... Oh." The self-important, young lieutenant sounded a bit crestfallen - and inexperienced, to Sparhawk's ear. "I just wanted to be sure that we all understood, is all."

"Yes, sir," the corporal said tonelessly.

"Wait here, men," the lieutenant said, trying to make his boyish voice sound gruff. "I'll look on ahead." He marched on up the street, his heels smashing noisily on the fog-wet cobblestones.

"What a jackass," the corporal muttered to his companions.

"Grow up, Corporal," an old, gray-haired veteran said in an equally quiet tone. "We take the pay, so we obey their orders and keep our opinions to ourselves. Just do your job and leave opinions to the officers."

The Corporal grunted sourly. "Easy for you to say. I was at court yesterday. Primate Annias had summoned that ridiculous whelp up there, and the fool absolutely [i]had[/i] to have an escort. Would you believe the lieutenant was actually fawning over The Bastard?" His hushed tones managed to convey the capitalization of the title despite the lowered volume of his words.

"That's the nature of a lieutenant, Corporal. Born boot-lickers- and the 'bastard' IS Lycheas the Prince Regent, so mind your tongue even if it isn't alongside that of the lieutenant, lest you want it cut from your mouth. Lycheas isn't known for his sense of humor nor his merciful nature." The veteran paused, before mirthfully adding, "I imagine none of that makes his boots taste any better, though."

The corporal snickered softly. "That's God's truth. Wouldn't the liuetenant be surprised, though, if the Queen recovered and he'd eaten all that boot polish for nothing?"

"Best hope she doesn't, Corporal," one of the other men said. "If she wakes up and takes back control of the royal treasury, Annias won't have the coin to pay us next month."

"He can always dip into the church coffers, can't he?"

"Not without an accounting, he can't. The Heierocracy in Chyrellos squeezes every penny of Church money til it squeaks."

"Alright, you men," the young officer called out of the fog. "The Pandion inn is just up ahead. I've relieved the soldiers who were on watch, so we'd better-"

Whatever might have been better was cut off as a great, flaring light shone out from the sky, casting sharp shadows even through the hazy murk of the night, and Sparhawk instinctively shrank into the darkest shade he could to remain hidden. The light rapidly drew closer, accompanied by an escalating roar of wind and flame, to end in a concussive crash like a collapsing hillside further up the street. The gaggle of soldiers were frozen in place, staring dumbstruck with mouths agape, as growing flames down the street cast the normally shadowy streets in flickering, brightening light. That light illuminated the prone body of the hapless lieutenant, a bloodied chunk of building masonry in a spreading pool of gore where his head should have been. One leg shuddered erratically and a single, mangled hand groped weakly at empty air before a callous burst of wet flatulence accompanied the arm's collapse to the cobbles.

One of the younger soldiers of the group collapsed to his knees, noisily hurling the remnants of his last meal onto the street, while the veteran of the group snarled out, "Fire," before shouting louder at the top of his, lungs, "Alarum! Wake, wake! FIRE!"

Sparawk considered briefly the idea of slipping away - but if his guess was correct, the fire was probably coming from the vicinity of the aforementioned Pandion safehouse. A slight peek around the corner confirmed his suspicions - along with the sight in the glaring light of a figure unsteadily standing up from the crater in front of the inn. Flames roiled up the stone walls of the structure, and the thatch of it was already beginning to catch fire.

Then, Sparhawk uttered a curse as the figure began waving his hands in a series of gestures. The fog of the night began to lift, coalescing into a heavy, opaque mass of what, in the flickering light of the fire, seemed to be a stormcloud hovering over the inn. WIthin seconds, a dense, pounding rain fell from the sudden cloud to douse the inn and the street in a brief but torrential downpour. The glaring light was cut off like a torch thrown in a rainbarrel, steam rising like fog from the doused embers and cobbles.

The sudden loss of light left Sparhawk blinking furiously, trying to readjust to the darkness, and by the time he could see again, the soldiers too had recovered. The veteran of the group dislodged one of the street torches from its sconce and grabbed it up, examining the body of the unlucky lieutenant for a brief second, then gestured in the direction of the inn, explosion, and the mysterious figure. "Come on, lads! After him, before the Pandion bastard gets away!"

Sparhawk frowned. Whoever that man had been, he was no Pandion, Sparhawk would have bet his second best sword on it. No Pandion could call up a conflagration like that, nor quench it so suddenly and dramatically, and he'd have laid even odds that Sephrenia herself, the Styric mystic who instructed their order since time immemorial, would be hard pressed to match the feat.

On the one hand, their pursuit would make his life easier, distracting onlookers so that he could make his way out of the city. On the other... he wanted to get a look at this magic user himself, preferably before the man was full of spear and sword holes. Men were harder to question when they were dead, Aldreas' ghost notwithstanding, and Sparhawk preferred a good, fresh, and- at least initially- healthy prisoner when he needed to ask hard questions. Which itself would mean either catching the man first, or somehow liberating him from the custody of the soldiers and hoping they left the man intact enough for Sparhawk to question.

Neither was a prospect that Sparhawk gave much credibility to their likelihood. Still, needs must. The sudden appearance of another magic user, after the number of whom which had dogged his heels all across the continent in his quest to diagnose the poisoning of his Queen, almost demanded he track this one down and do so with immediacy. For all he knew, the blast at the Inn had been targeting Sparhawk - and he'd only been lucky that the magic user hadn't known Sparhawk wasn't there.

In the wake of the consternation, now, the streets were rapidly filling with onlookers, some of whom were carrying their own torches and milling about, trying to discern between them what the noise and light had been, where they had gone, and who was to blame for it between ghosts, witches, or acts of God. In the tumult, Sparhawk set off in pursuit of the running soldiers and their quarry, sticking to shadows and back alleys. These latter were utterly abandoned now; the usual denizens of the shadows and gutters having sought refuge in their hidey holes because of all the furor. It wasn't much of a blessing, but Sparhawk would take what he could get; anything would help at this point.

Sparhawk found himself shadowing more soldiers, who, on seeing their comrades run somewhere in a hurry in the wake of the disruption, assumed that they knew what was going on and where they all needed to be. He didn't much welcome this company but he had little enough time or ability to do anything about it now; he'd keep hidden and deal with that lot when he came to it.

The shouts of the soldiers up ahead told the tale that the soldiers had lost sight of their target and were casting about looking for traces of him. Sparhawk and his impromptu retinue caught up readily. Among the newcomers, an officer stepped forward imperiously, one who seemed more experienced than the green lieutenant that the first group of church soldiers had been mocking behind his back. The officer looked around the cluster of more or less aimless soldiers, before his eyes landed on the corporal. "You! Corporal, report. Where's the witch?" Sparhawk winced internally as the officer uttered the Elenic slur for Styric magic users, and made a mental note to do something unpleasant to the man if given the opportunity.

"We lost sight of him, Captain," the Corporal answered unhelpfully.

"What did he look like?" the captain pressed, and Sparhawk listened intently so as to hear the conversation as clearly as possible.

"A bit shorter than an average man, something of a pot belly, black hair with balding pate and an almost white beard," one of the other soldiers answered. "Strange looking trousers and a fine, colored short tunic of some kind, never seen the likes of it before. His boots were shorter than most, not even covering his ankles, and strange cut and colors for leather, an almost cloud white and stormy gray together. Never seen the likes of it."

Sparhawk scowled as the officer looked about the cluster of soldiers and asked, "All of you get that?"

The soldiers, both the original group and the latecomers, murmured their assent.

"Pair up. Spread out wide, give out an alarum if you catch sight of him. You, you're with me," the Captain added, pointing at the man who'd given the description. "Search every alley. We meet back by the Rose Street inn at fourth bell."

Sparhawk's instincts suddenly screamed at him, and he whirled, Aldreas' spear thrusting out behind himself towards the face of a startled looking, middle aged man- balding, white beard, and odd clothes.