Crownless Tyrant

They came at night.

Alistair was alone at the base. Due had gone to the nearest settlement to manage obligations that had been piling up since the anchor’s removal, and his Characteristic demanded he be present for the unraveling.

Elara and Silas were at Frument’s position, coordinating supply routes with Sera and Tavin.

The Equalizer’s scan caught the first signature at forty meters, then a second, and then four more, arriving from different angles at a pace that suggested they had timed their approach to converge at the same moment.

Alistair stood from the table where he had been reading settlement reports, and he summoned his Rune Sword.

’Six. Coming from six directions. Soldiers don’t do that, so these are professionals.’

He moved to the center of the room and waited.

The first one came through the eastern window.

Glass shattered inward as a figure in dark cloth rolled across the floor and came up with a short blade already swinging toward Alistair’s neck.

The Equalizer matched the attacker’s capability instantly.

Alistair stepped left and drove his sword across the man’s ribs before his feet were fully under him.

The man dropped without a sound, the kind of silence that came from training and not surprise.

The second came through the door a half-second later, a woman, taller, moving low with a curved blade aimed at Alistair’s legs.

He was already turning. However, the miscalibrated Equalizer’s delay on right-side reads cost him a fraction, and her blade nicked his left forearm as he brought his sword down.

But the Rune Sword connected with her shoulder, deep enough, and she fell sideways into the broken table with a loud thud.

Fortunately, there was a gap before the next two arrived.

Alistair repositioned, putting his back to the stone wall and the broken window to his right.

Blood was already running down his left arm, though the cut was shallow.

He could feel his heart hammering. It wasn’t fear, but the alertness of someone whose body understood the threat before his mind had finished counting.

The third and fourth came together from the western wall.

They hit the shutters at the same moment and entered in formation, one high and one low, both accounting for the other’s position like people who had practiced this exact sequence hundreds of times.

Alistair blocked the high strike. The impact traveled through his arm and into the wall behind him.

Following that, he stepped into the low attacker rather than away, closing the distance before the blade could reach full extension, and drove his knee into the man’s chest.

The man staggered, and Alistair’s Rune Sword quickly found his side.

The third attacker adjusted instantly, pressing hard, refusing to give Alistair time to breathe.

Two quick strikes, left and right, that forced Alistair to give ground across the wrecked interior of the base.

He caught the second strike on his blade, locked it, and twisted.

The attacker’s wrist gave before the blade did, and Alistair finished it with a thrust that ended the exchange.

He stood in the center of the room, breathing hard.

Four down. His left arm was bleeding, and his shoulder ached from the impact of the third attacker’s initial strike.

Furniture was destroyed, glass covered the floor, and one wall was partially cracked.

The fifth stepped through the doorway.

This one was different. Lighter build, quieter movement, with the economy of someone who had been watching the previous four die and had already adjusted everything about their approach.

He looked at Alistair, and, at the same moment, he said a name.

Not Caldren’s name, but an older name. Something connected to a time before the Black Mountains, before Alistair had left the Upholders of Law and Justice, before any of this. A name that belonged to someone who should still be here and wasn’t.

Alistair went still, his eyes widened, and full of emotion that he could not hide anymore.

One second. His grip on the Rune Sword loosened by a fraction, his breathing changed, and his eyes lost the focus they had held through four consecutive kills.

One second was too long for Equalizer.

The fifth and sixth hit him at the same moment.

The sixth came from above, dropping through a section of roof that should have been solid.

Her blade caught his shoulder and drove him down to one knee, and the impact sent a shock of pain through his entire right side.

The fifth pressed forward instantly.

Fast, precise, using the name like a blade. His short sword came in low and caught Alistair across the ribs.

Alistair felt the cut open, groaning.

Blood came out, seeing that it was deep. The kind of wound that made breathing immediately harder.

’No! Straighten up. Not over a name.’

He surged upward.

The Equalizer pushed against both threats at once, matching their combined capability with a raw force that came from somewhere underneath the pain.

He caught the sixth across the leg with a sweeping strike that dropped her, and she hit the ground hard.

The fifth came again. Two more strikes, each one aimed to finish.

Alistair blocked the first poorly as his shoulder screamed, and the second cut the edge of his jaw before he could pull back.

He let the pain happen. He let it be present and visible and real, and then he drove forward through it, closing the distance on the fifth attacker faster than the man expected from someone bleeding from three wounds.

His Rune Sword went through the man’s guard and into his chest, and he twisted his blade.

The fifth fell.

Alistair turned to find the sixth, yet the floor where she had fallen was empty. The window was open, and the night outside held nothing.

She was gone. Clean exit, no trace, no blood trail, the kind of disappearance that belonged to someone who had been ready to run before she ever arrived.

Alistair stumbled into the wall. His back hit the stone, and he slid down until he was sitting on the floor.

His breathing was ragged. Blood was pooling beneath him from the rib wound, warm at first and then cold quickly.

Five bodies in the wreckage and one missing.

He sat there while the base settled around him.

The night sounds came back slowly, wind and insects and the faint movement of settlement life continuing outside as if nothing had happened.

Alistair was very unsettled. Not by the fight, and not by the wounds, which were serious enough that he needed to deal with them soon. Not even by the strength of these people.

It was the name.

’That dirty rat, Caldren, found it. He dug through whatever was left of my time with the Upholders and found the one name that could make me hesitate.’

He pressed his hand against the rib wound. The bleeding had slowed, though it had not stopped.

’And he used it as a weapon. He sent five people to die so that one person could say a word and watch me react to it.’

Alistair furrowed his brows, his grip growing stronger.

His Rune Sword vanished. His hands were shaking, and he let them shake.

Outside, somewhere in the dark, the sixth assassin was moving through the Oasis of Grain with information about exactly how close she had come to finishing what the others started.

Whatever Caldren did next, it was going to be worse.