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    Stalking the Shadows
    Stalking the Shadows
    Stalking the Shadows
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Stalking the Shadows

    By Stephen Brown

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    About this ebook

    Karl Kreigel is Vice-mayor of Werpenstad, an important trading town in Bergen, the westernmost Province of the Empire. When an assassination attempt is made against the Burghermeister, it is up to him to lead the investigation and take control of the town.
    With the killer still at large and rumours flying around about man-sized rats stalking the sewers, Karl knows that whoever - or whatever - he is, it is only a matter of time before the assassin returns to strike again...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStephen Brown
    Release dateJul 14, 2015
    ISBN9781310148781
    Stalking the Shadows
    Author

    Stephen Brown

    Author, artist, Reiki healer and horse trainer, Stephen Brown is a lover of Creativity in all its guises. His writing is varied, from fantasy, sci-fi and other novels, to poetry and haiku. He likes to be both deep and thought-provoking as well as humorous and nonsensical at the same time - in no way does he see the two things as contradictory. He writes for the sheer pleasure of it, but admits that if he can make a buck or two... well, that's fine too!

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      Book preview

      Stalking the Shadows - Stephen Brown

      STALKING THE SHADOWS

      By Stephen Brown

      Copyright 2015 Stephen Brown

      Smashwords Edition

      Coming soon in Paperback. See author website for details

      http://www.thestephenbrown.co.uk

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from Smashwords.com where they can discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

      For

      Moochie & Pepper

      Thanks to all the usual suspects

      For keeping faith

      And to particularly to Moz

      For your help I’ve made you the 2nd Emperor,

      in this world at least!

      xx

      Table of Contents

      Title

      Dedication and Thanks

      Contents

      Map – Kingdoms and Empire

      Map – Bergen

      Map - Werpenstad

      The beginning

      About the Author

      Other Titles

      Chosen Charity

      Kingdoms and Empire

      Bergen

      Werpenstad

      STALKING THE SHADOWS

      The foetid moisture clogged in his lungs with each new breath. The air was thick and stinking, and though he could not see far in the malingering fog, Joshua Puss knew that the marshes of the Borgersveldt spread out before him for miles and miles and miles.

      Squinting his eyes, he peered through the mists; visibility was down to about four yards. He grimaced; this was not going to be easy. Still, he had tracked his quarry this far and was not about to stop now. Taking note of what few landmarks were around, he heaved his pack from off his back and set to work making markers. Speed was important, true, but it would count for nothing if he just blundered off into the fog and got himself lost.

      With well-practiced skill it took him only a few minutes to tear off a number of ragged strips of cloth and attach them to the stakes and metal pegs which he carried in carefully tied and rolled up bundles. Fixing these five dozen markers onto a series of bandoliers, he shrugged them across his shoulders and made a final check: his sword was loose in its scabbard and he had a bolt loaded in his crossbow, the string nice and tight, but with a safety block holding the trigger back until he sprung it. One more look at his surroundings and then he set off into the swamps, his expert eyes picking up the spore he had been following for the best part of a day now.

      Progress was slow but sure - Joshua lifted himself into the concentrated mind-set that had become second nature to him after eight years working as a tracker. Constantly checking all around to familiarise himself with any new landmarks showing through the gloom, he would push a flagged stake into the spongy ground whenever the last one was at the boundaries of his vision. In the absence of any wind the cloth strips hung limp against the pegs, and he made sure to place each marker so that the knot of the rags lay in the direction he had just come. That way, if the visibility cut even further, he would still be able to retrace his steps back out of the treacherous marsh.

      Puss would have been unhappy to be labelled bounty hunter, but it was true enough that he had long since turned his hunting skills away from catching the game surrounding the Stad to the pursuit of human quarry. Only through official channels mind you - they were all legitimate marks. He had a full time contract with the Council and never did any private work. Nor would he ever, he had vowed when he had begun. If it ever came down to that he would go back to hunting meat for the butchers’ blocks, or the never ending supply of caravans that plied up and down the Imperial Highway or the numerous other roads in the area. Better that than to accept questionable coin from dubious patrons in all those no-questions-asked arrangements that he knew went on. No, he would never do that. Joshua Puss had decided that from day one.

      An hour of careful progress into the Borgersveldt and the air was heavier than he would have thought possible. The fogs had closed in around him so thick that Puss felt he could almost slash through them with his knife. His lip curled ironically at the thought. If only I could! The saturated mists had cut visibility down to almost nothing.

      The wispy white tendrils clung to him now like a spectral horde of beggars, and he found himself waving an arm in front of his face at times in a frustrated effort to clear their grasping hands away. Feeling for another flag, he realised he was down to his last bandolier - his final twelve markers - having been forced to cut the distance between them as he progressed further and further into the fickle swamp.

      He was still able to follow the spore - just. Squatting down every few steps he expertly sighted a bent reed here, a flattened clump of tussock grass there and, rarely, the occasional partial print in the mud on one of the raised patches of ground. These prints had become the cause of some anxiety for Joshua as, in places at least, they seemed to bear alarming similarities to... well, to animal tracks, but he knew that was just his imagination playing with him.

      The spongy terrain distorted everything, he knew, and in these mists, with all the stories everyone had heard about the Borgersveldt and the creatures that lived there... He had pushed all those childhood stories out of his mind and focussed as he pressed on, but when he reached the next patch of raised mud and crouched down to inspect it the stories came screaming back with a vengeance, filling him instantly with an earth-shattering terror.

      There, pressed into the sodden turf on a mound rising some two feet above the water, Joshua Puss found himself staring down on a complete footprint.

      It was not entirely intact, but as whole as you would ever hope to find in a pursuit such as this; the only thing was, having found it, Joshua almost wished he hadn’t.

      There was none of the usual elation at finding such a solid trace, none of the anticipation it should have brought. Instead, it filled Puss with dread, pure and simple. His heart sunk and shrunk away, seeking solace in the very depths of his soul, and he suddenly become aware of the icy chill that hung around him in the fog. Gaping down disbelievingly at the print, a murmured prayer rose unbidden to his lips, a prayer from his childhood, dredged up from his deepest memories to every God he knew.

      Puurs protect me, Talal spare me, Griet give me grace, and Sweet Sulaika show me your face, to guide me on, to guide me on, by the Pearl, by the Egg, by the Eye and the Sun, hear the plea in my heart and the words on my tongue, don’t come for me Miu, my time isn’t done.

      Faced with that print, Joshua’s whole world came crashing down and he became in an instant very, very scared. All that he had ever known as good, solid truth, all the certainties that had propped up his world and made it safe had been knocked out from under him, all his comfort zones dissipated into the now quite terrifying mist.

      Joshua suddenly became aware that he was alone, isolated and very small.

      *

      The temple town of Werpenstad was a modest, but important one, lying as it did on the Great West Road, the paved Imperial Highway running the length of the western border of the Empire, linking Cipriana and the Partition Lands in the south with Delta and the coast in the north. It was walled and gated, with a standing militia force of some five hundred regular troops plus officers. This, coupled with the occasional sorties made by the patrolling regiments of the Imperial Army from Spastad, meant that the citizens of Werpenstad had always felt safe. Always, that is, until last night with the rising of the Eye, the sinister and ill-omened third Moon whose blood red gleam was as fickle and evil as a predatory cat.

      Rumours had already flooded through the Stad like a plague of rats. Although none of the normal burghers had been directly affected, this was the biggest story to erupt in Werpenstad since... well, it was just the biggest, simple as that.

      Somebody had tried to assassinate the Burghermeister, in his own home!

      The attempt had failed, more through outrageous good fortune than anything else: a bucket of soiled water thrown from an upstairs window by his teenage daughter had distracted the would-be assassin

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