"What is going on?" Lara Raith asked. It was in the dead of night and she kept her voice low, lest anyone else than those intended hear her.
There'd been a light conversation going on, but it ceased when a young man without any care for discretion called, in a thick working class British accent:
"Oi, you fat fucks. Shuddup. The boss is here."
"Thank you, James," Lara said dryly, adjusting the communication's device in her ear as she peered out into the darkness. "Anything new on the target?"
A third person spoke, this one female. Her English was stilted and touched with a heavy polish accent. "He is still here, making deal. When done, he run boat I think."
Lara nodded, mostly to herself.
"Thank you, Maria. Stand by at your positions. We'll play patient hunters for a while longer."
And so they did, for five minutes, until:
"Kurwa! He ran. I think to boat."
Lara peered out to the streets, left in shadows under feeble streetlights and an overcast sky. About fifty yards ahead, at the mouth of the alley leading the harbor, she spotted the target, running towards the little pier the boats were tied to.
He was close to six and a half feet tall and built broadly, but moved with surprising speed and grace despite his bulk. Behind him, Lara saw figures darting from one patch of shadow to another, closing the distance.
Lara waited patiently for her moment to come. It only took a few more seconds. Half-way out on the pier, maybe fifteen yards away from where Lara stood, the target turned to look over his shoulders and froze at the sight of the ambush about to close in on him from behind.
Lara vaulted over the side of the boat the moment he looked around, landed on silent feet on the sturdy wood, and surged forward.
The target was much faster than he looked. His sword cleared its sheath in a single smooth movement that carried it towards Lara's throat. She parried the blow, but it carried enough momentum to force her to step backwards or be overpowered.
There was a whooshing sound and her target stumbled, as if struck at his right shoulder from behind. Lara pressed her advantage, ducked under a desperate horizontal slash at her head, and spilled his guts out on the ground.
Lara had to give it to him. He was one tough son of a bitch. Mortally wounded he may be, but that didn't stop him from trying his sword on her again. The injury had slowed him down, though, and Lara caught his sword-arm by the wrist even as one of her companions caught up and, without hesitating an instant, shoved a slender blade through the dying man's throat.
Lara shoved the man off her and hauled him into the dark waters. He'd be found eventually, but a minute was sometimes enough to accomplish a lot.
"Well done," she said, looking at the group of people gathering before her. There were fifteen of them, all in all, of varying ages and nationalities, but united in the same war, with the same enemy. They were still one man short, though.
"Shadow weaver. Are you out there?" Lara asked into her headset.
"As per usual," answered a reedy voice in an upper class British accent. "I'm in the clocktower and- Oh bugger."
"What?"
"We've got incoming. Forty, no, fifty of them. Two minutes out, heading straight at us."
"Empty Night," Lara swore and set off towards the city lights. "Get down here, Shadow. We're running."
There was a crash of breaking glass from ahead and a figured landed in the street in a crouch, then rose.
"Which direction are they coming from?" Lara called as she and the rest of the group closed in on him.
"Downtown. North!"
South was out of the question, seeing as it meant going for a swim. The boat wasn't big enough to carry them all.
"West!" Lara commanded. "We're heading to the bridge."
"Maria, Shadow – Rearguard. Buy us time. James. Scout ahead and make sure the road is clear."
There was a moment of hesitation, the kind of moment that got people killed.
"Go!" Lara called sharply, bringing everyone out of their stupor. Her little group was good at what they did, but they were also inexperienced in the field of actual combat.
They headed west along the coast-line. It meant an increased risk of getting cut off, but it was also the direct route to where they were headed.
"They appear to be catching up with us," Shadow weaver informed them breezily a few minutes of running later. "Maria, if you'd be kind enough to cover me for a moment, I'll hold them off."
"Not yet," Lara told him. "They'll flank you and kill you. Set it up at the gate."
They kept on running through the dark narrow cobblestone alleys until they approached a large medieval stone gate. It was surrounded on both sides by walls and had, presumably, once been equipped with a drawbridge. There was only a cobblestone path leading out of the city there now, but it was as good a place as they would get to cut the enemy off and gain the lead they'd need.
Lara turned and looked over the shoulder. Their pursuers were closing in, and quickly at that. The dozen or so of her troops who weren't working on the warding spell stood a little way off, shifting nervously in place.
On the other side of the translucent barrier, the enemy was closing in. Soon they'd be in range to fire weapons or spells.
"Done," Maria declared ten seconds later and there was no need for Lara to tell anyone this time around. They ran for it.
There was about two hundred feet of open space between the city and the woods, mostly the stumps of cleared trees and the occasional stubborn bush. Ahead, the trees loomed over them like the wall of a great fortress.
Lara supposed that the analogy wasn't entirely out of place. It was treacherous terrain to cross in a hurry. You could either take the direct path through the thick brush and risk getting lost. Or you could follow the paths, which weren't always as direct, and left you exposed to the possibility of ambushs.
The forest wasn't unfamiliar ground to any of them, but Lara preferred not taking risks when other options existed. Ten minutes of running later, they were less than a kilometer away from their destination… And that was when the situation changed.
There was a flicker of movement in the periphery of Lara's vision and she ducked on pure instinct. The blast of power missed her, but got close enough to singe some of her hair away, and bored a hole the size of a football in a tree behind her.
"It's Demisoz!" James called. He fired an arrow off into the darkness, but there wasn't any sound of an impact.
"Keep going!" Lara commanded. "Shadow, Maria, to the flanks."
Another blast of magic lit up the woods in a flash of red, which turned into a shower of indigo sparks when it met a magic shield.
Lara, meanwhile, was focused on her target's movement. She could only barely hear it over the shouts and the clash of magic. He was moving quickly and steadily, more so than anyone should be able to at night in the woods.
She kept track of his speed, his direction and flung a dagger at where she gauged he'd be. There was a scream of pain from the darkness and the spellfire ceased.
She'd hit something, but there wasn't enough time to finish the job. Lara could see lights behind them, torches and lit magical crystal. They were close, less than a hundred meters away.
At a place that looked like nothing but more jungle to the casual observer, she jumped. The brush covered the hole in the ground and she dropped through it, landing in a small cavern fifteen feet below.
Once upon the time, some manner of carnivorous creatures had lived in these caves and expanded them. The skillfully hidden holes were traps, which they'd used to feed off unwary travelers. There were still remnants of the sharp bamboo sticks they'd put up as barricades to trap unwary travelers.
Four small tunnels veered off in separate directions and Lara quickly headed north, to the tunnel leading deeper into the earth. Shadow weaver and Maria put up a last barrier at the mouth of the tunnel and it had only snapped into existence when the first of their pursuers dropped down the hole.
"To the bridge of Kazad Dum!" James hollered as they kept on running. A few seconds after the titters died down, the tunnel opened up. Ahead of them, a yawning abyss waited. The only way across the hundred feet of empty air, unless you knew how to fly, was a narrow but sturdy wooden bridge.
Once you got to the other side, you were able to circle around to both sides and put anybody attempting to brave the bridge in crossfire.
Lara was the last one across and placed herself at the mouth of the bridge, sword drawn and ready, while a few of the group went to the flanks.
For a while, the only sound to be heard was heavy breathing and the rapid thumps of heartbeats.
Then a voice echoed across the chasm, scornful and arrogant.
"Pussies!"
"Come over here and say that," James called back at them.
"What is your favourite color?" Lara shouted, unable to help herself.
More laughter echoed through the caverns.
"Miss Raith?" Lara flinched at the sound of a young woman's voice, the war suddenly forgotten as she almost fell out of her chair in startled surprise.
"A moment, Justine," she said quickly, then looked back at her computer screen and sighed.
She held down the control button of her keyboard and spoke into the headset.
"Duty calls, people. We'll make our way out of here later somehow. Give me a message if something's up or if the idiots try to breach. James, you're in charge."
And with that, she logged off and left the cavern… To return to the real world. She left the chat program on, but muted the sound and shut down the screen, then turned to the door.
"Come on in, Justine."
Her secretary did so, carrying a stack of files under one arm and a tray with a cup of coffee and three chocolate biscuits. She handed the coffee and cookies to Lara, who gratefully accepted them, and added the files to the already large stack at the side of her desk.
Lara cast a nervous glance at her computer again, making sure the sound was off. She'd had an incident before where she'd forgotten, but had been able to pass it off as a discussion with a business associate.
"Would there be anything else, miss Raith?"
Oh, there was plenty of other things sweet little Justine could've done for her, but Raith's did not poach, no matter how delicious the doe.
"No. Thank you, Justine."
The blonde left the room and Lara look forlornly at the stack of work that had accumulated already. It was probably time to get back to work. For at least another hour. Maybe forty-five minutes. If she really hurried, she might be back in time to pick off a straggler.