A Thief's Shadow

Death to the Pawns

Cal spotted a narrow path emerging from the darkness. The snow was clear of footprints, but he knew the difference between a goat path and a human one. This was far too wide to be a goat path. He glanced at the man bound to him by metal and pointed at the path.

"Is that it?" The prisoner nodded. He hadn't been as exhausted as Cal would have expected from someone who had been up for over twenty-four hours. Perhaps his odd ability to walk without forming prints in the snow was connected to his endless supply of stamina. Cal quickly reprimanded himself for assuming everything the tall man did was connected to magic.

At this point, Cal and the prisoner quit leading. They stepped aside, allowing the front men of the army to pick their way up the pathway, followed by the knights, the elite knights, and at last the General. The crackle of a wooden door shattering echoed down the mountainside, and the army began to rush into the tunnels. Just as Cal was about to follow the last of the elite knights, the General blocked his pathway. "Stay with the prisoner. Make sure he does not escape again, and do not allow him to speak to any of his thieving friends." Cal nodded, unable to disguise his disappointment.

Once the General had disappeared around the corner, he turned to Smiley. "We both know you can't talk to anyone, so just stick by my side." The General had not specifically told them to stay away from the battle.

They picked their way up the slippery path until Cal spotted the opening where a door had once stood. It now lay in frozen, crumbled pieces; one of the bulky front men had put a bit too much force into shoving it open. Cal cautiously stepped over the pieces and peered into the shadows of the thieves' den. If there had been any thieves in the entryway before, there weren't anymore. He began to tiptoe through the darkness, his shackled companion following close behind.

The tunnels twisted and turned, the torches set in the walls creating more shadows than they killed. Each pathway was cut in the same, ribbed fashion, giving Cal the uncomfortable feeling that he was walking down the throat of a giant creature. It didn't help that each pathway had a downward tilt, allowing gravity to tug them downwards towards the stomach of the beast. As they descended, the growl of the creature's stomach grew louder, until Cal could distinguish the individual screams of the other inhabitants of the digestive tract as the king's men put them out of their misery. The shadow-casting torches at last began to illuminate the scenes within the tunnels, but they were not scenes that Cal wanted to see. Men, along with a few women, lay splayed in unnatural positions along the path, their faces frozen in terror, and their wrists decorated by black stars. Not one of the initial victims had had the time to draw a weapon. Cal was fine with blood, and he was accustomed to killing, but such an unfair massacre tore apart the moral reasoning within his soul.

The prisoner was unaffected. They glanced down at each victim, as if searching for something, only to move on to the next without a care once they had found what they were looking for. Cal would not have found his removed nature odd, for he knew many men in the king's army without a moral compass, if he didn't know that the prisoner supposedly knew these people. Perhaps thieves did not form close bonds within their guilds. Thief guilds must not be synonymous with the trade guilds that Cal was accustomed to.

Cal kept his pace at a crawl as he stepped through the passageways. The General had commanded him to prevent Smiley from speaking to any of his former companions, and he did not hope to find out too late that his silent friend was actually capable of using the art of spoken words. As much as Cal despised the General, he did not wish to intentionally provoke the giant man's wrath, and so their feet moved slowly. They passed countless corpses, far too many with eyes wide open, until the sound of voices reached Cal's ears. This time, it was the welcoming sound of conversation grumbling far within the beast's stomach, rather than merciless screaming. The battle was over.

"It's so shiny..."

"Spectacular..."

"If I'd known all this was up here I would have..."

They had found the beast's stomach; it was a marvelous cavern, at least ten men high and twenty or more long. The size of the cavern was not its defining feature, however; the entire room was filled with treasure. Golden coins littered the floor, though silver coins dominated the scene, and separated into piles were diamonds and jewels, fur and silk clothing, gold and silver silverware, and much more beyond these initial piles. Immediately, all of Cal's memories of the deceased thieves slipped to the back of his mind. There was enough gold here to pay for an extravagant wedding for Tyja, hundreds of carving tools better than the ones she already had, and even enough to pay for both their home and meals for the rest of their lives. Of course, none of the soldiers would be able to keep that much of it if the King had any say in the matter.

"Nikolai! Nikolas! Return to the horses and gather all of the bags. Bring several soldiers with you. There will be a lot to carry." The General stared at the mountains of treasure with the same lust that Cal imagined lit his own eyes. The two Nicks backed out of the cavern until they at last turned their own gazes from the wonders of the cavern to head past Cal up the main tunnel.

"This will do well as funding for a larger military force and a larger prison. We cannot afford to let such a large criminal population build up again. Our kingdom shall be the strongest in the world, and it will be completely crime free." The King spoke with great force, drawing in his audience with his use of "we" and "our", but his eyes never left the piles of gold. He did not care about the well-being of the kingdom, or even the reputation of the kingdom as crimeless. He was going to take all of the gold for the treasury, and use it for his own means. Some of it would go towards prisons and the military since the King truly resented the criminal population, but he was a greedy man. Cal was not surprised by the King's declaration, but he felt the weight of disappointment nevertheless.

The glorious mountains took no more than an hour to remove from the beast's gut. The riches no longer appeared so vast when they were contained in simple cloth bags, though almost every soldier had to carry two of the bags. One of Cal's bags held only clothing, but the other was stuffed to the brim with coins. He debated having the prisoner carry the heavier bag. Unfortunately, his conscience overtook his selfish side, and he ended up filling half of the other bag with coins in order make each an equal weight. He was already lucky that he had someone to carry one of his bags.

As the much wealthier King and his General began to lead the soldiers back down the mountain, Cal knew something was wrong. Something was not connecting. Something about the battle, the treasure, or some part of their strange battle didn't make sense. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he knew his silent companion had something to do with it, whatever it was.

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