Their entry into Verdejante took place under a fine, icy drizzle that turned the waterfront alleys into a quagmire of mud and dung. While Hector and Orlan remained in the hidden camp, tasked with keeping a tight rein on a hundred mercenaries thirsty for plunder and wine, the main group pushed forward as the tip of the spear. Alistair led the band, accompanied by Lucius, the noble Roderick, the austere Marcus, the Solterran Rian, the gigantic Tito, and the two Cardo brothers, whose shift-eyed glances swept the shadows with the readiness of those who had spent their whole lives on the wrong side of the law.
The mission bringing this motley crew of men-at-arms was not, for now, one of blood and iron, but of pure logistical cunning: to establish a safe haven, an impregnable base in the heart of enemy territory from which the Brigade could spin its webs.
To hide the presence of so many familiar faces and warriors accustomed to carrying the reek of battle, Alistair put Hector's investment from Fontechiara to good use. Using the 'specialised merchandise' and the gold remaining in the pouch, they acquired a dilapidated inn by the outer walls. The building was a skeleton of timber eaten away by saltpetre and mossy stone, but after three days of hard labour – with Tito lifting ash beams as if they were dry twigs and the Cardo brothers reinforcing the door bolts – it was enough to bring life back to the place.
The doors opened under the oldest pretext in the world: a tavern serving cheap ale on the ground floor and an active brothel on the upper floors.
The cover proved perfect. The constant clatter of pewter mugs slamming onto oak tables, the drunken babble of river sailors, and the theatrical moans of the Fontechiara girls masked the creaking floorboards. Amidst the chaos of peat smoke, sweat, and cheap lavender perfume, the spies and informers of Verdejante passed through the back doors without the Viscount's guards casting a second glance at that den of debauchery.
While the farce simmered away downstairs, the actual leadership of the operation settled into the upper rooms, protected by reinforced oak doors. Far from the prying eyes of customers, the quarters were cold and austere, smelling of fresh straw and tallow candles.
Lucius continued to share a room with Alistair, but his role had changed substantially: he was no longer merely the lad who looked after Sarcasm or learned to dodge low blows; he had become Alistair's informal 'secretary' and constant apprentice. With fingers frequently stained with oak gall ink and sheets of parchment paper scattered over the small wooden bench beside the bed, Lucius took down the reports the Brigade members brought in from the streets.
– Patrol movements at the South Gate have doubled since the last moon – Lucius murmured, making a black dot on a sketch map of the city with his goose quill. – And the price of wheat in the citadel has gone up by three copper coins. Lorenzo is hoarding provisions.
The routine of spying on the Viscount's citadel – whose stone towers rose above the city roofs like the teeth of a hungry monster – unfolded thus, in a constant dance between the gloom of the upper rooms and the din of the tavern below. Between a mug of flat ale served to town guards and a forced laugh on the stairs, Alistair and the rest of the band kept weaving the trap.
On a morning like any other, breakfast on the ground floor of the inn had been served, tasting of the mould of old boards and yesterday's cold grease. Alistair chewed a piece of hard, dry bread, dunking it into a mug of flat ale to soften the crust, while Lucius arranged a scroll of parchment paper by the dim light of a candle stub. The stench of rancid lard and damp firewood smoke hung over the empty hall, hours before the river drunks would arrive.
It was at that moment that a woman approached. She wore neither the fitted corset nor the lip paint of the previous night, but the grey morning light filtering through the cracks in the shutters made her hair shine like live embers in a pile of ash. She had bright, violent red hair – the unmistakable mark of the Pyrrhos, the nickname given to redheads in that region, whom the people of Aurelia viewed with a mixture of superstition and contempt. They were the pariahs of Verdejante, shoved into the muddy, pestilential ghettos outside the walls, surviving on rubbish, theft, or the sale of their own flesh.
She slid onto the wooden bench beside Alistair without asking permission, reaching out her thin fingers to snatch a strip of bacon rind from the mercenary's pewter plate.
– You scrutinise your maps as if the city were made only of stone and locked doors – she said, her voice raspy from smoke and cheap liquor. – But my people know what lies beneath your boots. The Pyrrhos didn't build the Viscount's halls, but it was our hands and our grandfathers' backs that tore open the earth to sink the foundations.
Alistair stopped his mug halfway to his mouth, his steel gaze fixing on the woman's face. Lucius lowered his goose quill, listening closely.
– Speak clearly, girl – Alistair murmured, adjusting his sword belt out of habit. – Bread is scarce for riddles.
The redhead leaned over the table, the smell of cheap soap and smoked fish overpowering the ale.
– There are deep veins in the bowels of Verdejante – she whispered, dropping her voice until it was barely a breath against the sound of the wind at the windows. – Ancient tunnels, built long before Viscount Lorenzo and his ancestors laid the first stone in the citadel. Galleries of black stone and dead water that wind beneath the sewers straight to the deepest foundations of the fortress.
Alistair and Lucius exchanged a quick look. A path that bypassed the iron gates and citadel patrols was worth more than a dozen bronze bombards.
– If those passages exist, why hasn't the Viscount used them to hunt us down? – asked Lucius, his analytical mind searching for the flaw in the tale.
The Pyrrho woman let out a dry, mirthless laugh, biting into the bacon fat.
– Because they were sealed decades ago, lad. The iron doors were buried under tons of rubble and forgotten by the nobles, who think danger always comes on horseback and above ground. Nowadays, only the old folk of my people know where the hidden entrances are, and they won't open their mouths for a handful of coppers. To my people, those secrets are the only thing keeping us from being wiped completely from this land's memory. Come with me, I'll introduce you.
Alistair and Lucius, perhaps out of morbid curiosity, hardly needed dragging by that strange woman. The Pyrrho ghetto stretched beyond Verdejante's dry moat like an open wound on the earth. There, the wind blowing from the river brought no merchant spice, but the pestilential stench of open sewers, black mud, and rotting fish in the ditches. The houses were miserable hovels of rotten timber and old rags, leaning against one another like drunks trying not to fall in the mud.
Alistair and Lucius advanced through the narrow alleys with the alertness of men stepping into an enemy pack's territory. To avoid attracting the eyes of cutpurses and desperate souls watching from every doorframe, the mercenary had draped himself in a thick cloak of raw wool. The threadbare, dirty cloth served to muffle the clatter of iron and leather and hide the cold, almost divine glint of his shield; still, his upright posture and the heavy tread of a man bearing iron betrayed his nature with every yard.
Wherever they passed, pale faces with fire-coloured hair peered through cracks in the walls. Sunken, mistrustful eyes fixed upon the two strangers, accompanied by hostile whispers that cut through the cold afternoon air.
They were led into the heart of that human swamp, a damp underground cellar beneath the ruins of an ancient salt warehouse. The air inside was so thick it burned the chest, saturated with peat smoke and the sweat of half a dozen men armed with skinning knives and axes.
In the centre of the room, sitting on an empty beer cask, was Kaelan the Red. The leader of the Pyrrhos was a middle-aged man with a tough body made of rope knots and old scars. His long red hair, intertwined with threads of silver and dirt, fell over his shoulders like the mane of a wounded lion. When Alistair and Lucius entered, Kaelan raised his stern brown eyes, stabbing a hunting knife into the top of an oak stump.
– Swords-for-hire – Kaelan growled, his voice sounding like the grinding of two millstones. – Whether you come from the city or the bush, you always bring the same swagger in your stride. The girl from the brothel told me you're looking for the paths of darkness.
Alistair took a step forward, parting his cloak slightly to reveal the hilt of his sword, but keeping his hands clearly in view.
– We're looking for the old galleries – Alistair said, straight to the point. – You know where the sealed entrances are that lead to the back of the Viscount's citadel. Tell us the way, and you'll have enough silver to feed your people for fourteen moons.
Kaelan let out a dry, sour laugh, spitting onto the dirt floor.
– Silver? – mocked the chieftain of the Pyrrhos, shaking his head with disdain. – Silver doesn't raise the dead nor buy back the lives of my people. The tunnels exist, sir knight; the veins of the city were opened by our ancestors, and the earth still remembers where they run, but I won't hand you the keys to that darkness for a handful of coins.
Lucius stepped to the side, watching Kaelan's men as they blocked the cellar exit.
– If it isn't silver you want, fire-man, what do you seek from us? – asked the boy, his clear voice cutting through the murmur of the room.
Kaelan's expression hardened, and the shadow of an ancient, desperate fury swept over his weathered face.
– My people are being hunted – revealed the redhead leader, digging his fingers into the handle of the knife. – Over the last three moons, my lads and our women have been vanishing in the dead of night. They aren't killed in the streets; they're dragged into the shadows by a criminal syndicate operating in the bowels of Verdejante. A band of godless dogs hunting us like cattle to sell us to the slave markets of Solterra.
Kaelan rose from the cask, his figure looming in the gloom of the warehouse as he met Alistair's gaze head-on.
– My people don't want your money, mercenary – Kaelan continued, his voice dropping into a growled threat between the damp stone walls. – What we want is blood. A disgusting, racist cancer has taken root in the bowels of Verdejante, feeding off the contempt this city holds for our hair. If you want to know the paths that no one else knows, help me wipe out this band of slaving dogs, and the gates of the citadel will open for you.
Alistair looked at Lucius, who gave a silent nod, his face tense. Without the Pyrrhos' underground galleries, the mission to steal the Viscount's treasure became far harder, almost certainly suicidal. He looked at Kaelan, nodding to his proposal.
The leader of the Pyrrhos held his gaze fixed on Alistair and Lucius through a long, heavy silence. Then he yanked the hunting knife from the wood with a sharp snap and pointed the blade at the mercenary's chest, giving his final instructions with deadly precision.
– Then listen closely, warrior – Kaelan ordered. – You will return to this cellar at nightfall, leaving behind those woollen cloaks and your gleaming Ferralian steel; if any source of light catches your shield in the dark, we'll all be dead before we take ten steps. I want you dressed in black from head to toe and armed only with short blades, no longswords banging against stone.
Kaelan sheathed the knife in his worn leather belt and took a step back, retreating into the cellar shadows where his men waited like red-headed spectres.
– We attack the slavers' den in the dark – concluded the Pyrrho chieftain, his face fading into the gloom. – You will secure my people's loyalty through the blood of our oppressors. Bring your short iron, swordsman, for the night will be long and full of throat-slitting.