Entreri spent most of the day going through Riechen's stuff. The man was well-read and had many books detailing the history and geography of the area directly around Karenstoch. This city was not that old, maybe 150 years at best. The majority of the population on this continent lived further south, either alongside one of the numerous rivers that crisscrossed the vast prairie or along the coast.

Entreri searched for over an hour through a dozen books before he found a big enough map of the great seas that bordered either side of the continent to show the Sword Coast. None of the cities showed up on the map, but Entreri recognized the topography well enough. He was over 15,000 miles from home.

“Well done, LaValle.”

Entreri was also able to put to rest his concern about how Trent and Riechen had reacted to his question about goblins. The continent across the sea was a far harsher land than this one. Entreri had visited the extreme climate of the Spine of the World, the dark Trollmoors, and, of course, the desserts of Calimshan. This new land had nothing even comparable to those violent areas. Instead, it had vast grasslands dotted with great forests the further north you went.

Some of the history books hinted that the land used to have its fair share of goblin kind, but as the human population slowly filled the vast continent, the other races were shoved into the northern woods where the elves were waiting. The ensuing clash between the goodly elves and the evil races effectively wiped both sides out, allowing the humans to move into the northland and set up shop.

Now, all other races were assumed to be fiction, recorded in books more like fairy tales than history. Entreri wondered how the discovery of the dragon had affected Riechen's view of things.

Entreri found little in Riechen's room about the workings of this guild or what the other forces in the city were. From Riechen's window on the fifth floor, Entreri watched the town go about its daily routine. Street vendors dealt their wares to commoners as they walked freely along the streets. There was no sign of any organized control of the streets, whether by the city guards or this thieving guild.

Entreri also spent considerable time with LaValle's gift. He became very good with the device, finding ways to open it to twice its standard size or half of it. He also found that if you did not remove the cylinder from the middle of the disk after it had been formed, the portal would remain open indefinitely. This meant Entreri could move back and forth between his room and the cavern a dozen miles away. Entreri also took careful notice that if anything were halfway through the portal when it closed, it would be sheared in half cleaner than the sharpest blade could reproduce.

By nightfall, Entreri's stomach told him it had been too long since his last meal. Setting a cruel trap on his door with one of Riechen's daggers, Entreri slunk his way through the halls and down to the tavern on the main floor. Entreri smiled at the serving maid and ordered the place's most expensive meal. After a few trips to the cavern, money was not something he needed to worry about for a while.

As he ate, the assassin eyed the clientele of the room with interest. This was not a seedy part of the city, and from what Entreri could see from his window, there were few unsavory sections in all of Karenstoch. Still, he was surprised at the level of nobility in the room.

Everyone was well dressed and sociable. A few loudmouths sat at the bar, but Cailring's strong arms were always standing at the ready to diffuse any potential situation that could arise. Entreri even saw Cailring making his rounds about the room, talking with everyone he could. The assassin wondered if he was running for public office.

After the meal, Entreri left a nice tip and made his way back up to his room. There was a little blood just outside his door that someone had made a hasty effort to wipe up. Entreri sighed as he cracked his door and slid his dagger along the jam. The trap had been poorly reset, but it did not look like the room had been vandalized to any extent. Everything in the room had belonged to Riechen, and Entreri cared little for any of it.

The next few days, Entreri roamed the guild house more openly. Word spread quickly, and everyone avoided him. Few gave him evil stares, though most avoided eye contact altogether. On the third floor, Entreri was intrigued to find a good-sized practice room where most of the younger members of the guild practiced fighting. He watched the practice sessions several times each day, constantly amazed at how little skill everyone had.

Entreri realized that because this was not a harsh land they lived in, there was little need for battle readiness. To travel abroad back home, one needed to wield a sword well, or you would not make it far. The streets of most cities were just as harsh, if not more. Here, everyone was calm and peaceful.

When Entreri finally realized the full extent of his skills’ advantage, he decided it was time to visit Cailring. The guild master had his room on the seventh floor of the building. Entreri noticed two guards playing cards in a room adjacent to Cailring's. They were doing their best to make Entreri think they did not see him, but the more they tried, the more obvious it was to the experienced assassin.

Without knocking, Entreri opened the door to Cailring's room and strode in. It was early morning, and the stocky man had just returned from his basement breakfast. With him were the two men Entreri had seen during his first meeting with the guild master. They had been eating with him then, and they had apparently done so again.

Cailring rose dramatically from behind a large desk at the unannounced entry and looked like he was about to call out for the guards. He noticed who his guest was, however, and sat back down. Entreri was a good student of human behavior and realized that no one was usually allowed to enter as he had just done. Still, Cailring had apparently given his guards specific orders concerning him.

“Please come in,” Cailring said graciously. “Have a seat.”

The two other men turned to look at him as they sat in front of the desk with their backs to him. Entreri declined a chair and moved to stand between the two seated men. “Let me introduce you to my two lieutenants, Chancy and Untrul.”

“You mean your two OTHER lieutenants,” Entreri corrected.

The assassin referred to the fact he had pronounced himself as one of Cailring's lieutenants. The guild master recognized this reference immediately. “Of course. What can I do for you?”

“You are holding a guild meeting, and I was not invited.”

Cailring looked at the other two men, unsure where he was supposed to go with this. “I give out information to those who have proven their loyalty and usefulness. So far, you have killed two of my best men and are blackmailing me with my own treasure. So, unless you have something valuable to contribute-”

Too fast for any of the men to react, Entreri's right hand disappeared into his open jacket, removed a small gem bag, and tossed it onto the desk. Cailring had started for his weapon but saw that Entreri was not going for his dagger. He also noticed that if Entreri had wanted to attack, there would have been little any of the three could have done about it.

Cailring carefully opened the bag on his desk and gasped at the wealth inside. “That is a taste of what can be yours,” Entreri said. “There are a million more portions that size waiting for you. All I ask for is a piece of this.” Entreri waved his arms about the room. “I want to know what you do?”

Cailring was finally able to pull his eyes away from the gem bag and regarded Entreri's request. “Very well. This guild deals mostly in unique taxation. It is a tax that very few citizens realize they pay, and they never pay more than they can afford. This city has much wealth, and very little is spent on anything of value. Right now, I have been informed by Chancy that one of my enemies has raised the stakes, and we are deciding what should be done about it.”

It looked like Cailring was going to leave it at that. “Explain,” Entreri prompted.

Cailring looked between his lieutenants. Chancy stood suddenly and walked three quick paces away from Entreri before speaking, not liking the assassin's proximity above and behind him. “Wallace Kierston owns the lumberyard in the southwest corner of the city. He owns several restaurants and shops as well. He is one of the wealthiest and best-liked men in Karenstoch. He is liked best by those who know him least and vice versa. We know him very well.”

Chancy looked for a moment at his boss. Cailring nodded. “Master Cailring's son, Griecen, has his eyes on Kierston's only daughter, and by all accounts, the feeling is mutual.”

Cailring spoke up. “I do not care for the girl's father, but I will not stand in front of my son. Kierston, on the other hand . . .”

Chancy cut in. “Griecen came home three nights ago heavily bruised and carrying a message that he was never to lay eyes on Callie, Kierston's daughter, again. Our men responded in fashion, setting a small fire at his lumberyard. It did little real damage, but we let him know we were responsible.

“Last night, two of our men did not come home. We got word this morning that they were detained by the city guard and will not be released.”

“That,” Cailring emphasized by slamming his open palm on the desk, “is an outrage! We have a good deal going with the city guard that profits them very well. Only Kierston has the influence to bring the city guard down on us.”

Entreri soaked this information in. It was a little different from most of the feuds he was used to, in as much as neither side had lost lives yet, but the foundation was similar. All fights started over a tiny matter and escalated so quickly that the cause for the conflict was usually forgotten within days. “And what is your retaliation going to be?”

“We are going to call him out,” Untrul, the other lieutenant, said. “We will meet him tomorrow morning and settle this thing once and for all.”

“You will kill him?” Entreri asked.

All three men looked at each other before Chancy spoke. “If it comes to that, though we doubt Kierston will want to bring blades into the negotiations. He has little experience in fighting. We will present him with a financial offer that he will be a fool to pass up.”

“You plan to buy his daughter from him?” Entreri asked.

Cailring laughed. “We won't phrase it like that, but yes. Do you approve?”

Entreri did not like the tone of the guild master's voice but held his weapons in check. “It is your guild,” Entreri said. “Run it how you will.”

“Will you come with us tomorrow morning?” Untrul asked.

“Your ace in the hole?” Entreri asked. None of them said anything. “I will be there.” Entreri did not wait for a response and left.

The Kierston Lumber Company was hard at work by noon.

Men with barrel chests and arms as big as the logs they wrestled maneuvered the felled trees with minimal assistance from mules and ropes. The trees were cut down deep in the forest and then dragged to the edge of the clearing, where they were stripped. Two men with large hatchets worked the trees, one from each end walking toward each other. They each had two hatchets and whirled them about as they walked along the broad trunks, hacking off each small branch.

Men with much bigger axes then attacked the larger branches, allowing more men to turn the tree a quarter turn so the hatchet men could walk the trunk once more, picking any branches they might have missed. It took less than five minutes for a tree 60 feet long to be turned into a clean log.

Smaller men then scrambled amongst the brutes, collecting the branches. They would be sold to a peasant farmer for a roof, firewood, or if the farmer was unlucky, both. The larger limbs would be sold as more reliable firewood, or the straighter pieces would be cleaned up and sold to a wood artisan. They would be resurrected into furniture, a fence, or any one of several practical items.

The real treasure was the tree trunk. Some were hauled off to a corner of the lumberyard, but most were rolled into the broad river that bordered the lumber facility. These would be floated down the river and sold to several different towns and cities that lived on the water highway further downstream.

However, before any of the trees were moved and after their branches had been stripped, they were beaten upon by short poles. Three, sometimes four men, walked the length of the log, pounding on it repeatedly with the two and a half-foot long pounding rods. As they did, the tree unleashed all of its stored wildlife. Ants, termites, tree rodents, and thousands of insects came pouring out of the logs. After being cleaned in this fashion, they were ready for the river or storage pile.

There were two tree-cleaning units and four tree-dragging teams at work today. Each dragging unit consisted of three men and a couple of mules. Deeper in the forest, the real work was being done as the sound of wood chopping and the occasional cry of “Timber” echoed out of the woods.

Entreri watched it from a high perch in a tree across the river, safe from the mighty lumberjacks. Entreri not only surveyed the work area, but he also paid particular attention to the collection of small buildings at the entrance to the lumberyard. A significant wall separated the eastern edge of the yard from the western edge of Karenstoch. To the south, a natural cliff stood about 200 feet from the river, giving the woodsmen a large area in which to work. To the west were the woods, and to the north was the river. A shoddy fence on the western edge of the yard kept the woodland creatures out, but it would never keep a determined thief from entering.

It was lunchtime, and the workers took their first break of the day. Entreri noticed that while most of the men stayed in the work area, sitting down on their logs and producing their noon meals from scattered packs, three men left the group and headed to the buildings near the entrance to the yard.

Entreri climbed down his tree and moved secretly into the woods. He found a shaky rope bridge and dashed across the river. He approached the workers casually, not knowing what their reaction would be to a stranger interrupting their noon break. Entreri purposefully stepped on a twig as he exited the protection of the forest and several men turned to look at him.

A few men reached quickly for their axes or hatchets, but Entreri tried to calm their fears - a task he was not ordinarily good at. “Whoa, please, settle down.”

His voice was shaky and had a little fear thrown in it. Most of the men stopped reaching for their tools, but those who had already grabbed them did not let them go. “Who are you, and what do you want?” one of them spoke up.

“A friend. Please, put down your weapons. The last thing I want is a fight. I was wondering about how I could get a job.”

All the men were at ease now, and they all dropped their axes. The speaker casually flipped his hatchet in the air, caught the handle, and buried the head into the log he straddled. “What would you want to work here for?”

“Why does anyone work?” Entreri responded. “For the money.”

“My question still stands, stranger.”

“Surely the pay here is good,” Entreri insisted naively. “I've been watching you guys for the last hour or so. You each do the work of two men.”

“And get paid as if we were each a half-man,” one of the other men spoke up.

Entreri turned back to the main speaker for confirmation. The man nodded. “It's true. A dozen professions in the city offer better wages with much less work.”

“Then why do you do it?” Entreri asked.

“Don't think we haven't looked for work elsewhere, but Kierston has put the bug in every merchant and farmer's ear that we are his and no one will offer us a job. He's got a nice little scam going here. We are the best, there is no doubt about that, and I doubt there is a lumber company in all the realms that can match our daily output, and we probably get paid the least.”

“You tell him, Druane,” one of the other men spoke up.

“Why don't you slow down?”

Druane looked hard at Entreri. “We are not thieves,” he said sincerely. “Kierston might mistreat us, but to return the favor would be wrong. Besides, his foremen ride us too hard.”

“The three men who left to go to the company buildings?” Entreri said as much to himself as asking Druane.

“Yes,” the lumberjack replied. “Shreik, Lorance, and Porrik are very close to Kierston. He's got one of them with every group. If you've been watching us, you've seen Shreik at work. He walks the trees faster and cleaner than I've ever seen. I swear he does it with his eyes closed, his two hatchets moving so quickly and accurately half the branches that come off do so in fear.

“Lorance works with the draggers. He can push mules to the brink of collapse with his whip. He's killed five mules this year alone simply from working them past their threshold. But he's magic with that whip. He can take a fly off a man's back without either of them knowing about it, the man because he doesn't feel a thing, and the fly because it's dead before it knew it was in danger.

“And then there is Porrik, the only true lumberjack in the group. He is also probably the biggest man in all of Karenstoch. He can chop down a tree so fast he'll be clean through on a second one before the first hits the ground. For as hard as all three of them push us, they push themselves equally. That doesn't change the fact that they are company men, and we are not.

“So, stranger, if you still want a job, you need to go to the main office building, but if you want advice, I say you go to the slaughterhouse and get a good-paying job.”

“Is there anything that would be able to change your working conditions?” Entreri asked.

“New ownership would be a start. Kierston won't ever sell, though. He would only give up ownership if his daughter married some rich noble who could take over. He's got two sons, but they are about as thick-headed as the trees we cut down.”

Entreri soaked all this in, thanked the men, and left the way he had come.

Entreri sat on the roof of Cailring's guild house, watching as the stars came out. The night had a cool breeze with a pleasant pine odor. Entreri still was not used to the stars. They did not seem to hang in the sky quite right, but being 15,000 miles from home probably had a lot to do with that.

He was at a crossroads. What he did in the next few hours would define how he planned to function in society. He could walk away from the city tonight and never look back. Entreri knew Cailring had people watching him even now, but they had no idea whom they were watching. If the assassin wanted to be unseen, the thieves would never find him.

This world - for Entreri considered this place to be an entirely different world - functioned far differently from Calimport or any city along the Sword Coast. Chaos ruled in Entreri's homeland. The races interacted chaotically, the weather was chaotic, the magic was chaotic, and even the law was chaotic.

Here, there was organized crime. There was no magic. There was no racial diversity. While there were social classes, they were not as evident or as problematic. Entreri had two choices: change this land or let it change him.

He had been viewed as a master in Calimport, but he could be a god here.

There was a chance the land and people would reject him for who he was. Entreri believed that even Cailring might throw him out if he realized what the assassin was capable of. It was challenging to deal with because back home, Entreri was a prized possession by any guild house that was foolish enough to claim they owned him.

Entreri laughed as he thought of Drizzt. The drow had been rejected because of his skin. People saw what they wanted to and persecuted him. Drizzt had finally donned a mask to hide what he really was so he would be accepted. Would Entreri be forced to wear a mask too? Would he have to hide his dark profession under a veil of civility to be accepted?

The comparison to Drizzt was not a good one, for once the people of the Sword Coast learned that the dark elf was not as he seemed, he was not only accepted in the many cities but often celebrated. Entreri was precisely as he appeared, and the deeper people looked, the more he would be rejected.

Entreri stood and walked to the roof’s ledge, looking down on the rest of the city. “Are you ready for me?” he asked quietly to the streets of Karenstoch. “Are you ready for Artemis Entreri? I might not be able to change you, but you shall definitely not change me.”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“A splash.”

“We're next to a river, you idiot. Of course, I heard a splash. There isn't a second that goes by that I don't hear that bloody river, but I've already pissed a gallon tonight, so I'm trying not to think about it.”

Alex ignored his partner. “No, Jreck, I mean a weird splash.”

Jreck looked at him like he was insane. “No, Alex, I did not hear a 'weird' splash.” Jreck pushed away from the log pile he had been leaning against and picked up his lantern. “I'm going to do another sweep of the storage sheds. You just stay here and listen to the river.”

Alex watched as Jreck walked off into the night, disappearing as he moved in between the small collection of buildings along the cliff face. Alex's head snapped around as he thought he heard another splash. He stared off into the darkness at the river. It was almost full of logs now, the enormous trees held in place by a massive netting of rope that crossed the width of the river.

Alex and Jreck were city guards, and by patrolling Kierston's lumberyard, they were breaking several city ordinances. The city guards were supposed to patrol the city, not private property. They were not guards for hire. They were not mercenaries. That is, not unless someone paid them enough. Kierston paid plenty.

Alex had not figured out why anyone would want to rob this place at night, or at all for that matter. It was not like a store where you could pocket the merchandise and walk off with it. Alex stepped away to look at the log piles lined up a dozen feet from the cliff. Two dozen massive logs staked up in each stack, held in place by two thick ropes per pile.

Another splash. Alex spun around, taking several steps away from the log pile he had been leaning against and toward the river. He looked back and forth as he crept north toward the water. He was scared that either an animal would come tearing out of the woods or Jreck and the other city guard that was here tonight would catch him leaving his post.

Alex left his lantern back at the woodpile and walked across the tree cleaning area. He tried to be as quiet as possible, but the ground was littered with small twigs and leaves. It was not like there was any cover for him to move amongst either. The cleaning area was wide open.

The river's bank was almost fifty feet away when he heard the splash again. He knew he was not making it up now. It sounded like someone was throwing rocks in the river. The starlight kept the night from complete darkness, but shadows seemed to be everywhere with a forest so near.

Alex tried to pick out a human form somewhere near the edge of the river, but he either saw nothing, or every shadow held a thief ready to spring out and take him. All he was doing was tracking down a splash, but the city guard drew his sword and held it out in front of him to ward off whatever the night might hold for him.

The splashing had come from the western edge of the logjam, upriver and the opposite side from where the rope netting was. There was a four-foot drop off to the river at the edge of the cleaning area. Alex stood three feet from the edge, looking down at the river, daring it to make another splash.

Alex was just about to leave, convinced that it had just been a fish when another splash came right in front of him. The water flew two feet in the air. It happened about five feet from the edge of the floating logs and was definitely not a fish. Someone or something was throwing rocks into the river.

The guard still could not see anything. He crept right up to the edge of the four-foot ledge and realized that there was a small hollowed-out section under his feet. Alex slowly got to his hands and knees and leaned slowly over the edge to look under the lip. Entreri grabbed the stupid guard by his collar and pulled him into the river.

Alex tried to scream, but he was already underwater when he realized what was happening. The current was swift and pulled him toward the stationary logs. Alex's head broke through the surface, but Entreri, armed with a long branch, was there to push him back under.

When Alex tried to break through the surface again, he found the river had a very heavy lid. He was under the logs! Alex panicked, yelling out the little air he had been holding. He desperately tried to swim back upstream, but he wore heavy armor and had little swimming skill. Instead, he tried to focus his energy on the logs above.

Entreri watched as an arm came up from between two of the logs. The guard tried to pull two of the massive trees apart to push his head through, but his strength was quickly failing, and even fresh, he probably could not have moved the huge trunks. The arm gave one last spasmodic shove on the unyielding ceiling and then sank slowly back into the water.

Entreri had wondered if he would run out of rocks before Alex finally responded to the splashes. The assassin carefully jumped from the bank hollow onto the floating logs. Keeping his balance on the rolling wood was not as difficult as other stunts he had pulled in his life, but having recently seen what failure would mean, made him extra careful.

The climb up to land was done with an easy leap, and Entreri fell low to the ground as he surveyed the scene. A light moved about the buildings to the southeast and another light more directly east. To Alex, the cleaning area had looked like an open field with no cover available, but to Entreri, the site was full of hiding spots. There were patches of dark grass against which the assassin's cloak hid him better than other patches. Several small areas were relatively clear of twigs, allowing silent travel. Also, the lights from the city across the river highlighted different areas of the clearing more than others.

Entreri moved quickly across the open field as quietly and invisibly as the cool night breeze.

Jreck walked back to the woodpile, seeing Alex's lantern, but not Alex. The lantern sat off to the side of the woodpile, and Jreck set his down next to it. He remembered Alex saying something about a noise in the river. Jreck looked off in that direction, wondering if something had happened to him. “Alex,” he called out in a harsh whisper. As soon as the call left his lips, he laughed at himself.

What sense does it make to call out in a whisper? Besides, who else was out here to hear him? Despite what common sense tried to tell him, there was a reason he had called out in a whisper. Jreck felt a sense of dread creeping into his body as if death was waiting for him somewhere in the lumberyard. It seemed foolish. Alex was probably just wandering near the river.

Jreck walked in front of the woodpile, wondering if he should climb it to look around the whole area. Instead, he turned his back on it and looked toward the river, straining to hear the phantom splashes. After a minute of listening, he heard nothing but had gained a sudden urge to pee.

Turning toward the woods to do precisely that, Jreck heard a snap from behind him. His urge left him quickly, and he took a step toward the woodpile to identify the sound. Nothing in the pile moved, but Jreck sensed a feeling of terror creep through him. Then he saw it. One of the support ropes holding the stack of wood in place was cut.

Before Jreck could react to his find, Entreri's dagger cut through the other rope, and the stack of logs fell apart. Jreck was standing right in front of it and cried out as the first log rolled over his foot an ankle with a stomach-turning crack, ensuring the man would never walk again. That was the least of his worries, for a second later, another log bounced heavily on his head, ensuring he would never breathe again either.

This kill had not been as silent as Entreri had hoped. The logs had made little more than dull thuds as they fell and rolled, but Jreck had been able to cry out before he died. Entreri spotted the third guard long before he spotted the assassin. The guard had his sword drawn and was on the alert.

Entreri stayed perfectly still. The two lanterns had been unharmed in the log slide, and they both stood less than ten feet away from the assassin, but the master of shadows was invisible to the guard until he was right on top of him. Entreri exploded into motion as soon as the guard's eyes found him.

The assassin had only his dagger drawn, and the guard used the split second it took for Entreri to produce his dirk to set up some kind of defense. The city guard thought himself lucky, for he intercepted Entreri's initial flurry of six strikes in half as many seconds.

The guard quickly realized luck had nothing to do with it, for as he thrust his weapon out to intercept the next strike, he realized the assassin had just been setting him up. Entreri rotated his dirk to avoid contact with the larger sword at the last second. With suddenly nothing there to support the guard's sword so soon after the initial volley, he was significantly off balance. The doomed man stumbled in the direction of his missed parry, taking a dagger in the side and a fine cut across his gut.

The guard tried to cry out, but the dagger went from his side to his throat in a heartbeat. A few seconds later, the guard's heart no longer beat at all. Entreri wiped his blades on the dead man's clothes and placed them back in their sheaths. He had spent most of the night watching these men and knew there were only three guards. He also knew their routes and that they would soon be missed if anyone in the office buildings was paying attention.

Like a shadow, Entreri moved off toward the equipment sheds.

“Something is wrong,” Shreik said, pulling aside the drapes and looking out a window in one of the smaller office buildings in the lumberyard. The three foremen had come to work early that morning at Kierston's request. They were going to add a little muscle to the meeting with Cailring and his guild. “Jreck should have made a pass through the sheds half an hour ago.”

“You think he fell asleep?” Porrik asked.

Shreik scowled at the huge man. “Not everyone is as stupid as you.”

Porrik growled at the comment and took a menacing step toward the smaller man. Shriek just casually dropped his hands to the pommels of his twin swords. Porrik paused. He had seen Shreik wield his two hatchets during the day and knew the man was no less accurate with his short swords.

“Shriek is right,” Lorance said, stepping into the argument. “Something is wrong.”

Porrik looked back and forth between the two men, yielding to their assessment of the situation. “Okay, what do you want to do about it?”

The three walked out of the small building and made the short trip to the main offices. Kierston had the main offices set up much like his home in the central part of the city. He rarely visited that home, spending most of his time out here.

It was still dark outside, but dawn was less than an hour away, and there was activity inside the house. Kierston, his two sons, and his daughter all sat around the main table, sipping tea and discussing the meeting they were going to have with Cailring and his men.

Kierston had told no one but his foremen about hiring the city guards, and few outside the lumber company even knew about the foremen. Cailring and his gang of petty thieves were going to walk into this meeting thinking they had the advantage, but with six sure fighters and his two sons, Kierston would not be an easy man to bargain with. The rich man fully expected the meeting to end in blood, and he had given his men specific instructions that if only one person felt steel, it was to be Cailring's thieving son who was chasing his daughter.

Kierston looked up as his three foremen entered the large room. He knew something was wrong immediately. “Sir,” Shreik said, “there is no sign of the guards. They are long overdue on their routes.”

Kierston rose from the table and walked over to his men. “You and Lorance check it out. Porrik, you stay here. If the guards have skipped out on me, Lionel Cairon will hear it from me,” Kierston said, dropping the name of the chief of the city guards. “I paid him good money for those men.”

“And if they didn't skip out?” Lorance asked, his fingers playing with the whip hanging on his belt.

“I sincerely doubt anyone could have disposed of all three guards without raising the alarm, but if Cailring is playing some kind of trick here, I won't play along. Dispense with whatever you find. I trust your judgment.”

The two foremen left, and Kierston turned back to the table where his family sat. “Dad,” Callie, his daughter, said, “you need to be more diplomatic. You can't just beat up everyone that doesn't agree with you. There are better ways to handle these kinds of situations.”

“You heard the report,” he replied. “I am either being attacked or betrayed. Yet you want me to roll with the punches and talk peace.”

“You are receiving nothing that you didn't bring upon yourself.”

“Bite your tongue, daughter, or I'll find someone to bite it for you!”

Kierston's two stupid sons laughed at the rebuke and received a sharp rap on their heads for it. “You two shut up also. If we are going to get into a fight, you should get ready.”

The two young men nodded and left the table to get their weapons.

Outside, Shriek and Lorance crept slowly up to the equipment shed. This is where one of the guards was supposed to be stationed all the time. Another one was positioned at the log piles, while the third one roamed between the two.

“Something is not right,” Lorance said, stopping and sniffing at the air. “Someone is here.”

From where he hid inside the shed, Entreri could see that he could not remove these men in the same way he took out the careless guards. Any simple trap he tried would likely backfire. Without a sound, he stepped into the center of the shed, in plain view of the two men.

“You have made a bad choice this night,” Shreik said, snapping out his twin swords in front of him. “And it will be your last.”

Shreik walked toward him quickly, but Entreri's focus was on the other man, Lorance, if his memory served him. The assassin had fought against very few people who used a whip and had heard many great tales about their extreme usefulness in battle. Entreri engaged Shreik's blades in a half-hearted defensive stance, keeping the corner of his eye on Lorance.

Entreri suddenly rolled to his side, a snapping sound filling the spot where his head had just been. Shreik paused only briefly at the missed whip attack, but Entreri knew he had just come very close to losing an ear. The assassin also knew he would not be able to fight both men at once if Lorance stayed on the outside. He was using a black whip at night. It had only been pure instinct that had told Entreri to roll out of the way when he did.

Entreri jumped up from his roll and executed a furious attack routine against Shreik. The swordsman had never seen anything like it and backpedaled desperately, barely catching every other strike with one of his blades. With his opponent off balance, Entreri pulled his eyes away from the attack to find Lorance and ducked just in time to keep his left eye.

The whip snapped above his head, and Entreri managed to move Shreik between him and Lorance. The assassin now watched the whip master over the other foreman's shoulder as he easily parried his blades. Entreri had seen Shreik at work during the day and knew he was an expert, but the branches he hacked off never moved and never blocked. Entreri did both better than almost anyone alive.

Shreik launched a double strike, one sword high, the other low. He then reversed their direction after Entreri had deftly leaped back and brought them together like a giant pair of scissors. Entreri glanced at the ceiling, adjusted his feet, and swung his dirk into the center of the “V” attack. With both of Shreik's blades engaged with one of Entreri's, the assassin brought his free dagger around the swords, aimed at the foreman's exposed side.

Lorance's whip snapped out viciously at the exposed dagger, ripping it from Entreri's grasp. Entreri was not fazed and pushed his dirk up high, forcing Shreik's arms up also. He kicked the foreman hard in the gut, and the larger man fell back.

Entreri spun around to face Lorance and saw that his dagger was lying halfway between him and the whip master - right where he had planned it. “I whip donkeys all day,” Lorance said, rearing his weapon back for another strike, “and you are no different.”

Entreri had heard many stories on how effective a whip was at long-distance attacks, and they all said the only way to defeat one was to get inside its range. Entreri rolled forward as the whip snapped above his head. He came out of the roll and reached up to grab the whip before it retracted.

Lorance was startled at how easily Entreri had avoided his attack and did not pull the whip back in time. Neither did he let go of his end when Entreri grabbed the middle of the weapon and tugged hard. Lorance took several clumsy steps toward the assassin under the force of the hard tug and impaled himself on Entreri's waiting dirk. “I am no ass,” Entreri said into Lorance's ear before he shoved his body back.

Entreri's dirk stayed in the man's chest, for it was too deep to remove without extra effort. Shreik had scrambled back to his feet and saw that his enemy no longer had a weapon. Entreri had rolled to where his knife had fallen. He knew precisely where Shreik was, picked up his dagger, and flung it toward the man as he turned.

Shreik saw the move coming in time and stopped his charge as he dodged. The dagger flew over his left shoulder and thudded into the wall behind him. “You missed,” Shreik said, not knowing that the knife had cut cleanly through a support rope when it had struck the wall.

Entreri did not say anything and just glanced upward. Shreik's eyes went to the ceiling also and watched in horror as the colossal tree felling ax Entreri had rigged earlier swung down from the rafters, blew through his pathetic parrying attempts, and sunk its blade deep into Shreik's chest. The big man was lifted from the ground by the force of the blow, the edge of the enormous ax protruding from his back. The macabre pendulum swung back and forth with its victim still attached while Entreri retrieved his sword and dagger.

Before leaving the equipment shed, Entreri picked up two of the pounding rods he had seen the yard workers use the day before to rid the trees of insects. Entreri cleaned his two blades on Shreik's swinging corpse and sheathed them. He stuck the two pounding rods into the back of his waistline under his cloak, and he made his way to the lumberyard's main office.

Kierston looked nervously out the window. Lorance and Shreik should have been back by now.

“I hope your thugs haven't met an unfortunate end, father,” Callie said from the table. Her two brothers and Porrik stood behind Kierston and threw the girl an evil look.

Her father did not bother to turn around. “I don't know what you have against them, dear. They are both fine men, and either one would make a good husband.”

“Actually, dead men make very bad husbands.”

Everyone in the room turned around at the new voice and saw Entreri standing there. “Who are you?” Kierston asked.

“I am all your nightmares come to life.”

“Porrik . . .” the old man started, but the huge brute had already drawn his broadsword. The man kept it strapped to his back, and Entreri quickly realized if he had worn it any lower on his body, it would drag on the floor. Despite the sword's incredible size, Porrik swung it about his body as if it weighed no more than Lorance's whip.

Entreri had struggled mightily under the weight of the massive ax in the equipment shed when he had rigged the trap that had taken out Shreik, yet this man swung one of those axes for hours every day. The colossal sword swept back and forth in front of the giant as he stalked the much smaller assassin.

The swipes had no discernible pattern and were elementary, but Entreri knew if he tried to parry one of them, his weapon, if not his entire arm, would be ripped away from him. Instead of fighting him straight up, Entreri circled the room, staying just out of reach of the big man until he tried to work out a plan.

After a few seconds of cat and mouse, the assassin found himself in a corner. Kierston saw the look of terror on the stranger's face and looked on with glee as Porrik swung a tremendous strike aimed at Entreri's waist. The blow was too low to duck, too high to jump over, and there was no room to backpedal. Entreri was not worried. He leaped up a short way, placing his left foot on one of the walls in the corner. He pushed off and kicked his right foot against the other wall, throwing himself much higher than Porrik had ever guessed possible.

The huge man tried to follow the elusive assassin as the smaller man flew past his shoulder, delivering a vicious strike to the brute's arm as he did. Porrik shrugged off the blow and brought his weapon over his shoulder as he turned, preparing to cleave the assassin from top to bottom.

Entreri was already rolling out of the way as he landed, taking time to slash out at the big man's calf as he did. He did not move far from Porrik, though, and sprang up from the floor, standing right next to the giant. Like the whip, the huge sword was most effective when the opponent was farther away. Unlike the whip, the blade could still parry at close range.

Entreri was amazed at how quickly Porrik could move the big weapon, deflecting well over fifty percent of Entreri's attacks. Though, the rest found their mark, slashing and cutting into the big man until his tunic was more red than gray. Entreri pricked him especially hard with one attack, and the giant man kicked out with his foot to drive the little man back.

Entreri complied and leaped away four feet. Porrik could finally swing his mighty weapon again, but the attack was much slower than before, with as many hits as he had taken. Entreri waited patiently for it to pass in front of him and then leaped back inside it. Porrik tried to bring the weapon’s hilt back in time to deflect Entreri's attack but was too late.

The jeweled dagger slid firmly in between Porrik's ribs, but the big man was not finished yet. Though the hilt of his weapon had not been in time to block the blow, it was still coming in from the left, forcing Entreri to step to the right. As he did, he drove his dirk deep into the giant's side and stepped back.

Porrik stood for a brief moment, both weapons still stuck into him, and it looked like he might be able to swing his sword one more time, but the dagger was stealing his life energy and his strength. Entreri stepped in quickly again as the big man fell, removing his knife before it was buried under Porrik's tremendous bulk. He stepped back away just in time to avoid the man's collapse.

Entreri stowed his dagger inside his jacket and reached behind his back to pull out the pounding rods. As expected, the two brothers came at him with their swords drawn. They both swung at once against the assassin, and Entreri deflected each blow smoothly, dedicating one rod to each brother. He rolled his blocking rods over their blades and poked them each hard in the face.

Entreri hit the eye of one brother and gave a bloody nose to the other. Entreri had stepped right between them and turned to meet their next charge. Both were too stunned and inexperienced to press their attack, and Entreri did not waste time. He was on them in a second, poking and pounding on them repeatedly.

The brothers were at least two moves behind the assassin as they tried to catch up to the lightning strikes. Their blades never came close to the rods, nor did they come close to Entreri. Instead, Entreri covered the brothers with bruises, doing no lasting damage, but inflicting plenty of pain.

The two sons realized they were being played with and did not like it. They stopped trying to block the attacks, for they knew they never could, and initiated their own. Entreri took a step back at the change of strategy and snapped his rods out wide, blocking the weapons below the hilts. In doing so, he smashed their fingers, and both swords clattered to the floor.

Entreri stepped back forward, both rods jabbing ahead three feet apart. The jabs sunk deep into the brothers' guts, stealing their breath and doubling them over. Entreri stood quickly after his mid-attack, snapping his weapons up, this time into the boys' descending chins.

The brothers stood erect at this attack, dazed and in pain. Entreri dropped to a crouch and swept their legs out from under them. They fell hard, still without breath and with their heads spinning.

One of the brothers tried to rise, but Entreri cracked him in the skull as he stepped past him, sending the boy into unconsciousness. The other son wisely stayed down. Entreri walked toward Kierston quickly. Through the corner of his eye, he could see Kierston's daughter smiling at the spectacle.

The old man thought about drawing the small dagger he kept on him, but Entreri shook his head. “Please, make this easy on yourself. I do not want to kill any of your family out of respect for my employer.”

“Your employer?!”

“Yes,” Entreri said, walking right up to the older man. “It seems his son is in love with your daughter, and if I killed you or your pathetic sons, that might put a damper on the wedding, don't you think?”

Kierston was aghast that Cailring had been able to employ someone as skilled as the man who stood before him. Frankly, he was even more surprised that such a man even existed. “Now,” Entreri said slowly, “Cailring will be here in less than an hour. I believe we have a lot to talk about.” As he spoke, Entreri pulled out his dagger. “I hope you will be able to live with my proposal.”