Category: Books

There’s gonna need to be a fight scene soon. Two-thirds of the party rather badly wants to Smite some Evil right now. They’re only not chastising the wicked as they go because the wicked are outnumbering them thousands to one, and some very irate people are going to be coming over the wall anyway. It’s gonna be bad in the city, when it falls – and that’ll be despite the best efforts of the army about to overrun it.

The three of them moved as quickly as they dared through the blossoming outrages and atrocities playing out in the courtyard. Nate and Maddox’s hands were white-knuckled on their weapons by the time they reached the vile temple’s alcove; the Monsignor looked almost bored, not even bothering to leer or chortle. “Prepare yourselves, stout warriors,” he told the two men. “This is where steel may be of some use.”

“How bad will it be?” asked Maddox, flexing his fingers out of the stiffness his ire had imposed on them. “And how many will there be.”

“I have absolutely no idea,” the Monsignor told them with a grin that almost seemed sincere. “There may be fighting, within, unless they’ve all done us the favor of a mass suicide pact already. As for numbers?” He shrugged. “Fewer than the ones who entered the Fane. When rats cannot abandon a sinking ship, they naturally will turn on each other. Men are much the same, only more inventive about it.”

Inside the walls!

Inside the wall?

Inside was chaos, and license. Everywhere the three looked, the minions and the hanger-ons of the See of Iniquity were indulging in every vice known to humanity, and a few unique to Unholy Toledo. There was shouting, and killing, and revelry enough for twice the number of people cavorting in the space between the walls and the Fane, and even this late at night the bonfires were lit, making the scene flicker in a grotesque alternation between greasy shadows, and the pitiless firelight of Hell.

It was well-known that to carry a weapon openly without leave in the Whore’s Fane was to volunteer to be thrown from its highest spire. But on this night nobody challenged them, or even seemed to notice. “Where are the guards?” Nat muttered. “Not that I miss them.”

“The smart ones fled, and the unlucky ones were caught and slain for treason,” shrugged the Monsignor. “The very unlucky ones will be flogged towards the foe when the Babylon Gate is breached. But they will not be at their posts, which is all either of you should care about. Follow me, and stay close! Even now, my presence will keep the prying eyes of this rabble safely averted.”