EAGLEHEART
by
christiane ferguson
“The hero’s silver mark is laid across his eyes
The puppet has been stolen, between war and peace she lies
The king of the shadow feeds from the blood of the best
Only the eagle can save us and lay evil to rest.”
Exert from the five truths of Aradel the great.
Chapter one-
Business
Tulia's heart beat faster, darkness had shrouded the courtyard in front of her, it lay thick and heavy like the blanket she wished she were under. Her breath in the chill night air came out like insubstantial clouds, floating on the midnight breeze, and fading before the next breath was exhaled. Tulia’s eyes, deep amber in colour, and akin to a wolfs, caught the glint of a guards helmet halfway across the tiled courtyard. The reflection came from a window above her, the candle light from it creating a pale flickering beacon, not enough light for a normal person to see by, but Tulia was not normal. She crouched waiting in the shadows and half obscured from any would be watching eyes by the tall marble pillar gilded with the crest of the manor, a wild boar, crossed behind by two spears. Tulia was silent. Her clothes hid the sound of movement well, not the soft silks of the nobly born women, but the dark green and gray wool of the peasants; her soft leather shoes made no sound on carpet, mud or brick. A black lacquered metal belt, chipped and dented with use, circled her waist and Tulia’s midnight black hair was bound and wrapped in a hessian cover. Her clothes were meant for espionage, and she was the best that money could buy in the city of Senar at such short notice.
She worked in the streets of this sea port, buying and trading the most valuable commodity the world over, information.
She would be rich from the things she had heard tonight, plots, and deeds, and the murder of a king. She had been employed by a normal enough looking man, though she would not put it past him to just kill her after she gave him the information, instead of paying the fifteen gold Renna’s he had promised her for her expertise. A lavish sum, but one she could not reject. He awaited her on the other side of this courtyard wall, down the street and in a tavern. The knight’s honor, was its name, if she remembered correctly, which she did of course, it was her business to remember after all. While she was waiting she could smell the fetid streets of southern Senar. Although slightly diluted, the smell of wash water, mud, food scraps and dead animals had made its way past the rank and disheveled buildings of the peasants, into the inner city. Through the high-class housing and into the courtyard of this overly rich noble, though remained somewhat diluted by the smell of the roses that faintly permeated the air.
Tulia snapped back to reality at the sound of the change of the guard on the opposite side of the courtyard, which stated it was midnight. This was what she was waiting for. Keeping to the shadows on the right of the courtyard, she could feel her dagger inside her boot, the familiar tickling of the blade against the skin of her leg was comforting. It had served her well for the five years Tulia had owned it. It had been five years since her initiation. Tulia weaved her way to the opposite wall; her only weapon against an attack would be her dagger, sheathed tightly in her boot, and her hand to hand combat skills. But that made it all the more exiting, and challenging. Tulia’s heart skipped a beat in its rhythmic music of life; the yard patrol was on top of the wall. Two guards stood chatting idly not a meter away from the place where her grapple and rope lay, her two instruments for gaining entry to this place. Their arms rested idly on the long handles of their superior battle-axes. The blade’s half moons glinting wickedly in the pale moon light. This would not normally bother her, but they were standing a meter away from her exit. The guards could not have found her grapple or else the alarm would have been called already, alerting anyone in a half-mile radius of her intention and waking all the people of the manor.
Tulia bit her bottom lip, a habit she had acquired as a fisherman’s daughter almost eleven years earlier before she became an apprentice. She had to think quickly if she wanted to get out of here and to the knight’s honor alive and in time to collect her fee. Spying apple trees in the Four Corners of the courtyard, she silently padded towards the nearest one, just under the wall, but to the right of where she wanted to be. Dried shriveled apples that had not been collected by the maids lay on the cold packed earth beneath it. Picking up three of the depressingly small apples, Tulia made her way up the side of the courtyard. Inside the right guard tower window Tulia could see a faint flicker, as if a candle had burned down to the stub, but refused to gutter and die. Standing back a little, Tulia threw the three wrinkled apples as hard as she could in quick succession at the wide glass window above her, smashing the glass, that only the wealthy could afford. The guards came running; even the gate guards on the left of the enclosure came to investigate the tumultuous noise. Tulia ran with the wind at her back to the far wall, keeping low and out of sight behind the shrubbery within the courtyard. Looking to anyone watching like a bird swooping low to the ground. Hoisting herself up and also using the momentum she had gained running she scaled the wall easily. She could have gone through the gate that the guards had abandoned, but there was no excitement in that, plus even a rich noble had his gates watched at night, and they would surely notice anyone leaving it at this time of the morning. Scaling down the rope quickly she pulled it and the grapple after her. In one swift movement, circled it in her hand, attached it to her belt and ran into the dark night
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