1326: The Return – Part 9 1326: The Return – Part 9 Before Oliver’s very eyes, he saw a human do what a spider ought to have been in charge of.
In a display that was exclusively for the showmanship of it all, she spun a giant web, in the storefront, covering the windows with it.
A web that seed no less sturdy than that of a Giant Spider.
The girls on the loom worked and worked, giving her all the thread that she needed for the show.
And only when the act was done did her hands finally pause.
She gave a bow at the hip, rather than a courtesy, and then a broad smile, nacing smile.
But the applause never ca, for no one seed to have been watching.
Before Oliver could see what happened next, they rounded another curve in the road.
Here, instead of the girls on looms, it was true spiders that cast their webs.
Their favoured hos seed to be right at the top of the lampposts, just beneath where the fla would be lit, right on the edge of where the safety was.
And in the cracks of buildings too, where brick and cent had begun to be worn down, the spiders made their hos wherever they could.
It was more unnerving than intriguing to Oliver.
He had said, in jest, that he would have preferred to entreat with the ancestors of the place than the crowd, but as soon as he passed through Old Ernest, that opinion soon changed.
It was darker here, with the buildings built so densely together they blocked out the sun.
A man could quite easily skulk in the shadows of the many one-person-broad alleyways.
Oliver tried to keep an eye on it all, but there were so many people and places to keep track of.
He wondered if he was not better placed simply focusing his intention on his imdiate surroundings, within a tre of himself.
It was certainly more relaxing to do so.
He heaved in a deep breath, and closed his eyes to the point that they were narrowed.
He had Ingolsol spread his awareness thickly, in that single one to two tre radius.
And that was when the enemy struck – when the dam burst, and the first of the spiders ca scuttling out of the spider’s web, with cleaver in hand, and bloody apron on chest.
The carriage door was flung open in a single swift motion.
They’d passed within stepping distance of the nearest alleyway.
Two movents were all that was required to execute the kill.
The opening of the door, and the swinging of the cleaver.
If Oliver had been looking anywhere else, he would have failed to react in ti.
The scream ca, low and loud.
The blood ca quickly, falling with the thick patter of heavy rain.
The bald man clasped for his wrist, as the cleaver went bouncing to the ground, stuttering along the paving stones.
Oliver pointed his blood sword at the man’s neck, having leapt from the carriage.
“Who sent you, good sir?” “Fuck off,” the butcher spat.
“Indeed,” Oliver said, slicing his throat open, and leaving him to fall in the street.
It was a rcilessness that ought to have been best reserved for the battlefield.
But Oliver had judged that to be exactly what this place was.
A battlefield indeed.
He could spare no more ti for the butcher, not when the carriage was already eeking its way forward.
“My Lord!” Verdant shouted.
“Concentrate!” Oliver shouted back.
An arrow ca screeching from a rooftop, with all the accuracy of a bellbird.
Oliver noted it just before it ran through the glass of the carriage window, and with a slap of his sword, he sent it skittering out of the sky.
‘Focus,’ he told himself, blocking all else out.
The two tre radius that he had decided upon had saved him not once, but twice.
Ingolsol, in his pride, would allow no one to step into his domain.
It was his kingdom, from land to sky, not even an arrow could slip through without paying the toll.
“S-ser!” The driver stamred, as Oliver took up his seat next to him once more.
“Drive,” Oliver said, “or I will assu you to be an enemy, and I will drive in your place.
Put so speed into it too, damn you – get us out of this dank old place.” With a flick of his reins, the driver acquiesced.
It was him that the arrow ca for next.
Oliver stood and swatted it away, just as he had with the other.
He noted the accuracy and intent behind the projectile.
Whoever wielded that bow was a person of a considerable skill.
It wasn’t the sort of random volley attacks from the archers of the battlefield.
Oliver didn’t care for trying to pinpoint the man.
There was little point.
A fuss was already been made about the butcher, dead in the street.
Oliver was pleased to see at least the city-folk weren’t so dead to the world that such a thing would have been normal.
Still, he supposed the guardsn would arrive too late.
And even if they did arrive, whose side would they be on.
They rounded another corner in the tightly held together streets.
The crowd covered the road.
The driver shouted to them, hurrying them out of the way, as they continued to charge ahead.
Another arrow ca.
This one did not even manage to bridge Oliver’s two tre periter before he was swatting it down.
Yet, the crowd would not move.
They seed accustod to reckless carriage drivers, and they seed to believe that he would slow down before he hit them.
He didn’t.
Not for the first couple.
They dove out of the way.
Seeing that, those beyond in the crowd still did not seem willing to move.
Languidly, they stared at the great wooden beast, and the frothing horses that ca their way, and adjusted not a single thing about their step.
The carriage driver was forced to slow down.
He pulled the reins tight, before he killed a dozen people.
Perhaps they might have needed to slow down, but Oliver hoped that they wouldn’t co to the near dead stop that they were currently at.
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