The Heavenly Lord’s Ambassador. A Kingdom Like No Other. Book 1. Андрей Кочетков

Mickay stuck his dagger in his belt, wiped his hands on his bright green shirt, and then…

      If Vordius had been alone, he would have tried to calculate the consequences, assess the risks, and come up with a rough plan of action. But now, his instinct to protect those weaker than himself took over. He grabbed the sputtering oil lamp and threw the oil in the thug’s face. The effect was immediate, but without a light, neither side could see what was going on in the melee.

      Moving in on the cries of the burned man, Vordius grabbed him and wrestled the dagger from his belt. A few blows later, there was one less ruffian in the cell. The others were fighting all around him, and it sounded like they were fighting each other.

      “Fenia crawl to the wall!” Vordius cried. He immediately realized that he had given away his location.

      Following his intuition, he dodged left and barely missed a club aimed at his head. Crouching, he slashed at the shadows around him, crying “I’ll kill all you pigs! I’ll slash you into belt leather!” Someone screamed and began cursing like a sailor. An instant later, the door opened and one of the ruffians called for help. As the door slammed open, it let the deem light of the torches from the corridor in. Out of shock or fear, he didn’t know himself, Vordius started to feel or even sort of see the things around him: the silhouettes in the twinkling light of the candle, trembling in the stream of air from the door, and the shades of fire on the walls.

      Expecting a crowd of the thugs to swarm into the cell any minute, Vordius made a terrible mistake: he threw his newfound dagger at the man in the doorway. The knife wasn’t meant for such use, and it hit the man handle-first. The Heavenly Deity, though, was on his side, and the knife handle somehow landed squarely on the back of the man’s head. He fell to the ground, his large body blocking the doorway.

      Stunned by his luck, Vordius almost got hit by the third ruffian. He grabbed the man’s club at the last second, but the man let go of it and head-butted him in the face. Vordius saw stars and lost contact with reality for an instant, during which the thug threw him to the grown, sat on his chest and started beating him with his fists. He only got in a few blows before Fenia, silent as an owl, grabbed his hair in her left hand and, with her right, drove a dagger into his neck.

      “Can you walk?” she asked the guardsman, who was sprawled on the floor.

      “Of course!” he said cheerily, but he had a hard time getting up. He felt like there was a hive of bees buzzing in his head. His legs gave out and he grabbed the young woman’s shoulder, almost causing her to fall.

      “You’re in bad shape! Where’s Sorgius?”

      “Over here!” came a voice at the other end of the strip of light from the doorway. The little Vuravian was crouching by the wall with his arms over his head. “Is it all over?”

      “Let’s go, may the Shadow take both of you!” the young woman said with a scowl.

      “Of course! I’m running already!” Sorgius replied, tripping over the fourth ruffian, who was crawling across the floor with one hand covering a wound in his side. Sorgius hitched up his wide pants and kicked the man hard in the face. The ruffian cried out and started crawling in the other direction.

      “Get moving, fearless leader!” hissed Vordius, cursing his own slow-moving body. Then he turned to the girl. “Let’s make for the river!” He pushed aside the body in the doorway.

      They found the exit to the landing quickly. Gripped by fear, Vordius imagined a horde of cutthroats drawn by the sound of fighting, but the storehouses on the landing were abandoned and empty. Soon, however, they heard voices and saw flickering lights behind them. They would be foolish to expect miracles.

      “We have to find a boat!” Vordius commanded. “Fenia, you look to the left. I’ll look to the right. Sorgius, find some oars!”

      “Yes, Enel nicor!” grumbled Sorgius. He turned his head this way and that and dove into an old storeroom set back from the water.

      “Where in the shadows are you going?” cursed the guardsman.

      Sorgius didn’t even turn around.

      Vordius clutched his head. Their enemies were getting closer, and he knew he didn’t have enough time to get them all safely away in a boat. A wave of nausea hit him, and something was pounding inside his left temple.

      “I found some oars. They’re heavy!” puffed the Vuravian as he ran up, holding his elegant pants up with one hand.

      Fenia cried out. When they turned to the sound of her voice, they saw her waving frantically. “Here! Here’s a boat!”

      “Did you check if it’s sound?” Vordius asked as he jumped in. In the next instant, he realized she had already untied the rowboat from the dock. It buckled and slid away from the bank.

      “What about me? You forgot me!” Sorgius cried out, standing on the bank with an oar under each arm. He turned around and saw the first of their enemies running down the landing.

      “Jump, you fool!” Vordius screamed with all the love he had for his friend. He couldn’t imagine losing him so stupidly, right when they were about to triumph over some of the capital’s most hardened criminals.

      Spurred on by this wise counsel, Sorgius, who was out of his mind with fear, made a pitiful face and leaped as far as he could – which wasn’t quite far enough. His oars almost knocked Vordius into the next life, but the guardsman managed to dodge the blow and grab hold of them, leaving Sorgius suspended above the water.

      “Give me the oars! I need to row!”

      “What am I supposed to hold onto?”

      “Grab the stern, you clown!”

      Fenia tried to help the ridiculous pair, stepping gingerly in their direction with an outstretched hand, but her added weight made the stern too heavy.

      “Get back to the bow! Just sit tight and don’t move!” Vordius groaned weakly. He was praying that the ruffians weren’t armed with multi-shooters, and that there weren’t any other rowboats in the vicinity, and – for good measure – that he and his friends could just vanish into thin air. The way things were going, he feared they could all end up dead without any help from their enemies.

      Sorgius finally let go of the oars, and Vordius quickly put them to good use.

      “Hold on, do you hear me?” he ordered his friend, who was being dragged along behind the boat like a log. “Once I put some distance between us and them, I’ll help you get in. Don’t do it yourself. You’ll just turn us over!”

      It was difficult to pick up speed with Sorgius holding on to the stern, but the friends had taken the only sound boat in the area. They did not know that, however, so Vordius pulled for the middle of the river where it was dark and he could rest a little.

      “Give me your hand and crawl in slowly,” he said as he hauled his friend into the boat. “It’s so dark out here I can’t see a thing!” With Sorgius finally in the boat, Vordius let out a sigh and lay down in the bottom. “Praise the Heavenly Deity, we’re all alive!”

      “Watch where you put your feet. You aren’t the only one in this boat!” Fenia reminded him from somewhere in the dark.

      “Ah, our redheaded beauty. How could I forget? Is that all you want to say, my dear? Don’t you have any gratitude?”

      “You need my gratitude like the Heavenly Deity needs a torch,” the girl said with a cynical laugh. “You wanted to ask me about your friend, is that right?”

      “I believe we already asked,” Vordius shot back. “Now tell us everything you know. We’re listening most attentively.”

      “Let me get my pants off first. They’re full of water and I need to wring them out,” Sorgius broke in.

      “I don’t care if you dance naked, just keep your mouth shut!” Vordius growled.

      Fenia tittered in the dark.

      “Don’t