Chronicles of Gideon Fox

Chronicles of Gideon Fox

Excerpt One: Bromon’s Well


In the heat of midsummer, Bromon’s Well always had the smell of rotten life. It was worst during the long and humid afternoons, when the stench of the marshes would waft through the alleys and thoroughfares of the once great city over beggar, merchant and guildthief alike. The whole city stank of decay and to Gideon it only seemed appropriate that the Nobles and Guild-masters with their finery would be steeped in the same rank scent of decay as those less fortunate on the streets of the Beggar’s District. Night was falling and with the cool evening air the scent of the swamp would soon fade a bit from the streets to something resembling tolerable. At first lamplight, the Bazaar of the Bizarre would be open for business.


Gideon would often come to this part of the Beggar’s District to watch the opening moments of what was probably Tyrinthia’s oldest and most widely renowned black market. The day’s last warm gust of wind whipped a mop of dark curls around his face and tugged Gideon’s ash grey cloak from bulky shoulders to reveal the thick leather of armor underneath. Gideon knew there would be a reckoning tonight and he wanted to see something familiar..


Outside of the alley, merchants of nefarious services and questionable goods scuttled to and fro with loaded pushcarts or mysterious bundles clutched close to their chests. Here one could find stolen goods for sale, or take medicine from a healer with no guild license. Faith was available from the preachers of outcast or forgotten gods and if you knew the right corner you could get a damn fine bowl of noodles for a copper and a knowing wink. Good people and bad all mingled and operated outside the pulse and pound of the regular. The have nots were all here trying to scrape out a living from underneath the feet of those who had real power, the haves and the going to gets and the keep on gettings.


Gideon was here tonight because he wanted a reminder of what it was he was trying to protect. Growing up on these mean streets he knew there were good people being ground to dust under the heel of all this so called civilization. People like his father who died a pauper and his mother who he had never known. People who either didn’t have the skill or didn’t have the desire to be a part of the system, people who just couldn’t make it that way and get in with the Guild or the Ariadans in order to get ahead. People who too often became prey for hunters of a more sinister nature than a hunting cat or a hungry wolf, the meat eaters at the top of the urban food chain. Gideon wanted a reminder that he was lucky because he was bigger and faster and stronger than the others. He was lucky that he had all his limbs and he didn’t get sick with the plagues. He was lucky that he wasn’t sold to one of the pleasure dens by age 10 and didn’t become lost in a bottle of wine by age 12 or suffer a number of the other less fortunate fates that so often happened to the children of this city. Survival in this rotten corner of the world was never easy and often full of unpleasant necessity, but Gideon knew he was lucky and he always tried to give back. Lately he’d given about all he could handle. Even to those native to the Beggar’s Quarter, there were some things so unpleasant, so dark and terrible that it could chill them to the very bone. Gideon had seen much of those things of late.


“You’ve been busy,” spoke a smooth high voice from further back in the alley.


Gideon knew the voice. It belonged to man slightly younger than himself named Karl. Karl was of average height and build, with an unremarkable face and a forgettable nest of straight brown hair. Quite boring, quite simple, quite perfect for someone who wants to be forgotten, quite perfect for an aspiring young assassin. Gideon did not turn around, but looked back across his shoulder to acknowledge Karl. “So it would seem. Is it time?”


“Soon enough it will be. It’s too bad about you leaving.” Karl seemed honestly to mean what he said. He and Gideon had entered the Assassin’s Guild as new trainees together only but a few months prior. Though they seemed to have little in common, they got along well enough as young toughs looking to make a name for themselves in the world. Training was intense and the instructors were men of the most dangerous sort. It was not 12 days since the guild had told Gideon he did not seem to have the proper determination to be given a final exam. Of course, in the Assassin’s Guild, the final exam was your first murder.


Karl spoke with a smugness that would have roused Gideon to anger had he not been feeling so numb, “They said you didn’t have what it took.”


Gideon gave that a moment’s consideration before responding with an ironic half smile. “I think they were right.”


Karl’s face pinched up as his thoughts turned more to the business at hand. “You knew Jazel wasn’t going to let you interfere with his operation. Why did you bother?”


Jazel was a mid level operator in the Thieves Guild who had been making some fast coin selling trinkets to the locals. About a month previously a small community of ghouls had begun preying on the villagers from some of the outlying ruins of the old City. It was the night Gideon had been kicked out of the Assassin’s Guild that he found one feasting on the flesh of a young girl while he was wandering the back alleys of the district. That girl had been wearing one of Jazel’s tin, “protection,” talismans. Gideon destroyed the thing and began hunting them down, one by one, in their dark dank holes. Word spread in short order and Jazel was not pleased that people would soon stop buying his protection wards and made sure Gideon knew as much through one of his thralls. Gideon’s response was less than welcoming and it seemed now that Jazel’s displeasure had provided Karl with his final exam.


With slow and deliberate movement, Karl came closer behind Gideon and spoke his farewell, all business, nothing personal. “It’s funny how things work out, Gideon. I always figured you would pass your exam before me.”


For one brief and sudden, moment Gideon spun around to face Karl, and made eye contact. For one brief second their eyes met as two men who knew one another and knew that this moment, this place in time, what was happening right now was just business, nothing personal. That moment quickly passed and Gideon continued his spinning motion to until he again faced the crowd outside the alleyway.


Karl’s eyes were wide with surprise. As the slash across his throat threw arterial spray in a high wide arc across the wall beside him, he let his hand slowly slide down with his half drawn shortsword to let it rest again in it’s sheath. With a painful slowness he dropped to his knees, and then to the ground.

“You were right, Karl, you were right.” Gideon sheathed his dagger and walked into the Bazaar with the sounds of watchman’s whistles already reporting in the square…