Sasha The Assassin Part 7

“You’re alive, he isn’t, and that is all that matters.” Craggs told her. He was Sasha’s new friend at Lord Brown’s estate which had become a military base instead of a residency of a high lord. Sasha walked with the giant of a man, she figured he was over seven feet tall and didn’t want to even hazard a guess at his weight. He was always shirtless, his body had weird pock marks and scars all over his bronze torso, tales of countless battles he’d fought in the past.

“But so much of it was luck, his sword breaking, that he couldn’t bite me in the neck because I’m wearing a slave collar.” Sasha said.

“If you think it would do justice to the situation I could kill you now.” Craggs told her. He playfully threw his arm into her and she’d learned how to take the hit without being knocked over, which wasn’t easy even with the lack of force he put into the blow. “Big as I am, powers I have, still doesn’t matter. I’ve had a few fights where an inch this way or that would decide if I lived or died. The inches went my way those times, maybe not next time.”

“Why do you serve as a slave? You’re so powerful. How can Mistress Green kill you? You can’t have a collar like me since you can turn your flesh into stone.” Sasha asked him.

“Device in my head, put there when I was a child, they say the magic word and my brain explodes.” Cragg told her.

Sasha sighed. “I wish we could just steal the rings and kill our masters. You know we’re not living through the night of the assault right? They’ll never let us get near all those rings once they finally have them.” Sasha said, the despair in her voice was clear.

Craggs gave a loud laugh in reply. “Oh silly girl. You know that if you have the rings they make you a slave all the same don’t you? Oh you might be powerful and fearsome but the rings control the one who wears them, drive them mad.”

“What do you mean? I’d never heard that before.” Sasha said. She was stunned by the statement.

“You know all the Champions who wore those rings died before they even made it to age fifty. They aged so fast, the rings ate their spirit. Also they said that after enough kings died wearing them that the rings became haunted, that the dead kings would talk to the new king and tell him what to do. It’s why King Franklin died in that crowd. He planned for himself to die and for the crowd to tear at his body to get at the rings. He knew the Champions had reigned long enough that they had the army and the people behind them, the rings didn’t matter anymore, and he didn’t want his son to be damned into wearing them.” Craggs said.

“I knew they had died young, but I’d never heard about the rings being haunted.” Sasha told him.

“Oh it’s what Mistress Green tells us all the time. It’s why she’s so willing to let Lord Brown wear them and become King, because she knows the Browns will have to bear the burden of the curse while the Greens can just marry into power.” Craggs said.

Sasha shook her head. She hated Mistress Green everything about her seemed so smug. She felt like there was even more to the story than Craggs knew but his information really felt like put some things into place for her.

“They want me.” Craggs said just as Sasha felt the razors in her collar poke her neck.

“They want us you mean.” She replied to him as they headed to the command center in Lord Brown’s estate.

They made it into what had been a parlor but was now the war room where Lord Brown poured over maps and pretended he was some sort of military expert when odds were he had no idea about anything at all. Today Mistress Green was looming over his shoulder as he stared intently at a map.

“Craggs, Sasha. You know that in a week we will be launching the assault on the castle and now has come the time for your missions.” Mistress Green smiled deviously as she continued to speak. “Craggs, you’ll kill everything in your path. You’re the distraction for Sasha.” She nodded at Craggs who nodded back to her. “And you my dear will assassinate King Derrick and steal the center jewel out of his crown.”

Sasha took the news as impassively as she could. She knew that assassinating the king would be next to impossible. He was guarded by wards and talismans that would prevent Sasha from ever taking him by surprise and his personal bodyguards were armored with enchanted steel plate that would be nigh impenetrable for her weapons.

“Do not worry Sasha. The king still thinks the Greens are on his side. He believes I am a double agent that has been working all this years only to betray Lord Brown in the final hour and to hand the rings back to the Champions. The Greens build that castle, we set up the wards, we know exactly how you can get at the king without anyone stopping you. The king’s death is not what matters most, but killing him will sow chaos and confusion into the ranks of our enemies. The jewel at the center of his crown is the key to the vault that houses the final ring. Once you have it, you’ll meet us at the rendezvous point for the final assault on the vault and the gathering of the tenth ring.”

Sasha nodded. She was terrified of the fact that she wasn’t being set up to fail when it came to the murdering of King Derrick. She was supremely confident that somehow someway the Greens had in fact set all of this up to allow her to pull off this assassination. As sure as she was of that, she was sure of the fact that she would be murdered the moment she handed over the jewel, never in a million years would they allow someone as deadly as Sasha to be that close to those cursed rings.