THE SHEPHERD OF EVIL EXCERPT

From the Confession

of Boyd Dykes

In the year 1363 AE

My name is Boyd Dykes, and I will soon be hung for a crime I didn’t commit.

You’ve no doubt read the papers or heard folks gossiping about my alleged killing spree. You may have me pegged as some mad dog in need of putting down, and though this is far from the truth I don’t blame you for thinking it. But I’m not a bad man. Once I’ve had a chance to explain myself I hope you will come to realize that.

I write this confession from the cramped confines of my jail cell, using a quill pen fashioned from the tail of a rakair bird-of-prey and parchment that would otherwise be used to wipe my backside. I have no choice in this matter seeing as how my guards won’t provide me with actual writing paper, but time grows short and I must finish before my big day.

My hope is to tell my side of what happened that terrible day nearly a month ago here in the town of Misery. Keep in mind that I have nothing to lose by telling the truth. I wish only to record for posterity my side of the story in the vain hope that someday my name might be cleared.

A day does not go by that I'm not visited by one or more members of this fine, upstanding community. Everyone from our mayor (gods curse his worthless hide) to gossiping old spinsters file past my cell to gawk at the monster whose bloody rampage created such chaos in their otherwise dull lives. People I've known for years, who I used to greet in passing on the street, stare at me now with a mixture of fear and hatred. Many ask the same damn question, “Why'd you do it, Boyd?” over and over again.

I never answer them. What would be the point? Say I did try to speak in my defense, to explain how I was led astray by a dark man with soulless eyes and a grin as cruel as it was charming, would they listen? No, they wouldn’t care a lick about that. It would spoil the illusion they've gone and created of me. As far as they’re concerned, I’m a heartless monster who deserves what he gets. I guess somebody has to answer for all that blood spilled, and it’s a lot easier to sacrifice an innocent man to the altar of mass hysteria if you first strip away his humanity.

Now before you go thinking I’m trying to heap all the blame on somebody else’s shoulders I'm not saying I am completely innocent of the crimes I've been accused of. I accept responsibility for my part in the events I am about to unfold for you, the reader, just not to the extent folks seem to think me capable. Whoever you are and however you came across this confession, I leave it to you to decide whether my sentence was a just one. The fate of my good name lies solely in your hands. I can only pray that those hands belong to a just and fair-minded person.

So, having gotten that out of the way, let us move on to the heart of the matter—or the “harsh realities” as folks hereabouts are fond of saying. It’s not like I don’t know why you’re bothering to read this parchment. It’s not because of me, I know that. No, you’re here because of him.

Well, I won’t keep you waiting, but a word of warning before we continue: the man you wish to meet, even if it is only in writing, is the true monster here. Death lingers behind his words, and they will seduce you as surely as they seduced me. Who knows, if you’re not careful you might find a noose of your own waiting at the end of this tale.

The day that would lead to my ruin began typically enough. I had spent the morning out at Weeping Rock, a little hill on the northeastern edge of town. It was a quiet, secluded place that I came to when I needed time to myself. The hill offered a wonderful view of the desert landscape, which spread out before me as far as the eye could see.

Not that there was much to gaze at, mind you. The desert was a barren place, made up of rock and scrub and little else. What it did provide was an escape from the drudgery of my existence. From here I could see Old Road winding through the hills and gorges, stretching from the shores of the Skala Sea in the northwest to the wall of the Elysium Empire in the far east.

I liked to imagine myself on that road, my worldly belongings on my back, a rifle slung over my shoulder or an ax hanging at my side. Where I would go I couldn't say, but anywhere was better than here. I wanted to travel and explore, maybe get into an adventure or two. I wanted to see the sprawling cities of distant lands that many a traveler had spun tales about while warming his bones by the inn's fireplace. Most of all, I wanted to lay eyes on Elysium; that great eastern civilization cut off from the rest of the world by stone walls said to stretch as high as the heavens themselves.

It was a place of endless opportunities, these travelers would say over their cups, but only if you were smart and daring enough to achieve it. A man in Elysium could rise through the ranks of the military, or, if he was most fortunate, receive divine favor from the Emperor himself.

I had dreamed of making the long and dangerous journey to that fabled kingdom since I was a child. But the shackles of responsibility and, admittedly, fear of the unknown had kept me from achieving my heart's desire. Still, dreaming was free. So here I found myself once or twice a week, staring off into the distance and imagining a time when I could strike out on my own, far from this wretched town and its people.

But look at me, going on about my dreams of far off kingdoms when I know what you’re really interested in is the dark man and the murders he would commit in my name. I only mention Weeping Rock because it is the place where I first heard the voices.

Admittedly, such confessions go a long way against proving my sanity, but these were not voices in my head. I know this because I wasn't the only one who heard them that day. There was one other, a woman whose brutal death placed me in this cell, but we’ll get to her soon enough.

When I arrived at Weeping Rock that morning, the sky was overcast with a cool breeze that promised a strong chance of rain. Now as the afternoon approached, the first rumblings of thunder sounded over the distant mountain range.

A storm was brewing, but it was still a ways off. It likely wouldn't reach us until sometime this evening. Regardless, I figured it was time to pack away my dreams and head back to town. It was nearing lunchtime and my stomach wasn’t shy about letting me know it, the rumbling of which was nearly loud enough to drown out the distant thunder.

Thoughts of roast mutton and a tankard of ale to wash it down with were foremost on my mind as I watched a wagon appear on Old Road. It was heading back from the boneyard a mile outside of town and kicking up enough dust to choke a yezbac. I couldn't make out the wagon's occupants from here, but I knew who they were all the same. The only people who had business with the dead today were Misery's undertaker, Gustav Asher, and his dimwitted assistant, Lunk.

If I left now I might be able to catch up with them on the road back to Misery and save myself a walk. I knew Asher wouldn’t mind. He would probably appreciate having someone other than Lunk, who wasn’t known for his conversational skills, to talk to for a change.

As I bent to gather the remains of my morning's picnic from under the hill's single, crooked tree I heard what I can only describe as a myriad of voices speak my name so low that I scarcely thought I heard anything at all. My skin prickled at the sound and I spun around, half-expecting to see some bizarre sight behind me, like a gaggle of witches or maybe a bevy of corpses from yonder boneyard. But I saw only the desert, its sterile landscape near-blinding in the shimmering heat of the afternoon sun.

“Hello?” I called, but no one answered me. I was alone except for Asher and his assistant, and they were too far away to have caught sight of me yet. I stood perfectly still, head bent to one side, listening, but the voices did not repeat themselves.

I figured it must have been my imagination, for the voices didn’t sound human. Granted, I had only heard—or thought I heard—my name called for an instant, but there was something eerily ghostlike in the way they had spoken. It was as if the voices were somehow displaced, neither real nor unreal, but both at the same time.

It was the wind, I decided. The approaching storm was kicking up a gale and I mistook the rustling of the tree’s branches for voices, that was all. There was nothing sinister or unearthly going on here. It was just my overactive imagination getting the better of me as usual.

I shrugged away my apprehension and, descending the hill, took Old Road back towards Misery. Along the way, I was nearly run over by a trio of cavalry scouts coming from the opposite direction. They were riding their bikes, those wheeless contraptions that hovered a foot or so off the ground by way of what the scouts called an “anti-gravity device.” The bikes boasted steel armored plating and machine guns mounted on either side of the foot controls, but this extra weight didn't seem to slow them down in the least.

I had seen the bikes move at accelerated speeds, sometimes so fast that they were nothing more than blurs against the landscape. Thankfully, these scouts weren't traveling anywhere near that fast or else I might've been smeared across the road before I knew what hit me. I had more than enough time to spot them and make room to pass, but they decided to have some fun with me by spreading out three abreast, taking up the entire road. I hugged the rim, but the scout on my end thrust out his foot as he passed by and kicked me into the mud.

“Deadlander trash!” he bellowed over his friends' laughter. They gunned their motors and the bikes took off into the distance.

“Same to you, friend,” I muttered as I stood and wiped mud off the rear of my britches. I watched the three figures disappear behind a mass of large rocks, only to reappear a second later on the other side. They were no more than specks on the horizon now, their golden armor twinkling in the sunlight.

Cavalry scouts were the elite of Elysium’s grand army, patrolling the wastes in search of land to extend the Emperor's rule upon. Loud and unruly when sober, lethal and unpredictable when drunk, they spelled trouble no matter how you looked at it.

This trio looked as if they were on their way back to Fort Brix, a fortification about a day's journey north of here. Misery was the closest town to the fort, so it was here that the scouts came when on leave or when they needed to pick up supplies. Being Elysians, they considered themselves above those of us who had made our homes in the Deadlands, and they often showed their disdain through bullying, name-calling, and, on more than one occasion, cold-blooded murder.

We Deadlanders put up with their abuse because we had no choice. Elysium was superior to us in every way, from their advanced technology to their military training and growing influence over our culture. They were conquering the Deadlands one region at a time mainly through show of force and the promise of a better life for those willing to submit to imperial rule.

Of course, there had been resistance on our part, but our armies were disorganized and undisciplined, our weapons primitive in comparison to Elysium's own superior firepower. What I didn't understand was why we were trying so hard to resist them. Maybe things would be better with Elysium in charge. It certainly couldn't be any worse than it was now.

I finished wiping the mud from my britches and was just turning back towards town when I heard a commotion behind me. I looked and saw a cloud of dust rising from the other side of the large rocks. There were yells and curses and the sound of beating hooves. Asher's wagon appeared seconds later, led by a team of out-of-control yezbacs. Asher had hold of the reins, yanking on them in every conceivable direction and calling for the four mindless beasts to stop. Lunk lay sprawled in the wagon's bed, clinging to the sides and weeping hysterically.

If I was a bigger man, a braver man, I would have grabbed hold of the lead yezbac's head as it passed by and forced it to stop, thus bringing the wagon to a halt. But I was just plain ol' gangly Boyd Dykes, skinny enough to serve as a scarecrow and ugly enough for the job twice over according to some. So all I could do was jump to one side and watch in horror as the wagon shot past me, swaying first to the left, and then to the right. I was certain the thing was going to lose a wheel or flip over, but somehow Asher managed to get his team under control and bring them to a stop.

“What happened?” I called, running to the wagon. Lunk peered at me over the rim of the bed and mumbled something unintelligible. He looked scared out of what little wits he had. Asher coughed and swatted at the dust that still hung thick in the air. He wiped sweat from his pointed red beard and smiled down at me from the driver's seat.

“Oh, hello there, Boyd.”

The pleasantness in his voice caught me by surprise. I stopped in my tracks and blinked up at him. “Are you all right?”

Asher waved away my concern. “Fine, fine. We had a run in with some scouts. They spooked my team and sent them into a panic, that's all.”

“What do you mean that's all?” I shouted. “They damn near got you killed!” The lead yezbac shook the dust from its maroon-colored fur and trumpeted its agreement through the long and flexible appendages around its mouth.

“Nonsense, I had it under control.” Asher hopped down from the driver's seat and slapped the side of the wagon where his assistant lay cowering. “Lunk! Get your useless ass down here and help me check this coffin-pusher for damages.”

Lunk uttered a low whine but did as told. He gently climbed over the side of the wagon and lowered all two-hundred-and-eighty pounds of himself onto the ground. The wagon's springs groaned and then let out a steely sigh of relief once he was out. The gigantic youth looked at me shyly with his one good eye. The other was consumed by a large tumor growing on the left side of his face. He met my gaze, quickly looked away, and went about his work.

“Need any help?” I asked Asher as he climbed under the wagon to check the axle-tree.

“Aye and many thanks,” Asher said. “Keep an eye on the gals, will you? Make sure they don't go and get spooked again.”

I nodded and carefully approached the lead yezbac, who watched me nervously from the corner of her large and lidless black eye. Speaking gently, I reached out with the utmost care and stroked the creature's shaggy snout. The yezbac shied away but then relented to my touch.

“So, what brings you out to the ol' dumping grounds?” I laughed as one of the yezbac's long appendages crept into my shirt in search of food. I pulled away but continued to rub her snout.

“The Kalb family.” Asher pried loose a small rock wedged between one of the wheels' spokes and then crawled out from under the wagon and dusted off his hands. “Husband, wife, and son. Robbed and killed by marauders while coming back from Hunter’s Ridge with supplies.”

“That's a damn shame.” I didn’t know the Kalb’s well, but they seemed like decent enough folk. They had been spending a lot of time in Hunter’s Ridge of late. I’d heard rumors that they were planning to move to the town once they raised enough kyn to buy a house there, but they should’ve known better than to travel between there and Misery without an armed escort. The roads were far too dangerous.

“'The marauders stripped them bare,” Asher said. “I had no choice but to take the cost of burial out of their hides. Literally.” He checked the brake line next. Once satisfied, he turned and shot me a wink. “You be sure to look me up now if you need a nice pair of leather boots, hear?”

“Um, thanks,” I said, “I’ll be sure to do that.”

Asher was a true entrepreneur, always on the lookout for ways to make some extra kyn. Of all the businesses in Misery, Asher's Funeral Home was the most lucrative. Not a day went by that he didn't have one or more “customers” occupying his cellar, or a fresh pair of “genuine leather boots” in his window.

“Aye, well, she seems none the worse for wear,” Asher said. He gave the wagon's side a hearty slap, climbed back up into the driver's seat, and called over his shoulder to his assistant: “Lunk! Look lively now, lad, or I'm leaving you behind!” Lunk complied at once, all but jumping into the wagon’s bed. The springs moaned, and the wagon sunk an extra foot into the soft earth. Asher smiled down at me. “Need a lift back to town, Boyd?”

“Well, if you don't mind,” I said.

“Not t'all. Hop on up, you can be my lookout.” Asher lifted a long-barrel rifle from the floor of the wagon and handed it to me. “Don't want to end up like the Kalb's now, do we?”

“No,” I said, climbing up into the passenger seat. I made sure the weapon was loaded and then chambered a round. “We don't at that.”

The lead yezbac trumpeted its agreement.

We rode back to town mostly in silence. Asher smoked his pipe and occasionally called out to his team, tugging on or snapping the reins depending on if he wanted the beasts to go faster or slower or around certain obstacles in the road. Lunk rested happily in the back, probing his nose for treasure.

I sat guard in the passenger seat, ever vigilant of my surroundings. Marauders were always a threat in this region, but the scouts mostly kept them at bay. Had I known about the Kalb family I would never have ventured outside of the town limits today.

Once we reached Misery's outskirts I handed Asher his rifle, thanked him for the ride, and hopped down from the wagon. “Not t'all, Boyd,” Asher said. “Remember now 'bout those boots. If you don't want 'em then be sure to let others know.”

He snapped the reins, cursed at his team, and continued down Misery's main street, which was just a continuation of Old Road, paved in some spots, but mostly more of the same dirt, scrub, and rocks. Lunk grinned at me from the wagon’s bed, his finger still exploring the depths of his nose.

I walked down the street with my head down. It would’ve been easier to ride all the way into town with Asher but that would have exposed me to too many onlookers, and since I had skipped work today for my little excursion out at Weeping Rock, I figured it best to remain on the discreet side. I’d had a colleague of mine inform our foreman at the mines where we worked as dredgers that I was bed-ridden with the flu. If word got around that I wasn’t as sick as I let on then I had a feeling I would be seeking a new profession before week’s end.

There was no reason for me to take the day off. I wasn't feeling ill in the least. In fact, I was feeling quite spry. A peculiar mood had settled over me, a restless longing for something of which I was unaware. All I knew was that I wanted to move about freely in the sunshine, to breathe in the open air and not the blackened stench of some eroded mine shaft.

Let me tell you a little something about Misery. I know I keep putting off what (and who) you're truly interested in reading about here, but before we get into all of that I feel it is important that I first explain to you the nature of this town and why it is that I felt the need to do the things I did to escape it. It's no secret that I loathe this place. They don’t call it Misery because it invokes feelings of hope and opportunity.

Misery sat along the border between the provinces of Zhu and Tryggr in the southern region of Gos. A mining town, its chief purpose was to extract the rare ore, guanda, from the surrounding hills. Our buyers, in turn, used guanda in the manufacturing of everything from building material and eating utensils to weapons and armor.

The owners of the mines made a fortune from this process, which meant they could afford to live wherever they pleased. Often, that was nowhere near this region, let alone the town itself. On the other hand, those of us who had to dig, haul, and process the ore, worked for a flat fee that was barely enough to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. We had no choice but to live near the mines in dwellings we built ourselves from whatever scraps of material we could scrounge together. These were often poor, ramshackle abodes with dirt floors and leaky roofs.

Those who could afford decent homes, such as our good mayor, lived on the north side of town while the middle class occupied the east and south sides. The poorer lot (myself included) found ourselves crowded together on the west side nearest the factories and smelting plant.

As I'm sure you can imagine, such living conditions proved harmful to our health. We inhaled dust from surface mining operations and black smoke spewing from the factories chimneys on a day-to-day basis. This led to severe breathing problems for many of us, especially among the children, whose still-developing lungs often weren't strong enough to fight the infections that set in. This resulted in them either being bedridden for long stretches of time or, as was more often the case, their lungs simply shut down and they died.

That was the worst of Misery, resigned for the wretched and poor, of which there were many. However, if you had the kyn and knew the right people then living here wasn’t as bad as all that. In fact, it could be downright pleasant.

The rich, or “northsiders” as they were called by the poorer lot, lived atop a large hill in homes built from the finest materials around. The hill's elevation put the northsiders above the dust and factory smoke and provided them with a bird's-eye view of the town. The rich literally looked down on the rest of Misery.

Even the middle class was pretty well off. Though not as rich as the northsiders, these folks came from good stock, often applying their smarts and natural charisma to set themselves up with cushy jobs such as school teachers, merchants, bankers, saloon owners and the like.

Had I been a member of either of these classes I might not have been so desperate to escape my life here. But I belonged to the lowest class, the pitifully poor, and as such I had no choice but to eke out my living in the very bowels of this town's wretched economy—what the upper classes referred to as “Dung Row.”

What annoyed me most about my situation was that, unlike many of my fellow westsiders, I was smart enough to understand what I was missing out on. My step-mother, an ex-teacher from Elysium before she fell on hard times, had seen to my schooling along with my step-siblings. I could read and write well enough, and even count without using my fingers and toes, but none of this was enough to allow me to rise above my lot.

So it was that I lived and worked alongside the wretchedly poor in the shadows of the factories and smelting plant, the furnaces of which burned night and day, producing great clouds of smoke so thick that a typical westsider wouldn't be able to see ten feet in front of him. The exteriors of homes were often blackened with soot, and the wheezing cough of pedestrians was a common sound in the streets, often accompanied by someone keeling over from exhaustion or just plain dropping dead.

One might ask why so many people stayed here if life was so hard. The truth is if I had an answer for that then I wouldn't be here myself. But if I had to guess, I would say that these simple, mostly illiterate folk, who tended to breed in great numbers and were all related to one another in some way, had too many ties here in town to simply pack up what scant belongings they had and strike out for parts unknown.

Of course, there were also marauding bands and goblin hordes to consider, as well as the unpredictable and often chaotic weather. The Deadlands had earned its harsh reputation on the bones of many an adventurer too stupid to know when to stay put. I suppose that is one of the reasons I remained here myself. I had been called many things in my twenty-six years, but stupid was not one of them.

These thoughts were foremost on my mind as I made my way down Misery's single, partially paved street. The sun shone dully overhead, its beams barely able to pierce the heavy blanket of smoke. My head remained lowered in a vain attempt at anonymity, and I nearly ran into a group of harvesters on their way to the mayor’s private gardens as a result.

The harvesters had likely just finished eating their lunches. They strode down the center of the street, a dozen big and brawny men with hoes slung casually over their shoulders. Several were coughing into blood-stained handkerchiefs. One had a tumor the size of an egg growing on the tip of his nose. He paused long enough to glare at me before moving on.

I muttered an “excuse me” and continued in the opposite direction. One of them yelled at me to get my head out of my ass and watch where I was going. I quickened my pace and didn’t look back. I didn’t want any trouble, especially with a bunch of bulbs like them.

“Bulb” was a local term for anyone sporting deformities like the tumor on the harvester's nose or the one that had nearly consumed the left side of Lunk's face. They were quite common hereabouts. In fact, more than half of Dung Row and a smattering of the middle class suffered from such defects.

No one could prove it, but many believed these disfigurements were due to harmful emissions from the plant and factories. These sometimes resulted in stillborn births, but often the children experienced deformities ranging from cleft palates and harelips to tumors and skin lesions.

There wasn't much being done about it, though. Without the factories, there was no town, and without a town, the people were as good as dead. So, Misery's elite had adopted a strict policy of looking the other way.

This callous disregard for the people sickened me, but it wasn't enough to put me off my appetite. Since the miners would be lined up outside the cookhouse on the far-right corner of Dung Row, I had opted instead to take my meal at the Swords Crossed Inn, which was the only other establishment in town that served food at this hour of the day.

The inn sat on the northeast side of Misery, as far from the smoke and dung as possible while remaining within town limits. Being a high-class establishment, its prices were outrages, but that was okay, I was the sole dependent of what scant earnings I made and could afford the occasional self-indulgence.

If you excluded the factories, the two-story inn was the largest building in town. It was also the most lavishly designed, what with its gabled roof and stone exterior. The windows sported real glass too, an exception to the oiled skins and wooden shutters found in most other residences.

Our mayor had dug deep into the town’s coffers to erect the building. Being a border town, Misery saw its share of travelers passing through on their way from one province to another. The inn's luxuriousness was meant to attract these wayward souls, ensuring that they spent a goodly amount of kyn on one of twenty spacious rooms, all of which were nearly as large as your average townie’s house.

As it happened, this was the off-season for travelers, so I was counting on the inn being nearly empty this early in the day. Most of the town’s respectable citizens were either in the mines or out working the gardens, preparing the harvest in time for the summer market. They would have no time for such luxuries as a mug of ale and a hand of cards. Not if they wanted to keep a roof over their families’ heads.

I passed under the inn’s gently swaying sign, the crossed swords engraving of which gave the place its name. A thick mahogany door sat deep within a giant archway. Normally it would be closed to keep out the dust, but it stood open today to admit a cool breeze blowing in from the desert. The storm would take a while to reach us, but in the meantime, it looked as if people were taking advantage of the drop in temperature to air out their homes and places of business.

The first person I saw when I stepped inside was the innkeeper, Dix Hyland, in his usual spot behind the long mahogany bar that he kept polished to a spit shine. His large belly rose and fell with each labored breath beneath an apron stained with that day’s food and drinks. A small tumor sprouted from the corner of his right eye and he wore a long mustache to cover up a nasty harelip that would have otherwise exposed far too many of his crooked, yellow teeth.

His back was to me, but he noticed my reflection in the large cracked mirror that hung behind the bar and nodded a hello. I returned the nod as I stepped farther into the room, being sure to avoid the two men who sat at the bar, talking with the innkeeper. I knew the men. In a town as small as this how could I not? They were Buck Keenly and Willem Hadar, two loudmouths who couldn’t keep a secret between them to save their lives.

They must have just come from the mines judging from the amount of mud on their boots, which they had propped up on the brass foot rails like a couple of hens come to roost. I signaled Hyland for a drink and ducked into the adjoining room, hiding my face as much as possible. The last thing I needed was for one of them to go squealing to our foreman that they had seen me hanging around the inn when I should have been in bed with the flu.

The place wasn't as deserted as I would’ve liked. There were around a dozen or so people occupying the lower levels, with gods knew how many in the rooms upstairs. I figured I'd be all right though if I kept out of sight at one of the corner tables and didn't draw attention to myself.

The taxidermic head of a yezbac named Feela stared blankly at me from the archway that divided the gambling area from the main room. I patted its shabby head for good luck as I passed by, a habit I had picked up from some of the other gamblers. I wasn't a superstitious man by any means but in a place like Misery, I figured you needed all the luck you could get.

Once on the other side of the archway, I paused long enough to give the room a good once over on the off-chance there were more miners in attendance. There were none. Only a handful of gamblers passing the time at the card tables while a couple of youths played billiards, sipped watered-down Cat’s Eye, and tried to look tough.

The town’s school teacher, Morrow Young, fidgeted nervously at a roulette wheel as he worked up the nerve to approach a sitting couch where a gaggle of doxies sat with legs spread wide in advertisement while they smoked cigarette after cigarette and gossiped among themselves.

Hyland had gathered the women from every shithole city, town, and village on the map. Most came from large but poor families looking for one less mouth to feed, others were abandoned by their men to survive however they could in these withered regions. All were illiterate, treacherous, and wily to the bone.

The innkeeper acted as their panderer. He took seventy percent of their earnings and beat them regularly to keep them in line. Rumor had it that he used some of the more cunning girls to pick off the occasional drifter for his valuables and then buried the body in the inn’s cellar or some other undisclosed location.

The truth of these rumors was suspect, and our recently departed magistrate had never felt it worth his while to investigate the matter. I’m sure the fact that Hyland kept the rest of the clientele happy and coming back year after year had something to do with it.

This was your typical afternoon crowd. Some of the faces might change, but it was, more or less, the same old boring routine; a bunch of nobodies whiling away their useless and dull lives at one of the few places in town that didn't smell like the underside of a mongrel's ass.

What was different on this day was the stranger seated at the corner table (the very one I had planned to lay low in) playing a game of Capture the Ace with an oft-drunken dreg named Vul Shadwell.

It was my first hasty glimpse of the man who would come to dominate the remaining days of my life.

If you enjoyed this excerpt then be sure to buy the book this spring, only from Wamingo Publishing.