The cobblestones behind the commoner barracks were slick with black machine grease and cold November drizzle.
Arthur walked thirty paces ahead of the sputtering gas lamps, his boots making no sound against the wet limestone flags. Under his left arm he carried a heavy bundle wrapped in waxed paper. The dense shadow-wolf thigh bone pulled out from Professor Heseltine’s sub-basement sample locker, cool to the touch and heavy with dormant stone salts. Beside him, Grimm trotted with a low, hungry stride, his midnight-black coat shedding the fine rain like polished slate. The hound’s claws clicked rhythmically against the stone, his weight centered so that his pads barely rippled the stale puddles.
A block away, the iron chimneys of the smelting plants puffed rotten-egg smoke into the low clouds, tinging the damp air with the taste of burnt matches and cold copper. The academy bells had struck three. At this hour, guard post patrols favored the high-born side three miles to the west. That left the lower alleys to the stray curs, the coal wagon drivers, and the debt guards.
Grimm suddenly stopped.
The hound didn’t raise his head. His right ear swiveled forty-five degrees toward the narrow brick cul-de-sac between two abandoned grain warehouses. A sub-heard shaking hummed through the soles of Arthur’s boots—a faint, twenty-cycle rumble originating deep within Grimm’s chest.
Through their soul-sync bond, Arthur felt the sense tracking data resolve behind his eyes. Four living heat signed names, raised heart rates between ninety and one hundred and ten beats per minute, and the high-hum whine of an electric servo motor.
“Four targets,” Arthur murmured, resting his palm on the coarse fur of Grimm’s scruff. “Two paces apart in a standard wedge. One heavy living asset in the center.”
Grimm’s amber eye flashed in the dark. The dog lowered his balance point, his hind hocks coiling like hardened carbon springs.
From the mouth of the alley emerged four men in heavy oilskin coats over split-hide armor. They wore greasy wool bandanas over their mouths and carried weighted iron shock-batons wrapped in spiral copper wire. Between the two lead guards strode an eighty-two-pound Steel-Fang Bull-Mastiff. The animal’s broad skull was wrapped in a riveted silver-steel cap. Its lower jaw had been fitted with an external high-pressure piston that hissed with steam at every panting breath. The dog’s eyes were bloodshot and dilated, leaking yellow discharge. The clear sign of cheap man-made combat stimulants injected directly into the neck-vein sheath.
“Arthur Vance,” the lead guard rasped. He tapped his shock-baton against his leather gauntlet with a sharp clack. “Senior Instructor Gregory sends his regards. He said you forgot your bunkhouse exit fee before you scurried down to the morgue. Fifty credits for the courtyard gate, and five hundred credits for insulting the honor of House Vance in the arena.”
“Gregory is losing his office composure,” Arthur replied, his voice flat and even against the drizzle. “Yesterday he sent official court guards with stamped eviction warrants. Tonight he sends gutter sweepers with second-hand scrap and an overdosed hound.”
The lead thug spat dark tobacco juice into the gutter. “Smart mouth for an orphan whose charter expires at noon. Break his shins first. Kill the black mutt and cut off its ears. The Senior Teacher wants them on his desk before the bursar opens.”
The guard unclipped the mastiff’s iron lead.
“Rip!”
The wired mastiff launched forward with a chest-rattling roar. Four steel-shod paws tore into the wet cobblestones, kicking up fans of muddy water as eighty pounds of steroid-bloated muscle sped up toward them. The high-pressure piston on its jaw hissed with high-pressure fluid. It locked its steel-capped fangs into an open strike angle.
Arthur didn’t flinch, nor did he draw the heavy dark metal blade from his belt. His voice was a calm, cold and exact murmur delivered directly into their timed together link:
“Grimm. Low slip. Sever the high-pressure return hose. Disarticulate the left tarsus.”
Grimm didn’t meet the charge head-on. The cyber-mastiff closed the distance to two paces. Then, its fangs flashing beneath the gaslight, Grimm vanished.
A ripple of displaced air wavered three feet to the left. A precise, three-meter [Shadow-Slip Stride] that left the charging beast biting empty mist.
Before the cyber-mastiff could reverse its forward driving force, Grimm materialized directly beneath its unguarded flank.
The jet-black hound pivoted on his rear hocks. It drove his heavy skull upward beneath the mastiff’s silver-steel jaw guard. His jaws opened wide, exposing dense rows of carbon-black canines. Then he clamped down with twenty-four hundred pounds of pressure of crushing pressure directly across the brass return valve beneath the mastiff’s left ear.
A sharp, metal pop echoed off the wet brick walls.
High-pressure stone oil sprayed across the cobblestones in a dark mist. The cyber-mastiff’s high-pressure piston lost all squeezing in an instant, its clockwork jaw going limp. Before the heavy beast could thrash, Grimm shifted his grip three inches downward to the left ankle joint, bracing his front paws and twisting his neck spine with explosive turning force.
A crisp, wet crunch of splintering bone cracked through the rain.
The eighty-two-pound mastiff slammed sideways onto the wet stones with a strangled whimper, its left hind leg twisted outward at an unnatural sixty-degree angle. It collapsed into the gutter. Grimm planted his front paws firmly across the dog’s ribs. His molten amber eye burned through the shadows as he pinned the thrashing animal to the flat stone slabs.
Elapsed combat time: two point one seconds.
The four guards froze mid-stride, their shock-batons trembling in their hands.
“What... What kind of monster is that?” the lead thug stammered, stepping backward.
“A beast whose skeletal levers are intact,” Arthur said softly.
He set the wrapped shadow-wolf bone against the dry brick wall. Then, with a smooth, unrushed motion, Arthur drew the ten-inch heavy dark metal stiletto from his right boot sheath, resting the weighted handle knob against his palm in an inverted razor-sharp grip.
The second guard lunged forward with a wild, two-handed downward swing of his shock-baton.
Arthur stepped forward and inward, inside the arc of the swing.
His left forearm met the thug’s wrist, redirecting the driving force upward into the rain. With a flick of his right wrist, Arthur drove the rounded steel handle knob of his stiletto directly into the forearm nerve motor point at the thug’s inner elbow.
The guard’s fingers spasmed instantly. The heavy baton clattered onto the stones. Before the man could scream, Arthur pivoted on his lead heel. He drove his boot into the man’s knee tendon. The joint buckled inward, sending the thug crashing face-first into the mud.
The third and fourth men charged at the same time from the flank.
Arthur ducked beneath the third thug’s wide level sweep, hooked his boot behind the man’s ankle. Then he drove an open-palm strike straight into the fourth thug’s solar nerve web. The moving impact forced all the air from the man’s lungs, doubling him over in violent deep-belly burst.
Arthur spun back to the third man, who was wildly scrambling to regain his footing. Then he placed the cold point of his heavy dark metal stiletto directly against the man’s right main neck blood vessel.
“Freeze,” Arthur said. His voice was lower than the sound of the falling drizzle. But it carried the total weight of a guillotine blade.
The alley went dead still.
“Drop the batons,” Arthur commanded.
The weapons clattered into the gutter.
“Empty the belt pouches. Every token, every voucher, every copper. Place them in the dry nook beneath the drainpipe.”
The lead thug, clutching his deadened elbow with a gray face, wildly fumbled at his belt with his left hand. Four greasy leather coin pouches were tossed into the brick nook.
“Who gave the order?” Arthur asked, his blade never wavering from the man’s throat. “Gregory himself, or did Assistant Bursar Malcolm draft the execution note?”
“The Senior Teacher,” the lead thug gasped. “He met with Bursar Malcolm at midnight. Malcolm drew up the seizure notice under the Abandoned Property Statute. They’re serving it at eight this morning when the bursar’s office opens. Gregory paid us fifty silvers to break your legs so you couldn’t reach the office wicket to appeal before the deed transfers to House Vance.”
Arthur held the man’s gaze for three seconds.
“Tell Gregory Vance that his fifty silvers have been reallocated to my feed budget,” Arthur said coldly. “And tell him that if I see another House Vance guard in the commoner ward, I won’t use the handle knob. I’ll sever your upper-arm plexuses with the blade. Now get up.”
Arthur stepped back, sliding the stiletto into its sheath.
The three conscious thugs scrambled to their feet, hauling their gasping friend from the mud. But as they turned to drag the whimpering bull-mastiff with them, Arthur raised his hand.
“Wait.”
Arthur walked over to the fallen war-hound. The eighty-two-pound beast shivered in the gutter, its breath coming in shallow, ragged pants. High-pressure fluid continued to seep from the burst brass valve, mixing with blood from its out-of-joint tarsus.
Arthur knelt in the puddle beside the dog. Grimm stepped back three paces, watching with calm vigilance.
“You injected this beast with raw fight-or-flight rush-three,” Arthur muttered, his fingers moving over the dog’s trembling neck. “Its pulse is one hundred and eighty. If that fluid drains into its bloodstream, the stone toxicity will cause acute renal shutdown within forty-eight hours.”
From his coat pocket, Arthur drew a small brass blood-stopping clamp and a scrap of sterile hardened rubber tubing. With two deft movements, he clamped the cut high-pressure supply line shut, halting the toxic stone leak. Then, placing his left hand firmly over the dog’s out-of-joint ankle joint, he gripped the hock with his right.
“Hold still,” Arthur whispered.
He applied forty pounds of linear traction, rotated the joint inward by twelve degrees. Then he gave a sharp, controlled pull.
A clean, dull pop sounded beneath his palms.
The out-of-joint ankle bone slipped smoothly back into its articular socket. The mastiff let out a deep, shuddering sigh of relief, its bloodshot eyes blinking slowly at Arthur through the drizzle.
Arthur stood up, wiping his wet hands on a clean linen rag from his pocket.
“Take your dog,” Arthur told the lead thug. “Pack the tarsus with cold mud and keep it off that leg for seven days. If you inject it with fight-or-flight rush-three again, its heart will rupture during its next sprint. Now take your beast and get out of my sight.”
The guards didn’t utter a single word. Two of them carefully lifted the massive mastiff between them. Meanwhile, the other two backed away into the shadows of the alley. Their boots splashed wildly through the puddles until the sound faded into the distant hum of the city chimney pipes.
Arthur turned to the brick nook, picked up the four leather pouches, and hefted them in his hand. Roughly eighty silver Vanguard tokens and thirty copper pieces—more than enough to clear their immediate supply overhead.
He picked up the wrapped shadow-wolf thigh bone from the wall.
As his hand closed around the bone, a faint pulse of warm amber light condensed before his eyes. The monospace shape of his test HUD flickered into view:
Arthur exhaled a breath of cool mist into the drizzle.
“Good work, Grimm,” Arthur said quietly. “Clean execution, minimal tissue trauma, zero wasted moving mass.”
Grimm stepped up beside him, lowered his massive head, and nudged Arthur’s forearm with his cool black nose. A low, rhythmic rumble rolled through the hound’s ribs. A contented canine purr that shook the water droplets from his whiskers.
“Come on,” Arthur said, patting the dog’s solid shoulder. “Toby is probably recalculating our funeral expenses by now. Let’s go give him something useful to balance in his ledger.”
Together, tamer and hound walked out of the dark cul-de-sac and turned toward the glowing windows of the commoner barracks.