{"id":76,"date":"2010-04-07T20:29:17","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T00:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=76"},"modified":"2010-04-07T20:29:17","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T00:29:17","slug":"nathan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"Nathan"},"content":{"rendered":"

A thanks to Selorian<\/a> for providing the Story Starter for this one, although I didn’t use it in the normal way.<\/p>\n

Nathan ran. He sprinted down alleyways, jumping over drunks and around waste, and yet the inexorable cloak came on. That was how Nathan thought of the man chasing him, as the ‘cloak’. A black cloak covered the pursuer’s body, and an equally dark hood rendered his face invisible. Once, as Nathan, slipped on the muck as he turned a corner, he heard the clank as a throwing dagger spun off of the wall next to him. Fear drove Nathan onwards, into the Spiral, the foetid mess of ruined buildings and ruined lives that hung at the centre of the city.<\/p>\n

Nathan had arrived in this predicament by accident. He was a thief by trade, and was scouting a merchant’s mansion when he saw the cloak leaving \u2013 by an upper story window. Knowing what that meant, the thief had dropped from his perch and taken off. Of course, Nathan had been too late, and he carried a small nick from a dagger that grazed his upper arm.<\/p>\n

Jumping over a pair of drunks rolling in the gutter, Nathan dove round a corner, feet scrabbling for purchase on the muddy streets. He was heading for one of his hideouts, one where he could slip down into the sewers and lose his pursuer in the mass of tunnels and filth. If only that blasted assassin would fall behind. But no, every time Nathan slowed going round a corner, there was the whine of a passing knife, skittering off the old plaster and brick.<\/p>\n

He wondered if he was being herded. Nathan didn’t think so, he’d been in the lead the whole way, but the cloak’s uncanny ability to keep him just in sight was beginning to wear thin. Time to do something about that. Nathan burst through the nearest door, sprinting up the stairs and out onto the roof, where he leaped to the next roof, landing hard in a roll. Gods, he was breathing hard.<\/p>\n

Chest hurting from the impact, Nathan proceeded to leap from roof to roof, zigzagging deeper into the Spiral. No knives had flown past in the last few minutes, and so he paused to look backwards. A curse fell from his lips, for only a roof behind was the cloak, marching onwards and reaching for a dagger. Throwing himself into a roll, Nathan fell down the far side of the building, catching his fingers on the edge for a moment before dropping to the alley beneath. The hard impact rolled his ankle, but this was no time for him to slow down: he was nearly at the safehouse.<\/p>\n

A few more twists and turns and dives through buildings, and Nathan was there. Slamming the door behind him, Nathan stomped on the plate that shut every opening into the building except the sewers, and down he went, ripping up the trap door and clambering down into the foetid wastes of the oldest and foulest part of the city. Nathan paused, his breath coming in great gasping bursts. He’d made it! Free of the damn cloak.<\/p>\n

A wet splash was Nathan’s only warning, and before he could turn he felt the dagger slide under his collarbone and into the artery. Nathan’s shocked glance showed only a deeper darkness moving away from him, and the thief cried out in fear and in pain, begging for someone to come help him. His pleas for help fell on deaf ears. The city bustled above as he lay bleeding in the storm drains below their feet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A thanks to Selorian for providing the Story Starter for this one, although I didn’t use it in the normal way. Nathan ran. He sprinted down alleyways, jumping over drunks and around waste, and yet the inexorable cloak came on. That was how Nathan thought of the man chasing him, as the ‘cloak’. A black […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[36,4],"tags":[19,21,29],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sRIK4-nathan","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":300,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=300","url_meta":{"origin":76,"position":0},"title":"Breaking an Empire #1","date":"October 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This marks the beginning of a 30k word short story set in The Four Part Land. It takes place 400 years in the past from the time of Tarranau and Chloddio, and details the collapse of Hymerodraeth Heula, the Empire of the Sun. The crowd roared, a rolling thunder that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Four Part Land"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":358,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=358","url_meta":{"origin":76,"position":1},"title":"Breaking an Empire #6","date":"November 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The sixth installment of a 30k word short story set in The Four Part Land. It takes place 400 years in the past from the time of Tarranau and Chloddio, and details the collapse of Hymerodraeth Heula, the Empire of the Sun. 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Each day they rose to a white plain, the only distinguishing feature the wide trail laid by the army, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tarranau"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":723,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=723","url_meta":{"origin":76,"position":3},"title":"The Journey North – Part 3","date":"June 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The next morning hardly felt like he\u2019d had any sleep at all, though, and the exhaustion stayed with Yaden all through that day, as they ascended the last of the green saddles. As they reached the crest and received their first views of the other side, a series of low\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arhosa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":213,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=213","url_meta":{"origin":76,"position":4},"title":"City of my Life","date":"August 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I walked through the city of my life, and I stopped in at the convenience store. A few moment's search found me the drugs that I wanted, and I was off again. I flew like a kite above the urban landscape, and looked down at the parks that contained my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":544,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=544","url_meta":{"origin":76,"position":5},"title":"Rupert’s Revenge","date":"August 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This story was co-written by E. P. Marcellin\u00a0for a fun little contest we came up with, and I think she did a brilliant job of it. I'd be interested if anyone could tell where one of us stopped writing and the other picked up. Rupert was affronted. His neighbours had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}