Gaaron picked up the longsword, feeling the balance fall just beyond the steel gold-plated hilt. “I can work with this”, he muttered. “I mean, the officer was probably a pretentious fop, but he knew a fine craftsman.”
Stormwind Guard officers paid for their swords as part of their commission, and since almost all were from noble families, they often vied for the most ostentatious show of wealth where their personal property was concerned. This sword, taken from the lifeless fingers of one of the casualties of the uprising, had caught his eye despite the serpent-scale scabbard and its lion-headed basket hilt.
Bazil Thredd had been, if not the right-hand man of Edwin VanCleef, had been his left-hand, and his capture during the riots which led to the death of Queen Tiffin had been a severe blow to the operational effectiveness of the Defias Brotherhood. His incarceration in the Stockades had been itself something of a scandal; clearly, the magistrates were as corrupt as the families from which they came. Although in theory, he was just another inmate, life inside the Stormwind Stockade had its own social hierarchy. In here, Brazil Thredd was as close as one could get to royalty. Prisoners who had money could arrange for decent food, decent clothing, and even laundry service. Someone - different people each time - met with Thredd every couple of weeks and brought him money, food, wine, pipeweed… anything outside of magic or weapons.
Gaaron snorted at the thought. He did not for a minute believe that those might not also be available, given sufficient gold. Guards always could justify looking the other way, for the right price.
Of course, Gaaron hadn’t set out to make the infamous prison his new residence. Several months earlier, Gaaron had been working for The Dockmaster out of Jerod’s Landing, as part of the lucrative smuggling route from Lakeshire in the Redridge Mountains, down the Nazferiti River to Klaven’s Tower in Westfall and back again, and his job had been crewing one of the shallow-draft barges making the run. Smuggling was not a capital crime, but since Gaaron could not afford the stiff fines attached, he was sent to the Stockades until his debt was somehow paid.
Granted, the system did not address how inmates were meant to earn the money required to pay the debt, thus being caught red-handed and poor, Gaaron earned what amounted to a life sentence. The violence and filthy conditions of the Stockades meant that a life sentence was only a few months long anyway…Unless you knew someone, which he did; the inmates of the Stockades were ruled by violence, lust, and greed, and the Defias Brotherhood ruled the inmates, and Bazil Thredd ruled the Defias Brotherhood. Gaaron’s reputation for his ruthless skill with blade and gun gained him attention. A few well-chosen “arguments”, and some well-placed “accidents”, and he now stood him in good stead as one of Thredd’s newest bodyguards.
Even then, the uprising of inmates against the Stormwind Guard establishment had taken him completely by surprise. Not being a part of the planning meant not being part of the “need to know”, and while Gaaron was as trusted as anyone in the Defias Brotherhood could have been, it was clear to him that he was still on the outside of operational security. Gaaron had been allowed a sword taken from the casualties, which lessened the immediate concern, but even though he was now armed, it still rankled that as one of Thredd’s top guys he had been left so in the dark.
“So… what happens next?” asked one of the other members of the Defias Brotherhood.
“Next? We do what the Brotherhood has always done under the greed and corruption of the Council of Nobles! We will keep our freedom until we get assurances - backed by the Cathedral of Light - that they'll give us decent food and water. That we will have access to healers of the Light when we get sick or injured. We still have some guardsmen alive; they won’t charge in here and risk them, or risk the infamy that would come with the death toll of those who would dig us out.”
Gaaron kept his face carefully neutral, almost certain that Thredd was lying. The inmates had very little food, and Warden Thelwater was unlikely to give them any more. Nobody outside the prison had any inkling that something was wrong. All it would take to cover up massive casualties would be to tell a story of a plague outbreak. He could hear the officers now, “Sorry, but we had to burn all the remains. Couldn’t risk the contagion spreading.”
It was far more likely that Thredd would wait until the guards tried to retake the prison, and sneak out in the confusion, maybe with the help of some smuggled potions of invisibility or somesuch. Gaaron could not blame him for making an escape plan, even though he was certain that such a plan did not include himself. Including Gaaron would throw off the chance of a successful escape, and what other plan could there be but one that was a guaranteed success?
He was still pondering the question some hours later when the Alliance strike team broke through the guard into Thredd’s headquarters. Brazil Thredd had two guards in addition to Gaaron. The chamber door burst inward, shattered by mystical violence. Three of the assault team charged through the door; the leader was a plate armor-clad warrior wearing the tabard of the Scarlet Crusade. The next was a Quel’dorei archer, clad in dark colors. She let fly an arrow with a stone arrowhead, glowing with green runes. The third was a Night Elf glowing with a nimbus of Shadow energy.
Thredd used his twin blades to knock the arrow aside, where it detonated with an explosion that would have torn the flesh of its intended target asunder, had it landed as intended. The Scarlet Crusader engaged Thredd, and the two of them seemed evenly matched. One of the Defias rushed the archer simultaneously, and she backpedaled before them, parrying their swords with wide sweeps of her hardwood bowshaft.
Gaaron let his sword fall to the ground in a clatter. He felt no loyalty to Thredd, given his expectation that Thredd would betray and desert Gaaron in the final circumstance. He simply had no motivation to help Thredd and the other Defias; perhaps his lack of opposition would earn him leniency.
The shadow priestess assessed Gaaron as not being an active threat, and the shock of having so misjudged Gaaron showed on her face as Gaaron’s blade came up almost of its own accord. Before she could react, Gaaron’s sword passed over her shoulder; a Defias bravo had come through the door unnoticed, and Gaaron caught his blade before it could chop through her pretty swan-like neck, then reposted the longsword’s point into the Defias’ throat. She, in turn, intoned a spell in a voice that sounded as if it had come from the crypts of the damned, and a burning sigil appeared like a brand on the foreheads of the two assailing the archer. They screamed in agony, and the archer put a pair of arrows into the belly of each of them with preternatural celerity.
The three of them had no difficulty in putting Thredd down like a mad dog, earning himself the long-delayed execution he so richly deserved.
“Thank you for your help there, fellow!” said the Scarlet Crusader before he reversed his glaive and brought it across his head.
Gaaron fell, his consciousness fading swiftly. “No good deed ever goes unpunished” flashed through his mind before everything went black.
When Gaaron came back to consciousness, his first thought was “What a comfortable bed…” before opening his eyes and realizing he was in a chamber near the entrance to the Stockades staircase from the street level.
The chamber had clearly been set up as an infirmary, and several beds were occupied by either injured guardsmen or inmates. A young human heard him stir and came to stand next to him. He wore chainmail armor, and his tabard proclaimed him to be one of the Order of the Silver Hand. He smiled at Gaaron. “Nasty little head wound, you have there. Lay back down, all is well. Let me get your attending healer.”
Gaaron lay back down; head wounds were deceptive, and could be quite serious, but aside from a residual headache, Gaaron felt perfectly fine. Still, he had no objection to spending more time warm and comfortable while he could.
It was not very long before the paladin of the Silver Hand returned with a dwarven fellow. He was bald as an egg, but the wealth of spiky black hair more than made up for any cranial lack. His skin was an unusual hue for Ironforge dwarves, who spent much of their lives out of the sun, but instead, his skin had the same color - and possibly, the same texture- of uncured leather. He was clad in black, ironically for the same type that would not be out of place by a member of the Defias Brotherhood or an agent of SI:7, Stormwind’s espionage service.
“May we have a privacy ward, young Paladin?” the dwarf asked politely of the attending medic, who nodded and cast the Warding of Confession; within the ward, one was safe to speak and think in confidence.
“Hello,” greeted the dwarf. “You are Gaaron, formerly of the Defias Brotherhood, correct?”
“Yes, I am part of the Defias Brotherhood,” Gaaron confirmed.
The dwarf chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think so… I think helping save the life of one of my agents has pretty much written an end to that chapter of your life. Still, Grail - Grail is the Scarlet Crusader who fetched you that rather nasty blow to the head, by the way - made sure that there were no witnesses who survived.”
Gaaron nodded, without understanding why the fellow had knocked him out but left Gaaron alive.
“Which brings us to my being here,” said the dwarf. “I run a group of agents, former prisoners convicted of crimes, and offer them the opportunity to earn time on their sentences by going on missions for the Alliance.”
“I don’t understand,” replied Gaaron.
“Well, the assault on the riot in the Stockade was a perfect example. All four of my team are technically prisoners, but they live in a normal small apartment between missions. They are fed, trained, and allowed their own weapons and armor and whatnot, whatever the tools of their trade require. They can even take odd jobs between missions for a little spending money. When the Alliance has a mission that is very dangerous, or too sensitive for normal forces, I send in my team to get the job done.”
“And if they fail, it is blamed on a band of known criminals,” Gaaron commented.
“Yes, all of my agents are what we call in the business as ‘deniable assets’. It's a dangerous job, but each mission reduces your sentence remaining,” said the dwarf.
“And your… agents, you called them? When their sentences are deemed to have been finished?” asked Gaaron.
“At that time, you get a full pardon. Freedom,” said the dwarf. “We lost one of our own in Stockades; if you hadn’t acted the way you had, we might have lost two. Or more. So… I have an opening on the team. Interested?”
Gaaron took a moment to weigh his options, although he did not seem to have any; if what the dwarf was saying was true, and there was such a team of convicts and criminals acting as a sort of ‘suicide squad’. Then for them to be as effective as the dwarf said, they would need to operate in total secrecy. There was an old saying “Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” What the dwarf was explicitly not saying was that if Gaaron turned down the offer, it was not likely that he’d leave this room alive; what kind of an idiot would let someone turn down a job offer to become part of an ultra-secret group of operatives and live to tell of it?
Thankfully for Gaaron, Gaaron was not an idiot. “Yes, I’d like the job.”
“Excellent!” said the dwarf. “My name is Lucius Stonehand. Welcome to the Disposable Operations Personnel Engagement team.”
“DOPE? We’re dopes?” confirmed Gaaron with a chuckle.
“Yes, you are!” confirmed his new employer.