Hello.
Kind of an experiment) I made this piece of writing half a year ago, or something like that. It was in Russian initially... So, here's what came out of my attempt to translate it into English))
I beg your pardon for mistakes, I'm not a native speaker anyway... Just for fun and all that.
Original variant can be found... well, http://http://forum.tesall.ru/index.php?showtopic=3934&view=findpost&p=95399, for example.
I'd be grateful for any remarks, mistake pointings and simply for all the reviews/opinions. Hoping this can be read by a non-Russian.

UPD
Damn >_< Please, someone who's able, change the article in the topic's head.


To Kill the Sentry


“Irlin!”
Godsdamn...
“Irlin! Wake up!”
The list of the things I hate. Point one: midnight awakenings.
“Irlin, you darn guar! Get up, now!”
While opening my eyes I even seem to hear the lids squeaking. Surrounding space reluctantly grows steady, and I observe Duncan's angry physiognomy beetling over my hammock. It immediately grows mockingly pleased. Bastard.
Point two: Duncan.
“Whatta?”, I mumble, my voice wooden of still being half-awake.
“Money, Irlin! A pile of! Come on, dress up, we're waited for!”
“By Sheogorath's mom, Duncan, what money?”, I'm about to do him in. For his hand persistently shaking my shoulder, for impatience in his voice, for this enthusiasm in his eyes... Shifts from one foot to the other, dances around, just on the point of getting his ears steaming off like that centurion... “Drunk, eh?”, I ask.
“Elf, it's either you leap up at once or I pour the rainwater barrel over ya head myself!”
“Just try me...”, I get up, yawning. Pull the clothes on. He'll pour it in no time, you bet. Duncan is the most honest bastard ever, believe it or not.
“Hang on pigging out!”, he drags me away from the kettle and pulls me outdoors.
Point three: the torrential rain.
Point four: slush on the road. Feet, sticking in up to the ankle.
Point five: my house, built up at the very civilization's edge. My house, now forcing me to freeze, and to soak, and to splash through the mud, while rain and thunder, dueted dissonantly, are vainly trying to deafen the uncontended howl in my stomach. My house... I turn back to look over it... too late. It's already invisible, cloaked behind the opaque vertical watershroud. Transperent allusion of Mother Fate, sign from above: there's no way back. Curtains are dropped. Damnit.

***

The city has met me with a wry half-grin on the motionless face of the corpse, left in twenty steps away from the gates. Another lightning cut the sky in two, flashing the stab, right where the wretched one had once had his heart. A vast pool of blood on the ground made the picture look complete.
Two guardians scavenged around the body, like trying to find anything precious in his pockets – with no success apparently. I'd not be surprised if it was they who'd stabbed him out; Hlaalu, these abject hucksters, are not able to knock any plain dignity or honour into their guards' heads.
“Hey! You! Help us remove the corpse! Hundred drakes!”
He isn't talking to me, is he?
“You, in cloak! I'm talking to you!”
'Fraid of getting dirty, watchman? Not my worry anyhow...
With a habitual gesture I dive into the shade and hide behind the rain's mantle. No wish to help these carrion-eaters, even for money. I'm soaked, cold, tired and hungry, so my way lies right to my friend's place, a tavern close at hand.
Half an hour later I'm already putting away the empty plate and settling back in the chair. I'll sit for a while and go upstairs...
“Twenty five thousand drakes to each of you”, I suddenly heard somewhere from the back. Unintentionally I turned my head that way – and who would not? Two Imperials and a Bosmer didn't even seem to notice me, beign carried away with the talk.
I gave a heed... and fainted. I just couldn't ever be so lucky!

***

Points six till eight, in caps: Balmora. The major trading junction. The center of the world. City of liars, scroungers and hypocrites. City that smiles into your face and sticks a knife between your shoulder-blades - it takes only to turn back.
Just having arrived in here you wanna flee for miles away...
To the “South Wall”. The only place in this rusted settlement, where you can relax and have a rest from the infinite alertness. Duncan meets the clients only here.
Downstairs, first table to the right.
An unpresentable character with an aloof look. The client whom Duncan has already dinned into my ears. The person who is ready to pay fifty thousand for, as he says, “swift but dangerous” work. Nothing new.
“So what's the danger?”, I ask absently. Cannot calm down for some reason. Something's wrong with this fellow... something's wrong.
“There'll be a guard. The Sentry”, the last word was pronounced almost with resteem. “Very ancient and powerful creature”.
Duncan's grin grows wider.
“Friendly speaking, the longer the creature lives, the more the gossip – not the creature's power – grows. Every reteller adds, for example, a new head to it. I bet there's nothing to fear and the work is not at all so expensive...”
Duncan is the most honest bastard ever. Sets the excited client at rest. But the client is timid and superstitious like a Temple's neophyte, and hence persistent and stubborn like a cliff-racer. The Sentry. Ancient. Powerful. Fearsome. Fifty thousand is the most acceptable amount. If it were his decision, he'd give twice more, but noble lady Lintra, whom he has the honour to serve, had stated this sum.
Client's wish is our command, and that's that.
“Umm... won't you open the door for me?”, bashfully inquires the Unpresentable (he hasn't ever introduced himself) when we approach the exit.

***

I remember that day as now. Father waked us up before nightfall and, I suspect, didn't go to bed himself at all. However, it remains to surprise he had let us take a nap. That was the day he was to reach the goal of his life. Are you familiar to the sense of the cherish dream coming true? Hudreds of books, studied from cover to cover, and most of them are only fit for stoking the chimney. Crowds of polled people, and every second of them is insane. Piles of corpses, tonnes of gold... everything for a single grain of information.
We were striding through the badlands till the very evening. Having reached the place at sunset, we were raking away the obstruction till the sunrise...
When we entered, the events dashed off with frightening speed. At the end of the long tunnel, we were met by a strange man with bright-blue eyes glittering within the surrounding cold semidarkness.
“Thanks for having come”, I'll never forget this voice. Harsh, biting and lifeless, chilling to the marrow.
“Step back, my children”, triumph and awesome horror were mixed in Father's voice. “This battle is mine and mine alone”.
The fight lasts only a couple of minutes – and here's Father standing on the foe's dead body with one foot, tired, smeared with blood, breathing heavily but happy as never before.
At this moment a bright-blue lightflash illuminates the cave. I mechanically make a step aside, stumble over something and strike my head against a stone. I seem to have fallen unconcious for a second or two. I'd better not have come to myself...
A dreadful, savage picture appeared before my eyes. My father, bleeding, is slipping down the wall, and my sister... is pulling a dagger out of his briast. Gift of speech has left me simultaneously with the faith in what's happening...
“Get outta here!”, these were the last words I've heard from my sister for the last ten years. I recall some magic sphere flying up to me. I recall the numbness that fettered me. I recall how I came to my senses in Buckmoth Fort...
The same day I returned to the place but there was nothing except stones, ash and shrieveled crooked woods.

***

“Nasty place, oh nasty”, Duncan gazes around with the mix of anxiety and smouldering annoyance on his face. “I'd make off, the faster the better”.
I nod acquiescense. The place is slippery indeed. In such occasions they say that the wall are pushing you. Or – the death is in the air. It is in the air, damme! Not in literal sense, of course, there's no putrid smell. But this disgusting feeling inside...
Point nine: this cavern, lost in open Grazelands.
“Irlin, what's wrong?”, it appears that Duncan has already gone a dozen paces forward and I remain standing near the entrance.
Just having arrived in here you wanna flee for miles away...
“Nothing. Let's go”.
He shrugs and goes on, and I continue lagging ten steps behind.
A minute. Another. Duncan and our client are making forward even farther and I'm trudging it the tail. Covering the rear or so.
“Here”, I hear the Unpresentable's voice somewhere ahead.
“Here – what?”, Duncan is clearly in perplexity. “Hey! Hey, what a...”
Strange sounds, noise.
“Thanks for having come”, an unfamiliar voice at the cave's end.
Quickening my pace...

***

Having spent all magic energy and all available invisibility potions, I follow the Bosmer. Fifty thousand drakes, ha! A nice pay rise, isn't it?
He abrubtly changes the pace to the running and soon stops dead in his tracks.
“Lady Lintra, I suppose?”, he asks.
It is now or never...

***

The first thing I see is Duncan's body. The second thing I see – our client's gone. The third thing I... don't see anything, 'cause the cave suddenly gets illumined with a bright-blue flash of light and I hardly manage to shield the eyes with a hand...
“Thanks for having come”, the same voice. Death in the air. Blood runs cold.
Somehow unwillingly I retreat until setting the back against the wall. Twilight is returning gradually, and... Duncan's vanished into thin air as well! But then there is a Dumner female standing in the opposite, her sky-coloured eyes are cutting the darkness like two cold fires.
“Lady Lintra, I suppose?”, I try to save face. To no purpose, naturally.
A click, a clank, a whizz. A crossbow bolt, flying by in two inches of my ear. A blood stain, running over her stomach. A sounds of steps behind the back...
“No!”, her shout, painful, desperate, turns into abrupt sobbing. “Gods, no, please!”
A dark silhouette, omniously slowly merging from the darkness. A Dark Elf with a crossbow on the back and a sword in the hands.
“Father gave his life to that, and you betrayed him”, the air around rings of tention in resonance to his voice. “You, vile scum...”
A blade, raised for the slash. Rage, concentrated in a single movement. A clot of hatred, pain and contempt.
“Vindel”, she gushes with tears, “Vindel, you don't understand...”
The words break when the sword detaches her head from the body.
Point ten: a fountain of blood, welling out her neck.
And flash of light again.
When the light fades down, I see there's no Lintra's body anymore. The Dark Elf turn my way. A cold blue sheen in his eyes...
“Thanks for having come”.
Point eleven: the panic escape.

***

My father. The stranger he had killed that ill-fated day. My sister Lintra. The two of those Imperials. Some more unknown people. I see them all, they're with me and around me. What's happening to me?
“Son... how could this occur”, Father is shaking his head in grief. Lintra is crying on his shoulder.
“The Sentry-slayer takes its place”, smirks of the strangers, a short man with broad thick beard and with a cane in his hands. “Father's cupidity, sister's compassion and son's mad vengeance lust have just finished all the family – what a delightful thing! Hey, why so sad?”, he giggled. “Take it easy! All of you now have about an eternity to get bored of each other – both slayers and victims!”
A tactful cough is heard.
“I beg your pardon”, gives a tongue one of the Imperials (Duncan or so?). “What about my request?”
The man with a cane nods, as it seemed to me, not without some respect.
“Of course. Go ahead! But come back soon, I still have to rehide the cave”.

***

I still do not remember how I got home. I've never ever run so fast before, definitely. And I kept my breath, that's weird. What breath – I survived, and that's weird!
My first desire was to drop off, but I quickly realized I got no chance for such a pleasure. With shaking hands I opened the hidden cupboard, where there were some bottles of scuuma left...
“Hey! Irlin!”, that's the voice of... Duncan?
I turn around – precisely! Standing and smiling right into my mug. Safe and sound, dirty swine!
“Don't look at me in this way”, he even gave a neighing! “Irlin, it'll take only a minute. Open the front door, will ya?”
“Why?”, I hiccuped of surprise.
“I say open the front door!”, he continues laughing. “Wanna do me in, huh? No way, that's already done by others. So right, farewell, good luck”.
The next event was totally glaring, even for him. Duncan simply turned around and left the room. Through the wall.
That moment I felt sick for all that.
Point twelve: the swoons.
I don't know for how long I've laid outta here. And I still don't understand how I made myself go downstairs and open that thrice cursed front door. On the threshold there was a weighty bag. Money.
There was no need to count. Duncan is the most honest bastard ever, believe it or not.
Twenty five thousand drakes.

No comments for 4 weeks. So awful =D =(?