Daemon

the background, and the menu listing went away. Sebeck right-clicked on the guard out of curiosity. Another list appeared:
    Attack …
    Guard me
    Guard this place
    Leave me
    Sebeck selected
Attack
… When he did so, the mouse cursor started trailing a red line from it, with a fixed point leading from the guard. The game was apparently asking him to select the target. Sebeck clicked smack dab in the expectant face of the bearded merchant.
    An echoing shout went up in the room as not just one but all the guards pulled swords and came screaming toward the merchant.
    The man’s face actually registered fear. ‘No! To me! To me!’
    Sebeck’s warriors converged on the men and started hacking them with swords. Animated blood spattered the floor as the merchants tried to flee. Sebeck’s warriors hemmed them in. The merchants shrieked pitiably. That’s when Sebeck heard pounding on the front doors. A couple of his guards peeled off just in time to meet a dozen swordsmen in what looked to be chain mail. They burst into the foyer screaming like banshees and rushed to the merchants’ defense.
    A general alarm bell went up in the house. Shouts were heard all around. ‘We’re under attack!’
    Sebeck muttered into the phone. ‘Oh shit …’
    ‘Why are those swordsmen running into the villa?’
    ‘Okay, I may have fucked up here.’
    ‘Damnit, Pete, you couldn’t get out your front door without causing a brawl?’
    ‘It’s under control.’ Sebeck was trying to remember the command to get a sword into his hand. This character was incredibly confusing. There was so much to choose from – too much. Suddenly a wild-haired swordsman was on him, screaming and swinging like a maniac. ‘Uh-oh.’
    More of Sebeck’s men were coming in from the wings, but not enough. Already some of his men lay dead. The merchants had good bodyguards, and they were moving out the door under close protection now.
    The bearded one looked back and pointed to Sebeck. ‘I will have vengeance upon you!’
    Sebeck muttered into his headset. ‘Yeah, yeah …’
    Suddenly the merchant jerked and dropped to the ground with a black arrow in his back. His two bodyguards scanned the terrain outside, and one of them suddenly dropped dead as well. The remaining guard ran for the road.
    A horn sounded, and the merchant’s men-at-arms retreated, bringing the surviving younger merchant along with them. As they made their way through the doorway, another black arrow appeared in the younger merchant’s forehead, and he, too, pitched forward, dead. The remaining men-at-arms scattered, running through the gardens and over the low hedgerows. Sebeck’s four or five remaining guards gave chase. One of them turned back in the doorway and shouted to a servant. ‘Summon the town watch!’ Then he was gone. The servant ran off through the villa shouting, ‘The watch! The watch!’
    In a moment Sebeck stood alone among the dead. On closer inspection, some were groaning and twitching, obviously injured. This was frighteningly detailed. Sebeck scanned the room, hitting the arrow keys to move about.
    He almost jumped out of his digital skin when he turned to see a fearsome-looking hooded assassin appear out of thin air a foot from his face.
    Ross’s voice came over the phone. ‘Boo.’
    ‘Stop screwing around.’ Sebeck noticed that this avatar was different from the ones he’d seen so far – a glowing call-out box hovered over its head. The box was labeled
‘Entro-P’
and a series of green bars were stacked up to the left of it, like a graph. It was a ninja with a floating name tag. ‘Who are you supposed to be?’
    ‘You really screwed things up, you know that?’
    ‘I don’t remember you teaching me how to play this game.’
    ‘I plead guilty. I just didn’t think your first instinct would be to attack an unarmed old man.’
    ‘He was annoying me.’
    ‘Okay, a little tip: everything has consequences in this world– as in the real one. See the dead merchant on the floor? That’s the patriarch of the House of Peduin and a leading merchant. He had many friends, and he provided the local nobility with much of their liquidity – i.e., cash. This is an agrarian society, so cold hard cash is hard to come by. Even my character has used his services.’
    ‘
You’re
the one who killed him.’
    ‘But I wasn’t seen trying to kill him. See how that works? Just like the real world. Once you ordered your men to kill him, it was important to slay all