The Shai Qadi Ninja I

Constantine fumed. And it wasn't the heat.
For when he had, at last, found Duke Scalax... ha. He remembered it well. He and that hideous would-be ally of his, Kantor, the Nimble Mind, had strode triumphantly into Scalax's command pavilion.
“I am,” Constantine had declared, grandiosely, “the man who brings you Tyrenea.”
“Out.” Scalax had said to Kantor. “I don't care what message of world-shatteringly revolutionary importance you bring, it can wait until I've dealt with this moron.”
“Moron, sir?!”
“How did you do it?” Scalax asked, curtly, and Constantine had explained – slightly nonplussed – how he'd gotten to Tyrene, been captured, and had been on his way to the headsman's block when the people of the city, already annoyed at their being neutral in the Dragon War, had rioted at the prospect of executing Lanciars.
"The Tyreneans are an Akaric people, like us - " he had explained.
"I know that." Scalax had interrupted, frigidly.
"Well, there was this ethnic solidarity movement going on – helped by the corruption in the Patriarchal government. They took over the city – well, the Patriarch gave it to them – and sent me, along with four thousand Tyrenean soldiers as a gesture of goodwill, to ask you to install a native Lanciarial government in the city."
"So you survived by luck."
"Well - "
"Lanciar Constantine, through your reckless foolishness, you could have lost your own life, the lives of ninety of your comrades, and you could have brought the wrath of Tyrenea down on us, leaving us fighting a two-front war!" Scalax slammed his fist into the table, jumping all the cups and inkpots on it. "I should have you farming some bog back home for the rest of your life!"
"Sir, with all - "
"SILENCE!!!" Scalax bellowed. "I don't care whether or not you succeeded. Luckily for you, the rest of the command does – I cannot even strip you of your rank. But I can do this."
And that was how Constantine had ended up in southern Lannding, while the main force moved towards Lanndar, searching for a phantom.
Oh, the Shai Qadi Ninja – as this phantom called himself – was fearsome enough, and the stories circulating about this creature would turn a grown man's stomach, but he was only one man. Why Constantine had been given ten Cataphracts and sent off into the wilderness for one man... He balled his fists unconsciously.
Further north, close to the Urglenn Mountains where the sly little Ersian folk made their homes, Lannding was reasonably fertile, but the landscape that Constantine and his ten Cataphracts pushed their horses through was a dry dustbowl of a place, the dirt beneath their feet too fine even to achieve the status of sand. Blasted, sun-cracked orange cliffs loomed on either side of the ravine through which they passed; the sun, red like a bloody mouth, dribbled its glare on the shattered landscape. To the left, the vast plateau and sun-scorched peak of Barrowmount, Grave of Cities, loomed: not even the Shai Qadi folk of the desert would go near the mountain. There was common sense in that, of course – the mountain was tall, treacherous, and uninhabitable except by rock wyrms and the like – but there was an element of superstition as well.
Constantine felt inclined to note an element of superstition in the existence of the Shai Qadi Ninja also.
"Where did the last villagers say they'd seen him?"
"They said he headed this way, sir."
"Well, I don't see him..."
"That's only because I don't want you to, Lanciar."
There he was. Right in front of them, standing on a rock, black-blue robes rippling in a sudden wind, hand on his scimitar, face wreathed in black.
I hate it when bad guys do that, Constantine thought.
"I imagine you are the Shai Qadi Ninja." Constantine remarked. "Are the stories about you true?" Behind him, he heard the soft whirr and woody wrenching of gastraphetes being prepared to fire.
"I call myself the Shai Qadi Ninja, true. You are called Constantine. You are a Decanus among the Lanciars and you recently captured Tyrenea."
I hate it when bad guys do that too.
"Mr... aah, Ninja, I am placing you under arrest by the authority of the Archduchy of Akar and Tyrenea on charges of membership of the illegal Blue Dragon organisation, assault, rape - "
"Spare me." The man jumped down from the rock and strode towards Constantine. "You are a man of great potential, Constantine of Akar, and my goddess Benet would ardently desire your service."
"What are you talking about? Benet is my goddess."
"The other Benet, Constantine, the other Benet. The one whose servitors are the Amen Ur, whose home is the hellish city of Delirium, and whose worship the Blue Dragons have taken up, Constantine. Membership of the Amenurites is very exclusive, Constantine. Had I the choice, you would be dead right now. But I was, aah, obliged to offer you ingress."
"Rubbish!" Constantine snorted. "I don't want to get into your damn cult. Lanciars, kill him."
That was when everything went wrong.
The rocks came alive. Blue-robed men with composite bows, like the Shai Qadi Ninja save that their faces, lined and brown, were visible, popped up from the canyon all around. And I hate when bad guys do that too, Constantine thought irately. But these were Shai Qadis, longtime allies of Akar.
"Shai Qadi people!" he shouted, holding his hands up and ignoring the Ninja.
"Kill them." the Ninja ordered dismissively in Salkiri. "But leave the leader for me."
A few gastraphetes bolts spat out wildly, someone cursed in Salkiri. There was a whirring sound and a chorus of grunts.
When Constantine turned around, all his Lanciars were dead.
"You should have accepted my offer!" the Shai Qadi Ninja bellowed -
- and stepped back as Constantine's sword snicked through the air where his head had been moments before.
"Come here, you coward!" Constantine roared in turn, his sword held out in front of him, shield forgotten by his side. The black-robed bandit considered for a moment.
"Feather him." he ordered.
One arrow took Constantine in the shoulder, another in the leg, and a third in the small of his back. He jerked forward, his helmet concealing the widening of his eyes as the pain kicked in.
The bandit sauntered forward and kicked the Lanciar off his feet. Constantine hit the ground, rolled over, snapping the arrow in his back. The sun burned down on him until the Shai Qadi Ninja's shadow shaded him.
"You've wasted your first chance." he whispered. "Live and reconsider." Then he was gone.
Constantine gritted his teeth, moaning in the dry dust of Lannding. There would be hell to pay for this, he vowed.
Or rather, hell would pay for this.