Den of Thieves. David Chandler
“Oh? Truly, you would have gone away and never returned?”
Sir Croy was not a man for deep thoughts or meditations on the future. He pondered this for a moment, then smiled. “I would have whipped the barbarians in six months. Then I could have come back here with a clear conscience.”
Vry rubbed at his eyes with one hand. “Croy, please, for once in your life try to be realistic. Whatever quest is driving you this time won’t let you stay away. Yet Tarness cannot allow you inside the city walls. You know things he wishes kept secret. I know you would never betray him, but there’s always the chance someone would get the information out of you—if not by torture, then by wizardry. Banishing you the first time was an act of great mercy on his part, and it will not be repeated.”
“I understand. Well, I forgive you old friend. We serve the same masters, you and I, and perhaps you are simply more loyal than me. That’s hardly a quality to be condemned. Now, if you must—obey your orders.” Croy lifted his chin and straightened his back. If he was going to die he would do so with proper posture.
“Noble as you ever were,” Vry said, “and just as stupid.” He started to pull the lever.
His hand was stayed, however, at the last possible moment. There was a flash of light that was instantly swallowed up by a thick cloud of yellow smoke. Croy’s lungs filled and he was overwhelmed by a powerful reek of rotten eggs that made him gag and cough. He tried to stay upright and maintain his composure but the stench was just too great. He worried he might vomit—not exactly what the people would expect of a knight of the realm, not in public—
“Hold still, you freakishly large livestock copulator,” someone hissed in the midst of the yellow cloud. The noose was lifted away from his throat, then a knife cut through the rope holding Croy’s hands together. Small hands pushed him from behind. He went staggering forward and over the edge of the gallows platform. It was all he could do to land on his feet. Down at ground level the yellow smoke was rarefied and he could breathe again, but still he could see nothing.
Fortunately a figure with a cloth across its face was there to guide him. He was dimly aware that the figure was only about four feet tall. A child? Some magical sprite, with the appearance of a child?
“Stop standing there manipulating yourself in an erotic fashion. We don’t have much time before the feces-smelling watch is upon us!”
Ah. No child. There was only one sort of creature in the world with such a vulgar tongue, yet such an academic grasp of human language. “Murdlin?” Croy asked. “Is that you?”
“It won’t be either of us in a moment, if we’re both dead as horse urine!”
They wasted no more time. Using the melee as cover, the man and the dwarf hurried out of the square. Once they were clear of the yellow smoke, Croy was able to understand why Murdlin had covered his face with cloth. It must have filtered out the worst of the stinking smoke and allowed the dwarf to breathe easy even in its midst. Was there no end to the cleverness of the diminutive folk?
“Murdlin, I am deep in your debt now,” Croy said as he was led around a corner into Greenhall Street.
“Considering what you did for the dwarf king’s daughter, the debt is crossed out,” Murdlin told him.
“I only did my duty, as bid by my king,” Croy pointed out. A year earlier the dwarf princess had been traveling to Helstrow, to be received at the royal court of Skrae. Along the way she’d been abducted by bandits who intended to hold her for ransom. Croy had spent six weeks tracking the bandits down and eventually rescued the princess. The dwarf king offered him anything he desired—steel, gold, even the princess in marriage—but Croy had never considered there might be a reward. A crime was committed, and someone had to put it right, that was all.
Clearly Murdlin felt some recompense was still owed.
“This way, most hurriedly, like a rabbit making love,” Murdlin called.
Even as they dashed across the cobblestones, a wagon full of hay pulled up beside them. The driver was a dwarf with a hood pulled low across his face to keep out the sun. The wagon rolled to a stop as soon as it reached them.
“By the Lady, you work fast,” Croy said.
“The moment I realized it was you on the gallows, I knew what course things must take. I sent one of my servants at once to fetch this conveyance. Now please, get into this body-odor stinking hay. It will hide you from view. The wagon will take you outside the walls. By the time you arrive I’ll have a horse waiting for you, so you may run off like a goblin that has fouled its own pants.”
“You make escape sound less sweet that I would have thought it an hour ago,” Croy admitted.
“It’s only a figure of speech. A common expression in my first language,” Murdlin told him. “I am taking a great risk doing this, Croy. Now, please! Into the hay that itches like pubic lice.”
Croy rubbed at his chafed wrists. Then he started walking backward, away from the dwarf, almost breaking into a run. “You have my eternal thanks, envoy. But I’ve work to do yet, here in the Free City. My lady is still enslaved. What is freedom to me when she is in chains? Fare thee well!”
The dwarf cursed him and shook his small fists in the air, but Croy was already on his way, turning a corner into Brasenose Street and back into danger.
Just the way he liked it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For a while Malden’s world was only a terrible ringing, as if a bell were struck right next to his ear, and darkness, a kind of darkness that hurt. He could feel his body being moved about, but only from a distance, as if he were watching some other poor bastard being carted around. The pain he felt made no sense, really, and he kept probing at it with mental fingers, trying to remember what had happened.
Eventually he heard sounds over the ringing in his head. Gasps and shouts, and then the shriek of chairs being pulled back. His poor body was dumped without ceremony on a flat surface, and suddenly he rushed back into it, though that just made things hurt more. Gradually he managed to tease out voices from the noise all around him.
“—might have killed him with a punch like that. And we’d be back where we started. You really ought to learn some discipline.”
“What? That little tap? I’ve hit flies harder than that. Look, he’s already waking up. I couldn’t possibly have done more than jiggled his brains a bit.”
The voices were vaguely familiar. Malden couldn’t quite place them, though. He was having a lot of trouble stringing thoughts together, even though the horrible ringing noise had faded away from his ears. He attempted to make a catalog of the things he knew for sure. He was certain, for instance, that he was lying on a very hard surface. Also, that his face hurt.
Suddenly his face hurt a very great deal.
“Oh,” he moaned. “Oh, by the Bloodgod. Oh …”
“Open your eyes now, boy,” Bikker said. “There’s a good lad.”
Malden looked around without sitting up. He was in a tavern, lit by smoking oil lamps. The few patrons present at that time of day were all staring at him. The alewife, a heavyset woman of middle age, was coming toward them with a tankard full of beer.
“Which one of you is paying for this?” she asked. “This isn’t a sickhouse.”
Slowly, Malden got his elbows under him and sat up. He had been laid out flat on a long table, a slab of oak that felt as hard as stone. It was patterned with old dark rings where tankards had overflowed, and was held together with strips of iron that dug into his back and legs.
Cythera—the tattooed woman—handed the alewife a farthing and passed the tankard to Malden. It was of the kind that had a lid on a hinge, to keep out flies, an earthenware vessel sealed at the bottom with pewter. An expensive bit of crockery. That told Malden roughly