The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (17 page)

A watchman had stepped from a door down the street. The lantern he raised did not illuminate figures, but its light wavered from metal in the hands of half a dozen men scurrying toward the altercation.
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Samlor had heard that there were local militias raised from every few blocks of the Old City. They differed from street gangs in their expressed determination to keep order and protect their enclaves—but that didn't mean it would be healthy for an outsider to fall into their hands after starting a brawl on their turf. Militiamen rarely saw the need for a trial

; when there was already a rope or a sword handy.

;„ The squad marching toward the noise from the other direction was

.^ paid to enforce the law, but the priorities of the men comprising the unit J? tended to be more personal-They were regular army, and the quicker H 'they silenced the trouble, the quicker they could get the fuck back to the H patrol station where they didn't have to worry about showers of bricks

€ and roofing tiles.

I One of the soldiers carried a lantern on a pole. The glazing was pro | tected by wire mesh, and similar metal curtains depended stiffly from the I'brims of the squad's dented helmets. They carried pole arms, halberds,

"|and short pikes, and they shuffled forward with such noisy deliberation jthat it was obvious they hoped the problem would go away without any

""Wed for them to deal with it.

Samlor was wilting enough to do that. The problem was how. Star wasn't in the street and wasn't answering him. He'd find her if he ad to wash Sanctuary away in the blood of its denizens, but first he had 3 get clear of this mess into which Fate seemed to have dropped him
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tirough no fault of his own.

Why had that clumsy, suicidal stranger attacked him? Why had the silow even accosted him?

But first, survival.

Samlor switched the dagger to his right, master hand, and dodged into

*° alley nearest him.

90 AFTERMATH

The passageway was scarcely the width of his shoulders, but a door—

strapped and studded with metal—gave onto it from the building on the other side. The Cirdonian slapped the panel as he dodged past it. Had it opened, he would have dived in and dealt with those inside in whatever fashion seemed advisable.

But he didn't expect that; and, as he expected, the door was as solid as the stone to either side of it,

The alley jogged, though Samlor didn't recall an angle from inside the Vulgar Unicorn's taproom. He slid past the facet of masonry, into an instant of pitch darkness before someone within the tavern reignited a lamp.

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There were two slit windows serving this side of the taproom. The grating still covered one, but the light silhouetted the crisp rectangle of the other from which the wickerwork had been torn since the caravan master last saw it inside Even so, the opening was too narrow to pass an adult.

Samlor's mouth opened to call, but the child in the midst of four men was already screaming, "Uncle Samlor\"

There were three of them between him and Star, packed into the pas sageway so that the child's dust-whitened garments were only a shimmer past their legs. They were the punks from the table by the door. Beyond them was a fourth man, tall and hooded, closing Star's escape route.

Light in the passageway was only the ghost filtering through the tavern windows and reflected from the filth-blackened wall opposite, but it was enough for Samlor's business. He drew the push dagger from its sheath under the back of his collar and held it so that its narrow point jutted out between the fourth and middle fingers of his left hand.

Before the caravan master could lunge into action, the hooded man stepped past the cringing Star and held his staff vertically to confront the trio of toughs. Either the hood was flapping loose or something tiny capered on the fellow's shoulder.

"What are you doing with this child?" he demanded in a clear voice.
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"Begone!"

"Hey," said the nearest thug, doubtful enough to step back and jostle a companion.

The staff glowed pale blue, a hazy color which seemed to hang in the air as the object trembled. The face beneath the hood was set with deter mination which controlled but did not eliminate the underlying fear. The staff shook because the man holding it was terrified.

Reasonably enough.

Samlor paused. If the toughs did turn away in fear of what confronted

them, he didn't want to be launched into an attack intended for their backs.

He didn't know what was going on. Sometimes you had to act anyway

—but just now, Star was out of immediate danger, so there was no point in going off half-cocked.

Something—a man, there was no damned doubt about it, but he was only a hand span tall—stood on the right shoulder of the man with the
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glowing staff. The little fellow hopped up and down, then piped, "Do not be afraid to do that in which you are right!"

A thug swore and swung his weapon at the staff.

Instead of blades or ordinary clubs, this trio of street toughs carried weighted chains which Samlor had mistaken in the tavern for items of armor or adornment when they were coiled through an epaulette loop on each youth's shoulder. Each chain was about a yard long, made up of fine links which slipped over one another like drops of water. They were polished glass-smooth and then plated for looks—silver for two of the thugs, gold for the third who now swung his weapon in a glittering arc.

Both ends of the chain were weighted by lead knobs the size of large walnuts, armed with steel spikes. The knobs were heavy enough to stun or kill but still so light that they could be directed handily and with blinding speed. A skilled man in the right situation could pulp an oppos ing knife artist, and he could do so with the sort of flashy display which on the street counted for more than success.

It was the wrong weapon for an alleyway which even at its widest point was straighter than the span of the chain fully extended, but the hooded man seemed to have no idea of how to defend himself. The weighted end of the chain wrapped itself tight against the staff—it clacked like wood, despite the glow which suggested it was of some eerie material—and the tough jerked it toward him.

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The hopping manikin disappeared with a high-pitched shriek of terror. The hooded man staggered forward, managing to keep a hold on his staff only by lurching toward the punk whose weapon had snatched it. The blue glow was snuffed out as if the gold-plated chain had strangled the life from the wood.

The hooded man was a magician, had to be with his staff and capering manikin. Samlor—and probably the street toughs as well, though psy chotic pride ruled the actions of their leader—expected magical retribu tion for the attack. A thunderbolt might shatter them, or icy needles from nowhere might lace their bodies into bloody sieves.

Nothing happened except that the leading thug gripped his opponent by the throat and shouted, "Finish 'im, dungbrains!" to his fellows as the victim struggled to free his chain-wrapped staff.

92 AFTERMATH

The caravan master waded in to do the job that magic wouldn't take care of after all.

One of the three youths hung a half step behind his fellows. Samlor punched the base of his skull left-handed. The steel cap concealed be neath the bright bandanna rapped the knuckle of the Cirdonian's index
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finger, but the bodkin point of Samlor's push dagger plunged in to its full length.

The youth turned and cried out, pulling clear of the two-inch blade that left a trickle of gore crawling toward the collar of his studded vest. He'd been spinning his chain between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, waiting for an opening to slap the weight into the hooded man. One of the balls gouged Samlor's thigh, but that was accident rather than deliberate counterattack.

The youth dropped his weapon and stumbled off down the alleyway, kicked in passing by the man still struggling for his staff-Star flattened herself against the wall to let him go. Her eyes and the white swirl in her hair were pools of reflected light as she stared at her uncle.

Samlor cut at the neck of the next thug with the watermarked dagger while drops of blood still winked in the air as they flew from the neck of his first target. The hilt of the unfamiliar weapon was slimmer in his hand than the knife he'd left in the corpse, but the blade's relative point heaviness gave heft to the slashing blow. The youth got his left arm up in time to block the edge with his forearm while his leader sprayed curses and tried to clear his chain from the staff which now held it rather than the reverse.

There wasn't enough hilt for Samlor's hands. The shock threatened to jar the knife away from him as the blade sank deep into the leading
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armbone and cracked it through as the Cirdonian twisted. The youth squealed in hopeless panic, but luck or practice spun one end of his weighted chain in a loop around the weapon that had crippled him.

Samlor punched the tough in the chest lefMianded, then jerked down on the butt of his coffin-hiked dagger. The youth's leather vest was sewn with flat metal washers; the narrow point in Samlor's left hand scratched across the face of one before it sank deep enough into unprotected flesh to prick a lung.

Whether or not the metal in the dagger blade had spelled Samlor a warning, it served well enough for a fighting knife. At the Cirdonian's swift tug, the edges sawed through the silvered chain and freed them selves. The severed knob spun to the muck on the alley's cobblestones with its bit of attached chain twitching like a lizard's tail.

The thug lost his footing and fell backward. He should have tangled himself with his leader, but the youth with the gilded chain danced clear.

On his toes, buttocks flattening against the tavern wall as his fellow sprawled beneath him, he whirled a spiked knob at Samlor in a down ward arc that split the difference between vertical and horizontal.

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The stranger's hood had flopped back and his cape was twisted so that its broach closure was at his left shoulder instead of his throat. When the street tough dropped him to deal with Samlor, the man raised a hand and began to stutter words in a language the caravan master did not know. As the spike chain spun at Samlor's skull in a curve as dangerous as a sword stroke, the stranger stopped talking and prodded the youth be tween the shoulders with his staff Samlor dodged back to avoid the spikes, forgetting the bulge in the wall behind that rocked him to a halt. The knob sparked across the stone and tore the Cirdonian's left ear as the youth tried to recover from the push that sent him off balance.

He didn't get the chance,

The youth wore a necklace strung with the protective charms of at least a dozen faiths, and the front of his vest was strengthened with gilt and silvered studs. None of that helped him when Samlor stabbed up ward from the groin level. While the punk thrashed like a gigged frog on the twelve-inch blade, the caravan master punched him repeatedly with the push dagger, aiming at the base of the jaw just below the bandanna and the steel cap it covered.

The youth collapsed. His eyes were open and his lungs were still work ing well enough to form bubbles in the blood that drooled from the comer of his mouth. A mixture of body fluids and digestive products
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followed the blade of the long knife as Samlor withdrew it. Their foetor was briefly noticeable even in this alley.

He was probably fourteen years old or so. He looked younger, but bad diet pinched and stunted the faces of those bom here into permanent childhood,

"Now the others," chirped a little voice. "Do not kill a snake and leave its tail!"

The caravan master was on his knees. He did not recall closing his eyes, but he opened them now. The man with the staff was on his feet again and straightening his disordered cape. The manikin was back on his shoulder, strutting proudly with hands on hips.

"You," said Samlor very distinctly. "Shit it in or you'll join 'em."

The little figure yelped and disappeared again.

Samlor, Star, and the stranger were alone with the dying youth. The other two toughs had disappeared down the alley, and no one else seemed to have entered the passage behind the caravan master. There were voices

94 AFTERMATH

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from within the taproom, deep and hectoring, but Samlor didn't care enough to try to understand the words.

His niece, shivering also, minced over to him without looking down and put her arms around Samlor's shoulder. "I'm sorry you hurt your ear, uncle," she said in a voice that trembled with the child's attempts to control it. "I shouldn't have—"

She hugged him harder. "But I thought I could climb up from the bench when it was dark and I didn 't know where you were—" Her words tumbled out like flotsam in the current of the sobs wracking her little body.