David Tallerman - Giant thief

It was another minute before he sat opposite me again. When he did so, it was with a platter of bread, cheese and dried tomatoes in one hand and a cup of wine in the other. "One of my agents," he said, by way of explanation.

That surprised me. By the time I first met Castilio Mounteban he'd gone relatively straight, having put a lucrative and notorious career in thievery behind him to concentrate on running his bar, and occasionally fencing goods or dealing in questionably legal favours on the side. I'd never known him to have anything as prestigious-sounding as agents. For the first time since I'd arrived, I wondered what I might have blundered into. Mounteban and I had always got on tolerably well, but we'd hardly been the best of friends. He owed me nothing. Completing the thought, I said, almost automatically, "I have money."

"That's good," he replied, shoving the plate and glass towards me. "No one enjoys penury. We can worry about such things later."

I nodded. Perhaps that was what he'd been waiting to hear — though the truth was that my handful of onyxes wouldn't get me far. I made a start on the bread, and then drained the wine in one long gulp.

"You had a giant with you," said Mounteban.

I started. He hadn't been joking. He really did have agents.

"He was poor company and smelled like an unwashed horse. We parted ways."

"Do you know what happened to him?"

It seemed an odd question. But I was in Mounteban's bar, eating his food and begging his protection, so I thought I'd better play along. "I left him in a haystack, beside a farm just outside of town. It seemed best for both of us."

"Really?"

"Well, for me anyway. What's this about, Mounteban?"

"Nothing we can talk about here and now. Suffice to say you're only one detail of a bigger picture."

"Not to me."

Mounteban laughed, without much humour. "Same old…" He caught himself. "We need to get you out of here. Before someone remembers you used to know me and passes that information to Moaradrid."

He stood and started once more towards the entrance. I followed. When we reached the side door through which his mysterious agent had left, he stopped to unlock it again, pushed it open, and motioned inside. I felt suddenly nervous. Nevertheless, I stepped through as instructed.

The room beyond was evidently a store, with crates and casks piled against the walls on two sides, and cluttered shelves on a third. A lantern hung from the ceiling, giving out more smoke than light. It was just sufficient for me to make out the cloaked figure stood in the farthest and darkest corner.

I heard the door slam heavily behind me.

I was wondering whether it would be more polite to greet them or to pretend I hadn't seen them — when something crashed into the back of my neck, driving me onto hands and knees.

"Hey!"

I tried to roll over, to protect myself with my arms. Fingers gripped my hair from behind, pulling my head back.

"There's no need for…"

I never finished the sentiment. The second blow sent my plummeting into cold darkness.

Thud.

I opened my eyes, and looked out through a crimson web of pain.

Thud.

Darkness, split by flickering yellow; I tried to turn my head, regretted it.

Thud.

I was lying on some kind of litter. My feet were tied to the higher end where, if I strained, I could just make out a bulky silhouette supporting it. Perhaps they'd tied me carelessly and my head had been banging for a while, or maybe I'd slipped down as we travelled. Either way, I saw no point to suffering in silence. I groaned as loudly as I could manage. The noise came back at me alarmingly in a wave of muffled echoes. We jarred to a halt, and my head bounced off the ground once more.

"He's awake." The voice was muted, though curiously piercing. I presumed it belonged to the cloaked stranger.

"It seems so." That was Mounteban, sounding less than pleased.

"Can you knock him out again?"

"I could."

"You won't?"

"I will if you think I should. It's risky. You can only hit a man on the head so many times before parts start to rattle."

"Will he make trouble? We could blindfold him."

"No trouble," I gurgled.

I'd have liked to say more, but the throbbing between my ears, the angle I was at, and a cruel dryness in my throat all conspired against it.

My feet were lowered to the ground. Steps came towards me, echoing off some hard surface, stone flags or bare rock.

"We know everything," said Mounteban, from just outside my line of sight. "You don't want to make this more difficult than it needs to be."

I wondered what it would be like to know everything. It sounded a lot of work, and I didn't envy this mysterious "we". "I don't want things to be difficult," I agreed. "Only, my head hurts."

More steps, of a lighter tread. A face loomed over mine, but only a third of it was visible beneath the folds of the hood and that third was sunk in shadow.

"He's bleeding a little. His head's been knocking on the ground." I noticed again how sharply pitched his voice was. He seemed short and slight enough to be an unusually tall child, though it was hard to judge details from the loose-hanging cloak.

"It has," I agreed. "Repeatedly."

"We could turn him the right way up."

"You could."

"Shut up, Damasco!" Mounteban sounded more exasperated than angry. "Listen, you can't make things any worse."

I wasn't sure how to take that. On the surface, it seemed promising; I'd rarely come across a situation I couldn't aggravate. Yet an edge to his voice suggested I might do better not to try this time.

The cloaked stranger said, "Raise his legs."

A moment later my feet lurched into the air, and I found myself gazing up at Mounteban's florid, cyclopean face. He gave me one glance, of irritated disdain, then turned his good eye and patch resolutely towards the ceiling. His companion busied himself in passing a length of rope beneath and around my shoulders and knotting it tight, so that now I was bound securely at both ends.

"Let's get moving."

All this while, my head had been slowly clearing. While Mounteban laboured to lower one end of my litter and haul up the other, I pondered the fact that he seemed — despite his fearsome reputation, his standing in the criminal community, his enigmatic talk of "agents" — to be following orders. This was interesting, and might be useful. I'd never known Castilio Mounteban to follow anyone, for any reason. Was I in the presence of some fearsome criminal mastermind, some new lord of the Muena Palaiyan underworld?

My head and shoulders pitched upward, and were dragged through a half circle. Then we were moving again, and all I could see was a press of shadows merging into deeper darkness, with the only light the shuddering glow of our mysterious leader's lantern from behind me.

I thought I'd worked out where we were, at least. I had an idea, anyway, though if I were right it wouldn't do me much good. Back in the day, I'd occasionally had cause to visit the ant's nest of tunnels behind Muena Palaiya. Some were remnants of the old mines, some natural passages formed by waters that had once hurtled through the blackness. A few were claimed to be the handiwork of some ancient race who'd made burrows amidst the rock. None of that had really mattered, because for as long as anyone remembered the warrens had been the refuge of smugglers, fences and other unlawful sorts, who had adapted the excavations for their own ends. It had been another of Muena Palaiya's fine secrets for those of us in the trade. I'd only ever seen the edges of it; rumour had it that the full extent reached throughout the mountains, penetrating as far as the coast and in every direction.

So if I was right I was utterly lost, with no hope of doing anything about it, even if I could somehow work myself free and escape.