Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

The first one, the one who had jumped right at me, was the partner of the stiff that Bolt had killed. This thug was holding a knife in his left hand and smiling.

The second one was none other than the municipal guard Yargi, this time not in his orange and black uniform but wearing civilian clothes, so I hadn’t recognized him straightaway. That meant these lads were working for the unknown servant of the Master, if one of the bribed servants of the law was here with them.

I wondered where the rest of them were.

I didn’t know the third killer. He looked tough, tanned by the winds, you might say. A wolf between two mongrel dogs. The knife in his hand kept breaking into a dance.

“Just look at the people you can meet in places like this,” Thug drawled slowly as he and his partners halted about ten paces away from me. “Now who’s this that’s taken a fancy to reading books?”

“Enough talk, we finish him and get out of here! The job’s already done!” hissed the third man, moving forward again.

“Calm down, Midge,” Thug said reassuringly. “We can kill two birds with one stone here. This is Harold.”

“That’s Harold?” said Yargi, delighted. “His head’s worth its weight in gold!”

“Yes, and now we’ll cut it off for him,” said Thug, moving toward me.

“You’re a bit braver than you used to be,” I said, curving my lips into an ugly grin. “I recall that only a few days ago you and the stiff over there took off with your heels twinkling.”

“Ah, but you don’t have the magician with you now,” Thug chuckled, tossing his knife from one hand to the other.

“Stop, let me finish him,” Yargi said, licking his thin lips and looking at me with a greedy gleam in his eyes. “Let me have a bit of fun.”

“Watch out he doesn’t finish you,” Midge chuckled, but he and Thug moved back, freeing the space for a fight. The lads had obviously decided they would like a bit of light entertainment, and they didn’t rate my humble personage’s chances at all. “Don’t drag it out, now. If anyone else comes, this place will be full of bodies.”

“Nobody’s interested in this dump. You already topped the old man, Midge. Now relax-”

“But the old man did for that friend of yours first,” Midge put in. “A real Wild Heart.”

“But you were one of them, too.”

“Shut up!” Midge barked.

A Wild Heart? Here? Could he really be a deserter? That meant the lad was even more dangerous than I’d imagined!

“Well then, thief? Shall we let the fun begin?” Yargi smiled with his jagged mouth of teeth and leapt toward me, aiming his knife at my stomach.

I dodged sideways and tried to reach him with my weapon, but failed. I had to jump toward the lantern standing on the floor and wave my knife through the air to drive Yargi well back.

“Where’s your crossbow, thief?” Thug asked in a mocking voice, but I ignored him.

Yargi moved into the attack again and we started circling round the lantern, waiting for someone to make the first inexcusable and fatal mistake.

Our knives clashed a couple of times with a repulsive clang, then they started weaving a cobweb pattern of feints and dodges, slowly but surely leading one of us to victory and the other to the grave. Steel sliced through the air and our shadows danced across the walls of bookcases and shelves.

I had to sweat a bit; the damned guard was holding his knife with the Nizin reverse grip. On the one hand that was bad-the skunk could easily shift his blade backward and forward between a cutting or a slashing blow. On the other hand, it was good, because the Nizin technique was intended for soldiers wearing armor that protected the free hand against being cut, but for anyone with just a shirt instead of chain mail and a chain-mail glove, this technique was a double-edged sword.

Whoooosh! My opponent’s knife came flying at my face. I parried, but at the last moment his weapon changed direction and I had to twist sharply to avoid being stabbed in the armpit. Yargi was a little bit unlucky, because when his blow missed its target, his inertia spun him round slightly, and I had time to strike at his left arm and jump away before he could realize what had happened. He hissed in pain as he shook his injured wrist.

“You’re not too agile, my friend.”

“Shut up. I’ll kill you!” he hissed. There were heavy drops of blood flowing off his fingers and falling to the floor.

Why strain yourself trying to reach your enemy’s stomach or neck, if you can give him deep cuts on his wrists and wait for the wounds to make him weak from loss of blood and admit him into that world that the priests assure us is blessed? Yargi also realized that he didn’t have much time left, and he came charging straight at me like a rhinoceros, trying to trick me with rapid feints. I wriggled like an eel, but I still got a slight cut on my chest.

“It’s time to stop this fairground performance and leave,” I heard someone say. Midge’s patience was almost exhausted.

“You’ll be carried out of here feetfirst, you skunk!”

When he heard me say that, Yargi hesitated for a moment, and I tore the cloak off my shoulder, flung it in his face, and immediately moved in and struck him with my knife. Thug swore viciously behind me.

Yargi dropped his knife, started to wheeze, and grabbed hold of my wrist. I pulled it free with an effort, leaving the knife behind in his belly. Harold was left without his most important and most persuasive argument.

The other two killers came for me without any more talk. I leapt back in a most inelegant manner, on the way flinging the lantern into Thug’s face and sticking my hand into my bag to feel for a magic vial. Thug caught the lantern I’d thrown at him as if it were a ball and clicked his tongue in disappointment.

I fumbled in my bag and tossed a round little bottle of poisonous-yellow liquid at Midge, but he ducked his head and the damned magical bauble smashed against one of the legs of a gigantic set of shelves loaded with books. So instead of the hired killer’s head, it was the wooden leg that dissolved into thin air.

A remarkable stroke of luck!

“Come here, Harold! Time to stop running! I’m going to slice you to ribbons!”

Meanwhile the shelves, having lost their support, started tumbling forward, straight onto the unsuspecting killers. Just one moment longer, and they both would have been crushed, but the sound of books slipping off the shelves attracted their attention. Midge dived aside, but Thug, being rather less bright, started turning round, opened his mouth wide in amazement, and was hit by the hail of tumbling tomes. Then the shelves that were missing a leg collapsed, overwhelming the man and flattening him to a pancake. His final howl was drowned out by a loud rumble.

I glanced round. Midge was nowhere to be seen. Without wasting any more time, I reclaimed my knife, wiped it on the dead man’s clothes, and put it back in its scabbard. Then I loaded my crossbow: I pulled on the lever to tighten the string and set the bolts in their firing position. Then, for extra reassurance, I put another bolt between my teeth so that if the first two missed the target I wouldn’t lose too much time reloading. Having armed myself, I began methodically withdrawing to the exit.

I forced myself not to run, although I wanted to dash through the dark rooms and out into the light as quickly as possible. But to hurry would have been to lose control of the situation and, consequently, to make myself vulnerable.

Eventually the damned bookcases and shelves came to an end and I was left facing the corridor that led to the service door. I stopped, trying to decide how best to sneak along a narrow tunnel where it was hard even to turn round, let alone engage in armed combat with a Wild Heart.