Robert Asprin - Storm Season

"How much."

"Name it. I'll get it."

A woman who was faithful. To something. He stared at the dark, doubting all of it, standing in the den Mama Becho owned and listening to the promise of gold to get him out of it.

"Back off," he said, shoving her away, not wanting her knife in him, and he reckoned it was drawn. "I'll get my shirt. Don't make any moves. Just tell me where you reckon to look for this lost lamb."

"Riverside." She caught her breath, a moving of cloth in the dark. "That's where they turn up-the hawkmasks they murder."

He stopped, his shirt half on. He cursed himself, thought of the gold and made his mind up to it. "You'll pay for this one."

Mor-am kicked. They jerked him off his feet and carried him, battering him against some narrow passage as he struggled, with the reek of wet stone and human filth and suddenly warm and windless air. They set him on his feet again and jerked the blindfold off. The room came clear in a haze of lamplight, a cot, a ragged small man sitting on it crosslegged amid a horde of others, the human refuse of the Downwind standing and squatting about the room. Beggars. He felt hard fingers working at the knot at the back of his skull, freeing him of the gag: he choked and tried to spit out the dirty wad and the same hard fingers pried it from his mouth, but his hands they had no intention to release. They only let him stand on his own, and his knees wanted to give under him.

"Hawkmask," the man said from the bed, "my name is Moruth. Have you heard it?"

No, he said, but his tongue stuck to his mouth and muffled it. He shook his head.

"Right now," Moruth said quietly, an unpleasant voice with the accent of Sanctuary's Maze and not the Downwind, "right now you'd be thinking that you shouldn't know that name, that taking that blindfold off means you're already a dead man and we don't care.what you see. Might be. That might be. Turn around."

He stood still. His mind refused to work.

"Turn 'round."

Hands jerked him about, facing the closed door. A mask was pinned there with a heavy iron nail. Terror came over him, blank terror, image of Brannas nailed to the pole. They spun him about again facing Moruth.

"You want to live," Moruth said. "You're thinking now you'd really like to live, and that this is an awful place to die." Moruth chuckled, a dry and ugly sound. "It is. Sit down-sit down, hawkmask."

He looked, reflexively. There was nowhere. A crutch hooked his ankle and jerked. He hit the dirt floor on his side and rolled, fighting to get his knees under him.

"Let me tell you a story," Moruth said softly, "hawkmask. Let me tell you what this Jubal did. Remember? Kill a few beggars, he said, and put the informer-sign on them, so's the riffraff knows what it is to cross Jubal the slaver, ain't it so?" The accent drifted to Downwind's nasal twang. "Ain't that what he did? And he killed us, killed boys and girls that never done no hurt to him-to impress them as might want to squeal on his business. It weren't enough he offs his own, no, no, he cut the throats of mine, hawkmask. You know something about that."

He knew. He shivered. "I don't. I don't know anything about it.-Listen, listen, you want names-I can give you names; I can find out for you, only you let me out of here-"

Moruth leaned forward, arms on ragged knees, grinned and looked appallingly lean and hungry-

"I think we've got one what'll talk, doesn't we?"

Haught flinched in his concealment beneath the bridge. Screams reached him, not fright, but a crescendo of them, that was pain; and they kept on for a time. Then silence. He hugged himself and shivered. They began again, different this time, lacking distinction.

He bolted, having had enough, finding no more assurance even in the dark; and the thunder cracked and the wind skirled, blowing debris along the shore.

Of a sudden something rose up in his way, a human form in the ubiquitous rags of Downwind, but with an incongruous long blade shining pure as silver in the murk. Haught shied and dodged, ex-dancer, leapt an unexpected bit of debris and darted into the alley that offered itself, alley after alley, desperate, hearing someone whistle behind him, a signal of some kind; and then someone blocked the alley ahead.

He zigged and dodged, feinted and lost: the cloak caught, and the fastening held; he hit the wall and the ground, and a hand closed at his throat.

"Escaped slave," Moria said, crouching by the man they had knocked down. She had her knife out, aimed for the ribs; but the throat was easier and quieter, and Mradhon was in the way. "Kill him. We can't afford the noise."

"Something started him," Mradhon said. The slave babbled a language not Rankan, not Ilsigi, nothing she knew, sobbing for air. "Shut up," Mradhon said, shaking him and letting hishand from the man's throat. Mradhon said something then, the same way, and the slave stopped struggling and edged up against the wall. He talked, an urgent hiss in the gloom, and Mradhon kept the knife at his throat.

"What's that?" Moria asked, clenching her own hilt in a sweating fist. "What's that babble?"

"Keep still," Mradhon said, reached with his fist and the hilt of his knife and touched the slave gently on the side of the cheek. "Come show us, seh? Come show us the place. Fast."

"What place?" Moria demanded, shoving Mradhon's arm.

Mradhon ignored her, hauling the slave to his feet. She got up too, knife aimed, but not meaning to use it. The slave had straightened up like a human being, if a frightened one, and moved free of Mradhon's grip, travelling with lithe speed. Mradhon followed and she did, as far as the opening of the alley.

"River," the slave said, delaying there. "By the bridge."

"Move," Mradhon said.

The slave rolled his head aside, staring back at them, muttered something.

"Seh," Mradhon repeated. "Move it, man." Mradhon set an empty hand on his shoulder. The slave gave a gasp for air like a diver going under and headed down the next alley, stopping again when they reached a turning.

"Lost," the slave said, seeming to panic. "I can't remember; and there were men men with swords-and the screams-It was the house by the bridge, that one-"

"Get moving," Moria hissed frantically and jabbed him with the blade. The slave flinched, but Mradhon stayed her hand with a grip that almost broke her wrist.

"He's likely still alive," Mradhon said. "You want my help, woman, you keep that knife out of my way; and his."

She nodded, wild with rage and the delay. "Then quit stopping."

"Haught," Mradhon said. "Stay with us."

They went, running now, with no pauses, down the twisting ways even she did not know; but it was Mradhon's territory: they passed through a shanty alleyway so close they had to turn their shoulders and came out upon sight of the bridge.

It was quiet, excepting the wind, the dry, muttering thunder. A lightning flash threw the pilings of the bridge and the house by the pier into an unnatural blink of day, exposed a bridge vacant of traffic.

"There," said the slave, "there, that was the place-"

"Better stay back here," Mradhon said.

"It's quiet," Moria said. Her voice shook despite herself. "Man, hurry up." She pushed at him and got shoved in turn. He caught a fistful of her shirt and jerked at her.

"Don't shove. Get your mind working, woman, cool down, or I'm off this."

"I'll get round by the windows," she said, shivering. "I'll find out. But if you run out on me-"

"I'll be working up the other side. Haught and I. If it's even odds we take them. If it isn't we pull off, hear, and refigure."

She nodded and caught her breath, trotted off with a looseness of her knees she had not felt since her first job; felt as vulnerable as then, everything gone wrong. She sorted her mind into order, pretending it was not Mor-am in there, in that long quiet, where screams had been before.