Raymond E. Feist - Jimmy and the Crawler

James reached a point roughly halfway between his ambush and the palace and stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He clutched his side and felt more blood drenching his shirt beneath the leather tunic he wore. This wound was not going to heal on its own. As loath as he ever was to admit he was wrong, he realized he had underestimated the damage he had sustained.

He heard footfalls, boot heels striking the cobbles coming from somewhere up ahead. The lamps were placed far enough apart that small dark areas lingered between the pools of light, and into one of these he quickly ducked. He had no trust in the Goddess of Luck. Experience had taught him that self-reliance was always his best bet. If there were a god of self-reliance, he’d have been praying to him fervently. He found the irony of that contradiction amusing, or as much as he could be amused, given his current situation.

The footsteps got louder and James struggled to stay focused: there might be a furious minute or so coming up that would decide his fate. He reached across his body and slowly wrapped his right hand around his sword hilt, flexing his fingers and tensing as three figures hove into view.

He was teetering on the brink of collapse when they came walking into a pool of lamplight.

Catching sight of the figure in the shadows drawing a sword, the men slowed and fanned out, each of them also drawing a weapon. Rather than rushing into an attack, they approached slowly. A few yards away from James, the two men on the flanks stopped while the one in the middle said, ‘Who passes this night?’

James blinked in confusion for a moment, then pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Jonathan?’

The acting sheriff, Jonathan Means, looked incredulous. ‘James?’

‘I could use a bit of help,’ said James.

And then he fell forward, losing consciousness so swiftly that he did not even feel strong arms grab him to stop him striking the cobbles.

J AMES OPENED HIS EYES.

An oval shape hovered above him, and slowly it resolved itself into a face. Dark eyes looked down on him with concern, but there was an amused set to the lips. A woman’s voice asked, ‘Are you all right?’

James’s first impulse was to say something clever, but he couldn’t think of anything clever.

The face above him repeated the question.

James smiled and blinked and he finally replied, ‘You’re so pretty.’

A light laugh was echoed by a deeper masculine one, and someone out of James’s sight said, ‘I’ll send for the prince.’

‘It’s the drugs,’ said another male voice behind James.

He tried to turn and felt agony rip up his left side. A soft hand pushed gently on his shoulder, firmly forcing him back down. A fog seemed to lift from his mind and at last he recognized the face above him. ‘Jazhara?’

The Prince of Krondor’s magic-advisor smiled. ‘Welcome back. We were worried.’

She was a woman of medium height and solid build, though her figure tended to curves and her legs were elegantly tapered. By any measure she was attractive, and she had a no-nonsense attitude that discouraged James’s usual tendency to try to disarm ladies with practised flirtation.

The voice behind James said, ‘If Sheriff Means hadn’t fetched you here quickly, Squire, I think you might finally have left us.’

The disapproving tone brought recognition even though the speaker was still out of James’s line of sight. ‘Ah, Master Reynolds, again I am in your debt.’

The face of an older man moved into view, hovering over Jazhara’s shoulder. It was William, lieutenant of the prince’s household guard and son of the magician Pug.

‘Help me sit up,’ begged James, and Jazhara piled some pillows up behind him so that he could look around the room. As the last effects of the sleeping draught the chirurgeon had given him before sewing him up wore off, pain returned. He winced as he settled into the pillows.

‘I’ve sent for the prince,’ said William, walking into view. The young soldier had matured greatly since entering the prince’s service and had become James’s unofficial partner in crime. James’s best friend, Squire Locklear, had been banished to the northern frontier of Yabon as punishment for a transgression involving the wife of an influential man at court. James had thought more than once that women would be the death of Locklear.

William was a different sort, something of a romantic idealist. Taller by half a head than his father Pug, he looked like the icon of the loyal prince’s soldier: broad shoulders, resolute expression, brown eyes that gazed unflinchingly upon danger. James often tried to get his goat with a barbed remark, but William would have none of it. He was as stalwart a man as James had ever met, and the former thief actually enjoyed that fact about William.

James sighed as he shifted position, glancing from Jazhara to William. William had obviously been in love with Jazhara before arriving in Krondor, from when they had been students together at Stardock. His attempt to get over her had led to a romance with a local innkeeper’s daughter, who had come to grief. He had suffered greatly over Talia’s death. In James’s judgment Cousin Willy, as he was known to Arutha’s family, had succumbed to Talia’s charms more because she was crazily in love with him rather than he with her. She had been beautiful, vivacious and a flirt, but once she met Willy, all other boys and men had been forgotten. For most men it would have been difficult to resist. But once Jazhara appeared in the city …

James understood the story. He hid it well, but William still cared deeply for Jazhara, or James knew nothing at all.

For his part, James avoided romance. He didn’t trust women. More to the point, he didn’t trust men. He trusted individuals, and after Chirurgeon Reynolds had departed, it occurred to him that the two remaining in the room were second only to Prince Arutha in earning his trust. Jazhara was new to the court and a Keshian by ancestry, but she had been a staunch ally who had faced deadly danger without flinching. Without her participation in the affair with the pirate Bear and the recovery of the Tear of the Gods, James and William might now both be dead and the hidden enemies behind that artefact’s theft might even now be planning to unleash chaos upon every man, woman, and child in the Kingdom.

For a moment the wry thought passed through James’s mind that despite their efforts to remain platonic, William and Jazhara were not done with each other. He just hoped, with some apprehension, that things didn’t get too awkward or interfere with more pressing concerns.

Now Prince Arutha arrived. He too bore that expression James had come to know so well: the one that was set halfway between concern and wry amusement. ‘Almost got yourself killed, again, I see.’

He had changed since James had first met him as a boy, back when he had foiled the Nighthawks’ first of many attempts on the prince’s life. The youthful whipcord body had broadened a little, and palace life had put a few more pounds on Arutha, but he was still a man of slender frame and as fast an opponent with a sword as James had ever encountered.

‘Occupational hazard,’ James said, sitting up a little straighter. ‘I do recall, Highness, more than one occasion when you were less than prudent when it came to staying out of harm’s way.’

With a grimace, Arutha echoed James’s last statement. ‘Occupational hazard, indeed. However,’ he added, ‘I find myself bleeding considerably less frequently than you do, James.’

James’s grin expanded. ‘Well, in fairness, you don’t get out as much as you used to. A few days of bed rest and I should be good as new, Highness.’