Thief

by Kris Kramer

  ***

  Staying quiet proved to be a chore.

  “Kieran Riose,” I said, letting the words hiss through my lips like a whisper. After a while, I grew tired of keeping my mouth shut. Following him quietly seemed demeaning, as if I was making his job too easy. I couldn't be a part of that, so I started saying his name every so often just to remind him that I wouldn’t forget. I threw in some occasional insults, as well, my favorite being that Kieran was a woman’s name. He denied that, but I was insistent, and I could tell that I was actually getting under his skin with that one. Now I was saying it constantly, taunting him, making sure he knew that I didn’t make idle threats. “Kieran Riose.”

  “Shhh,” he said, holding his hand up, listening.

  “I hush for no man, Kieran Riose.”

  “What about for Jon Hagrim?" he said in a low voice, not even looking at me. His head was cocked to the side like a dog who'd heard a rustle in the grass nearby. "Do you hush for him?”

  I suddenly lost my desire to toy with Riose. I knew Jon Hagrim. Not personally, but I knew his reputation. He was a bandit king in this part of the world, a powerful one, with all sorts of fearsome rumors associated with him. He operated in the forests along the edges of Raven’s Crest, and had made a name for himself over the last decade by capturing merchant caravans and beheading the mercenaries who guarded them. That made it a scary proposition for merchants to get in and out of Raven’s Crest, so the city guard had made it something of a personal mission to root him out of their lands. They’d driven him off several times, but never captured him, and he always came back every so often to rile up the merchant class. “Is that who you really work for? You brought me out here to sell me to a bandit-king?”

  He looked at me like I’d insulted his cousin. “No. Now be quiet so I can hear. If anyone sneaks up on us out here, they won't be friendly. To either of us.”

  He was right, but I wasn’t in the mood to be rational. Or quiet. In fact, part of me thought the whole thing was a ruse designed to keep me from bothering him about his name. To me, it simply meant I was getting to him.

  “You expect me to believe-”

  Kieran's eyes went wide. "Quiet!" he whispered so harshly that I thought he might hit me. He leaned in closer and lowered his voice substantially. “Of course he’s back. And his camp isn’t far from here. So unless you want your fate in his hands, you need to keep your voice down.”

  “Nice try, but I don’t scare that easily.”

  Riose frowned at me. "Well I hear Hagrim's men love a challenge." He turned away, and continued down the path. "Right up until they chop you into pieces and feed you to the dogs."

  Riose yanked on the rope and dragged me along behind him. He moved much more methodically now, though, stopping more often and listening carefully to the woods around us, and I began to wonder if I hadn't just made another mistake. If Hagrim was back, and I'd heard no rumors to suggest that he was, I didn't want him controlling my fate any more than I wanted Arnum to. I may have thought Riose's warning a trick to keep me quiet, but he certainly wasn't acting that way. Of course, that made my urge to escape even more pressing.

  It was hard to determine where exactly we were. The brush in this forest was thick, the branches and treetops thicker, and very little moonlight guided our way. In short, I didn't have any idea where we were or how far from the path we’d traveled. But, as it sometimes does, fortune smiled on me. Shortly after his warning, Riose led us to the top of a hill, with a steep slope on our left side. This was one of the taller hills in the area, and I could see the sky clearly here, at least to my left, along with the vast swath of forest below. I looked down that slope, at all of the trees growing at strange angles, the tangled brush scattered about in clumps, and the jagged pieces of rock jutting out. A fall down this hillside would be dangerous, practically guaranteeing a broken leg or arm, or maybe even a neck.

  But no matter how deadly the fall, it would be nothing compared to the humiliation of Riose or any other bounty hunter dragging me through the streets of Pontas in chains, on my way to the gallows. All my enemies would be there to watch, laughing, smiling, and throwing rotten food at me. Or even worse, they would stand there quietly, basking in the knowledge that I was beaten. I couldn't let that happen.

  So I fell.

  Actually, fell isn’t the right word. A better way to describe it is to say that I let myself slip down the edge.

  I made it about fifteen feet before the rope went taut. Riose clutched it instinctively, before it slipped right out of his gloved hand, and that’s when the real fall began. I slid down at first, riding down the grass on my backside before my foot caught a branch. My leg buckled, my body twisted, and I half-tumbled, half-rolled down the rest of the hill. There was a lot of bouncing in there, too. Hard, painful bouncing.

  I finally came to a rest at the bottom of the hill after rolling into a bush, and even though my mind told me to get up and run, my body resisted. I was woozy, sore, bruised, scratched and bleeding, and every part of me hurt. But through a stroke of luck, or my own masterful skill at falling, nothing was broken. I was in pain, but nothing screamed at me in agony.

  The sound of grunting and broken branches alerted me to Riose’s approach. He was coming down the hill more or less the same way I had, just a little more slowly and controlled. He grabbed at branches and exposed roots, trying to scale down the hill, but it would take him a while to reach me. I rolled over onto my side and tucked my knees up, trying to pull my bound hands under my legs. It took some imaginative bending, but I did it, then hurried to my feet and shuffled off into the forest. I was a little dizzy, and my body rebelled every step of the way, but the thought of being caught by this man again was enough motivation to ignore those impediments.

  I darted between the trees, careful of any low branches or shrubbery that would catch on the rope around my ankles. I also kept an eye out for any sharp rocks I could use to cut it. That actually became my priority. If I could lose the rope, I could out run this bounty hunter and disappear into the forest, and he’d never see me again. At least not until he least expected it.

  Unfortunately, just as the exultation of victory had blinded me to danger when leaving Harfort, the thrill of my escape kept me oblivious to the small group of men hiding in the trees ahead. My eyes were busy scanning the ground for a cutting tool, which meant I didn't see them, or the swords and cudgels they held in their hands. Especially not the one that came right for my head as I approached them.