He led their rush down the dock. He heard rather than saw the net scoop up its prey; a cheer went up from the small boats. He was waiting waist-deep in the water when the Old Man’s boat finally reached the shallows. Grabbing on to the cleats, Hort dragged the boat to the beach as if it were a toy while his father sagged wearily between the oars.
“The trap,” the Old Man wheezed through ragged gasps, “pull it in before those fools get it tangled in their nets!”
The rope was cold and hard as cable, but Hort dragged the trap hand-over-hand away from the sea’s grip. Not surprisingly, it was full of Nya that shimmered and flopped in the morning sun. Without thinking, Hort reached behind his father and dumped the fish into the boat’s live-well.
All the boats were ashore now, and there was splashing and thrashing around the net in the shallows.
“What is it like?” the Old Man gasped; he could scarcely raise his head. “What’s the monster like?”
“It looks to be a large crab,” Hort announced, craning his neck. “The mercenaries have got to it.”
And they had; waving the crowd back they waded into the water to strike at the spidery giant even before the net was on the shore.
“I thought so,” the Old Man nodded. “There weren’t any teeth marks on the traps. Some damn sorcerer’s pet run loose,” he added.
Hort nodded. Now that he could see the monster it fitted the rumours he had heard from time to time in the town. The Purple Mage had kept large crabs to guard his home on the White Foal River. Rumour said he was dead now, killed by his own magic. The rumour was confirmed by the crab; it must have wandered downstream to the sea when its food no longer appeared.
“Whose catch is that?”
Hort turned to find two Hell Hounds standing close beside him. Simultaneously he noticed the crowd of townsfolk which had gathered on the streets.
“Everybody’s,” the Old Man declared, getting his strength back. “They caught it. Or anybody’s. Maybe it’s Terci’s—it’s mangled his net.”
“No, Old Man,” Terci declared, approaching them. “It’s your catch. There’s none on the wharf who’d deny that—least of all me. You caught it. We netted and gaffed it for you after the fight.”
“It’s yours then,” the Hell Hound decided, facing the Old Man. “What do you plan to do with it?”
It flashed across Hort’s mind that these soldiers might be going to fine his father for dragging the crab to the beach; they might call it a public nuisance or something. He tightened his grip on the Old Man’s arm, but he’d never been able to hold his father.
“I don’t know,” Panit shrugged. “If the circus was still in town I’d try to sell it to them. Can’t sell it for food—might be poisonous wouldn’t eat it myself.”
“I’ll buy it,” the Hell Hound announced to their surprise. “The Prince has tasters and a taste for the unknown. If it’s poisonous it will still make table talk fit for an Emperor. I’ll give you five silvers for it.”
“Five? Ten—times’re hard; I’ve got debts to Jubal for my fish-stall,” the Old Man bargained, no more awed by the Hell Hounds than he had been by Jubal himself.
At the mention of the slaver’s name, the tall Hell Hound scowled and his swarthy companion sucked air noisily through his teeth.
“Jubal?” the tall man mumbled as he reached for his pouch. “You’ll have your ten silvers, fisherman—and a gold piece besides. A man should have more than a slaver’s receipt for this day’s work.”
“Thank ye,” Panit nodded, accepting the coins. “Take your watch to the marshes and swamps; there’s never one crab but there’s ten. Corner ‘em on dry land an’ Kitty-Kat’ll eat crab for a month.”
“Thanks for your information,” the Hell Hound grimaced. “We’ll have the garrison look into it.”
“Not a bad day’s catch,” the Old Man chortled after the retreating soldiers, “and Nya besides. I’ll send two in luck-money to the blacksmith and the S’danzo and get new traps besides.” He cocked his head at his son. “Well,” he tossed the gold coin in the air and caught it again, “I’ve got this too, to add to your other gift.”
“Other gift?” Hort frowned.
The smile fell from the Old Man’s face like a mask. “Of course,” he snarled. “Why do you think I went after that thing anyway?”
“For the other fishermen?” Hort offered. “To save the fishing ground?”
“Aye,” Panit shook his head. “But in the main it was my gift to you; I wanted to teach you about pride.”
“Pride?” Hort echoed blankly. “You risked your life to make me proud of you? I’ve always been proud of you! You’re the best fisherman in Sanctuary!”
“Fool!” the Old Man exploded, rising to his feet. “Not what you think of me; what you think of yourself!”
“I don’t understand,” his son blurted. “You want me to be a fisherman like you?”
“No, no, no!” the Old Man leaped to the sand and started to march away, then returned to loom angrily over the youth. “Said it before—not everyone can be a fisherman. You’re not—but be something, anything, and have pride in it. Don’t be a scavenger, drifting from here to yon. Take a path and follow it. You’ve always had a smooth tongue—be a minstrel, or even a storyteller like Hakiem.”
“Hakiem?” Hort bristled. “He’s a beggar.”
“He lives here. He’s a good storyteller; his wealth’s his pride. Whatever you do, wherever you go—take your pride. Be good with yourself and you’ll be at home with the best of ‘em. Take my gift, son; it’s only advice, but you’ll be the poorer without it.” He tossed the gold coin to the sand at Hort’s feet and stalked off.
Hort retrieved the coin and stared at the Old Man’s back as he marched away.
“Excuse me, young sir?” Old Hakiem was scuttling along the beach, waving his arms frantically. “Was that the Old Man—the one who caught the monster?”
“That’s him,” Hort agreed, “but I don’t think this is a good time to be talking to him.”
“Do you know him?” the storyteller asked, holding fast to Hort’s arm. “Do you know what happened here? I’ll pay you five coppers for the story.” He was a beggar, but he didn’t seem to starve.
“Keep your money, Hakiem,” the youth murmured, watching the now-empty beach. “I’ll give you the story.”
“Eh?”
“Yes,” Hort smiled, tossing his gold coin in the air, catching it and putting it in his pocket. “What’s more, I’ll buy you a cup of wine to go with it—but only if you’ll teach me how to tell it.”
The Vivisectionist
By Andrew Offutt
Chapter 1
A MINARET TOPPED the Governor’s Palace, naturally. The narrow, eventually pointed dome resembled an elongated onion. Its needle-like spire thrust up to pierce the sky. That spire, naturally, flaunted a pennon. It bore the device of Imperial Ranke (Ranket Imperatris). Below, the dome was clamped by a circular wall like upended herbivorous teeth. If ever the palace were attacked, that crenellated wall promised, beware archers in the embrasures between the merlons! Beware dumpers of boiling oil.
Every bit of it was haughty and imperious, insultingly imperial. And high.
Even from the top of the (lower) wall of the granary across the avenue from the wall surrounding the Governor’s Palace complex, no grapnel could be hurled, for no human was so strong.
An arrow, however, could be shot.
On a night when the moon over Sanctuary was not a maiden’s pale round breast but a niggling little crescent hardly worthy of the business end of a scythe, a bow twanged like a dying lute. An arrow rushed at the pennon spire of the Governor’s Palace. After it, like the web-trail of an industrious spider or a wind-blown tent caterpillar, sped a silken cord so slim as to be invisible.
And then it was laboriously and time-consumingly drawn and dragged back, for the archer had missed his shot.
He aimed anew, face set for curses rather than prayers. Elevating his bow a bit,
he drew to the cheek and, daringly endangering the springy wood, drew even further. Uttering not a prayer but a curse, he released. Away sped the arrow. It trailed its spidery line like a strand of spittle in the pallid moonlight.
It proved a night for the heeding of curses, if not the answering of prayers. That was appropriate and perhaps significant in Sanctuary called Thieves’ World.
The shaft streaked past the spire and reached the end of its tether if not its velocity. It snapped back. The line forced it into a curving attempt to return. It snapped around the spire. Twice, thrice, four times. The archer was dragging hard. Keeping taut the silken line bought at the expense of a pair of lovely ear pendants of gold and amethyst and chrysoprase stolen from—never mind. The archer pulled his line, hard. That maintained and increased tension, tightened the arrow’s whipping about the spire which was, naturally, gilded.
Then all motion ceased. A mourning dove spoke to the night, but no one believed that dolorous call presaged rain. Not in Sanctuary! Not at this time of year. The archer leaned into his line, and braced his heels to lean his full weight on it. The cord was a taut straight-edge of immobility and invisibility under the un-imposing one-ninth moon.
Teeth flashed in the dimness. The archer’s, standing atop the granary behind the Governor’s Palace of Sanctuary. His mop of hair was blacker than shadowed night and his eyes nearly so, under brows that just missed meeting above a bridged nose that just missed being falcate.
He collected his other gear, collected himself, swallowed hard, choked up all he could on his line until he was straining, stretched, on tipetoe.
Then he thought something rather prayer-like, and out he swung.
Out above the street made broad enough to accommodate several big grain wagons abreast he swung, and across it. The looming wall rushed at him.
Even with the bending of his knees until they were nearly at his chest, the jar of his impact with the unyielding wall was enough to rattle teeth and turn prayers to curses. Nothing broke, neither legs nor silken line. Certainly not the wall, which was of stone, quarried and cut to form a barrier four feet thick.
He went up the rope in a reverse rappel, step after step and hand over hand. Dragging himself up the wall, walking up the fine perfectly set stones, climbing above death, for that was the penalty for slipping. The street was far below and farther with each pulling step.
He never considered that, or death, for he never considered the possibility of slipping.
A mighty warrior he was not. As an archer he had many peers and many betters. As a youth he was perfect, lean and wiry and strong. He was a highly competent thief in a citylet named for thieves. Not a cutpurse or a street-snatcher or an accoster; a thief. A burglar. As such, he was a superb climber of walls, without better and possibly without peer. He was good at slipping in by high-set windows, too.
His colouring and clothing were for the night, and shadows. They were old friends, he and shadows.
He did not slip. He ascended. He muscled himself atop the broad wall of the Governor’s Palace, of Sanctuary. Unerringly, he stepped through the crenel, the embrasure between two merlons like blunt lower teeth. And he was at home, in shadow.
Now, he gazed upon the palace itself; the palace of the golden prince sent out from Ranke to (pretend to) govern Sanctuary. The thief smiled, but with his mouth closed. Here there were tigers in the form of guards, and young teeth would flash even in this most wan of moonlight. That precaution was merely part of his competence.
At that, he had lived only about a score of years. He was not sure whether he was nineteen or twenty or a bit older. No one was sure, in this anile town the conquering Rankans called Thieves’ World. Perhaps his mother knew—certainly not the father he had never known and whom she had known casually, for this thief was a bastard by birth and often, even usually, by nature—but who knew who or where his mother was?
Below, within the wall lay ancillary buildings and a courtyard the size of a thoroughfare or a small community common, and guards. Across, just over there, rose the palace. Like him it was a shadow, but it loomed far more imposing.
He had broken into it once before. Or rather he had previously gained nocturnal entry in manner clandestine, for that other time he had help. A gate had been left unlocked for him, and a door ajar.
Entering that way was far easier and much preferable to this. But that time the opener of the gate had been bent on the public embarrassment and downfall of the Governor, and the thief was not.
Prince-Governor Kadakithis was no enemy, as a matter of fact, to this youth spawned in the shadows of the wrong end of town. The thief had rendered the Rankan prince two considerable services. He had been rewarded, too, although not in such a manner that he could live happily ever after.
Now, on this night of the most niggling of crescent moons, he stood atop the wall and took in his line from behind and below. It stretched upward still, to the pennon spire. It remained taut. He had to believe that it would continue to do. Elsewise he was about to splatter on to the pave below like a dropped pomegranate, a fruit whose pulp is plentiful and whose juice is red.
When the line was again taut he yanked, dragged, braced, yanked, swallowed hard, and kicked himself off the wall into space. His stomach fell two storeys to the pave; he did not. His soft-booted but padded feet struck another wall of cut fulvistone. Impact was no fun and he had to stifle his grunt.
Then he went up.
“D”you hear something, Frax?” A voice like a horse-drawn sledge gliding over hard earth. Not stone, or sand, but packed dry earth.
“Mmm? Hm? Huh? Wha’?” A deeper voice.
“I said: Frax, did you hear something?”
Silence. (At sound of the voice the thief had frozen. Hands-forearms-torso atop the very palace; tail in space and legs adangle.)
“Uh-huh. I heard something, Purter. I heered her say “Oh Frax you han’some dawg, you’re the best. Now suck on thisun awhile, darling,” and then you woke me up, you bastard.”
“We’re supposed to be on guard duty not sleeping, Frax, damn it.—Who was she?”
“Not gonto tell you. No I din’t hear nothing. What’s to hear? An army of Downwinders comin’ over the friggin’ walls? Somebody riding in on a hootey-owl?”
“Oh,” Purler’s higher voice said, with a shiver in it. “Don’t say that. It’s dark and creepy enough tonight.”
“Stuporstishus rectum,” Prax accused, with more austerity than skill, and lowered his head again on to his uplifted knees.
During their exchange the thief had got his rangy self on to the wall. He made hardly any sound, but those idiots would have drowned out something even as loud as snapping fingers. He wriggled through another embrasure and on to the defence gallery that ran around the top of the palace, below the dome and spire that rose on up, higher than the outer wall. Men trusted with guard duty, he was thinking contemptuously, heard something and blabbered. He shook his head. Idiots! He could teach these stupid soft-butted “soldiers” a thing or three about security! It took a civilian to know about the best security measures, in such a town as this. For one thing, when you thought you heard something, you shut the hell up and listened. Then you made just a little noise to pretend unconcern, and froze to catch the noise-maker in another movement.
The shadow of a shadow, he moved along the gallery, between the smooth curve of the dome and the crenellations of a wall. After thirty-one paces he heard the scuffing footsteps and tap-tapping pikestaff butt of a careless sentry. That persuaded him to squat, get as close to the wall as he could, and lie down. Flat, facing the wall, whose merlons rose above the gallery. He lay perfectly still, a shadow in shadow.
A spider wandered over his shoulder and up his cheek and began struggling in his black mop of hair, and was unmolested. The spider felt warmth, but no movement, not so much as a twitch. (If mental curses could have effect, the spider was a goner.)
The sentry ambled by, scuffing and tapping. The thief heard him yawn. Dumb, he
thought, dumb. How nice it was of sentries to pace and make noise, rather than be still and listen!
The sentry having moved on leftward along the perimeter of the wall, the thief moved on rightward; northwestward. He’d an armlet of leather and copper well up his right upper arm, and a long bracer of black leather on that wrist. Each contained a nasty leaf-bladed throwing knife of dull blue-black. There was another in his left buskin, where sheath and hilt were mere decoration. He wore no other weapons, none that showed. Certainly he bore neither sword nor axe, and the bow lay at the base of the granary wall.
He stopped. Stepped into a crenel just above two feet deep. Stared, off into the darkness. Yes. There was the spire of the Temple of Holy Allestina Ever Virgin, poor thing. It was the first of the markers he had so carefully spotted and chosen, this afternoon.
The thief did not intend to enter the palace by just any window. He knew precisely where he was going.
The task of regaining line and arrow was more difficult than he had anticipated. He silenced snarls and curses. Knot a rope ten times and try swinging on it and the accursed thing might well work itself loose. Shoot an arrow to wrap a cord slimmer than a little finger around a damned gilded brass flagpole, and he had to fight to get the damned thing to let go!
Within four or six minutes (with silenced snarls and curses) he had sent enough loops and twitches ripple-writhing up the line to loosen the arrow. It swung once around the spire, twice, encountered the line, and caught. More curses, a sort of prayer, and more twitches and ripples riding up the line. Reluctantly the arrow ended its loving embrace of the pennon spire. The line fluttered loose. Down came the arrow. It fell with a clatter that, to a shadowy thief in shadows, sounded like thunder on a cloudless day.
Sleepy sentries heard no thunder. Only he noticed. He reeled in line and arrow. In a crouch, he reached behind him into his snugly fitted backpack. From it he drew two cylinders of hard wood wrapped with black cloth. Around them he looped his line arrow detached. He held silent for a time, listening. A fly hummed restless and loud. The thief heard nothing to indicate that any o his actions had been noticed with anything approaching alarm.
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