Legends of the Riftwar

by Raymond E. Feist

  Lorrie couldn’t seem to co-ordinate her limbs and after a moment stopped trying.

  ‘What a dainty head the creature has,’ Benton said. ‘If you’ll take one arm, sir, then I’ll take the other and we’ll be on our way.’

  They hoisted her up and everything went black for Lorrie. Throbbing pain spiked its way up both sides of her neck.

  When she came around it was to find herself flat on the ground in a dark lane behind a building. Benton and Travers were having an argument with two other men.

  ‘…is my territory, Gerem Benton, and well you know it!’ growled a man with an eye-patch. He towered over Benton who was trying to reason with him.

  ‘It all started over in the East Market,’ Benton was saying. ‘But we have to go through your territory to get to the gaol. Be reasonable, Jake.’

  ‘I saw the whole thing!’ Jake roared, by no means inclined to be reasonable. ‘I don’t care where you started, you carried out the business end of it in my territory!’

  He pulled back his fist as if to strike and Travers caught his wrist. Then Jake’s companion chose to interfere, giving Travers a hard shove.

  ‘Ah, demons take it,’ Benton cursed. ‘You have the right of it, then, if it’s your territory.’

  He turned half away, and then shoved his club into Jake’s middle just below the floating rib, a hard swift jab. ‘But who says it’s your territory, dog’s-pizzle!’ Benton grabbed the other man by the hair and yanked his head back. Cutting off the man’s airway with the club he growled, ‘Remember who’s running things here, boyo. You and your little crew are free to boost and cut purses, but only because I keep the constables off your neck. I haven’t had a thief to turn in for almost three weeks now, so if I have to, I’ll turn some farm boy into a thief. But I’ll hear no more about “your territory” and “my territory”.’ He let the man go and watched as he staggered back. ‘When it comes to things dodgy, all of Land’s End is my territory.’

  Lorrie crab-walked away for a few paces, then turned over and scrambled to her feet. Before she’d taken two steps the four of them had grabbed hold of her and were cuffing her about the head and shoulders, shouting at her and each other and pulling her arms.

  She sank to her knees with a keening sob. Someone had drawn a knife…

  Something about having his rapier on his hip, even if it was carefully hidden by his cloak, gave Jimmy a sense of being taller–even full-grown. He could feel it in his walk, a new swagger–let him cross my path who dares! He shifted his slender shoulders and grinned.

  He’d never dream of wearing the sword on the street in Krondor; the watch would have it off him and himself in a cell before he could begin to argue about it. As for the Mockers, well, unless you were a basher they didn’t encourage the open wearing of weapons. It tended to lead to trouble.

  Which it could in Land’s End as well, I suppose.

  But here he was dressed quite respectably, which he knew counted for a great deal and, even more importantly, had a very respectable address. Of course he hoped he wouldn’t have to fall back on that. Flora would kill him–assuming she hadn’t already revealed all to Aunt Cleora and wasn’t sitting on the front steps weeping. In which case they were both likely to be arrested. But when he had last seen them, they had been sitting together while Aunt Cleora regaled Flora with family stories, holding the girl’s hands as if they were gold. With no children of her own, it seemed Cleora had found a suitable object for all her maternal instincts. Sometime this evening, Jimmy assumed, they’d finally get around to visiting Grandfather.

  Resisting the urge to throw back his cloak off his shoulder, showing the blade, Jimmy continued on. No point in borrowing trouble, he thought. Must continue to look as respectable as possible, he reminded himself. And there are advantages to it. I can case any target I please, and the shopkeepers bow double and ask me to take their inventory, instead of calling for the watch or throwing horse-apples!

  So he strutted as he walked, enjoying the mild air as dusk fell and the way his cloak swung about his calves. He rather liked this town. It was so compact compared to Krondor, and so quiet.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  Jimmy’s head snapped toward the sound. Down a dim alley he saw four men fighting over a struggling shape. See, he thought smugly, there’s where an organization like the Mockers comes in handy. In Krondor such an unseemly situation would never occur. Any freelance thief would know better than to contest a prize with a Mocker and two groups of Mockers would simply take the loot and let the Day-or Nightmaster sort it out. This was uncivilized. And it was not even dark yet!

  For just an instant a last, golden ray of sunshine struck the face of the victim, turned toward the end of the alley where Jimmy was standing. His heart seemed to stop and his breath caught in his throat. Then she turned her head and the light was gone, leaving the alley darker than before and Jimmy in a state of paralysis.

  It can’t be! he thought.

  It was impossible, yet…In that last flash of daylight he’d have sworn that he saw the face of the Princess Anita. But she was safely on her way to the far coast. What would she be doing, alone, here in Land’s End?

  The girl made a cry of pain, galvanizing the young thief into action.

  He’d passed a box of ashes by the steps of a house just a step away; he grabbed a handful and rubbed it on his face, then pulled the hood of his cloak over his head as far as it would go and ran back to the alley. Jimmy yanked out his sword and with a blood-curdling yell rushed at the heaving, shoving group at the end of the alley.

  ‘At ’em boys!’ Jimmy bellowed. ‘No quarter!’

  Up to now it had been hard words and harder clubs, and one man waving a dirk without using it, but the introduction of an edged weapon and the possibility of more attackers threw the four thief-takers into confusion for a crucial moment. Jimmy slashed out at waist level and the men let go of the girl and jumped back.

  Whereupon Jimmy grabbed her tunic and pulled. She was older than he was, he judged quickly, but no taller. And a game lass, he thought; on her feet in a second to follow him out of the alley. He let go of her and slid his rapier back into its sheath, leading her toward that box of ash.

  It hadn’t taken the four men long to recover from his unplanned attack, or to realize that there were no ‘boys’ intent on giving ‘no quarter’, and they were soon hot on Jimmy’s heels. He suspected that they might happily let the girl go free in order to pummel him into the cobbles. It was sad, but he often had that effect on people.

  When they reached the house with the ashes Jimmy picked up the box, spun round and flung the contents into the air right in his pursuers’ faces. They fell back, cursing and coughing. With dexterity bordering on the supernatural, he again drew his blade and delivered a few well-placed nicks and cuts to the four men, who tried to fend off the much longer blade with clubs and a single dirk. Jimmy had only a few weeks’ practice with the blade, but his teacher had been Prince Arutha, and more, Jimmy was faster than most experienced swordsmen. The men tried to fan out and approach from two sides. For their efforts they received some nasty cuts on the arms and hands from Jimmy’s much longer blade. Jimmy laid about, his blade hissing as it cut air, and each time it made contact, an attacker yelped in pain and fell back. Then the leader of the group, the man with the black moustache, tried to leap in, and Jimmy cut him deep across the shoulder. One of the men turned and fled, and in a moment, the rout was on, the attackers beating a hasty retreat; the price of the girl and the boy wasn’t worth bleeding to death.

  Jimmy grabbed the girl’s hand and led her through the narrow space between two houses. It was barely wide enough for him and in a few steps his cloak was strangling him where it had caught on the rough surface somewhere behind him. He managed to get a hand up to release the clasp and with the girl’s help dislodged it.

  ‘They won’t be able to follow us through here,’ he said.

  ‘What’s to stop them from going back down the alley and com
ing around?’ the girl asked. She had a low, husky voice, and she asked very sensible questions.

  Jimmy liked that, but she didn’t sound like the Princess, meaning he’d probably interfered with something that was none of his business. Ah, well. Win some, lose some, he thought philosophically. Perhaps there was something here he could turn to his advantage. And if it was a madness, it was a noble madness.

  When they came out behind the house, Jimmy looked around and traced a path to the roof tops. The roofs were different here in Land’s End, slightly steeper and mostly tiled, but not impassable; the walls had more stone and less brick and half-timbering, but his fingers were strong and his toes nimble.

  ‘Can you climb?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said shortly.

  ‘Then follow every move I make,’ he ordered.

  He unbuckled his belt and refastened it over one shoulder so that the hilt of his sword lay between his shoulder-blades.

  Up the drainpipe, he thought: it was bored-out wood and quite strong enough, fastened to the stone with bolts. Onto the transom of a window, thence over the eaves and onto the roof. From there, it seemed to Jimmy, the city was theirs. The girl put a hand up and he took it, giving her a lift that helped her scramble up. Then he led her to the deepest shadow he could find, hoping they’d be invisible from the street below.

  And not a moment too soon, as around the corner of the alley came four very angry men, now bearing swords or clubs. They looked up and down the street, then took a moment to argue, until the short one pointed one way and then the other, whereupon two men went up the street and two men went down. The man with the moustache shouted, ‘Find them. They’re worth three silvers each!’ He headed up the street, while the other men took off in different directions.

  ‘Three silvers!’ the girl exclaimed. ‘Those bastards!’

  Definitely not the Princess, then.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘That man said he was a thief catcher. They were going to turn me in for a bounty.’

  Jimmy was silent for a moment, then said, ‘It’s an old grift. Two or three “citizens” testify you’re a thief, and if you don’t have no one from around here to vouch for you, you’re off for the work gang or worse.’ He paused. ‘Did you happen to catch the name of that fellow with the moustache?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lorrie replied. ‘He said his name was Gerem Benton.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jimmy slowly.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I know him,’ said Jimmy with a nod. ‘Gerem the Snake. Used to run a confidence game up in Krondor. Thought he was dead.’ He stood up. ‘I’m Jimmy. If you like I’ll escort you home.’

  ‘I don’t live here,’ the girl said gruffly, then was quiet for a moment. ‘Thank you. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t interfered.’

  ‘It depends,’ Jimmy said. ‘But nothing good, you can rely on that. So what’s your name?’

  ‘Uh, Jimmy,’ she said.

  The young thief laughed so hard he slipped a couple of yards down the roof. He elbowed his way back up and grinned at her.

  ‘No, no, that’s my name,’ he said. ‘You weren’t paying attention.’ He leaned a little closer and whispered, ‘I know you’re a girl.’

  She looked startled, and her lips parted as though to deny it.

  ‘I know you are,’ he insisted.

  ‘How? They certainly didn’t!’

  ‘Well, I’m more…alert, I suppose. Or maybe it’s that you look amazingly like someone I know, and she’s most definitely a girl.’ He gave her shoulder a gentle poke. ‘So, what’s your name?’

  ‘Lorrie,’ she said, sounding discouraged. ‘Lorrie Merford.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Lorrie,’ Jimmy said at his most suave, managing to copy Prince Arutha’s courtly bow in miniature, while lying on slippery red tiles.

  She smiled at him. ‘Nice to meet you, too, Jimmy,’ she said.

  The sun was now setting, and night was almost upon them. It would be getting harder to see in the gathering darkness, but the young thief crossed his ankles as though they had all the time in the world. Better to let their pursuers get farther away before they themselves moved on.

  ‘So if you don’t live in the city, where do you live?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Somewhere you’ve probably never heard of,’ she said. ‘The nearest village is a tiny place named Relling.’

  Nope, never heard of it, he thought. Sounds like an early-to-bed-early-to-rise land of honest toil and earthy, peasant virtue. Hope I never have to go there.

  ‘Were you going to go back there tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘Uh, no.’ Lorrie shook her head. ‘I’ve got something to do here.’

  I’ll bet you do, he thought. He’d also bet it was something her family wouldn’t approve of. Why else would she be in disguise? ‘So where are you staying?’ he asked. ‘As I said, I’ll walk you home.’

  With a short laugh she said, ‘I’m not staying anywhere. I just got to Land’s End today and almost the first thing I did was meet Benton and agree to run an errand for him.’ Her voice was rich with self-contempt.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ Jimmy advised. ‘He’s pretty slick. I’m a stranger here myself, so I don’t know which inns might be good for you. Do you have any money?’

  There was a long pause at that. ‘A little,’ she admitted cautiously.

  Almost none, Jimmy thought. Poor kid.

  ‘Well,’ he said, rising, ‘let’s go exploring. Maybe we can find you somewhere really cheap to stay.’ He helped her to her feet and led her back to a place where they could climb down.

  Jarvis Coe sat in the darkest corner of The Cockerel and sipped his beer with his cloak wrapped about him. There was a tired-looking roast of pork turning on a spit over the fire; but he’d contented himself with a hunk of dark bread and some cheese and a few good apples, since they were less likely to lay him out with stomach cramps. One advantage of being out of Krondor was that market-food was fresher and less expensive.

  He’d paid for the use of the table at the outset of the evening, since he didn’t intend to drink much and didn’t want any difficulty about it. He was here to eavesdrop. Over the years he’d found that the gossip most useful to a man of his interests tended to be found in the roughest taverns. It was certainly proving true tonight.

  The tables along the wall were separated by board partitions that didn’t run all the way to the rafters and lathes above. He could follow a very interesting conversation from the next one, given his training and a focused mind. The knotholes and gaps in the boards were helpful as well, giving him an occasional glimpse of the talkers.

  ‘Bring ’em here, take ’em there. I tell ye I don’t like this,’ a heavy-set man was saying to his companion. ‘It’s gettin’ worse there all the time! I don’t want to go there any more, I tell ye!’

  ‘Easy, Rox,’ his skinny companion soothed. ‘We’ve never been paid so well.’ He hoisted his goblet. ‘Drinkin’ the best wine, ain’t we?’

  Which at The Cockerel, Coe thought, must be a whole two steps above vinegar.

  Rox leaned in close to his companion, his glance nervously darting around the room. ‘It’s not right, what we’re doin’, not right at all!’

  Skinny whooped with laughter. ‘Well, of course it’s not!’ he said.

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Rox snarled.

  Skinny looked away impatiently.

  Rox gave his shoulder a shove. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said. ‘That place, there’s somethin’ about it.’ Rox rubbed his lower lip with a dirty thumb. ‘It’s not right.’

  Skinny shook his head and then the rest of himself, like a dog flicking off water.

  Rox grabbed his arm. ‘You know what I mean!’

  ‘What I know is it’s the best money I’ve ever seen,’ Skinny said stubbornly. ‘And that’s all I need to know, or want to know, and if you’re smart, you’ll be like me.’

  Rox su
bsided for a moment, scowling darkly. ‘What’s he want with all them kids, then?’ he demanded suddenly.

  Skinny started to snicker. ‘Maybe he, hee-hee, maybe he’s running an orphanage!’ He smacked his thigh and whooped with laughter. ‘Out of the goodness of his heart, like.’

  Even Rox grinned for a moment, smiling as he took a sip from his cup. But when he lowered it his frown was back. ‘I don’t want to go there any more,’ he grumbled. ‘Why can’t he get somebody else to take ’em?’

  ‘I think he’s keepin’ it secret,’ Skinny said. ‘We know about it, so,’ he shrugged, ‘he uses us instead of tellin’ someone else. Keeps it more secret, see?’

  Rox sat growling quietly for a few moments. ‘I want to quit,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘We can’t quit!’ Skinny snapped. ‘We need the money, best money we ever got. And beside…’ He stopped and rubbed his face with his hands, then looked over his shoulder. He leaned toward Rox and whispered, ‘I don’t think we can quit.’

  ‘Whaddaya mean?’ Rox sat up straight, looking worried.

  Skinny leaned closer still. ‘He’s important.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘He can do things to us.’

  Rox just stared at him, shaking his head slightly, confused.

  ‘You know what I mean. When people like us annoy people like him we don’t stay healthy.’

  Rox’s eyes widened. ‘Ohhh!’ he said.

  ‘So just hang on, all right?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Rox conceded. He picked up his mug and drained it, then smacked it down loudly. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Innkeeper! More!’

  ‘So we’ll just deliver the boy to the manse, take our money and go. Easy. Just hold on. Maybe this will be the last time we have to make a trip out into the country.’

  The bigger man didn’t answer but he made the innkeeper leave the pitcher of wine he brought to refill their goblets and then proceeded to get very drunk.

  Coe listened to all of it and decided that he, too, might just make a trip out into the country. It might be very interesting to see this place that ‘wasn’t right’.