Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

Still, this sort should have enough sense to fear him.

That none did, that one stepped forward and said in a thick voice with a trace of gutter accent, “Looking for me, big fella? All your bugger boys are,” gave the Riddler time enough to realize that, while he’d been looking for the rebel called Zip, Zip had also been looking for him.

A noise behind, and then more sounds of moving men, gave the mounted soldier and his horse a good estimate of the odds without either turning to see the dozen rebels climbing down from rooftops and up from tunnels and out of cellar windows.

Tempus’s skin crawled: Pain wasn’t something he sought, and with no death at the end of it, he could suffer infinitely more than other men. But it was his pride that leant him pause: The last thing he needed was to be taken hostage by the

PFLS and held to ransom. Crit would never let him forget it.

And the result for the PFLS would then be eradication- total and complete, not the minor harrassment Crit had time to field while busy with a hundred other tasks as he got two fighting units ready to depart a town that had precious little else between it and total anarchy.

So Tempus said to the foremost fighter, “If you’re Zip, I am,” and slid off his horse, making fast its reins on its pommel: Whatever Tempus was worth, the Tros was irreplaceable, and would make for the Stepsons’ barracks on a whistled command.

But once the Tros, with teeth and hooves and blood lust spewing carnage in its wake, made for the barracks beyond the Swamp of Night Secrets, then the die for each and every rebel child was cast.