“Maybe, maybe—” the filth-caked, scrawny gang leader replied, swaying a little where he stood, knee-deep in muddy water, wisps of greasy red hair weaving around his face.
“What’s the matter, Grim? What’s matter? You scared?” Marco taunted, as the blood drained out of Benito’s face and his eyes got big and frightened. “I’m not a kid anymore, that it? Afraid to take me on now?”
“Marco—” Benito hissed, tugging urgently at his soggy sleeve. “Marco, I don’t think that’s too smart—”
The gang leader hesitated—and his own followers began jeering at him, waving their arms around and making obscene gestures. Under cover of their catcalls, Marco whispered harshly to his younger brother.
“Benito—don’t argue. For once, don’t. I know what I’m doing, dammit! When you figure they’re all watching me, you light out for deep water. You swim—”
“No! I’m not leavin’ you!”
“You’ll damn well do as I say!”
“No way!”
“Shut up!” Grimaldi roared, effectively silencing all of them. He sloshed forward a pace or two and grinned. “I ain’t afraid, Marco, but I ain’t stupid, neither. I ain’t gonna get myself cut up for nothin’—not when we can take both o’ ye, an’ make a little bargain with the Dandelo buyers for two nice young eunuchs—” His knife described a fast nasty low flick.
He sloshed forward another step—his last.
Marco’s right hand blurred, and Grimaldi toppled sideways into the mud, wearing a rather surprised expression, a rock imbedded in his temple.
There was a moment of stunned silence, then the rest of the gang surged forward like a feeding-frenzy of weasels.
* * *
Harrow lost the boy as soon as he slid into the reeds. It took him longer than he liked to get to the place where the boy had vanished. If this had been the mountains, or a forest or a city—even a weird city like Venice—he’d have had no trouble tracking the kid. Here in this foul wilderness he was at something of a loss. He floundered around in the mud, feeling unnaturally helpless. Fine vessel of the Goddess, he was—he couldn’t even keep track of a dumb kid!
Then he heard the shouting; there was enough noise so that he had no trouble pinpointing the source even through the misleading echoes out there. It sounded like trouble; and where there was trouble, he somehow had no doubt he’d find the boy.
But getting there . . . was a painfully slow process; he literally had to feel his way, step by cold, slippery step. Waterweeds reached out for him, snagging him, so that he had to fight his way through them. The noise echoed ahead of him, driving him into a frenzy of anxiety as he floundered on, past treacherous washouts and deposits of mud and silty sand that sucked at him.
Until he was suddenly and unexpectedly in the clearing.
He blinked—there was the boy—no, two boys, standing at bay, side by side on a hummock of flattened reeds. They were holding off—barely—a gang of mud-smeared, tattered marsh-vermin. One boy was Marco—
Merda!
The other was Benito!
Harrow saw the pattern of the Goddess’s weave. It was too much to be coincidence; first the vision, then Marco just happening to be holing up out in this Godforsaken slime-pit—and now the other boy also turning up—
But the boys weren’t doing well. They’d accounted for one of the crazies, now floating bloody-headed within arm’s reach of Harrow. But the others were going to overpower them before much longer. Marco had an ugly slash across his ribs that was bleeding freely and soaking into a long red stain along the front of his mud-spotted tan cotte. And even as Harrow moved to grab a piece of driftwood to use as a weapon, one of the crazies started to bring down a boathook, aimed at the younger boy’s head.
“Benito!”
Harrow saw the horror in Marco’s eyes as the boy saw it coming, and before Benito could turn, the older boy shoved him out of the way and took the blow himself.
The deadly hook missed, but the boy took the full force of the pole on his unprotected head. The pole broke—the boy sank to his knees—