Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

Moving with a cat suppleness that would have been scary to an] observer, he

reached his second marker. Nicely framed betweer two merlons, he could see it,

away off in the distance. The purple’ black shape ofJulavain’s Hill. Again he

smiled, tight of lip.

A merlon became a winch, aided by the two wooden cylinders brought for the

purpose. They would pay out the silken cord and prevent the stone from slicing

it. Its other end he secured to his ankles. And froze, waiting while the sentry

clumped by. He was not importantly thumping his pike’s butt, now. He no longei

cared to keep himself awake. The thief gritted his teeth against the ghastly

noise of the hardest of wood grating over harder flagstones. The porker was

dragging his pike!

Then silence was thick enough to cut with a knife, of which the thief owned an

abundance. He waited. And waited.

At last he stepped, still crouching, into the crenel. Turning, he carefully

winched himself, backwards, down the wall. Down and down, until he came to a

particular window. It was cut in the shape of a diamond. That decision had

involved more than aesthetics; the damned thing was harder to enter.

Most carefully indeed, he turned. He paid out the cord with his hands until he

was quite upside down outside that window. Blood flowed into his head while he

strained muscles and vision until he was assured that the chamber was

uninhabited.

Then, grinning, Hanse the thief flipped down and dropped lightly into the

bedchamber of H.R.H. Kadakithis, Prince-Governor of Sanctuary.