Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

hasten over to greet. Tonight, he remembered nothing earlier forgotten; he

saw no one he cared to bestir himself to meet. He prepared to defend his

place as seven mercenf aries filled the doorway with plumes and pelts and hilts

and mail, and looked his way. But they went in a group to the bar, though

one, in a black mantle, with iron at chest and head and wrists, pointed

directly to him like a man sighting his arrow along an outstretched arm.

The man talked to Two-Thumbs awhile, took off his helmet with its horsehair

crests that seemed blood-red, and approached Hanse’s table alone. A shiver

coursed the thief’s flesh, from the top of his black thatch to his toetips.

The mercenary reached him in a dozen swinging strides, drawing a stabbing sword

as he came on. If not for the fact that the other hand held a mug, Shadowspawn

would have aired iron by the time the man (or youth from his smooth, heartshaped

face) spoke: ‘Shadowspawn, called Hanse? I am Stepson, called Abarsis. I have

been hoping to find you.’ With a grin full of dazzling teeth, the mercenary put

the ivory-hiked sword flat in the wet-rings on the table, and sat, both hands

well in evidence. clasped under his chin.

Hanse gripped his beltknife tightly. Then the panic-flash receded, and time

passed, instead of piling all its instants terri-fyingly on top of one another.

Hanse knew that he was no coward, that he was plagued by flashbacks from the two

times he had been tapped with the fearstick ofVashanka, but his chest was

heaving, and the mercenary might see. He slumped back, for camouflage. The