Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

somewhere in her skirt before the door burst open.

“They’ve taken her!”

The light from the torch on the landing blinded Walegrin to the details of the

scene before him. There was a central figure, huge and yelling; writhing

attachments to it, also yelling and presumably his guards, and finally Thrusher,

leaping out of the darkness to wrap lethal arms around the neck of the unsubdued

invader. The dark hulk groaned. It fell back, squeezing Thrusher against the

wall. It twisted, freeing its right arm, then calmly peeled someone off its left

side and threw him into the eaves.

“Walegrin!” it bellowed. “They’ve taken her!”

Cythen was crouched on the balls of her feet, beneath the giant’s notice but not

Walegrin’s. She was ready to strike when he laid a hand on her shoulder. She

relaxed.

“Dubro?” Walegrin asked cautiously.

“They’ve taken her!” The smith’s pain was not physical, but it was real

nonetheless. Walegrin did not need to ask who had been taken, though he could

not imagine how they had gotten past the smith in the first place.

“Tell me slowly: Who took her? How long ago? Why?”

The smith drew a shuddering breath and mastered himself. “It was just past

sundown, a beggar-lad came up. He said there’d been an accident on the wharf.

‘Lyra bid me help if I could, so I followed the lad. I lost him almost at once^

there was nothing on the wharf-” he paused, taking Walegrin’s wrist in a bone

crushing grip.

“It was a trap?” Walegrin suggested, grateful for the gauntlet that protected

his wrists from the full power of Dubro’s despair.