Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

for what might be happening behind him. There might be others. Moria might be

walking into ambush set for him. He dared not turn to see. He reached the end of

the bridge, kept walking, walking, walking, toward the shelter of the alleys. It

was all right then, he kept telling himself; Moria could take care of herself,

would recross the river and find her own way home. He was in the alleys, in his

element again, of beggars crouched by the walls and mud squelching underfoot.

Then one of the beggars before him unfolded upward out of the habitual wall

braced crouch, and from behind an arm encircled him, bringing a sharp point

against his throat.

“Well,” a dry voice cackled, “hawkmask, we got you, doesn’t we?”

* * *

Moria did not run. Gut feeling cried out for it, but she kept her pace, in the

waning hours of the night, with thunder rumbling in the south and flashing

lightning in a threatening wall of cloud. It was well after moonset. Mor-am had

not gotten home.

And there was a vast silence in the Downwind. It was not nature, which boomed

and rumbled and advised that the streets and alleys of Downwind would be aswim.

The street-dwellers were up seeking whatever scrap of precious board or canvas

that could be pilfered, carrying their clutter of shelter-pieces with them like

the crabs down by seamouth, making traffic of their own-It was none of these

things; but it was subtle change, like the old man who always had the door

across from their alley-door not being there, like no hawkmask watcher where he

ought to be, in the alley across the way; or again, in the alley second from