Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

his mind up to it. “You’ll pay for this one.”

* * *

Mor-am kicked. They jerked him off his feet and carried him, battering him

against some narrow passage as he struggled, with the reek of wet stone and

human filth and suddenly warm and windless air. They set him on his feet again

and jerked the blindfold off. The room came clear in a haze of lamplight, a cot,

a ragged small man sitting on it crosslegged amid a horde of others, the human

refuse of the Downwind standing and squatting about the room. Beggars. He felt

hard fingers working at the knot at the back of his skull, freeing him of the

gag: he choked and tried to spit out the dirty wad and the same hard fingers

pried it from his mouth, but his hands they had no intention to release. They

only let him stand on his own, and his knees wanted to give under him.

“Hawkmask,” the man said from the bed, “my name is Moruth. Have you heard it?”

No, he said, but his tongue stuck to his mouth and muffled it. He shook his

head.

“Right now,” Moruth said quietly, an unpleasant voice with the accent of

Sanctuary’s Maze and not the Downwind, “right now you’d be thinking that you

shouldn’t know that name, that taking that blindfold off means you’re already a

dead man and we don’t care.what you see. Might be. That might be. Turn around.”

He stood still. His mind refused to work.

“Turn ’round.”

Hands jerked him about, facing the closed door. A mask was pinned there with a

heavy iron nail. Terror came over him, blank terror, image of Brannas nailed to

the pole. They spun him about again facing Moruth.