Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

She struggled then. The two of them held her.

“You can’t help him,” Mradhon said, his arms locked round her.

“She’s hurt,” said Haught. “She’s bleeding.”

They tended her, the two of them. She hardly cared.

* * *

“It’s him,” the Stepson said, looking disdainfully at the human wreck they

deposited on the road across the bridge. Rain washed the wounds, dark threads of

blood trailing in a wash of water over the skin. The guard toed the informer in

the side, elicited a little independent movement of the arm, lit in lightning

flashes. “Oh, treat him tenderly,” the Stepson said. “Very tenderly. He’s

valuable. Get a blanket round him.”

“We lost the rest,” his companion said tautly. There was rage beneath his tone.

The Stepson looked up. A shadow stood there in the lightnings, in the rain, an

unlikely cloaked shape, a darkness by the bridge.

When the lightning next flashed it was gone. Fire danced on the water, full of

tricks and shadows on this side of the bank. The blaze might have taken all of

Downwind, but for the rain. It was dying even now.

Six horsemen thundered across the bridge from Sanctuary to Downwind, securing

the road.

“You’d better send more,” the garrison officer said. “They’re like rats over

there, small but a lot of them. You- saw that.”

The Stepson fixed the man with a chill, calm eye. “I saw catastrophe. Two of us

could have turned the town upside down if that were the object. Perhaps you

misunderstood. But I rather doubt it. Six could raze the town. But that wasn’t

what we wanted, was it?” He looked down at the moaning informer, then collected