Thieves World 5 – The Face of Chaos by Asprin, Robert

worse, his comrades snatched away as Stilcho had gone. He wanted to call out, to

ask the others were they safe; but that was craziness. He heard the rustling

again near himself.

Some vermin creeping about; they grew rats large here on riverside. So he told

himself. Something feeding on the garbage that swept down the sewers, the

gutters, some choice tidbit brought down from the dwellings of the rich, to

tempt the rats and snakes. And the fear grew and grew, so that he eased his

sword from its sheath and crouched there with his back pressed to the stones and

his eyes constantly scanning the dark that he had view of.

There was nothing anywhere but the splash of rain, the steady drip off eaves of

buildings that still had eaves. Beside them, the shell, the timbers, the loose

piles of brick.

One moved with a dull chink. Mradhon whirled about, saw a figure close against

the wall, at the corner.

‘Come,’ Ischade said.

‘Where’s my brother?’ Moria asked.

But the witch was gone around the corner.

Mradhon cursed beneath his breath, adding things as he went, as Haught did, as

Moria stayed with them. There was no way of retreat, now, against the flow of

things. The beggar on the bridge – someone was watching. The body was gone.

There were likely Stepsons on the loose. He came round the corner, down the

alley where once he had waited in ambush, where the three of them had, before

the Stepsons had chosen to make a bonfire of the place, to use the clenched

fist.

He knew this place. Knew it because he had lived here. They had. He knew the law