Thieves World 7 – The Dead of Winter by Asprin, Robert

The White Foal River stirred like an awakening animal, expanding through the

trees on either side of the upper ford until its shining tendrils crept across

the General’s Road toward the Street of Red Lanterns. The alleys Downwind were

already underwater, and the Swamp of Night Secrets had become a pond.

Water gurgled over the marshy ground above Fisherman’s Row and tugged like some

marine thief at the small boats tied up on shore. Waterfront merchants labored

mightily to protect their wares or fought over the carts that could take them to

higher ground. In Caravan Square water stood in muddy pools. But the river

roared its frustration where the high banks narrowed it, and nibbled angrily at

the supports of the bridge.

Things were not much better elsewhere in the town. Water pounded on tiles and

shingles, and roofs which had been at best inadequate turned into sieves. It

seeped downward and mud walls began to sag. It pooled in streets and overflowed

gutters, floating away the accumulated filth of years. Block after block, the

water scoured, hurrying its captured debris toward the gaping mouths of the

sewers, whose hollow roar soon became a constant undertone to the drumming of

the rain.

Drowned rats and bigger things were swept onward- bodies thought long buried,

pieces of rotting wood, wagon wheels, cracked dishes, a mercenary’s scabbard, a

beggar’s precious heap of rags, all became part of the stream. And presently,

where pallid waterweed had rooted in the underground channels or where bricks of