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

like a tearing sheet and staggered beneath a gust of wind. Over her shoulder she

glimpsed the last shards of the bubble whirling away on the storm.

The wind swept through the kitchen, upheaving the table so that Snapper Jo had

to leap aside. Gilla picked up a trashbasket and flung it at one of the thralls,

upended another over the serpents, saw the fiend recover and start toward her,

and snatched up her broom. Another of the soul-thralls lurched forward. Her

swing connected with its head and knocked it bleeding into Snapper Jo’s arms.

Gilla steadied herself and cocked the broom for another swing, but the fiend’s

eyes were fixed on the trickle of red that crossed the thrall’s skin. Bony

fingers tightened and the body began to struggle. The Snapper’s thin lips

writhed back from his razor teeth.

“Fresh meat,” he said thickly, and then, oblivious to the tumult around him,

bent to feed.

Before anything else could come at her, Gilla kicked over the rest of the

trashbaskets, launched herself through the door and slammed it behind her, and

scrambled, panting, across a soggy wilderness of weeds. Before her loomed the

rain-dark walls of the warehouses, and beyond them, the bridge, over the river,

to home.

Lalo bent, shivering, grasped the end of the timber, and nodded to Wedemir.

Together they hefted it, and staggered forward to the edge of the river where a

Stepson, four burly men from the 3rd Commando, and a couple of scrawny youths

from Zip’s collection of toughs were trying to build a bulwark. It was a motley