A Thief in the Night

chapter Twenty

“You,” Malden said. “I’ve seen you before. Back up the road a ways. You’re—”

“I’m the man no mischievous little peasant ever wants to meet,” the man said. Malden was sure he knew the man now, even if his face couldn’t be seen. This was the shire reeve he’d seen back at the last milehouse. The one who’d sized him up like a horse he wanted to buy. “I work this road looking for runaways. Most don’t give me such exercise as you.” He swept back his cloak and Malden saw a long-handled hammer dangling from his belt. “You’re looking at a beating, no matter what. But you can save yourself from being hobbled if you play nice.”

Hobbling. The very word made Malden’s blood freeze. It was too gentle-sounding a word considering what it meant—leg-breaking was perhaps more precise. It was the traditional punishment for villeins who ran away too many times from their farms.

Malden licked his lips in fear. “I have no idea what you think I’ve done, but—”

“Your master sent me to bring you home, boy.”

“Master? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Malden said. “I’m a citizen of Ness, a free man. I’m traveling with a knight of the realm, Sir Croy. He’ll vouch for me if we just go inside and rouse him.”

The shire reeve chuckled. “You’ve got a silver tongue in your mouth, I’ll give you that. Most folk I catch can barely mumble the king’s speech. That must have helped you trick yon bunch into letting you ride on their wagon. Did you tell them all that guff about being a citizen? Do you think they really believed you? Look at you, son. You’re as thin as a switch, and near short as a dwarf. You’ve got the look all over you of one born poor. You can put on fancy city clothes if you like, too, yet it don’t make you a gentleman.”

Malden glanced to the left and the right, looking for a good escape route. Unfortunately none presented itself. The privy stood well off from the main building, and he doubted he could outrun the shire reeve. Yet if he could just get inside the milehouse, he knew he could wake the others and they would explain everything. If he could—

“Hold,” he said, thinking of something. “You say my master sent you? Pray tell, what was his name?”

“I should think you’d know that yourself,” the shire reeve said. “Prestwicke. His name is Prestwicke. He sent me word of your description, and coin to pay for your capture in advance. When I spied you last night I sent a message back. He’ll be here tomorrow to collect you—whether or not you can walk then.”

At the sound of the name Malden’s heart raced. He’d come all this way to get away from Prestwicke, but it seemed the assassin wasn’t going to give up that easily. He had no choice now but to escape. If Prestwicke came for him, he knew the bastard would never let him get away again. “Very well,” he forced himself to say. “I’ll go quietly. Just let me do one thing first.”

“Come now, what could you possibly hope to achieve by—”

“This,” Malden said. He drew his bodkin from his belt in one quick motion and flicked it toward the shire reeve’s face. It was no throwing knife—it had no edge, just a poorly sharpened point—and he knew better than to think it would actually hurt the man. The shire reeve didn’t know that, however, and as Malden had expected he flinched and took a step backward as the tiny knife flew past his ear.

It was just enough to ruin his balance. Malden rushed toward him with one shoulder down and caught him in the midriff, knocking him off his feet. He didn’t stop to admire his handiwork but kept running, across the road and into the field of wheat on the far side. Behind him he heard yelling but he didn’t bother listening too closely—he could guess what the shire reeve was shouting about.

The stalks of wheat, pale in the moonlight, bowed and bent aside as Malden hurtled through them. He would run a dozen yards and no more into the field then double back, he figured, and race for the door of the milehouse. Hopefully the shire reeve would get lost in the wheat while trying to stop him. Hopefully—

A sharp pain exploded across Malden’s buttocks. He was lucky he’d been doubled over, trying to keep his head down below the level of the wheat. If the hammer had taken him in the back it might have broken his spine. It was one of the worst blows he’d ever taken, and it sent him sprawling in the mud. His breath burst out of him and his hands grabbed at the yielding wheat as he tried to scrabble back up to his feet.

A boot pushed down on his back and ground him into the dirt.

“That,” the shire reeve said, “was a fool’s gambit. You think I never chased down some farmhand in a field before?”

Malden could think of several witty quips to come back with, but he lacked the breath to form them.

“I can see you’re a lively one,” the shire reeve said. “Well, I got a cure for that. Tell me, boy. Which knee you want to keep? Left or right?”

Malden fought and struggled and just managed to roll over onto his back. He looked up at the stars and the great shadow of the shire reeve above him, and the silhouette of the hammer in the man’s hand. His heart beat so fast in his chest he thought it might burst. “Please,” he begged. He’d spent much of his life as a thief waiting to be measured for a hangman’s noose. He’d thought often of what he would say to his executioner, what final words he would impart on the world. All that came out of his mouth now was, “Please.”

Even vain hopes are answered, sometimes.

There was a sound very much like the noise a scythe makes when it cuts through a sheaf of grain. A few drops of dark rain pattered on Malden’s cheek. And then the shire reeve’s head fell from his neck to land right in Malden’s lap. The man’s body stayed standing a moment longer, then slid to one side and crushed the wheat down flat.

Another shape was revealed behind it. A much larger shape, that of a man holding a massive bearded axe.

“The fool woke me up,” Mörget said, “when he rapped on the wall with that little stick of his. I was enjoying my rest.”

The blood started flowing once more in Malden’s veins. It still ran cold, though.

No. Oh, no. It couldn’t be.

Not a shire reeve.

Among the criminal fraternity of Ness there was a certain understanding. Thieves occasionally fought one another. Sometimes footpads had to hurt someone to make their nightly wages. Every thief owned at least a knife, and often far more serious weapons, and they knew how to use them. But not even the most hardened thug in the Free City would think of attacking a watchman.

The agents of the law had their own fraternity, and they punished those who killed their own without mercy or question. If you slew a watchman, you were signing your own death warrant. They would never stop until they caught the killer.

And that was just for average everyday watchmen. The shire reeve was—had been—one of the most important officials of law in the entire kingdom.

If you killed a man like that, you might as well slit your own throat next. And Malden knew to a certainty that after the law dealt with Mörget, they would come after him as an accomplice. The facts didn’t matter. The law would have its due.

“That might have been a foolish blow,” he said. “Though I do thank you for it.”

Mörget squatted down a little and picked the head up from Malden’s lap. “No, it was a clean cut. Look.”

Malden shook his head. “Mörget, that man was an official of the crown, and when he turns up missing they’ll hunt high and low for his killer. Nor will they think that disturbing your rest justified your crime.”

“Ha! Let them come. I’m afraid of no watchman.”

Malden shook his head. “Please, listen to me, friend. You know how to chop off men’s heads—I know about the law. We have to hide the body. Just to make sure it isn’t found until we’re long gone from here. Once we’re across the Strow, away from civilization, maybe we can breathe easy again.”

“Justice! Law!” Mörget mocked. “Just words, little man.”

Oh, this was bad. Very, very bad. Malden could hear his heart pounding in his ears. He could feel sweat pooling in the small of his back. What if someone in the milehouse heard the shire reeve shouting? What if they were coming even now with torches and swords, looking to see what was the matter?

What if the shire reeve had told someone, anyone, about the peasant named Malden he was hunting? What if Prestwicke came in the morning and—

No. He couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t think at all, there was no time for it. He needed to act.

Malden got to his feet, then reached down to grab the shire reeve’s ankles. The shire reeve was bigger than he was, and Malden didn’t think he could drag the man very far on his own, but if Mörget would just help—

“Catch,” the barbarian said.

It was all Malden could do to drop the dead man’s ankles and bring his hands up. He neatly caught the shire reeve’s severed head, then almost dropped it again when he realized what Mörget had thrown to him.

The barbarian bent down and lifted the body easily, slinging it over his shoulder. “Where do you want it?” he asked.

“Deeper in the field is our best bet,” Malden said. “He won’t be discovered until this place is harvested.”

Together they covered up all evidence of what had happened. The hardest part was washing the blood from his tunic. Malden was convinced the keeper of the milehouse would come out and demand to know what they were doing in his horse trough, but somehow they avoided detection.

When it was done, Mörget returned to the stables, while Malden slipped inside and headed for the room he was supposed to share with Slag. He stopped outside the door and waited until he’d stopped shaking.

Inside, Slag was propped up on the mattress, reading by the light of a single candle. “Didn’t have the liver for it, eh?” the dwarf asked.

It took Malden a moment to realize what Slag meant. “Ah. No. I won’t be going to . . . to Helstrow, not now.” Not until he was sure the shire reeve’s death went unnoticed. Not while Prestwicke was out there somewhere, riding hard to catch up with him. All the horrors of an elfin crypt couldn’t match what his misbegotten fate came up with on its own. “I’m coming with you.”

“I thought as much,” Slag said.

“You did?”

“You’ll never leave Cythera behind. Not if it means losing her to Croy,” the dwarf told him, and tapped the side of his nose.

Malden knew he couldn’t tell anyone—not even Slag—what had happened, so he just said, “You’ve got me there, old man. You’ve got me dead to rights.”