A Thief in the Night

chapter Sixty-five

“Malden stood here, yes. He must have been under attack as well, for he was holding a naked blade,” Mörget said. “Perhaps that explains this.” He went back to the side of the roof and pointed down. Another dwarf lay on a rooftop far below, half its body cloaked by shadow. Its face was even more bloody than the other’s. Croy couldn’t even tell if it had been male or female. “The dwarves must have beset our little thief. He defended himself ably.”

Croy shook his head. “No—Malden didn’t slay these dwarves. He couldn’t have. Our laws are very strict on that sort of thing.”

“And he is known for abiding your laws,” Mörget said. “Our thief?”

Croy supposed the barbarian had a point. Malden was a criminal. But he wasn’t a killer. Croy had known him long enough to understand that Malden had his own moral code. It might be quite liberal, and include all kinds of things that he himself wouldn’t countenance, but Malden wouldn’t kill unless his life depended on it. And no dwarf would ever attack a human, not unless they had no choice. So how could such a fight have even started? “I just don’t know,” Croy admitted. “This does mean one thing, though.”

“Oh?” Mörget asked.

“Malden was here. Not so long ago. And that means Cythera must be close by. We’re on the right track.”

“Good,” Mörget said. “The sooner we find her, the sooner we can get back to our real purpose here.” He headed to the edge of the roof and started climbing down the tower. Croy followed close behind, invigorated by what they’d found.

They began to head deeper into the residential level, toward a place where the walls narrowed to a point, when Croy called a halt.

Mörget grimaced in annoyance at yet another delay, but he waited expectantly while Croy craned his ears back the way they’d come.

“I know I heard something back there. A grunt of pain—or fear,” Croy insisted.

“Then we are best served going the other way. We cannot waste time investigating every little noise.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Croy said, and started walking forward again—only to freeze in his tracks a moment later.

“No!” someone screamed. He didn’t recognize the voice but it had a dwarven accent. “No, you stinking sack of pus! You can’t have him! Get back!”

“Someone’s in trouble,” Croy said.

“Good! One less enemy for us!” Mörget growled. But Croy had already turned on his heel and was headed back into the dormitory. His boots beat like drumsticks on the flagstones as he pulled Ghostcutter free of its scabbard. He came around a sharp corner toward the fountain, then drew up short as he viewed a scene of horror.

The demon—one of the demons—had come to claim the body of the dead dwarf. Its amorphous mass had flowed over the lower half of the corpse and it was absorbing the rest while Croy watched.

Yet not without resistance. Another dwarf—a female—beat at the faces under the demon’s skin with a wrench. She had a bad cut across her face and another gash in her leg, but she battled more fiercely than a wounded badger. Still, she couldn’t possibly win. Already the demon reached a thick tendril of its substance toward her, clearly intending to have two meals for the effort of securing one.

She looked up when Croy approached and stared at him with blazing eyes. “Stop fiddling with your dubious manhood and help me!”

Croy leapt in immediately, slashing away with Ghostcutter at the demon’s thick skin. Its glassy blood poured out in gouts but it only redoubled its efforts at seizing the female dwarf, shooting forth a second rope of pale flesh to snare her ankle. She fell backward, her arms wheeling in the air, and dropped her wrench. Inch by inch the demon started reeling her in.

“I’ve never seen them do that before,” Mörget said, rushing in to slice through the tendril with one quick stroke of Dawnbringer. The blade flashed with light as the dwarf tumbled free.

“What’s that?” Croy asked as he cut again through the thing’s hide. He couldn’t seem to find the central mass, its only truly vulnerable spot.

“Grow arms,” Mörget said. A new tentacle slapped out toward the dwarf, but the barbarian grabbed her by the belt and tossed her to safety. As the tentacle attempted to grab Mörget around the waist, he brought his sword down in a close arc. The limb came off neatly and spun in the air for a moment before splattering wetly on the flagstones. As Croy watched, the monster surged forward to reclaim this piece of itself. It absorbed it as hungrily as it was swallowing the dead dwarf.

“We know little of these things,” Croy agreed. “Yet I fear learning more would be a dangerous enterprise.”

“Perhaps,” Mörget said, slicing off a wide strip of the demon, “yet it might profit us well, should we encounter very many more of them.”

“Excuse me!” the female dwarf shouted, drowning out the warriors. “If you two giant teat-suckers don’t mind winding up your colloquium—I want to kill this thing.”

“What do we appear to be doing?” Mörget asked, civilly enough.

“Wasting my f*cking time.” The female dwarf ran off, toward the fountain. “Draw it this way! I have a plan!”