The Complete Darkwar Trilogy. Raymond E. Feist

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СКАЧАТЬ leaped through the doorway, with the two closest men following after him.

      The boys had reached the boulevard and were heading into the plaza by the time the men began to overtake them. Jommy glanced over his shoulder to make sure Tad and Zane were still behind him and shouted, ‘Follow me!’

      He hurried to the fountain where the usual gang of apprentices and girls were gathering and came to a grinding halt in front of Arkmet and the other Bakers’ Boys. He said, ‘You feel like hitting someone?’

      ‘You?’ asked Arkmet, taking a step back.

      ‘No,’ said Jommy as Tad and Zane caught up.

      ‘Them?’ said Arkmet with a grin.

      ‘No,’ said Jommy, pointing past the brothers at the two greycloaked assassins who had pursued them into the plaza. ‘Them.’

      Arkmet shrugged. ‘Sure.’

      Jommy, Tad, and Zane took off, and the two assassins moved forwards, their cloaks hiding their weapons from the city watch. The Bakers’ Boys moved to intercept the two men and Arkmet said, ‘What’s the hurry?’

      One assassin, a grey-bearded man with a bald pate, threw back his cloak, revealing a sword and dagger in either hand, and said, ‘You don’t wish to know, boy.’

      Seeing weapons, the Bakers’ Boys stepped away but continued to block the route Tad, Zane, and Jommy had escaped by. Putting up his hands, Arkmet also backed away, and said, ‘No one said anything about blades.’

      ‘No one said anything about stupid boys getting in the way, either,’ said the assassin. He made a menacing gesture with the dagger in his left hand, while his companion slipped around him to the right, and tried to see which way the three boys had fled.

      ‘Stupid?’ said Arkmet as the man tried to shoulder past him. ‘Stupid?’ With stunning fury, the broad-shouldered boy lashed out, catching the assassin on the left side of his face, right at the point of his jaw. The man’s eyes rolled in his head and his knees buckled. His companion turned to see what the noise was and was greeted by a brick, thrown with precision by another Bakers’ Boy. The brick caught the man on the bridge of his nose and his head snapped backwards.

      Someone pushed him over and the Bakers’ Boys gathered around the two fallen men and proceeded to stomp and kick them, continuing long after they had fallen unconscious.

      Tad, Zane, and Jommy hugged the wall in the darkness. They had been on the move for hours and at last were fairly sure they were not being followed. Perspiration dripped off all three of them, for the night was hot and they had not had the chance to rest for ages.

      ‘What now?’ asked Zane.

      ‘We go where Caleb told us to go if something went wrong,’ Tad replied. ‘Four men trying to kill us is most certainly something wrong, don’t you think?’

      ‘You’ll get no argument from me, mate,’ said Jommy. ‘Where did he say we were supposed to go?’

      Tad said, ‘Follow me.’

      He led his two companions through the streets of the city, getting lost twice but eventually finding his way to the appropriate home. As instructed, he did not approach the house directly, but from a narrow alleyway, and through a broken board in the back fence, which let the three boys into a small garden behind a modest building. At the kitchen door, he knocked and waited.

      ‘Who’s there?’ demanded a man’s voice.

      ‘Those who seek shelter in the shadows,’ Tad replied.

      The door opened quickly and a broad-shouldered man in a simple tunic and trousers urged them inside. ‘Come in, quickly!’

      He said nothing but moved towards the centre of the room and rolled back a carpet. Under it lay a trap door and he motioned for Zane and Jommy to pull it open. A narrow flight of stairs led down into the gloom. The man lit a lantern from a taper thrust into the fire in the kitchen, then led the boys down. ‘I’ll close that when I come back up,’ he said at the bottom of the stairs.

      The stairs gave way to a narrow tunnel which headed away from the house in the direction they had come. A deserted shed had stood on the opposite side of the alley, and Tad judged they were now somewhere beneath it.

      The man paused at a door and knocked twice, paused again, and then repeated the knock. Then he opened the door.

      They entered a small chamber with barely enough space to hold them. Within the room sat a single bed, a chair and a tiny table. Obviously this hide-out had been meant for one person. The man turned and said, ‘You’ll wait here until tomorrow night, then we shall move you.’

      As he moved past the three boys, Zane and the others finally realised that a figure already lay on the bed, unconscious. At the door, the man turned and said, ‘We’ve done all we can. He had lost a lot of blood before he got here.’ He closed the door.

      The boys looked down. ‘Caleb,’ Tad whispered, regarding the still form on the bed. His bandages were soaked in blood.

      Zane slowly sat on the one chair, and Jommy and Tad settled on the floor to wait.

       • CHAPTER FIFTEEN •

       Deception

      TAL CONSIDERED HIS CARDS.

      He sat back slightly and glanced to his right, where Amafi stood motionless against the opposite wall. The former assassin-turned-servant had his right hand folded over his left. His eyes scanned the huge hall, which was unlike any gambling establishment in the north. Most gaming up in Roldem and the Kingdom of the Isles was done in well appointed salons or common taverns and inns. The Mistress of Luck was Kesh’s finest gambling establishment, without rival in any other nation.

      Here, the normal venue appeared to be palaces, or as close to a palace as a commoner could find. This particular building had once belonged to a wealthy merchant, but in years past had become a haven for card players and gamblers of every stripe. It was located at the end of a long boulevard, on top of a hill, with a view straight up to the plateau and Imperial Citadel, and a rear vista of the lower city and the Overn Deep.

      Tal sat in the middle of what must have been the grand hall where the merchant had entertained his guests, for instead of a wall, behind Tal stood columns of carved marble forming a colonnade that provided a panorama of the beautifully maintained gardens and the city below. The weather in Kesh was either hot or really hot, so the night air rarely invited a chill. Tal’s immediate concern however, was not for the décor, but for his safety, as his back was exposed to the garden, and lately people had been dying at inopportune times.

      Tal had used his celebrity to gain admission to several galas, receptions and parties, as well as gambling establishments, and since arriving in Kesh he had wasted hours listening to idle gossip. But he had finally heard something that had led him to this place, and now he waited.

      If what he had overheard two nights earlier was true, an imperial prince would be present in the hall tonight – incognito – ostensibly to relax and СКАЧАТЬ