Jimmy the Hand

Jimmy The Hand

Legends of the Riftwar Book 3

Raymond E. Feist

Men cursed as
they grappled.

Jimmy the Hand
slipped eel-like between knots of fighting men on the darkened
quayside. Steel glittered in torch- and lantern-light, shining in
ruddy-red arcs as horsemen slashed at the elusive Mockers who strove
to hold them back. Only seconds more were needed for Prince Arutha
and Princess Anita to make their escape, and the fight had reached
the frenzied violence of desperation. Screams of rage and pain split
the night, accompanied by the iron hammering of shod hooves throwing
up sparks as they smashed down on stone, to the counterpoint of the
clangour of steel on steel.

Bravos and
street-toughs struggled against trained soldiers, but the soldiers’
horses slipped and slithered on the slick boards and stones of the
docks and the flickering light was even more uncertain than the
footing. Knives stabbed upward and horses shied as hands gripped
booted feet and heaved Bas-Tyran men-at-arms out of the saddle. The
harsh iron-and-salt smell of blood was strong even against the
garbage stink of the harbour, and a horse screamed piteously as it
collapsed, hamstrung. The rider’s leg was caught in the
stirrup, crushed beneath his mount, and he screamed as the horse
thrashed, then fell silent as ragged figures swarmed over him.

Jimmy fell flat
under the slash of a sword, rolled unscathed between the flailing
hooves of a war-horse scrabbling to find better footing, tripped one
of the men-at-arms who was fighting dismounted against three Mockers,
then dashed down the length of the dock, his feet light on the
boards.

At the end of
the quay he threw himself flat on the rough splintery wood to hail
the longboat below:

‘Farewell!’
he called to the Princess Anita.

She turned
toward his voice, her lovely face little more than a pale blur in the
pre-dawn light. But he knew that her sea-green eyes would be wide
with astonishment.

I’m
glad I came to say goodbye,
he thought, an unfamiliar sensation
squeezing at his chest below the breastbone.
It’s worth a
little risk to life and limb.

He grinned at
her, but nervously; the fight with Jocko Radburn’s men was
heating up and his back felt very exposed. It wouldn’t be long
before the Mockers broke and ran; stand-up fights weren’t their
style.

Another, taller
figure stood in the longboat. ‘Here,’ Prince Arutha
called. ‘Use it in good health!’

A rapier in its
scabbard flew up to his hand. He snatched it out of the air and
rolled over, just in time to avoid a kick from one of Radburn’s
bully-boys. Jimmy rolled again as the man pursued him, heavy-booted
foot raised to stamp on him like an insect. Letting the sword go he
reached up and grabbed toe and heel with crossed hands, giving it a
vicious twist that set the bully roaring and twisting to keep it from
being broken. That put him off-balance, and a kick placed with
vicious precision toppled him screaming into the water. His gear
dragged him under before the echoes of his scream could die.

‘Time to
go!’ Jimmy panted.

Rolling up to
his feet, Jimmy yanked the rapier from its scabbard and looked about
for a worthy target—preferably one blocking the best escape
route. Below, he could just make out the rhythmic splashing of the
oars counterpoint the chaos of the battle all around him. Farewell,
he said again in his heart. Then, as a pile of baled cloth blazed up:
Ooops!

Lanterns began
to appear on the boats around them, and watchmen from the surrounding
warehouses came running, while from all around men called out: ‘What
passes?’ and ‘Who goes there?’ And a growing shout:
‘Fire! Fire!’

A man in the
black and gold of Bas-Tyra snatched a lantern from one of the
watchmen and marched toward the end of the dock, giving Jimmy an idea
of whom to attack. The soldier grinned at the sight of the thin,
ragged boy before him.

‘Brought
me a new sword, have you?’ he said. ‘Looks like a good
one. Too good for gutter-scum whose whiskers haven’t yet seen a
razor. My thanks.’

He swung a
backhand cut at Jimmy, a lazy stroke with more strength than style.
No doubt he imagined that he could easily smash the rapier from the
young thief’s hand and then hack him down.

The finely-made
blade was alive in Jimmy’s hand; heavy, but perfectly balanced,
limber as a striking snake. It flashed up almost of itself and turned
the clumsy stroke away with a long
scringgg
of metal on metal.
The guardsman grunted in astonishment as the redirected force of his
own stroke spun him around, then shouted in pain as Jimmy danced
nimbly aside and slashed at him.

More by luck
than skill, the sharp steel caught the guardsman on the wrist,
parting the tough leather of his gauntlet and cutting a shallow
groove in the flesh beneath. With a gasp, the man shook his wrist and
took a step back, disbelief visible on his coarse features even in
the darkness.

Jimmy laughed in
delighted surprise. Clearly not everyone had Arutha’s skill
with the blade. The hours he’d spent training with the Prince
while waiting for Trevor Hull’s smugglers to find a ship for
Arutha and that old pirate, Amos Trask, to steal for their escape had
paid off. Jimmy felt as if the soldier moved at half Prince Arutha’s
speed. He laughed again.

That laugh
galvanized the soldier into action and he struck out at the young
thief with blow after powerful blow.

Like a
peasant threshing grain,
Jimmy thought—he had little
experience of matters rural, but a deep contempt for rubes.

The blows were
hard and fast, but each was a copy of the one before. Instinct led
him to raise the rapier, and the cuts flowed off steel blade and
intricate swept guard; he had to put his left palm on his right wrist
more than once, lest sheer force knock the weapon out of his hand.
But he knew he was moments away from dodging to his left, thrusting
hard and taking the soldier in the stomach. Arutha had always
cautioned patience in judging an opponent.

An instant later
Jimmy’s back met the side of a bale; glancing to either side he
realized he’d been neatly trapped in a short, dead-end passage
of piled cargo. The man before him grinned and made teasing thrusts
with his sword.

‘Caught
like the little sewer rat you are,’ he growled.

The man raised
his sword and Jimmy readied himself to execute his move, confident he
would be through with the soldier in another moment. Then, suddenly,
a pair of grappling bodies hurtled by, each man with a hand on the
wrist of the other’s knife-hand, stamping and cursing as they
whirled in a circle like a fast and deadly country dance. They
tumbled into the Bas-Tyran man-at-arms, throwing him forward with a
cry of surprise. Jimmy didn’t hesitate. He felt a mild instant
of regret that he couldn’t execute his fancy passing thrust,
but he couldn’t ignore such an easily acquired target. Jimmy
stabbed out, and felt the needle point of the rapier sink through
muscle and jar on bone, the strange sensation flowing up through the
steel and hilt to shiver in his shoulder and lower back.

The man dropped
his lantern with a cry that turned into a screamed curse as the glass
shattered. The splattered oil blazed high, driving the wounded
soldier back. He dropped his weapon and began to beat at spots of
flame on his clothes, while Jimmy climbed the pile of bales like a
monkey.

‘You
should know better than to corner a rat!’ he called over his
shoulder as he bounded down the back of the pile and struck the
ground running.

He heard someone
whistle the code to withdraw and saw Mockers streaming into alleys
and side-streets like wisps of fog scattering before a high wind.
Jimmy raced to join them, but before he ducked into an alley he
turned to look out into the bay. Trevor Hull and his smugglers were
diving into the water, some swimming under the docks while others
made for longboats standing by in the water. Beyond them, Jimmy could
make out the form of the
Sea Swift
turning toward the broken
blockade line, canvas fluttering free and catching the light like
ghost-clouds in the dark; he raised his arm to wave. He knew it was
useless; the Princess would have been hurried below to safety as soon
as she’d been brought aboard. But he could no more have
resisted that wave than he could have not spoken that one last word
to her.

The young thief
turned and ran down the alley, as light on his feet as a cat and
almost as keenly aware of his surroundings. He might not be a great
swordsman—yet—but fleeing through the darkened alleys of
Krondor was a skill he’d mastered thoroughly long before he
reached the ripe old age of thirteen.

As he dodged
through the byways of the city, his thoughts turned to the time he
had spent with the Princess and Prince during the last few weeks. The
Princess Anita was what girls were supposed to be and in his
experience never were. For a boy raised in the company of whores,
barmaids and pickpockets, she was . . . something rare, something
fine, a minstrel’s tale come to breathing life. When he was
near her he wanted to be better than he was.

It’s
well she’s gone, then,
he thought. A lad in his position
couldn’t afford such noble notions.

Besides, he
thought with a wry grin, she would one day marry Prince Arutha—even
though he didn’t know it yet—so Jimmy had no business
having such feelings for her. Not that having no business doing
things had ever stopped him.

I suppose if
she has to marry, and princesses do, he’s the one I’d
want her to.

Jimmy liked
Arutha, but it was more than that. He respected him and . . . yes,
trusted him. The Prince made him see why men would follow a leader,
follow him to war on his bare word, something he’d never
thought to understand. Jimmy’s experience had been solely with
men who commanded through fear or because they could deliver an
advantage to those who followed. And Jimmy served at the pleasure of
the Upright Man, who did both those things.

Jimmy ran his
hand along the scabbard of Arutha’s rapier, his now, and
smiled. Then he grew suddenly solemn. Being with them had brought
something special into his life, and now it was over. But then, how
many people in the Kingdom got this close to princes and princesses?
And of those, how many were thieves?

Jimmy grinned.
He’d done better than well in his acquaintance with royalty:
two hundred in gold, a fine sword, including lessons on how to use
it, and a girl to dream about. And if he missed the Princess Anita,
well, at least he’d got to know her.

He headed for
Mother’s with a jaunty step, ready for a light meal and a long
sleep.

Best to sleep
until Radburn cools off,
he thought. Though that might mean he’d
have to sleep until he was an old man.

Jimmy neared the
large hall called Mother’s, or Mocker’s Rest, carved out
among the tunnels of the sewers. To a citizen of the upper city it
would have looked gloomy enough: the drip of water and the glisten of
nitre on ancient stone. But it would have been little more than
another junction of tunnels in the city’s sewer system, a bit
larger than usual, but nothing remarkable. To the average citizen of
the upper city, the eyes watching Jimmy approach the entrance to
Mother’s would have gone unseen, and the daggers clutched in
ready hands would have been undetected, unless at the last, fatal
instant, they were driven home to protect the secret of Mocker’s
Rest.

To Jimmy it was
home and safety and a chance to rest. He pushed on a stone, and a
loud click preceded the appearance of a small opening, as a door
fashioned of canvas and wood, cleverly painted to look like rock,
swung wide. He was short enough that he could walk hunched over while
a taller man would have to crawl, and he quickly traversed the short
passage to enter the hidden basement. A Basher stood watch and as
Jimmy appeared, nodded. Jimmy was thus spared a lethal welcome. Any
unknown head coming through that passage had roughly a second to
intone the password, ‘There’s a party tonight at
Mother’s’ before finding his brains splattered all over
the stone floor.

The room was
huge, carved out of three basements, all with stairs leading up to
three buildings owned by the Upright Man. A whorehouse, an inn and a
merchant of cheap trade-goods provided a variety of escape routes,
and Jimmy could find all of them blindfolded, as could every other
Mocker. The light was kept dim at all hours of the day or night, so
that a quick exit into the sewers wouldn’t leave a Mocker
without sight.

Jimmy nodded
greetings to a few of the beggars and urchins who were awake; most
slept soundly, for there were still many hours until dawn. They would
all be in the market minutes after sunrise on a normal day. But today
would be anything but normal. With the Prince and Princess safely
away, reprisals would be the first order of business. The City
Constables and the Royal Household Guard had been easy enough to cope
with over the years, but this secret police installed by Guy du
Bas-Tyra since he took the office of Viceroy was another story. More
than one Mocker had been turned snitch to them and the mood of the
room reflected it. While there was a quiet sense of triumph at having
aided Princess Anita’s escape, the benefit was long-term; the
Upright Man thought about things that way, Jimmy understood. Some day
Princess Anita would return to Krondor—or at least Jimmy hoped
so—and those who supported her and her father, Prince Erland,
now had a debt to the Upright Man that he would contrive to collect
in the most beneficial fashion.