Mickey Zucker Reichert - By Chaos Cursed (4 page)

Intrigued by the guards’ formation, Taziar watched the closest set of men as they passed between the smokehouse and Cullinsberg’s inn. The sentries wove through the alley. One always stayed in the lead, apparently watching for movement. Two bobbed their heads, following the sweep of each wall to its ceiling. The last glanced behind rain barrels and garbage, using a torch to peer into any crack large enough to fit a rat.

It seemed only natural for Taziar to anticipate his reactions had the guards, in fact, intercepted him in the alleyway.
I would have slipped ahead and climbed.
He tracked his potential route to a series of shops and cottages closest to the eastern wall enclosing the city. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.
They must have some strategy in mind. Why would they flush me toward the wall? They know I could scale it. Then I’d be free.
Squinting, he studied the eastern wall, wondering if the baron had packed it with sentries. If so, it seemed a foolish mistake that would require him to skimp on guardsmen for the other three walls.
Why short defenses on three sides of the city for one? What would make him that certain I’d go eastward?

Darkness glazed the outer wall to a blur. Taziar blinked, for the first time cursing the limits of vision imposed by the “thieves’ moon.” He tensed for a better look, and his movement brought a glint of metal to view.
Too near to be from the catwalk.
Taziar froze, staring. The object flashed away.
Too high to be from a sentry on the ground. Has to be some sort of steel fitting or object on a rooftop.
Discomfort jangled within Taziar, its source not quite able to slip from instinct to understanding. Taziar considered, twisting his head until he found the glitter of metal again. This time, the answer came.
It disappeared even though I didn’t move.
Since the moon could not have shifted that abruptly, it had to be the metal that had changed position.

Taziar contemplated the significance of his observation.
Either it’s a loose edge of something being blown by wind, or someone is on that rooftop.
The second possibility would have seemed ludicrous under ordinary circumstances, but the guardsmen’s behavior in the alleyway clinched it.
The baron stationed sentries on the rooftops for me?
Taziar followed the natural extensions of the strategy.
The patrols weren’t trying to drive me eastward, just toward any wall at all. They probably figured I’d know to dodge sentries on the walls, but I’d run right into the ones hiding on the roofs.

Now the baron’s scheme made perfect sense, and Taziar tried to rework it to his advantage.
I can’t go through the main gate. I have no choice but to climb the walls.
One alternative presented itself to Taziar. When he had escaped the baron’s dungeons months ago, he and his barbarian companion had crept from the city through the sewer system. Now, that option appealed less to Taziar than battling through the guards, though he carried no sword. If not for Moonbear’s strength, they would never have hammered free the grating that kept attackers from using the same means to enter the city.
A grating that may have been replaced
, Taziar realized, remembering that Moonbear’s quick reflexes had also kept the Climber from drowning when he fell into a depression in the riverbed.
Forget the sewers. I’m just going to have to avoid the outer circle of rooftops and slip over the wall between sentries.
Decision made, Taziar waited until the patrol again turned westward, then clambered down the east side of Mardain’s temple, dropping from the second story into the alley.

Back pressed to the wall, Taziar glanced into a connecting east-west roadway. The backs of three retreating guardsmen loomed to the west. Eastward, the path lay open. Quietly, huddled in pooled darkness, he rushed toward the eastern wall and freedom. Flitting past a row of cottages, he slowed as he approached a well-known crosswalk leading to a statue-crowned basin where much of the populace drew its drinking water. Edging forward, Taziar peered around the corner.

He found himself face-to-face with a guardsman urinating on the stone and sod of the candlemaker’s shop.

Taziar back-stepped.

The guard’s expression went from startled to urgent. Without bothering to fix his britches, he lunged for a spear leaning against the wall. “Here! Shadow Climber. Southeast. Candlemaker’s!”

Taziar groaned at the crisp efficiency of the signal; evidently, the guards had organized precisely for the cause of his capture. Spared only the moment it took the guard to jab his spear, Taziar reacted from long habit. Seizing handholds in the wall, he scurried to the roof. Too late, he realized his mistake. As his head came over the ledge, he caught a split-second glimpse of guardsmen rushing toward him and cold steel whipping for his face.

Momentum overrode Taziar’s instinct to duck. Instead, he flung himself to the rooftop. The sentry’s sword tore the hood from his head, close enough to ruffle a breeze across his scalp. The backswing caught the Climber nearly at the hilt, a clouting stroke that sent him reeling across the tiles. Head ringing, he dropped to one knee, twisting to face his attackers. One rushed him, catching a tenuous grip on Taziar’s sleeve. Taziar jerked backward, and a more solid pair of hands seized him from the opposite side.

“I had him first.” A knife flashed in the first guard’s hand.

The second recoiled with a gasp of pain. “You bastard!” Blood splashed Taziar’s cheek.

The words slurred through Taziar’s spinning consciousness. Reflex had him up and halfway to the northern edge of the roof, tearing free of the fingers entwined in his sleeve, before logic took over. He judged the gap between buildings; a leap across a narrow alley would take him onto a cottage roof. He had tensed to spring before sense seeped fully back into his numbed mind, and he recognized the shapes on the reinforced thatch roof as guardsmen with drawn bows.
Karana’s hell.
Taziar flinched back, hoping his nearness to the other guards would force the bowmen to hold their fire.

The twang of bowstrings sounded almost simultaneously. Taziar ducked and rolled. Steel heads clattered to the tiles. One guardsman cried out, apparently pierced by a companion’s arrow. Others swore, scrabbling for cover. In the confusion, Taziar sprang from the rooftop toward the now empty alley where he had stumbled upon the indisposed guard. He skimmed his fingers and toes along the wall to slow his descent without bothering to catch secure holds. Baron Dietrich’s mistake seemed obvious; apparently, the baron had offered an individual reward or bonus to the guard who killed the Shadow Climber. While it encouraged alertness, morale, and healthy competition, it also stretched the already marginal cooperativeness of the guards.

Perhaps
, Taziar thought as he crossed the byway and hauled himself up a warehouse wall to a slated, second-story rooftop that came to a central point,
the baron doesn’t care how many men he loses, so long as he gets me.
The idea seemed morbid, but not beneath the morality of a leader whose control by Aga’arin’s priests had driven him to hang his faithful captain.
If the bowmen aren’t afraid to kill their own, how can I possibly survive their barrages?

Taziar dodged to the northern side of the roof, boots scrabbling on the slanted surface. Arrows thunked into sod or tile; more clicked or snapped against stone. Other noises wafted to him beneath the muffled shouts and curses: scraping, the hollow clunk of wood hitting wood, and the louder impact as heavy objects struck tile. The roof shook beneath his hold.
What?
Needing to understand this new threat, Taziar risked craning his neck around the corner.

The bowmen on the cottage roof had abandoned their attack to place a sturdy board from the lip of their rooftop to Taziar’s, spanning the byway the Climber had run across. Farther south, the swordsmen on the neighboring roof had placed a similar passage to the row of cottages next to Taziar’s current location.

Taziar jerked his head back around.
They’re prepared this time. Those makeshift bridges can get them across roadways too wide for me to jump.
Taziar worked his way to the western side of his roof, considering in which situations the guards’ preparation gave them the advantage and how he might turn it against them.
The boards will slow them down. So long as I stay on buildings set closely enough for me to jump across them, I’ll be faster.
Taziar frowned, listening to the pound of footsteps as the guards crossed the bridges.
They’ll expect me to stay high. That’s my style. So, at some point, I’ll have to go to the streets.
Taziar leapt from the slanted rooftop, over a narrow alley, to the flower shop, gathering momentum from the story of difference in height.
I need to draw them away from the rooftops near the outer wall.

Disguising his voice, Taziar shouted, “Here! Shadow Climber. Southeast. Slant-roofed warehouse!” He was rewarded by the clatter of movement as guardsmen on-high all along the eastern wall joined the chase.
All right. I’ve got them away from the wall. Now how am I going to get them away from me?
No ready answers came.

The patrol on the cottages rounded the slant-roofed warehouse. Atop the warehouse itself, the archers swore. Tile pattered down the slope and into the street. One screamed as his footing tore free, and he toppled to the packed dirt road below.

Taziar shinnied into the street. Ignoring the moaning guardsman, he sprinted across the roadway and scrambled to the roof of the L-shaped cobbler shop. Behind him, he could hear the scratch of wood dragged along tile. Footsteps thundered across the slaughterhouse roof.

Taziar measured the distance to the smokehouse, then sneaked a peek in the direction of the pursuing guardsmen. It would be a race to the smokehouse.
If I don’t leap across, they’ll meet me.
The space between buildings gaped. Not daring to contemplate it for too long, Taziar sprinted across the long limb of the L-shaped roof and dove for the smokehouse. He hit with his shoulder, rolling in a crooked arc that saved his life. Arrows rebounded from sun-baked stone and tile, every one taking the straighter path he should have taken.

Once on the smokehouse roof, Taziar wasted no time. He half-leapt, half-climbed into Panogya Street. He twisted his head as he fell, gaining a momentary semicircle of view. Guardsmen clustered on the cottages west of the slant-roofed warehouse, the cobbler shop, smokehouse, slaughter-house, and the roof of Shylar’s whorehouse. Quick as a squirrel, Taziar whisked up the wall of the butcher’s shop even as soldiers in black and red uniforms slapped boards into place from Shylar’s whorehouse.

Too close.
Taziar’s heart pounded. His lungs felt as if their linings had been gasped away, leaving them raw and bleeding.
Think. Have to think. A trick.
He knew this side of town well; as a young teen, he had spent much of his time here, filching food for himself and his friends through the baker’s third-story window. Running westward, he sprang the short gap between the butcher’s shop and the cooper’s, then leapt down into the cross street, grabbing a handful of stones from the roadway as he ran.

“Shadow Climber!” someone yelled behind him. “Northeast. Cobbler’s!”

Taziar jammed his fingers into cracks of the building that housed the baker’s huge ovens. The stone felt warm beneath his hands, and he clambered toward the top without glancing back. He kept himself tightened into the smallest target possible, feeling the wary prickle that came with known enemies at his back. But, apparently, the guardsmen were preoccupied with angling their boards from the single story of the cobbler’s shop to the three-story structure that housed the baker’s ovens.

Taziar darted across the oven building to the attached baker’s shop. There, he paused, his fingers on the westernmost ledge of the baker’s shop, overlooking the main thoroughfare, waiting for the guardsmen to come back into sight.

As the first guardsman appeared, Taziar swung down over the side, clinging to the lip of the rooftop as if to drop into the main thoroughfare. At the last moment, he swung his legs and hooked through the baker’s window. He landed silently on the floor, turned and hurled the stones he had gathered through the window and into the main street, hoping the mild thump of their landing simulated a small man rolling onto the cobbles with enough accuracy to fool the sentries. Drawing back into the darkness of the baker’s shop, Taziar waited.

Shortly, a cry broke the night. “Shadow Climber just entered the northwest quad. Jeweler.”

Taziar smiled. The main market thoroughfare onto which the front gates opened ran north and south while Cullinsberg’s second largest street, Panogya, ran east and west, dividing the city into four sections. The sentry’s misidentification revealed that they believed the Climber had crossed the main thoroughfare.

Cautiously, Taziar avoided the tables, ledges, and tray racks that, before sunup, would hold cooling cakes, pies, and breads. Not wanting to risk waking the baker and his family on the second floor, Taziar padded down both flights of steps to the shop level. Ignoring the front exit onto the main street, he pushed open the heavier, unlocked panel leading into the oven building. Finding the hearth cold, he ducked into the chimney, braced his back and feet against the stone, and edged upward.

Dirt coated Taziar’s limbs and face. Soot wedged beneath his fingernails and blackened the tips. He choked on ash, hating the taste, suppressing a cough with effort. At length, he came to the roof. Peering out, he saw no evidence of guards. Relieved, Taziar pulled himself to the tiles.
Ought to charge the baker for the chimney sweeping.
Taziar could not raise a grin for his feeble joke.
Maybe that’ll pay him back for some of the bread I stole as a child.
Lowering himself over the ledge, he climbed back into Panogya Street.

In the wake of the guards’ chase, the city seemed eerily quiet. Taziar slunk with a graceful speed that brought him swiftly to the eastern side of the outer wall. He waited until the soft slap of footsteps on the upper walk wafted clearly to him. Then, as the sound receded, he shinnied up the stone, scuttled across the top, and lowered himself to the fire-cleared plain that surrounded the city of Cullinsberg.
Done.
Excitement ebbed, replaced by the cold sweat with which Taziar had become all too familiar. The euphoria inspired by action had disappeared, yet the feeling of satisfaction that accompanied outwitting the baron’s guardsmen felt twice as sweet for the period of idleness that had preceded it.
It’s not over yet. I still have to find out what Bolverkr’s doing. And sneak back in.