The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) (50 page)

A loud crash from the floor below signified the arrival of the guards. Standing at the doorway of one of the chart rooms that served as the guild’s libraries, Lucius heard the panicked shout of one of the returning sentries.

“They’re coming, everyone clear out!” the man yelled as he ran. “The soldiers are coming!”

Lucius waved impatiently at Hengit. “Okay, that’s it,” he said. “Get your men out, Hengit, it’s time to go.”

The veteran thief needed no second telling, and he barked an order at his three younger charges. They immediately filed out of the library, leaving Lucius alone for a moment, looking at the huge multitude of papers and books that remained. In their haste to carry off the most important items, the thieves had left drawers and cabinets open, papers strewn across the floor around them. He wondered how long it would take the guild to recover so much lost knowledge, and whether the thieves could ever truly be the same efficient organisation without it.

Sighing, he turned and jogged out of the door, heading for the stairs.

The ground floor of the guildhouse held barely contained panic. The few remaining thieves darted across the common room in different directions, some heading for the rear door, some the front, others heading upstairs to escape across the roofs of nearby buildings.

They had all spent many hours in the common room, a place set aside for thieves to talk, to plan, to relax after a hard day’s – or evening’s – larceny. The bar had been stripped of liquor, and Lucius suspected much of it had left the guildhouse before even the contents of the vault. Furniture and various ornaments of questionable value had followed the drink quickly, though Lucius could not find it in his heart to blame those who had taken them – they
were
thieves, after all.

“Forget the doors!” Lucius shouted. “The soldiers will have those covered.”

He had been involved in a running battle through the streets of Turnitia in the past, and did not relish the idea of repeating the experience with trained soldiers on his tail.

“Head for the tunnels, we can lose them down there,” he said.

Hengit and his three thieves waited impatiently for Lucius, the elder giving him pointed looks. However, Lucius had made a promise to Elaine that he would be the last to leave, ensuring all thieves in her charge got away cleanly. It was not a responsibility he was willing to relinquish.

“Leave that!” he said angrily, grabbing one thief who was burrowing into a niche in the common room wall, likely retrieving something precious stashed there years ago. “There’s no time!”

As the last man fled from the common room, Lucius gestured to Hengit that they should move on.

A deafening crash from the front door of the guildhouse hastened them all.

“Capture or kill, it’s all the same to me,” said a voice from behind them. “There will be bonuses for every live one you get.”

Pushing Martelle, one of Hengit’s young thieves, through the rear door of the common room, Lucius cast a glance over his shoulder to see a Vos soldier enter behind him, sword drawn. As their eyes met, Lucius drew a dagger from his belt and flung it across the length of the room. At that range, it did no damage, and Lucius hung around just long enough to see it skid off the mail of the soldier’s chest, scoring a rip in his tabard.

They raced through the rear passageways and rooms of the guildhouse, coming to the kitchens where a stove had been moved to reveal a deep shaft into which had been set metal rungs. There were several entrances to the tunnels beneath the thieves’ headquarters, but this was the largest.

Hengit was helping Martelle down the rungs, almost throwing the young thief down the shaft. Acutely conscious of the sounds of soldiers fanning throughout the building, Lucius considered drawing his sword to defend Hengit and the others, but quickly dismissed the idea. He would likely have need for the weapon later and a naked blade would simply encumber him on the rungs of the shaft. There were plenty of stories of thieves carrying their swords in their teeth, but practical experience had taught Lucius this was a bad idea.

It seemed to take ages for Hengit to swing himself over the lip of the shaft and start descending, while the soldiers moved towards them both with terrible speed. As soon as Hengit had descended a few rungs, Lucius leapt over the edge and began to climb down as fast as he dared.

Cursing the shaft’s builder for not installing a ladder they could all simply slide down, Lucius looked up to see the curious faces of two soldiers staring back at him. One of them turned and shouted for more men to join them as the other dangled his legs over the edge and reached for the top rung.

Lucius raised one hand and leaned back as far as he dared. He flooded the top of the shaft with fire, the flames fanning out from his outstretched hand to crawl inexorably up the curving walls, roiling as they engulfed the soldier. The man managed a single, strangled scream before the fire sucked the air out of his lungs. Lucius only just managed to bark a word of warning as the heavily armoured body fell past him into the darkness.

Not waiting to hear the sickening crunch below, Lucius sped down the last few rungs.

At the bottom of the shaft Hengit was waiting for him, a lit torch already in his hands, taken from a rack stood next to him. Lucius nodded at the other torches still in the rack.

“Break them,” he said to Hengit. “No sense in making things easier for the soldiers.”

Hengit nodded and grabbed another torch for himself, before ripping the others from the rack and snapping them underfoot with the heel of his boot. Lucius, flanked by the other thieves, stared down the two passageways that led from the chamber.

“We could get back onto the streets anywhere along Lantern Street or around the Dogs,” one of the thieves said as he gestured to one of the tunnels. Buenwerner, Lucius thought his name was.

“Bad decision, lad,” Hengit said.

“He’s right,” Lucius said. “Vos will have covered every street within a mile with soldiers. They’ll be expecting us to come up from beneath the city. No, we should take the sewers.”

None relished that thought, but the sewers allowed access to almost every part of the city, and a group of thieves could lose themselves within their labyrinthine twists and turns for days. The drawbacks were, unfortunately, obvious.

Together, they raced through the small network of tunnels that led to the guild’s main sewer entrance, a stout stone door designed to look like part of the sewer’s brick wall from the other side. The sewer door was cracked open, the mechanism that allowed the heavy bricks and mortar to swing freely groaning quietly as they heaved on it. A terrible, gut-churning stench immediately assailed their nostrils, and Lucius was not the only one who gagged. Martelle raised a ragged cloth to his face to try to mask the noisome smell, but Lucius gritted his teeth and stepped onto the ledge that ran alongside the vile sluggish river.

Hengit did not seem to mind the dark environment. He surprised Lucius further when he closed the sewer door behind them and, leaning against it, placed a palm on its surface.

“She was our home for many years,” he whispered.

Looking back at the others, he caught Lucius’ stare, and looked down, embarrassed.

“Come on,” Lucius said to them all. “We’ll head for the docks. It’s a long way through this muck, but Vos cannot cover the entire city.”

“And don’t fall in,” Hengit said. “Vos won’t need trackers to follow you on the surface if that happens; they’ll just follow the stink.”

Doing their best to ignore the stench that was beginning to settle into their clothes, hair and skin, the thieves made their way cautiously through the sewers, hopping from ledge to ledge, their passage lit only by Hengit’s torch. At one junction that opened into a wider tunnel travelling east to west, Buenwerner cocked his head and stopped.

“Did anyone hear that?” he asked.

“Just rats, keep on moving,” Hengit grumbled, anxious to be back on the surface and in the fresh air. Lucius, however, had stopped as well. Straining his ears, he looked down each path, trying to pinpoint the faint noise.

“That is not rats...” he said quietly.

Frozen, they all stood stock still, their senses reaching into the darkness around them. It was Hengit who identified the sounds first, and he cursed vociferously.

“Dogs,” he said. “They’ve brought damned dogs with them.”

“That makes no sense. Dogs can’t track in the sewers,” Martelle said.

Hengit snorted. “Tell that to Vos. They’ve probably got dogs that are bred in cesspools, just to catch thieves in sewers.”

“I can’t tell where they are coming from.”

“Sounds just bounce around these tunnels,” said Hengit. “We won’t know until they are on top of us.”

“Get moving,” Lucius urged.

“But what if we start moving straight towards them?” Martelle protested.

“We’ll get as close to the docks as we can before they reach us. Get moving!”

They turned west. The ledges running alongside the effluent here were wide enough for cautious movement, but their speed caused more than a few nervous moments as a foot slipped on slime or a head was cracked against the low ceiling. At every new junction, Lucius paused to listen for signs that their pursuers were closing in.

“I think there is more than one patrol down here,” Hengit said.

“I know,” said Lucius. “They seem to be moving alongside us, but that doesn’t make sense – dogs should follow us directly, right?”

“Right.”

“So how can they be matching our movements? If one patrol has our scent, how does it let the others know?”

Shrugging, Hengit turned to follow the others. “No idea. Maybe they have runners on the streets above, going to and from each patrol.”

There was a hiss from Martelle up front. “I saw something,” he said.

“What?” said another.

“Don’t know – flicker of light, or something.”

“That’s just our torch reflecting off the walls. You’re getting jumpy.”

“I know what I saw!”

Carefully picking his way along the ledge, Lucius made his way past the other thieves to Martelle. The young thief looked at him, worry evident on his face.

“Just down there, maybe a couple of dozen yards,” he said, pointing. “A flash of light.”

A howl echoed down the tunnel behind them, chilling them to the bone

“Behind us!” Hengit shouted. “Move! They’ve found us!”

That was all Martelle needed, and he sprinted off as fast as he dared.

“No, wait!” Lucius cried out, stretching out to grab Martelle, but he was too late. The thief was already out of his reach.

First one soldier, then another, detached themselves from the shadows of a side tunnel, leaping into the effluent. They seemed completely unaffected by its stench and were quickly joined by another pair. All four levelled crossbows at Martelle, who had skidded to a sudden stop before them.

The twangs of the crossbows’ mechanisms echoed in Lucius’ ears as four bolts shot through the air to skewer Martelle’s body. The young man’s expression was a mixture of shock and fear as the life went out of his eyes and he toppled into the stream, taking his torch with him.

“Move!” Lucius shouted as he drew his sword and raced forward. Covering the distance in seconds, he was on the soldiers as they were still struggling to reload.

Smashing one man senseless with a hurried blow across the top of his head, Lucius noted curiously that the design of the soldier’s helmets was very different from anything he had seen before. Apart from the eye sockets, they seemed to be completely enclosing, and where the men’s mouths should be was a complex arrangement of cloth and two wide pipes, jutting out like dark tusks. It occurred to him that Vos might well have been far more prepared to tackle the thieves, even here in the sewers, than any of them had suspected.

Lucius bullrushed the soldiers, toppling them head first into the sewage. Then, raising a hand, he caused a large wave of stinking filth to rear up to the ceiling, before slamming down on the soldiers, smashing the life out of them.

Looking back at his companions, ignoring their wide-eyed astonishment, he quickly made a decision.

“Get moving, to the docks,” he said, flattening himself against the curved wall to give them room to pass. “Hengit, you lead.”

“What about you?” Hengit asked.

“I’ll delay any other soldiers long enough to give you time to escape.”

“Don’t be a damned hero.”

Lucius shrugged. “It’s my job, my responsibility. Yours is to your men.”

“We only have one torch left.”

“You take it,” Lucius said. “I’ll work better without it. Now go!”

Hengit snorted in frustration, then drove the thieves on. Lucius watched them go as he called upon his magic to wrap him in shadows.

The patrol coming towards him now was stronger than the last, with two dogs leading six men. They wore the same strange helmets as the others, but Lucius had already seen their weakness. While the devices might well make a voyage through the sewers more bearable, they also greatly restricted their eyesight and probably their hearing. That would make achieving surprise far easier.