The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (2 page)

His grandfather took a slow breath and began again.

“A very many trickster moons ago, and very,
very
far away... way past where our real world ends and your imagination begins, things were different than here. There was a proud kingdom that had fallen on darker days.”

“The kingdom was known as Iisen, or the Iisendom as it was sometimes called. It was a prosperous and peaceful kingdom, but for years, a cloud had been forming over the land and was worrying the people that lived there.”

“People were disappearing... not many, but when they did, it made the people afraid. There were rumors, of course. Rumors of gypsies and monsters in the woods, but no one seemed to know what was happening for sure. And the people of Iisen, the merchants and hostlers and iron mongers and farmers, couldn’t very well hide in their homes and farmhouses. They still had to earn a living. All they could do was hope they weren’t the next to vanish one day.”

“But the tale doesn’t really start with that. The tale starts with a thief. A thief who had just been caught and was about to be in very deep trouble...”

“Stop that infernal fidgeting, now! It’ll go worse for you if you keep with all this fighting!”

The guard pulled his arms tighter around his prisoner, trying to keep his hold on him secure.

He focused on his fellow guard again and grunted at him, “Come, Pollon, hurry up searching him and help me hold the wiggling piglet! And where are the others with the blasted irons? Wish I had known what a pot o’ honey and thorns this one would be!”

Pollon continued trying to search the pockets and pouches of the thief as his fellow guard held him, arms wrapped around his chest to keep him from running. There was an absurd number of hiding spots in the thief’s belt, tunic, and breeches, and every one he searched seemed to reveal two more to try to check while the thief continued to thrash about.

“Aye! I am as fast as I can!” huffed Pollon as he tried to search the prisoner’s legs. “The filthy bugger has more hiding places than a banker’s vault!”

Pollon had already recovered the small moneybag the thief, the Gully Snipe himself, had stolen not ten minutes earlier, but he still had more to examine. Even within the thief’s boots were nooks and crannies to be checked.

“You heard him! Be still, Gully Snipe!” commanded Pollon, and which immediately fell on deaf ears as the thief continued to resist. He groped again and complained to his fellow swordsman, “Probably a filthy knocker anyway!” Then, to the thief as he tried to hold his foot still so he could search it, “Maybe I should just knee you in your beggar’s jewels to put you down for an hour or so, eh?”

Pollon pulled a lethal but scabrous throwing knife out of a leather sheath inside the Snipe’s boot. He held it up triumphantly and admonished him, “Aha! Don’t want to leave this where you can get to it, now do we?” He slipped the small knife into his own belt so he could continue looking.

The Gully Snipe continued his resistance and almost wormed his way out of the thick guard’s arms a couple of times. His eyes repeatedly glanced over the crowd pressing close; he had limited time before the other guards arrived with irons to slap on his wrists and feet, and then he’d truly have to start worrying.

He struggled more, trying to goad his captor, and thought to himself,
come now, you sodden fool, stop letting me squirm!

There was quite a crowd gathered at the edge of the Swordsman Market, having been drawn from their hawking of wares, errands and work so they could watch. The flower stalls, carts laden with pannyfruit and apples and plums, crates with chickens and ducks for sale, all were mostly forgotten and abandoned for the moment; the sight of a criminal caught in the brazen light of early afternoon was far more interesting to those in earshot. Most wondered what foolish thief would attempt something in the middle of the day in the market closest to Lohrdanwuld’s largest garrison of the Kingdom Guard. But then rumors that this was perhaps the Gully Snipe spread like agitated squirrels through the crowd, which drew the curious attention, and the crowd, even tighter.

In the distance, at the far end of the market, the Snipe could see a disturbance in the crowd. It could only be the expected additional guards pushing their way through and he knew his time was already short and diminishing rapidly. He wiggled and pulled and fought even harder.

The guard holding him bellowed, “Finish your search or make him stop, Pollon! I can’t hold him like this!”

“I’m doing my right best, Bekellor!” rejoined Pollon, frustrated with both his fellow guard and their captive. He stood up straight and looked the thief in the eye. “That’s enough, you! Stop all this!” he yelled.

Pollon pulled back his fist and hit the thief squarely in the jaw, drawing an audible gasp from the gathered crowd of both peasants and merchants alike. It had the desired effect, though, and the Gully Snipe stopped fighting. His tongue felt around inside the back of his mouth for a moment, then he spat a wad of blood and saliva at the feet of Pollon in front of him, his dark hazel eyes glaring at the guard the whole time. Pollon glanced down and saw a tooth mixed in with the bloody spittle and dirt.

Bekellor began to relax slightly as the thief’s resistance died, but the Snipe picked up struggling in his arms again, this time even more stridently than before.

Bekellor pulled his prisoner tighter to his chest, and leaned back to lift him and give the Snipe’s feet less traction on the packed dirt of the streetside.

Finally,
thought the Gully Snipe in relief,
it took the wretch long enough!

The instant the guard behind him pulled back, lifting him off the ground, the Snipe balled his legs up to his chest and kicked out at the other guard as hard as he could, knocking Pollon off of his boots and flat onto his back. The force of the kick, and the fact that Bekellor’s center of gravity was already off from leaning back with the Snipe, caused them both to fall back into the roadway with the Snipe still held in the guard’s arms.

The Gully Snipe allowed a brief smile for himself as he landed softly on top of Bekellor and heard the wind get knocked out of the guard, even with his hard leather cuirass to protect him. The thief jumped up, throwing his chaperon hood back over his head, and began to dash. He stopped short, though, before either of the guards knew what had happened. While Bekellor was still fighting to get air back into his lungs, the Snipe pressed a foot down on Pollon’s chest, grabbed his throwing knife from where Pollon had stowed it on his belt, and then deftly picked the small moneybag jangling full of swallowstamps and belders out of the guard’s pocket again. It wasn’t much money, but he had worked for it and wasn’t going to let it go easily.

“I’ll be needing these, sir, but I’ll leave my tooth with you!” said the thief to Pollon, and then he was off running again.

The Gully Snipe had to think quickly as there were multiple ways he could run to escape. Luckily, he knew the streets, alleys, and footpaths of Lohrdanwuld very well. Unluckily, after weighing his options, his best one now was to plow straight ahead and through the crowd, which also meant straight ahead and through the three guards he could see rushing to help Bekellor and Pollon. And this time, they had irons for him.

Behind him were Bekellor and Pollon, now recovering from his escape, as well as the full garrison house teeming with Kingdom Guards. To his left, through the market, was a poorer neighborhood with too many dead ends to get caught in, and to his right was a solid line of merchant houses, apartments, inns, and a few meadhouses.

Oh well,
thought the Snipe as he pushed forward and the crowd magically parted for him as if he were the pox itself running loose,
when did a few armed guards ever frighten me from my path?

He spit another mouthful of blood into the road and stormed ahead, feeling more confident now that he had the hood covering his head and face again. The three guards running towards him were in a standard formation for capturing him, the formation that worked to his advantage — the guards on the left and right a foot or two ahead of the one in the middle so they could flank him.

He ignored the two on the sides and fixed his eyes instead on the one in the middle, whose own eyes were getting close enough now that he could see the glint in them as they all made right towards each other. The crowd closest to them tried to push back for what was surely going to be a bad run in, and the rest of the crowd behind those in front pushed in harder trying to see better.

The Snipe hit his top speed, and in advance of the middle guard reaching him, he jumped up, leaned back, and landed hard on his feet, letting them slide out from under him with perfect timing. He landed hard on his back right as the two guards wound up on either side of him and the middle guard was leaning forward, expecting to tackle him directly. But with the Snipe now on the ground, practically under the off-balance guard, he kicked up with both feet into the groin of the guard and pushed back up over his head, in effect using the guard’s momentum to send him flying overhead, flailing enough to strike the other two guards in the process.

He had used this move enough times that he was now genuinely disappointed that the guards still hadn’t seemed to learn from it and not make the same mistake over and over again. But on the other hand, he had gotten quite good at it.

He heard the guard land behind his head, hard, and take the other two guards down with him in a heap as he landed. Without a thought, the thief jumped back up onto his feet and sprinted off again, only now he had a path free of guards and leg-irons and gallows nooses in front of him.

He didn’t stop running because he knew the guards would still give chase, but now he could get into the warren of streets and alleys in the other peasant neighborhood to his right and lose them there. Behind him, the pointless shouts of “Halt!” and the thundering boots of the Kingdom Guards could be heard. He ignored the commands and set his mind instead to actively dodging the throngs of the crowd that were unaware of the arrest that had so recently been thwarted and were still going about their business in the streets of the capital.

The Gully Snipe felt close to free and victory, and so he ventured a quick glance behind him to gauge the distance of the guards, with almost fatal results. As he turned back forward, his eye caught on something familiar to his left. He spotted the soft, brown and auburn curls and the emerald eyes of the girl locked with his own for a split second, and he cursed how easily he was distracted under the circumstances. But then, she was watching him, too, so he decided that maybe he could be forgiven for being distracted this time. He wondered briefly what had caught her eye, other than someone running the streets so hard it was like the gypsies themselves were hard on his feet to boil his bones for soup.

Just as he forced his face forward and his mind back onto the more pressing matter of his escape, a carriage being pulled by a large Belder horse, of the kind so prevalent in the Iisendom, had crossed his path and stopped right in front of him. He would have careened right into the beast’s barrel if it weren’t for the fact that Belders were so large and tall. The Snipe managed to duck under the horse’s belly and to the other side, startling it as he did so. The resulting nervous stepping of the large beast caused the guards to decide it was less risky to go around the horse and carriage, even if it gave their prey a small extra amount of a lead.

The Snipe peeled off to the right, down a side street, and with the market behind him and consequently fewer people to thread through, was able to sprint ahead even faster, dodging right and left down more streets and alleys until he was sure he had lost the guards. He even entered the front door of an inn that he knew had a convenient back door that let out into a hidden alley not too far from the Chalk Market. Inside the inn, he slowed to a casual walk and tried to pace his breath and heart. He nodded politely to the pretty young girl that worked it and took the time to remove his chaperon and flip it inside out. The guards that were looking for someone in a black hood would pay no attention to someone wearing a light brown one instead.

He placed his throwing knife back where it belonged in his boot. The knife was one of his dearest possessions and he felt oddly naked without the hilt of it against his ankle; so precious was it that he would have given up the money before losing the knife. With an extra deep breath, he walked casually out the back of the inn, checking the side of his belt to ensure he still had his moneybag. He exited the alley and melted into the teeming crowd of much poorer people that frequented the Chalk Market.

Not a bad day’s work, after all.

Except for the sore back from landing on it and throwing the guard overhead.

And the tooth.

~~~~~

The Gully Snipe walked through the unused gate in the old city wall. This was one of the original city walls of Lohrdanwuld, back when the city was much smaller than its current size. The gates and barbicans in the old, original walls were still in place, but never used. The newer city walls were further out, to the west of where the city backed up against Kitemount, and were the ones actively used to defend the capital now.

As he passed through the gate along with a stream of others moving from one part of the city to another, he spotted a familiar face. Seated on the paving stones at the foot of the gate was Almonee, what was left of her frazzled white hair sticking out from under her skewed cap as she gnawed on a tough parsnip. The Snipe wondered if he’d wind up in her place one day, with only a few teeth left in his mouth and slightly touched in the head, like her. She made no notice of the hooded, young man standing and watching her from only a few feet away. The busy people of the city avoided her and veered around the Snipe in the meantime.

He reached into his moneybag and pulled out a handful of the coins he had stolen earlier and walked over to hand them to the craggy old woman.