Thief in the Night
Rex Sumner
Cover Illustration by Nina Pancheva-Kirkova
The knife gleamed from under the chair and Andy grunted in satisfaction. He'd been looking for it for the last hour and had been retracing his steps religiously, trying to find where the strap on his belt had broken. As he leant down under the armoury table to pick it up, his senses screamed shrilly at him and he banged his head on the heavy oak table.
Repressing a few choice swear words, he sat down lightly in the chair, muscles tensed for instant action, and meticulously inventoried the room using sound and scent. The dark hair on the back of his neck was rigid, chafing the uniform collar and he knew he wasn't alone.
Nothing.
His senses were never wrong, and had kept him alive many a time in the past. He adjusted the wick on the oil lamp he carried, took off his belt and placed it on the table, removing the various weapons and laying them close at hand. Picking up the belt, he examined the frayed strap, holding it closer to the lamp and twisting it this way and that, using the movement to scan the armoury unobtrusively, working out where the enemy could be hidden.
He grinned to himself, realising he was enjoying the threat of combat. He had spent the last two months helping out in the armoury, recovering from a spear thrust through the thigh taken during a night melee up on the border from a hairy Uightlander. The man's halitosis had been appalling as he screamed his guts up with Andy's sword in his belly.
Behind the spear rack, he decided, the only place with enough room to hide a man.
Andy balanced the knife on his hand, carefully inspecting the narrow space below the rack for feet while wondering if he could still throw the knife. He used to be damn good, hitting a target the size of a hand at twenty paces nine times out of ten. But then he'd been a basic squaddie with time for the daily hour's practise you needed. Somehow he doubted he could do it now. A Lancepesade didn't have the time. He pulled out the short sword, stood up and walked to the rag bin where he pulled out an oily rag and started wiping the sword down while pacing down the passage. He wasn't a tall man, but tough and wiry, fit with a moustached face that the girls rather liked.
Tensed and keyed up, he swung the sword to the ready position as he rounded the end of the rack. Empty. Damn. And he'd alerted the bastards now.
"All right, shithead, so you know I know you're here." He spoke slowly and venomously into the darkness. "Why don't you come out and grovel to me, because if I have to come and find you I'll chop you into little pieces small enough for a fucking dog to eat." He smiled, pleased with himself. The Uightlanders didn't like dogs.
Something slithered at the back of the room, a whisper of sound so light he almost missed it and his backside clenched into spasm. A wave of horror washed over him and he backed carefully towards the lamp, swallowing nervously. Nothing human could make so little sound. Not up here. Thoughts of ghosts drifted through his mind and tried to lodge there. He shook his head furiously, reminding himself he'd been there for two months and nobody had seen a damn ghost.
"The little people," his subconscious whispered to him. "You've not left them a gift. Your mother taught you to leave them some cream. All these years you've ignored them, now they are coming for you."
"I don't believe in faeries and demons," he whispered quietly to himself and gripped the sword tighter. "I'm Lancepesade Andy Russell; I've stood in three shield walls and killed eight men that I know about. I'm posted to the Royal Pathfinders, the elite frontiersmen. I'm a good soldier. No thief in the night can scare me. It's hiding at the back of the room because it's scared of me. Of Andy Russell. It knows how dangerous I am."
He smiled to himself, feeling much better, grabbed the lamp in his left hand and stalked the back of the room.
A tiny scuff came to his ears, from above, and his eyes widened as he realised the intruder had climbed the old racking at the back. Slight movement caught his eye and he saw a dark shape jump from one rack to another, up near the ceiling, astonishingly quiet. It was half the size of a man and he had to quell his fear sharply.
Time for cunning. He walked towards it. It froze. He shined the lamp into each nook at ground level that he passed, never looking up. He went under the shape and his skin crawled, expecting it to land on his back while his unconscious chittered about sharp teeth and claws.
As he came directly beneath it, he reached up, found an ankle and quickly grasped it and pulled. With a squawk and a desperate ineffectual scrabbling, the shape came off the rack and into his waiting arms.
He dropped the lamp carefully and awkwardly tried to restrain the bundle without stabbing it with the sword, but a heel smacked into his guts and the bundle sprawled onto the floor, revealing itself in the lamplight as a small boy. Which leapt to his feet and took off. Andy dropped the sword and took off after him angrily.
The boy was agile, slipping round racks as Andy closed in, once ducking under his arm. Finally he made an expected dash for the door and Andy dived full length to grab his legs, knocking the boy to the ground.
Where he turned into a whirling mass of legs, claws and teeth, scratching, kicking, biting.
Andy pulled back his fist and smacked the kid hard, and had the satisfaction of seeing his head bounce off the floor. The kid went quiet. He stood up, grabbed the shoulder and pulled him into the lamplight to inspect, while rubbing his injured thigh where of course the little bastard had kicked him.
In the lamplight, the boy was revealed to be about ten, a shock of ragged red hair and a big pointy nose making him look like a mouse, no, a rat. Not starved, unlike many of them, and he wondered how the bloody Uightlander had got into the fort. Especially now with the heightened security for the King's visit.
"Speak Harrhein, do you boy?" he asked roughly, shaking the kid as he saw the eyes flutter. The boy looked up at him malevolently with beady eyes, radiating hatred.
"Stealing what you can find, hey?" Andy continued, feeling the quality of his thick shirt and rubbing it with his hands. "You were lucky to find something this good, this small up here. Now, what were you after from the armoury? Huh?"
The kid glared at him, his left eye beginning to disappear in the swelling Andy's fist had caused.
"Bastard fucking savages," muttered Andy, his thigh hurting. Keeping the kid firmly down with his left hand he reached over for a coil of light rope. Flipping the boy over, he swiftly and expertly tied his hands together and put a noose round his neck. He hauled the boy to his feet and jerked the noose.
"Ah, you might not speak the King's language, but by God you know the feel of a noose, hey boy? We'll have you dangling from the ramparts by noon, I reckon. Ugly little shit that you are, you won't scare anyone but maybe it will stop more kids coming in."
Finally the boy responded. "Pig fucker!" he hissed. "Your mother shagged goats to make you, that's why you smell so bad, you're so ugly and can't grow a proper beard! Ducks! You fuck ducks because your rotten prick is so small."
Andy rocked back on his heels and grinned. "So you do speak Harrhein. Straight out of the gutter. That explains how you got into the fort, anyway. Live here, I reckon, make your living by thieving."
The stream of invective didn't stop, and Andy rapidly grew tired of the inventive list of animals with which he enjoyed sexual congress in more and more peculiar ways. Sighing, he shoved a rag in the boy's mouth and tied it firmly down, finding the sudden silence rather enjoyable. He tied the noose to the table and proceeded to clear up the mess they had made in the armoury, at the same time double checking that there were no more boys hiding around. He had to admit that he found the boy's courage admirable - most boys came in gangs, it was unusual to find one alone. He t
old the boy as much.
"If you weren't a fucking Uightlander, we'd let you join the regiment as a drummer. Got guts you have. One day you might even make a soldier."
The beady eyes glared at him and the boy made horrid noises from behind the gag.
Andy finished clearing up, and dragged the boy out of the Armoury. As he locked it, he noted that the mortise moved more cleanly than usual and a close inspection proved it had been recently oiled. He looked at the boy with more respect and searched him carefully. Inside the hidden pouch was not only a small leather oil bottle, but a selection of keys.
"Wonder who you stole these from," he muttered. "Somebody will be on a charge."
At the guardhouse he passed the boy over to the Corporal who locked him in a cell without removing the gag. The Corporal refused to wake the Duty Officer and Andy was told to come back before the watch changed to have his report taken down by a scribe.
Andy had just finished with the scribe and was joking with the outgoing watch, when the Duty Officer came rushing in, white and looking harassed. Several guards started bobbing up and down behind his back - junior officers were renowned for panicking, and a legendary Regimental Sergeant Major was reputed to have said they bobbed and weaved like a virgin with its first