And it was.
Three men stepped out of an alley in front of her just as three more stepped out of one behind her. They were armed with sticks and clubs_and as everyone else sandwiched in between their ranks fled the immediate area without being stopped, it was obvious who they were after.
One of them stepped forward and gestured with his club as Nightingale shrank away, putting her back up against a building.
T'fyrr shoved himself away from the steeple, plunging toward them in a closed-wing stoop.
Nightingale knew she was being followed; she'd known it the moment that her tailer picked her up just outside of Leather Street. He had been following her for the past five days, in fact, always picking up her trail at Leather Street and leaving it just before she got to Freehold. He was good, but not good enough to evade someone who could sense a tracker's nerves behind her.
That was why she had paid all of her army of street urchins an extra penny to follow her, as well, from the Palace gate to Freehold. They might be children, but they weren't helpless; you couldn't live in and on the street around here if you were helpless. They had their own weapons; tiny fists as hard as rocks, the stones of the street, slings like her own, even a knife or two. They had their orders: if someone tried to hurt Nightingale, they were to swarm him, give her a chance to escape, then run off themselves.
But she had not expected to be attacked by more than one or two at the most.
The three stepping out in front of her made her freeze in shock; the three closing in from behind brought a cold wave of fear rushing over her.
Quickly, as the normal denizens of the street vanished into their own little hiding places, she put her back to a wall and reached inside her skirt for her own knife. This was no time or place for magic_
At that moment, the bolt from above
He raked the scalp of one with his foreclaws as he plunged in, striking to hurt and disable, not to kill.
With a thunder of wings that sent debris flying, and a wind that whipped the ends of her hair into her face, he landed beside her and turned to face the rest of her enemies.
He didn't speak; he just opened his beak for another of those ear-shattering screams.
But any hope that he might simply frighten them into giving it up as a bad job died when three more appeared behind the five that remained standing.
Nightingale's fighting knife was out and ready in one hand, a nasty little bit of chain in the other. Good enough in the ordinary run of street fighting_
None of those men seemed at all impressed as they closed in.
She had never been in this kind of a fight before; she spent most of her time ducking, and the rest of it trying to fend off grasping hands with her knife. Fear choked her and made it hard to breathe; T'fyrr panted harshly through his open beak. Every fiber of her wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to, no opening to seize. Bile rose in her throat; she tasted blood where she had bitten her lip. One of them kicked at her legs, expertly, trying to bring her down. She ducked head blows, but not always with complete success. Her breath burned in her throat, and sweat ran into her eyes and coldly down her back.
Nightingale fought like a cornered alleycat and T'fyrr like a grounded hawk, but neither of them were willing to strike to kill, and that actually worked against them. There were too many times when the only option open would have meant killing one of their assailants....
A glancing blow to her shoulder made her drop her bit of chain as her arm and hand went numb; she slashed feverishly at the man who'd struck her, but he only stepped out of the way and came in again, swinging his lead- weighted club. With the chain, she might have been able to get the club away from him_
