Thief's covenant

thief doubled up, the agony a blade stabbing through her. She heard a strangled cry echoing from the darkened alleyway, and only faintly recognized the voice as her own. She found herself on her hands and knees in the garbage, violently retching up the contents of her stomach.

Vomit, she realized with a dull horror, mingled with blood.

A thoughtful look on his face, Brock materialized from the alley, his hammer swinging casually in a one- handed grip. “Oh, that doesn't look good for you, Widdershins,” he commented, poking with one booted toe at the unpleasant mess she'd heaved up. “I think you may have ruptured something.”

“Brock…,” Widdershins croaked through filth-encrusted lips, glaring with pain-deadened eyes.

“Are you upset, Widdershins? You're speaking in Chicken again.” A look of rage twisted the enforcer's face just before he kicked his victim in the stomach, the force of the blow lifting her from the ground.

Widdershins screamed. Her stomach felt as though she'd swallowed a brimming mug of molten iron, and she spat up another mouthful of bile-tinged blood even as she landed, shoulder first, on the cobblestones. Unable to act, to think, she curled into a tight ball around the pain, gasping, lacking breath even to fuel the anguished sobs that racked her chest and throat.

“Hurts, doesn't it?” Brock continued conversationally, idly spinning the hammer. “A lot?” He smiled abruptly. “Maybe even more than being kicked-twice-in the pomegranates? More than having a damn staircase dropped on your head? Well, I'll do you a favor. I'll make the hurting stop.”

“Can't…” Widdershins gulped several mouthfuls of air, trying to focus. “Can't…kill me…”

“Oh, can't I? Everyone knows your reputation for acting before you think, you stupid little bitch! No one'll doubt it when I say that you attacked me first.”

“Olgun…,” she coughed, unable to whisper.

“Olgun?” Brock squinted. “Who the hell is Olgun? And why should I care if he believes me?”

“Help…” Another cough, another mouthful of brackish blood. Widdershins spit it out, nauseated at the metallic taste, the slimy feel as it oozed over her tongue and between her teeth. It splattered across the cobblestones in a thin red spray, dotting Brock's shoes.

“That was rude,” he told her. “A guy might start to think you didn't care for him.”

Widdershins wasn't listening. She lay huddled and shaking, and struggled to bite back a sob of relief as she felt the familiar tingling in the air around her, felt the deity's divine touch. The pain, a roaring blaze, dimmed to a low flame-still intense, still agonizing, but no longer crippling. She wouldn't be dancing any time soon, but at least she wasn't bleeding to death internally. Her stomach muscles spasmed as Olgun set to right several bits that had been ripped apart by Brock's brutal assault. She tried not to cringe at the feel of things shifting around inside her. Olgun had saved her…partially.

She'd have to finish the job herself.

“Brock…,” she croaked again.

“Yes?” the larger man asked pleasantly, stepping closer so he might hear. “Something you want to say before this is all over?”

“You're an idiot.” Fighting past the agony that permeated her body, Widdershins punched upward, aiming at the same target that had worked so well the last time.

The blow landed between the man's legs with a loud clang. Widdershins bit her tongue to keep from crying out. Her fist throbbed, and one of her fingers had gone numb. The man was wearing a bloody codpiece under his pants!

Brock laughed, a vicious, ugly sound. “Anything else?” he asked.

Ignoring the tremor in her hands, Widdershins reached out with a strength Brock could never have expected, yanked the hammer from startled fingers, and let it fall heavily on his left foot.

Brock's high-pitched scream wasn't nearly enough to drown out the cracking of bone.

The huge enforcer collapsed, clutching at his shattered limb, even as Widdershins rose. She swayed, her stomach throbbing, as the adrenaline slowly faded from her limbs. Olgun had healed her as best he could, but without a few days of rest, she had nothing left to give.

Well, almost nothing. She had one last thing to take care of before she passed out, or collapsed, or whatever it was she was about to do. Widdershins was no murderer, never had been; but she couldn't let Brock come after her again, not knowing what he would do to her. Her arms trembling with the effort, sweat beading on her forehead, she raised the hammer in both hands. Her stomach heaved once more, and not just with the pain of her wound, but she ignored it as best she could, fully prepared to remove Brock from her life in the most final way imaginable.

“Don't move!”

Widdershins's fingers went slack, and the hammer fell to the street with a dull clatter. Her face pale, the thief stared over her shoulder.

Flintlocks drawn, the pursuing Guardsmen stepped into the alley. The first shifted to the side, bash-bang aimed unerringly at her chest, while the other yanked a pair of manacles from his belt.

“Widdershins,” the second man, dark-haired and thick-bearded, intoned as he approached. “By order of Major Julien Bouniard, you are under arrest on suspicion of thievery.” He glanced over at the fallen lump of quivering flesh that was Brock. “And assault,” he added smugly.

Oh, no. No way. She wasn't about to go back to gaol. Not like this, not just because Bouniard was paranoid, and certainly not for defending herself against that towering slab of filth!

“Olgun,” she began, focusing on the flintlocks. “I think that…that…”

The alley danced maniacally, the pain in her gut flared once more, and Widdershins collapsed, unconscious, to the cobblestones.

They watched, concealed in the shadows of a broken window above, as the two guards moved in, one kneeling by each of the fallen figures. Heavy manacles clattered shut around the thief's limbs. “Hey,” the man at her side called to the other. “She's pretty bad off. I'm going to need your help carrying her so we don't make it worse.”

“Who cares if we make it worse? She's just a-”

“You explain that to Major Bouniard.”

A soft grumble. “What about this one?”

“He in any danger?”

“Doesn't look like it. Not with her gone, anyway. He'll be walking funny for a while, though.”

“Then we'll send someone back to check on him after we get her squared away.”

“All right.”

With a level of care that at least somewhat belied his cavalier attitude, the second constable aided the first in lifting Widdershins, keeping her fairly level. Slowly, carefully, they made their way from the alley and back toward the horses they'd left behind.

A few minutes more, to make sure the Guardsmen were well and truly gone, that any incidental sounds would be lost to the dull roar of the crowded streets beyond. Only then, when they were certain, did Pockmark and Scarface emerge into the open-the former still limping, and both of them sporting bruises, unhealed abrasions, and stubborn splinters.

“We could've taken them,” Pockmark insisted as they hurried to the knoll of quivering flesh that was their boss.

“Murdered two of the Guard? Without explicit orders from the taskmaster or the Shrouded Lord? I don't bloody think-”

“You're godsdamned right you don't!” Brock's voice was muffled by garbage and road dirt, tinged with hysteria. “You should've killed them! You should've killed all of them!”

“Are you all right, Brock?” Scarface asked as he knelt in an unconscious echo of the constable who had been here moments before.

In answer, Brock managed to push through the pain long enough to reach out and smack the other man across the face hard enough to make his beard stand on end. Then, once the fellow had managed to pick himself off the ground, “Help me up, you moron.”

It actually required both men to heft the colossus, and even then it was a struggle that left all three puffing and panting, but once he was upright, Scarface alone was able to support him.