Thief's covenant

“I-But she wasn't supposed to-”

“No, she wasn't!” Joseph drove his curved dagger through Pierre's ear, full to the hilt. Mouth agape in an eternal silent scream, the young man twitched and convulsed horribly, his feet dancing spastically across twig- littered earth. Only when Joseph yanked the weapon free, steel grinding hideously on bone, did Pierre finally collapse and lie still.

“We attack now,” Joseph coldly informed the others.

“Joseph,” Anton the scarecrow protested, glancing nervously at the bleeding corpse, then gesturing roughly toward the carriage with his crossbow, “you sure? They've been warned now, and I ain't exactly looking forward to-”

“I said we attack now, damn you! So what if they've been warned? We outnumber them four to one! Move!”

Anton sighed in resignation and, like the others, moved.

In the glow of the lanterns that hung from the carriage, Adrienne could clearly see the face of the man who escorted her, and grew ever more convinced that he was indeed the same who had once tried to shoot her down. From his neck hung a pair of medallions, one bearing the masked-lion crest of House Delacroix, the other the same feline visage without the mask. She wondered what it meant.

“Bring her inside!” came the clipped, authoritative command from the carriage. Adrienne jumped, startled at how familiar the voice sounded, though she'd only ever heard it speak a handful of words.

“Sir,” the guard protested, “we don't know that she-”

“Now, Claude!”

Adrienne was shocked to see the servant blatantly roll his eyes at his master's command, even as he acquiesced. “Yes, sir. May I at least take her rapier from her first?”

“I think not.”

“Very well. I'll say a nice prayer at your funeral.” The carriage door loomed open. Unable to see much within, Adrienne felt as though she entered an abyss of endless darkness as she mounted the single step.

“Sit down,” the voice instructed.

She did, just as the attack began.

Men charged, screaming, from the trees. Crossbows twanged and firearms roared; bolts sliced through the air, lead balls and pellets tumbling beside them in a hail of metal, punching cruelly through flesh and bone.

It was a slaughter, but not the one Joseph and his thieves had planned. The cover offered by the heavy wooden panels of the carriage-not to mention the sheets of iron installed within each, for precisely this purpose- made the guards nigh impervious to any attack that didn't come from directly before them. And any bandit foolish enough to try to venture into that particular field was fired upon in turn. Six blunderbuss fuses burned down, six flocks of lead shot flew, and six flintlocks appeared from gods-knew-where. They, too, discharged, before the smoke of the first volley faded.

Between Adrienne's defection, the execution of Pierre, and the opening fusillade, Joseph lost half his men before laying even one of the enemy low.

As the last of the loaded ammunition flew, rapiers, broadswords, and knives appeared with a sequence of leathery rasps, a horde of hissing serpents. Joseph charged, his men following on his heels, and the guards moved to meet them.

Without the advantage of cover, it seemed the greater number of the bandits might yet turn the tide. Joseph was the first to draw blood, his blade painting a gash of red across a dark-clad rider's leg. The other thieves flooded in behind him, massed too tightly for the mounted soldiers to take advantage of their horses' speed, pressing them back against the unmoving carriage.

But for all their numbers, all their desperation, even their lives of violence on the streets, these were not men trained for this sort of melee. Horses reared on command, hooves lashing out to shatter bone. The soldiers used their mounts' bulk to force their adversaries back, then set about them with a vicious array of cuts and thrusts, each carefully considered, each aimed at whatever flesh left itself exposed. Joseph's cry of triumph was cut abruptly short as the man whose leg he had slashed delivered a perfect riposte, the height of his horse providing devastating leverage. His blade plunged neatly into the soft spot at the base of Joseph's throat, and the large bandit died with his face forever locked in a parody of disbelief.

The carriage rocked with the surrounding tumult, and Adrienne desperately wanted either to scream till her voice went raw or to dive for cover beneath the seat. Alexandre Delacroix did neither, however, so her pride allowed her no other option but to maintain her seat as chaos raged around her.

It ended mere moments after it had begun. Two of the defenders lay bloodied upon the ground-one who might be saved with proper attention, the other of whom had been opened from gut to groin and was clearly beyond help-alongside six or seven bandits. The few who survived, led by the gaunt and raggedy Anton, fled for the cover of the looming trees.

Everything was silence then-a moment between life and death when the hue and cry of battle faded away but the sounds of the night had not yet returned. The tentative peep of a mockingbird shattered the pall of quiet, followed by the buzzing chirp of crickets, and the night resumed its normal cacophony.

“It's over, Master Alexandre,” the nearest guard called into the carriage. “All but a handful of the brigands are slain, and the rest have fled.”

The old aristocrat surely made some reply to his man-at-arms, but Adrienne didn't hear it. Her blood hummed audibly in her ears, and sweat broke out fresh on her face.

All but a handful have been slain….

“Pierre!” she shrieked, lunging at the carriage door. She flung it open, utterly unaware that she'd knocked the speaking bodyguard clear off his feet, and sprinted for the woods the moment her boots touched the road.

Adrienne never saw the blunderbuss, swung stock first. An abrupt fire blazed across the back of her head, and she fell unconscious to the roadway.

The world was bouncing.

With a groan, Adrienne forced her eyelids open, staring at the carriage ceiling. It swayed back and forth, bounced up and down, made her dizzy, jarred her already throbbing head against the seat, and she knew that within a matter of seconds she would-

“Here,” someone said, shoving a wooden bucket in her direction. She accepted it a bare instant before she would have emptied her stomach onto the floor. As it was, she very nearly upended the bucket-and its acrid, unpleasant contents-when she fell back with a gasp to lie once more upon the wooden bench.

“I think we'll just get rid of that,” the same voice suggested. “Somehow, I think the cost of a new bucket is one I can absorb.”

Adrienne continued to stare at the ceiling, even as she heard the sounds of the door opening and the bucket falling to the side of the road, where it would no doubt provide food for all sorts of desperate scavengers.

“That's a fine sword you've got,” the carriage's other occupant continued conversationally. “Seems I've seen it somewhere before.”

Though it hurt even to think about moving, Adrienne tilted her head just far enough to look at the man across from her. Alexandre Delacroix appeared much as he had at the market: hawk-nosed, sharp featured, practically bald…and smiling. Why in the name of all the gods was he smiling?

“Do…” Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden wave of pain. “Do you…want it back?”

“I think, child, that it's a small price to pay for you saving my life back there.”

“Just…just repaying a debt.”

The carriage hit another rut, and Adrienne moaned. The older man's features clouded with concern. “I'm terribly sorry about this, child. You, uh, rather startled my guards, leaping from the carriage like that. I'm afraid that Martin hit you harder than he intended. You'll be all right, though. I'll have my best healers see to you personally.

“What did you mean,” he continued a moment later, “about repaying a debt?”

“You…saved me from your man…in the market.”