who had flung it dropped as though poleaxed. After that the rest of them more or less gave up the pursuit.
But there were others, far more ruthless, who took it up as we reached the walls. And, as I saw, two thin, furtive, weasel-like fellows remained dogging our footsteps as we ran up to the wall and looked about for the nearest way through or over or under.
The assassins had gathered their strength. Now the mob of men who flowed around a buttress meant to do for us finally.
I took a single look at them and hauled Barty off. We ran fleetly along the wall, dodging refuse, leaping covered stalls, almost treading on a family sheltering under an old tarpaulin. The rain washed away a deal of the muck and stinks; but enough remained for me with my odoriferous clothes to feel at home. A splendidly orchestrated hullabaloo now racketed away at our heels. Barty kept on laughing. I own the situation amused me; but I am notorious for that kind of perverse behavior and I felt some surprise -
pleased surprise, I hasten to add — that Dayra seemed to have found herself a young man of exceptional promise. So we ran along the wall and a gang of kids pelted us with rotten cabbages, green shredding bundles falling through the rain. We ducked into a house built into the wall and leaped over an old fellow who snored in a wicker hooded chair and so rollicked up the blackwood stairs. The upper rooms were filled with all kinds of trash and bric-a-brac indicating the storage places for the junk merchants who thrived on human stupidity and cupidity. Their ruffianly agents scoured around picking up antiques which were then sold at inflated prices to the wealthy of Vondium. Well, it takes all kinds to make a world. We hared through the piles of old furniture and pictures and tatty curtains, past boxes and bales and bundles, heading for the windows. These were all barred. Barty put his foot against a wooden bar and the old wood puffed and shredded — I hardly care to describe that tired sagging away as a splintering of wood.
We bundled through and then tottered back, clutching each other, poised dizzyingly over nothing. I grabbed the lintel. It held, thank Zair, and we hauled in. We stood perhaps fifty feet up the sheer outside wall, in a window embrasured out over the cobbled road below. And at our backs the pursuit bayed up those dark blackwood stairs.
One window along a beam jutted out with a rope and pulley. The junk would be collected here and then hoisted out and lowered onto Quoffa carts below.
“Next window, Jak,” said Barty, cheerfully.
“I had hoped there would be stairs — at the least a rope ladder.” These drikingers of the Old City have their entrances and their exits. Drikingers — bandits of a particular bent — is not too strong a word to apply to some of the fellows in Drak’s City. So we bashed along to the next window and kicked it open and seized the rope.
Loud footfalls echoed up from the room at our backs. Men fell over bundles, and a giant glass-fronted wardrobe toppled to smash to ruination.
‘Time to go, Barty. Come on.”
So, grasping the rope, we let ourselves down as the windlass held against the pawl. We were almost at street level when the first furious faces poked out of the window alongside the pulley-crowned beam.
“Jump!” I yelped. “They’ll start reeling us in any mur!”
So we jumped, and hit the rain-slicked cobbles, and staggered and a flung knife caromed past my ear. Barty staggered up and shook his fist. Men were sliding down the rope. I smiled. Oh, yes, this was a smiling situation.
“They mean to do for us, then. . More running is indicated.”
“Why can’t we stand and blatter them, Jak? By Opaz — I do not care much for all this running. I can’t get my wind.”
“They’ll open up your body quick enough, my lad. Then you’ll have wind and to spare. Run!”
Running off I was aware Barty was not with me and swung about ready to damn and blast him. He was hopping about with his old blanket coat twisted around his legs, trying to disentangle himself, first on one foot then on the other. His face was a wonder to behold.
“By Vox!” he bellowed. “This confounded blanket is alive!”
“Not as alive as most of ’em in there.” I dodged back and grabbed for the coat; but he kept toppling away and almost falling and staggering about. In the end I whipped a horizontal slash from the rapier at him and shredded the rope. The blanket coat fell away. He kicked it wrathfully.
“Opaz-forsaken garment! I nearly knocked my brains out on the cobbles.”
“Run,” I said. There was no need to draw any parallels between his outraged remarks and what would happen. So we ran.
Now we were outside Drak’s City and, in theory, back where the writ of Vondium ran. Whether Vondium’s writ ran or not, we did.
I owe that the sheer zest of this running pleased me. The idea that I ran away from enemies had long since passed. The game now was to stay ahead. That became the object, the running was the thing, the escaping the prize. If we fought that would come as an anticlimax.
The stikitches pelting after us were still yelling. Near the Old Walls, some remnant of their own powers clung.
“By Jhalak!” one of them sang out. “Stand and meet your doom like men!”
“I’m all for standing,” puffed Barty. He gave me a most reproachful look.
“Run,” was all I said.
Pressing on we came into more respectable streets and Barty, with a comment to the effect that if I intended to run I had best run with him, and that we’d best go
I think most of them had removed their masks; but they all kept a fold of cloth over their faces, and this would be taken as a natural precaution against the rain. Their large floppy Vallian hats with the broad brims hanging down and shedding the water also afforded them a measure of concealment. When the rain, after the Kregan fashion, started to ease up and the splendor of the suns began to shine through, I wondered how far the stikitches would press their pursuit. Our mutual progress had now degenerated into a fast walk and we threaded our way between the people venturing out after the rain. No one took any notice of us. There were others running — slaves, mostly, about their masters’ business — and our bedraggled appearance bespoke us for slaves or free men with unpleasant work to perform. We came to the broad arrow through either side of the building that is called the Lane of the Twins. This leads to the broad kyro before the imperial palace. Barty started up it at once and so I followed. Although I say I recognized where we were this does not mean I was well acquainted with the area. Opening off the Lane of the Twins many side streets and roadways gave entrances to the streets and roads pent within two curving canals. A number of broad boulevards cross the Lane. We passed over canals bridged in a variety of the pleasing ways of Vondium. Just under the stalking feet of an aqueduct we were held up by a crowd who jostled and pushed along slowly, mingled with carts and chariots and carrying-chairs. And all these streets and alleys and canals and boulevards and aqueducts are blessed with names. . No — I knew only that if I went on along the Lane of the Twins eventually I’d reach the palace.
The crowds grew thicker and more solid. On the right-hand side a string of carts had come to a standstill. Each cart was piled with hay. They were filled to abundance with hay, and they were jammed tightly together, so that the pair of krahniks who pulled each cart were eagerly reaching forward to chew contentedly away at the hay dribbling from the tailgate of the cart in front. The carters sat slumped, hats over their eyes, phlegmatically waiting for whatever obstruction ahead was halting all progress to clear. I looked back.
The two thin weasely fellows were padding on apace, and with them a dozen or so of the most determined stikitches.
For a moment we stood halfway between two side streets. The doors of the buildings flanking the Lane were closed.
“Now,” said Barty, and he started to draw his rapier. “Now we cannot run any farther, thank Opaz. Now we can teach these rasts a lesson.”
The backs of the crowd ahead appeared to be a solid wall; but we could worm our way through. I frowned. I did not relish the idea of Barty being chopped to pieces, and I knew he would unfailingly be chopped if those master craftsmen at murder caught up with him. I could not risk his life.
