The Deadliest Game

“Down there,” Leif whispered.

“Maybe he is. I’m not waiting. I don’t like being followed…it makes me want to practice dwarf- chucking.”

“What?”

“Dwarf-chucking. A very old and very incorrect sport. My mother would be shocked to even hear me mention it.” Megan grinned, and looked around them. “Where are we?”

“Between the third and fourth walls.”

“No, I mean which way is east?”

Well ahead of them, leftward against one stone wall, was a patch of moonlight. Leif pointed off to the right.

“Oh, yeah,” Megan said softly, and thought for a moment. Being an incurable map-reader, Megan had had a good look at the game’s stored map of Errint before coming in today. Now she compared the spot where they stood with her memory of the map, and considered for another second or so.

“All right,” she whispered then. “There’s a gate in the wall to your left about sixty yards ahead. It goes through into the next circle. I’m going to leave you. Count thirty seconds and then follow me. Walk down the middle of the street. Don’t stop at the gate. Just keep going.”

“What are you going to do?”

She smiled. And she vanished.

Leif stared. She had not used game-based magic — there was a typical aura, a feel in the air, associated with magic use at close range, which he would have detected. But very quietly, very simply, between one blink and one breath and the next, Megan had stopped being where he had thought she should have been. It was a little unnerving.

One, two, three, he thought, wondering as always whether his seconds were as accurate as he thought they were. Leif listened to the sleeping city, listened hard. Somewhere, up high, a bat made its tiny squee-squee-squee of sonar, possibly targeting bugs attracted to the lights still burning in the windows of the towers of the High House. Nothing else moved.

Scuffle…scurry.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, Leif thought. Nineteen, twenty…

Out in the open country, there was a brief, distant, astonishing burst of sweet-voiced song. A nightingale. It ran its descant through to its end, almost making Leif forget where he was in his counting. For a moment, the scurrying stopped. Then it started again.

— twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty—

Leif stepped out into the street and began walking calmly down toward the gate. He was not particularly calm. Errint was a city where it was permissible to carry weapons within the walls, so he had a knife. He was good enough with it to make serious trouble for anyone who tried anything, and he had enough general self-defense training to make him feel comfortable in any large real-world city. But this was not any large real-world city. This was Sarxos, and you never knew when someone was going to jump at you out of a dark alley carrying a loaded cockatrice…against which front snap-kicks would do you no good at all.

Leif walked on, resisting the temptation to whistle. It might make you feel better in the dark, but it also pinpointed your location for someone whose night vision might be no better than yours. He strolled, as calmly as he could, and passed the square of moonlight on the left-hand wall, just a thin ray of it passing between two taller buildings on the east side. The gate Megan had mentioned was maybe another twenty yards on. Very, very quietly, Leif reached down and started loosening his knife in its sheath.

Behind him, very softly, something went scuffle.

He didn’t stop to look behind, though he was sorely tempted. Leif kept walking. His mother’s voice said in his head, No common thug ever sneaks up right behind you. They always break into a run, those last few steps. If it’s a professional stalking you, you don’t have a hope. You’re probably dead already. But if it’s just a thug, so long as you can’t hear those last few steps, you’ve still got at least a few feet between you and him or her. When you hear those steps, though, they’re in reaching range. Do something quick—

Leif just went strolling on.

Scurry. Scuffle—pause—scurry, pause—

He kept walking.

There was the gate, a faint, wide, arched dimness in the darkness of the left-hand wall. Leif walked innocently past it, not turning his head to look through it, just taking his time: though he could see by peripheral vision that no one was there.

Scuffle.

Footsteps. Soft shoes on the stones. Much closer now.

Leif swallowed.

Scurry, scuffle—

— and someone breaking into a run—

Leif whirled, whipping the knife out, going forward just enough on the balls of his feet to jump or run.

He never had a chance to do either. A dark shape shot out of the gateway and got jumbled up with the very small dark blot that had been running at him. Leif was uncertain what happened next, except that the two dark forms seemed to consolidate…and then one of them flew away from the other, and into the wall opposite the gate, with stunning force. There was a shriek, cut off suddenly as the smaller form slid down the wall and hit the cobblestones.

Leif hurried over. Megan was standing there, not even looking particularly winded. She was standing over that smaller shape now, her hands on her hips, looking down with an expression that was hard to make out in the darkness, but it looked thoughtful.

“He weighs nearly as much as my number-three brother,” she said mildly. “Interesting. All right, Gobbo, get up off your butt, it wasn’t that bad.”

The dwarf lay moaning and sniveling on the ground. “Don’t hurt me, don’t do that again!”

Megan reached down and hoisted Gobbo up by the front of his motley, and briefly held him straight-armed against the wall at nearly eye level. She and Leif studied his face. It was that of a middle-aged man, much collapsed together because of his dwarfism: a nasty face, eloquent of much troublemaking.

“I’m a very important person, I can get you in a lot of trouble!” the dwarf squealed. “Let me go!”

“Oh, yeah,” Leif said, “we’re shaking, the two of us. Was that dwarf-chucking?” he said to Megan.

“Very incorrect,” she said, in an abstracted tone of voice. “But you could get used to it.”

The dwarf’s face spasmed with fear. “Don’t!”

“Why were you following us?” Leif said.

“And why have you been following us since Minsar?” said Megan. “Answers, quick — or I’ll chuck you right over this wall, honest, and we’ll see how important gravity thinks you are when you come down.”

“What makes you think—”

Megan lifted him a little higher.

“Your arm getting tired?” Leif said. “I could take him. I can press almost one-fifty these days.”

“No,” Megan said, “no need. I won’t wait much longer. Gobbo, this is your last chance. I saw a lady get hurt today, and it’s put me in a real bad mood, and made me short-tempered with people who don’t answer reasonable questions.” She started to lift him higher.

The dwarf looked at her, a strange expression. “Put me down,” he said, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Megan looked at him for a moment, then put him down.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”

The dwarf began feeling around in his pockets. Megan was watching him like a hawk. Leif was wondering what those pockets might conceal—

“Here,” the dwarf said, and reached up, holding out something for Megan to take.

She reached down her hand and took it, curious. She lifted it close to her eyes, turning it over and over in the