He heard the approaching shouts; they had cornered him and there were no high rooftops in this poor district beside the great lake. Instinctively he looked around for an escape, and though he noted one distinct possibility, he shook the notion away.
He had purposely baited Bregnan Prus and the others and had led them to this point.
But he was merely a child, barely nine years old. Bregnan stood almost twice his height and easily carried twice his weight.
“You can do this,” Regis whispered and he thought of Drizzt and Catti-brie, of Wulfgar and Bruenor, and of the role he had ever played in that band. True, he had found moments of usefulness, usually by accident, but mostly he had been the tag-along, hiding in the shadows while his heroic friends had protected him.
It could not be like that again. He wouldn’t allow it.
A shout from beside the very warehouse where the young halfling sat, told him that his pursuers were close, so he stood up, dusted himself off, and stepped out around the corner to meet them.
Bregnan Prus, in the lead, skidded to a stop.
Regis didn’t blink.
“No walls to climb, Spider?” the boy asked, a bit of a lisp to his voice since he had torn his lips extracting the whistle.
Regis glanced left, then right, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“You think I’m to be easy on you, then, because you’re just a child?”
“Ah, but just punch him hard,” another of the group said. “Let’s all punch him hard!”
That brought a few nods and cheers from the group of five.
Regis held his nerve and wouldn’t let them see him shift nervously, or even let them hear him clear hi sure what to make o spellscarons throat.
Behind him, the halfling heard the other group rushing in, this one led by the elf girl.
Bregnan Prus stepped up to him, towering over him.
“Beg me not to kill you,” he said.
But Regis stared up at him, locking his gaze, unblinking, and the halfling even managed a bit of a wry smile.
“Last chance!” Bregnan Prus said, and grabbed Regis by the collar-or tried to, for the halfling’s hand flashed across, slapping Bregnan’s fingers aside.
“Little rat!” the boy cried, and he launched a wild left hook aimed for Regis’s head.
But the halfling, surely not caught by surprise, ducked and backed up a step. He knew the counter move he should then execute, had practiced it a thousand times before, but he found that he could not.
Bregnan Prus pursued, launching a barrage of punches, though clumsy hooks one and all, and Regis rolled away time and again.
“He’s just a boy!” he heard behind him, the elf girl. Regis liked that one, and for some reason, the sound of her voice emboldened him.
“One last warning,” Regis said loudly, suddenly, and all the chatter stopped, and Bregnan Prus stopped as well and stared at him incredulously. “It was all just a game until now,” Regis warned. “Walk away.”
“What?”
“You are a clumsy ogre,” Regis said. “I have embarrassed you once before your friends. Would you have me do so again?”
Bregnan Prus let out a strange garbled sound and leaped at Regis, fists flailing. But Regis moved, too, the maneuver he had practiced repeatedly, day and night. He dived at the teenager’s feet, curled and rolled, and the older boy, coming forward, tried to straddle him so that he did not get tripped up.
But that was the whole point, and as Bregnan Prus awkwardly slithered past the ball of halfling, one leg on either side, Regis rolled so that the back of his head and the back of his shoulders were planted squarely against the ground. With that brace, he kicked straight up with both feet, connecting solidly with the teenager’s groin.
Bregnan Prus gave a cry and a grunt, and tried to press past, but Regis began a furious pumping of his feet, left and right alternately, smashing one heel after the other into the older boy’s tender loins.
Bregnan Prus hopped weirdly and kept trying to sidle past. He brought his hands down for cover, yelping all the while. Too late, though, both he and his assailant realized, as Regis’s foot connected perfectly, driving the older boy to his tip-toes and even lifting him off the ground.
Regis tucked and rolled through, spinning around as he did to catch Bregnan Prus’s trailing foot as the gasping young man tried to stagger away. The sneaky little halfling had all the leverage here, and he drove in hard, pushing up and over Bregnan Prus’s other leg.
The teenager crashed to the ground.
Regis untangled himself and ran right up the back of the fallen lad’s thighs, leaping onto his back with a stunning knee drop.
He went for the lad’s hairy head and almost got there before being swept aside by a flying tackle. Now he rolled and punched, bit and scratched, but the boy atop him was too strong and too heavy for that. A balled fist came in at him and he got his hand up to b asked, and Catti-brie nodded.igh inadvertentlyonlock-but the power of the punch drove right through and crushed Regis’s nose and sent him sprawling.
“He’s just a boy!” the elf girl yelled.
But in reply, Bregnan Prus ordered in a gasping and pained voice, “Kill him!”
Suddenly it wasn’t just a game, or a youthful play of dominance, for in that tone, Regis heard, unmistakably, a serious death sentence.
He had underestimated this group; he hadn’t realized just how tough the streets of Delthuntle might be.
He tried to get up and run, but got tackled again, and the next punch sent him spinning-or more accurately, the world around him spinning.
He felt himself lifted to his feet, then into the air, and a heavy slug, a punch by Bregnan Prus, took his breath away.
Pericolo Topolino tapped his ivory-tipped cane against the counter, drawing the fishmonger’s attention. She stood straight indeed when she recognized the halfling.
“Grandfather,” she said, dipping into an awkward bow. “You have quite the assortment of deepwater oysters,” the cultured halfling remarked.
“Y-yes, Grandfather,” she stammered. “Fresh, too. They were brought in just today.”
“The boats are out at the Sandy Banks, chasing the bass,” Pericolo said. He wasn’t surprised by the oysters, of course, nor did he doubt that they were fresh as stated. His informants had led him here, after all, and for precisely this reason.
The fishmonger stammered as if cornered.
“An independent diver, then,” Pericolo reasoned. “A good one, it would seem.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“You were here the other day, when there was such a commotion across the street?” Pericolo graciously asked. “The toot-tooting of the whistle?”
“Aye, yes,” she answered, and she nodded and managed a smile. “Was myself that extracted the instrument from Prus’s glued lips. Poor boy.”
“And the one he pursued?” Pericolo asked. “The one called Spider?”
The fishmonger looked at him curiously.
“Ah, yes, of course,” the halfling clarified. “It was myself who gave him that name, so you would not know him by it.”
“The halfling?”
“Yes, the halfling. The one who went up to the roof. You know him, I believe.”
The woman seemed very concerned suddenly, and she inadvertently glanced at the oysters, tipping her hand. Indeed, this little halfling, this Spider creature, was a valuable commodity to her, the astute Pericolo recognized.
“Tell me his name.”
“Spider, you said.”
“His real name,” Pericolo said, shifting his tone just enough to carry an undercurrent of a threat.
“I’m not for knowing,” she said with a gulp. “Don’t know that he’s even got one, for his Da’s not a man to be bothering with such things.”
asked, and Catti-brie nodded.igh inadvertentlyonPericolo narrowed his eyes.
“He’s Eiverbreen’s boy!” she blurted.