Tantaerra got a glimpse, just for an instant, of a single bright brown eye peering at her from behind the Molthuni helms. Then it was gone, that ringing clang still loud in the air, as the two dazed bloodcoats were shoved hard into the third, grounding them in a brief chaos of thudding bodies and wildly kicking legs. Whoever had felled them darted off into the darkness-leaving a hole right in front of Tantaerra.
She sped through it.
Back into Halidon, into a darkness that held fewer spears and wildly waving lanterns and shouting men behind them, into-oh, blast.
Around a corner, now heading her way, came more Molthuni spearmen. In a tidy line that stretched right across the street, with a second rank right behind, who were holding aloft a bright row of lanterns.
She kept running toward them. She had to. There was a crossroads just ahead, but she knew before she reached it what was waiting on her right, where the forest was. Yes, there-a few more bloodcoats, spears lowered.
She turned left, right back to the barracks that almost had to be nigh deserted by now, with all these soldiers in the streets. It would be a bit too much to hope that a still-blind Lord Investigator would still be hacking the air in all directions …
It was. She saw moving helms catching the moonlight, just two-no, three-and then lanterns were unhooded to her right. More bloodcoats! This place must be a patrol-base with a big garrison, gods spit and spew …
With a savage snarl, Tantaerra turned left again, and ran along the barracks fence. Back toward the warehouses.
She was being herded.
At least the lanterns and the shouting she'd fled from were still over there, one street closer to the forest, and not waiting in front of her.
One soldier was sprinting back to intercept her, though.
"What," Tantaerra almost sobbed at the moon, "have I done to enrage you so thoroughly, gods? What?"
She kept on running, but drew her two daggers. Her only two daggers. She had a stabbing needle, too, but this Molthuni ahead would have to embrace her and raise her to his unprotected face for that to be any good.
She would need luck to manage this, and it would only work if he were alone and she gave him no time to set himself and be ready.
"Haaaaa!"
He charged around the corner of the fence at her, spear to the fore.
She threw her first dagger hard at his face-and he struck it aside with his spear, laughing-which left him no defense at all against her second knife, flashing end over end like a hungry fang, right into his mouth.
Damn. She'd been trying for an eye.
But he staggered, choking, fell hard on one knee, clutching at his throat-and she ran right up him and buried her stabbing needle in his right eye, then let her speed carry her past his head. She caught his chin and jerked his head around, trying to slow herself, and landed on her feet, behind him and facing him.
She needed both her daggers back. Fast.
She plucked the first out of his mouth and went back into the road-gloom to seek her second.
Bloodcoats were running from the barracks and from the patrol with all the lanterns. If she couldn't find her dagger in a few panting moments, she'd have to abandon-there!
She scooped it up gratefully and ran, fangs in both fists, heading for the nearest warehouse.
It looked about as inviting as a fortress, high unbroken walls looming up in front of her, moonlight bathing the nearest one …so the one beyond, then. Behind and around this fortress …yes! It had neat stacks of barrels along its east wall, and-was that a vent-door, propped open?
Gods be thanked, a whole row of open vents, and the same in the next warehouse, beyond!
Using her daggers like climbing spikes, Tantaerra swarmed up and over the fence. Climbing the barrels was a series of swift, easy leaps, and then-
She plunged through the nearest vent in a full, fast dive. If it was a long fall onto a hard floor within, so be it, she was-
It was a short fall, onto a hard and unyielding crate, but she bounced, wincing, and skidded to a hard stop.
Oh, but she was going to be sore in the morning. If, that is, she lived to see morning.
It was dark, and her arrival had raised dust. She sat up on the crate and saw more of them all around her, dark and looming and silent.
Resisting the urge to scramble, with the din of running bloodcoats growing nearer outside, she sat still, straining to hear.
Nothing. At least, nothing man-sized on the move or breathing hard, inside this end of the warehouse.
Tantaerra got down off the crate, sheathed her daggers, and felt her way cautiously along. She was in a loft, under the eastern eaves of the warehouse roof-there would be another loft facing her, that way, with an open gulf between where the pulley-hoists hung, with catwalks across where the trusses were doubled, for men with long hook-pikes to move crates like these about, to disturb the rats.
"Rats like me," she murmured, heading for the end of the warehouse. Any ladders up and down would be there, and-
There was a sudden roar from the other end of the warehouse, behind her, and the rattle of counterweights. Moonlight flooded in. The great end doors of the warehouse were being thrust open.
"Lanterns first!" The voice was clipped and cold. "No one goes haring off into the dark-that just gives our little rat a chance to slip out. Lamps to the fore!"
Lantern light flared, and Tantaerra saw dozens of helms and spears gleaming on that threshold. The bloodcoats were earning their coins tonight.
"All doors and stairs guarded," a new voice called, from outside those open doors.
"Good. Traevyn, guard these doors. No one not of us is to pass out. The rest of you: the lofts first. Search and secure, then look down to aid in searching the floor. Watch for crates that have been opened."
A soldier who knew his business. Damn him.
They were going to be slow, and careful, and thorough. She wasn't going to be able to escape.
Unless clouds took the moon away, and this warehouse had what she was hoping for.
It did.
Her heart leaped in hope as she found the wall-rungs, and the oiled rope tied to the topmost one that held the roof-hatch firmly shut.
The best warehouses had these; a way up onto the roof for repairs and for sun-drying damp sacks. The sun would bake her once day came again, but until then she might stay alive a little longer, if the moonlight wasn't good enough for bow-work. She was small enough to …
The knot undid with ease, kept from closing hard by a length of wooden branch shoved through the coils. The hatch opened almost soundlessly, and she eased herself through it, not daring to hope that moonlight flooding in wouldn't be noticed.
Yet there'd been no shouts, yet.
She let the hatch back down with infinite care, then rolled gently away from it, back from the roof edge, back south along the slope.
And into something that shouldn't have been there. Something that stiffened.
Tantaerra tried to roll away again, to get out a dagger-but a hand came out of nowhere to close like an iron clamp around her throat and haul her back again.
Bringing her nose to nose with its owner, a man who'd been lying asleep on the warehouse roof in the moonlight.
A man who was wearing a mask that covered his face from forehead to chin.
"So," he whispered into her face as she struggled to breathe, his other hand pinning her arm in place, keeping her from reaching her dagger, "are you some sort of intrepid Molthuni agent? The Bloodsworn Halfling Strike Force, or some such?"
Chapter Three
The mask didn't have to be on his face or next to his skin to whisper in his mind.