His head went first. Twisting it slightly, he thrust his face forward between the top bar and the stones above. Practice had taught him that his ears would suffer less if not bent backwards as he tried to pull his head through. A rising sense of urgency battled the pain he felt, as he sensed his pursuers closing in. Yet the pain from his cheeks as he slowly pressed through the gap grew more intense. He tasted the salty, iron tang of blood and sweat and he continued to wiggle his head through the gap. Tears flowed freely, yet he held his silence as he cruelly scraped both ears, one against stone and the other against filthy iron. For an instant panic threatened to rise up and overwhelm him as images of him hanging helpless in the grate while his pursuers raced to seize him played vividly in his imagination.
Then his head was past the top bar. He easily snaked his arm through, and he moved his shoulder. Hoping he wouldn’t have to dislocate his joints to get through, the young thief continued. He got his shoulders through and, by exhaling, his chest followed. He held the lantern in his trailing arm and realized it wouldn’t fit through the gap.
Taking a deep breath, the boy let it fall as he twisted the rest of his body through. He was now on the other side of the grate, clinging to it like a ladder as the lantern clattered onto the stones.
‘He’s in there!’ came a shout from close by and a light shone into the tunnel.
Limm held himself poised for a moment, and looked up. The hole above him was barely visible in the faint light hurrying towards him. He shoved upward, slapping his palms against the tunnel walls, keeping his feet firmly on the grate. He pressed hard with both hands on the sides of the vertical shaft. He needed solid hand-holds before he pushed off the grate. He felt around and got his fingers into a deep seam between two stones on one side and had just found another when he felt something touch his bare foot.
Instantly he pushed off with his feet, and heard a voice cursing. ‘Damn all sewer rats!’
Another voice said, ‘We can’t get through there!’
‘But my blade can!’
Summoning all his strength the young thief pulled himself up into the shaft, and in a dangerous move, released his hold on the top of the grate, dropped his hands to his side, and pushed upward. He slapped his palms backwards and braced his back against the wall of the chimney, and pulled his feet up, jamming them acrobatically against the far wall. He heard the scrape of steel on iron as someone shoved a sword through the grating. Limm knew that had he hesitated, he would have been impaled on the point of that long blade.
A voice swore and said, ‘He vanished up that chimney!’
Another voice said, ‘He’s got to come out somewhere on the level above!’
For an instant Limm could feel the shirt on his back move as the material slipped against the wall and his bare feet skidded on the slimy stones. He pressed harder with his feet and prayed he could hold his position. After an instant of downward movement, he stopped.
‘He’s gone!’ shouted one of the men who had been chasing him. ‘If he was going to fall, he’d have been out of there by now!’
The boy recognized the voice of the leader. ‘Head back up to the next level and spread out! There’s a bonus for whoever kills him! I want that rat dead before morning!’
Limm moved upward, one hand, one foot, another hand, another foot, by inches, slipping down an inch for every two he gained. It was slow going and his muscles cried out for a pause, but he pressed on. A cool whiff of air from above told him he was close to the next level of the sewers. He prayed it was a large enough pipe to navigate, as he had no desire to attempt another passage downward and back through that grate.
Reaching the lip of the shaft, he paused, took a deep breath and turned, snatching at the edge. One hand slipped on something thick and sticky, but the other hand held firm. Never one for bathing, nevertheless he looked forward to scrubbing this muck off and finding clean clothing.
Hanging in the silence, the boy waited. He knew it was possible that the men who had pursued him might appear in a few moments. He listened.
Impulsive by nature, the boy had come to learn the dangers of acting rashly in dangerous situations. Seven boys had come to Mother’s, the Mockers’ safe haven, at roughly the same time, within a few weeks of one another. The other six were now dead. Two had died by accident: falling from the rooftops. Three had been hanged as common thieves during crack-downs by the Prince’s magistrates. The last boy had died the previous night, at the hands of the men who now sought Limm, and it was his murder the young thief had witnessed.
The boy let his racing heart calm and his straining lungs recover. He pulled himself up and into the large pipe, and moved off in the darkness, a hand on the right wall. He knew he could negotiate most of the tunnels hereabout blindfolded, but he also knew it only took one wrong turn or missing a side tunnel in passing to become completely lost. There was a central cistern in this quarter of the city, and knowing where he was in relationship to it provided Limm with a navigational aid as good as any map, but only if he kept his wits about him and concentrated.
He inched along, listening to the distant sound of gurgling water, turning his head this way and that to ensure he was hearing the sound coming down the sewer and not a false echo bouncing off nearby stones. While he moved blindly, he thought about the madness that had come to the city in recent weeks.
At first it had seemed like a minor problem: a new rival gang, like others that had shown up from time to time. Usually a visit from the Mockers’ bashers, or a tip to the sheriff’s men, and the problem went away.
This time, it had been different.
A new gang showed up on the docks, a large number of Keshian thugs among them. That alone wasn’t worth notice; Krondor was a major port of trade with Kesh. What made this group unusual was their indifference to the threat posed by the Mockers. They acted in a provocative fashion, openly moving cargo into and out of the city, bribing officials and daring the Mockers to interfere with them. They seemed to be inviting a confrontation.
At last the Mockers had acted, and it had been a disaster. Eleven of the most feared bashers – the enforcers among the Guild of Thieves – had been lured into a warehouse at the end of a semi-deserted dock. They had been trapped inside and the building set afire, killing all eleven. From that moment on, warfare had erupted deep in Krondor’s underworld.
The Mockers had been driven to ground, and the invaders, working for someone known only as the Crawler, had also suffered, as the Prince of Krondor had acted to restore order to his city.
Rumour had it some men dressed as Nighthawks – members of the Guild of Assassins – had been seen weeks before in the sewer, bait to bring the Prince’s army in after them, with the final destruction of the Mockers as the apparent goal. It was a foregone conclusion that had the Prince’s guard entered the sewers in sufficient numbers, everyone found down below the streets – assassins, false Nighthawks, or Mockers – all would be routed out or captured. It was a clever plan, but it had come to naught.
Squire James, once Jimmy the Hand of the Mockers, had foiled that ruse, before vanishing into the night on a mission for the Prince. Then the Prince had mustered his army and moved out – and again the Crawler had struck.
Since then, the two sides had stayed holed up, the Mockers at Mother’s, their well-disguised headquarters, and the Crawler’s men at an unknown hideout in the north docks area. Those sent to pinpoint the exact location of the Crawler’s headquarters failed to return.
The sewers had become a no-man’s
