'Of course he's close,' snapped the leader who had first called the halt. 'He doesn't have wings, does he? He's not immortal, he's not immune to the charms of our blades – no more such mutterings, do you two hear me? Now spread out – you, up that side, and you, up the other.' Sorcery cast its cold breath. 'I'll stay in the middle,' the leader said.
Aye, and unseen, meaning you're first, bastard.
Kalam listened as the other two headed off. He knew the pattern they would assume, the two flankers moving ahead, the leader – hidden in sorcery – hanging back, eyes flicking between the two hunters, scanning alley mouths, rooftops, a rib-less crossbow in each hand. Kalam waited a moment longer, then slowly, silently slipped free of the corpse and rose into a crouch.
He padded into the street, his bare feet making no sound. To someone who knew what to look for, the bloom of darkness edging forward twenty paces ahead was just discernible. Not an easy spell to maintain, it was inevitably weaker to the rear, and Kalam could make out a hint of the figure moving within it.
He closed the distance like a charging leopard. One of Kalam's elbows connected with the base of the leader's skull, killing him instantly. He caught one of the crossbows before it struck the cobbles, but the other eluded him, clattering and skittering on the street. Silently cursing, the assassin continued his charge, angling right, towards an alley mouth twenty paces behind the flanker on that side.
He dived at the muted snap of a crossbow and felt the quarrel rip through his cloak. Then he was rolling into the alley's narrow confines, sliding on rotted vegetables. Rats scattered from his path as he regained his feet and darted into deeper shadows.
An alcove loomed on his left and he spun, backed into its gloom and pulled free his own crossbow. Doubly armed, he waited.
A figure edged into view and paused opposite him, no more than six feet away.
The woman ducked and twisted even as Kalam fired – and the assassin knew he had missed. Her dagger, however, did not. The blade, flashing out from her hand, thudded as it struck him just beneath his right clavicle. A second thrown weapon – an iron star – embedded itself in the alcove's wooden door beside Kalam's face.
He pressed the release on the second crossbow. The quarrel took her low in the belly. She tumbled back and was dead of the White Paralt before she stopped moving.
Kalam was not – the weapon jutting from his chest must be clean. He sank down, laying the two crossbows on the ground, then reached up and withdrew the knife, reversing grip.
He'd already used up his other weapons, although he still retained the tongs and the small sack of cloth-tacks.
The last hunter was close, waiting for Kalam to make another break – and the man knew precisely where he hid. The body lying opposite was the clearest indication of that.
Now what?
The right-hand side of his shirt was wet and sticky, and he could feel the heat of the blood streaming down his body on that side. It was his third minor wound of the night – a throwing star had found his back during the next-to-last skirmish. Such weapons were never poisoned – too risky for the thrower, even when gloved. The heavy apron had absorbed most of the impact, and he'd scraped the star off against a wall.
His mental discipline in slowing the flow of blood from the various wounds was close to tatters. He was weakening. Fast.
Kalam looked straight up. The underside of a wooden balcony was directly overhead, the two paint-chipped braces about seven and a half feet above the ground. A jump might allow him to reach one, but that would be a noisy affair, and success would leave him helpless.
He drew the tongs from their loop. Gripping the bloody knife in his teeth, he slowly straightened, reaching up with the tongs. They closed over the brace.
Now, will the damned thing hold my weight?
Gripping the handles hard, he cautiously tensed his shoulders, drew himself up an inch, then another. The brace did not so much as groan – and he realized that the wooden beam in all likelihood extended into a deep socket in the stone wall itself. He continued pulling himself upward.
The challenge was maintaining silence, for any rustle or whisper of noise would alert his hunter. Arms and shoulders trembling, Kalam drew his legs up, a fraction at a time, tucked his right leg even higher, then edged it, foot first, through the triangular gap above the brace.
He hooked that leg, pulled, and was finally able to ease the strain on his arms and shoulders.
Kalam hung there, motionless, for a long minute.
Claws liked waiting games. They excelled in contests of patience. His hunter had evidently concluded that this was one of those games, and he intended to win it.
