The Thieves' Band, Part Two
The sight inside the tent threw Carlo for a moment.
It was as if someone had picked up an entire household and set it down whole. A great bed occupied the center of the inner space, and sprawled across it, tangled together in sleep, lay naked bodies—a man and a woman. No. A man and two women.
Startled by the sudden commotion, the man rubbed at his eyes and was just pushing himself up.
"What's going—"
Carlo gave him no time. He lunged, swinging for the shoulder. He had no mind to kill. Plant a knife in a shoulder, though, and a man was usually easy enough to put down.
The dagger drove in a straight line at the startled target. But before the steel could so much as touch him—
Clang!
A shadow burst from the dark and knocked Carlo's dagger aside.
"What!"
The smoke that had struck the blade away drew into a single mass. A reaper's shape, clad in a black robe. Black smoke condensed, it barred the way with a dagger in each hand.
In that interval the caravan master came fully awake.
"What the—!"
Carlo clicked his tongue. Damn it. The black smoke standing in his face was a magic item, no question. So he did have a card in reserve. Still, a magic item was hardly omnipotent.
He traded a look with the men to either side, and the three of them charged at once from three directions. The figure the smoke had made was one. They were three.
The smoke broke apart left and right, whirling as it turned the thieves' swords. Clang-clang! Chak-chak-clang! Chak-clang!
But Carlo was a top-grade thief himself. He lashed both daggers, beat the smoke's blades aside, and in the same breath whipped a cut around its neck. The reaper, throat opened, went slack and scattered on the air—then drew itself together again almost at once.
That brief gap was enough. In it, one of his men succeeded in driving inside.
"Resist, and I don't mind killing you—"
He never finished.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Thunder cracked in a rapid string, and the women who had been asleep beside the bed screamed a beat too late.
"Aaaaah!!"
"Master!"
The man who had charged staggered backward and went down.
Thud.
Holes were bored clean through his chest and belly. Carlo couldn't begin to tell what had hit him.
Then the thing in the caravan master's hand swung toward another of his men.
And—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Thunder again. The man's body jerked under the impacts, and he toppled straight over backward. Blood jetted from chest and gut, same as the first.
"No. What in the world kind of item is that."
He had never once heard of a magic that struck with noise. No time to dwell on it. If the other side was using a means he didn't understand, falling back was the only sensible move. He flung himself through the hole they had cut on the way in.
"We fall back for now. Move to the rally point—"
The words died in Carlo's throat.
The center of the camp. The boy he had seen at the start stood there with a sword in hand, and the rest of his men—the ones who were supposed to have taken the slaves and the guards—lay sprawled on the ground. Fortune or misfortune, they were alive. He could hear them groaning.
The boy looked his way.
"See? You should've left when I told you to."
A voice came from behind.
"And send them off for whose benefit, exactly?"
Carlo turned. The caravan master was walking out with a robe thrown over him, that same unknowable object still in his hand.
The boy spoke again.
"While you were at it, you might've stopped them before they ripped the tent."
"Watching how they moved, three looked like something I could handle just fine. And you've got that item you just bought."
"Sure. That's true, but still."
"In return, I didn't kill a single one on my side. I even tried not to hurt them, as much as I could. That ought to do, right?"
"Ah. I'd be grateful if you handled it that way. A slave fetches more than a corpse."
"Figured as much."
Carlo was thrown. Subdued without killing them? Seventeen thieves?
In the meantime a giant of considerable bulk came up beside the caravan master and took a stance as if to guard him. Taking the master hostage had just grown that much harder.
Carlo decided on his last resort. He slipped a hand into his clothes, drew out what he found there, and hurled it hard at the ground.
Whump!!
Smoke that had been packed tight burst outward all at once, flooding the surroundings. Blind the field, then run. The final measure of a man who had climbed to top grade inside a thieves' guild.
The instant the smoke spread, Carlo launched himself toward the place where the children were gathered.
Or he meant to.
Urk!
If a hand hadn't shot out of the dark and closed on the scruff of his neck. His windpipe shut. The strength ran out of his legs, and he folded where he stood.
From somewhere a hard wind rose and scoured away the heavy fog that had filled the air. Into Carlo's dimming sight came the face of the one gripping him by the neck. The boy. The same calm face that had spoken of putting his men down without killing them.
Only then did it come to him. A caravan on this scale would never simply travel without a proper escort. Goddamn it.
We bound the captured thieves and put them to the question. What came of it was unpleasant.
"So the word is, I'm being frozen out."
"Sir?"
"No. I meant everybody's got it in for our company."
"Ah. That does appear to be the case."
Set against what we'd pulled from the thieves, the picture was plain enough. A brand-new caravan that still reeked of the amateur had, in the space of a few days, sold off more than two hundred and seventy slaves. For the competing houses, it went past sour grapes into something like panic. So a few of those houses had deliberately seeded talk through the market.
A newborn caravan, just come into Gerona, has made a fortune.
Not one escort mercenary. God knows where they get the nerve.
Keep on like that and they're begging to be robbed.
Rumors dropped around the market loud enough to be overheard had made us a mark for Gerona's thieves' guilds, and the guild that hit us at dawn was the Night Cat Thieves Guild, drawn in by that same talk.
"Honestly. What a nuisance, the lot that latched onto us."
If Argon hadn't been there, I'd have kept my own neck, sure—but the caravan might have taken a heavy hit. Catching the bastards who came raiding and selling them off was fine and good. There was no reason to court the danger on purpose. And I had an errand that meant a short trip back to Earth.
First, the guard had to be strengthened. When everyone else was doing a thing, the wise move was to do it too. The men who'd come before me weren't spending sweat and coin for nothing.
Early that morning I took Marco and Maximus and went looking for the mercenary guild. I meant to be introduced to a company through them. We were asking the way when an unexpected face called out to me.
"Well now! If it isn't Baron Terra of the Sahara Merchant Group!"
I turned at the voice.
Ah. That one. The jinx.
Hans, the mercenary I'd gotten acquainted with while traveling with the Modric Caravan, came up grinning.
Skip the mercenary guild and you saved their brokerage cut. That wasn't the only reason. The way he'd fought beside us last time hadn't been bad either, so I signed with the Marcus Mercenary Company, the outfit Hans belonged to.
Ten days. They would watch the camp and also guard Marco, my only employee. The women and the dwarves—expensive assets—went on the list of those to be protected. If they died, the loss would be large.
With the mercenaries contracted and set to the watch, I called the dwarves aside. In front of the craftsmen waiting on me, I drew from a high-capacity pouch the G-Wagen whose nose had been smashed in the last chase. Seeing one for the first time, the dwarves stared as if it were some marvel.
"What is this?"
"My personal wagon. You can see the front's caved in and broken. Think you can fix it?"
Dwarf Number One, the eldest among them, studied the body closely, then spoke.
"This is an iron I've never seen."
"I'll supply the materials. Not back to what it was—what I want is this."
I switched on a smart pad in front of them and showed a single photograph. A customized armored vehicle.
"I want this whole outer shell skinned in steel. And this part, like so. The hatch should open like this. What do you think?"
Hand the job to a proper shop back home and it would cost the better part of a million dollars. I was trying it on the off chance. If it failed, there was nothing left on the thing to ruin. I couldn't drive it around as it was, anyway.
"Even if we have the materials, the forge is the problem. To do the work, we need a forge."
"I'll take care of that. So if you've got a forge and the materials, it can be done?"
"We'll give it a try."
So I set the dwarves to their task as well. With a guard posted at Marco's side, that worry eased. The immediate danger was plugged, at least.
Next was making sure a thing like this didn't happen twice. After an accident, you laid down a proper plan to keep it from recurring. That was the rule. And in a case like this, the surest plan of all was simple.
Pay back ten times what was done to you.
The enemy was the Night Cat, a thieves' guild working out of Gerona. And behind them, the caravan-master bastards trying to freeze the Sahara Merchant Group out. Revenge on the Night Cat started with intelligence. And those caravan bastards—this was jealousy, because we'd sold too well?
Then I'd have to show them what a real price dump looked like.
I called Marco.
"Yes, Guildmaster."
"From here on, go to the market and find out which of the slaves sell the best, and in the greatest numbers."
"Yes."
"I'll be stepping over to the item market for a bit."
"Again? You're going again?!"
Marco jumped. I'd burned through a thousand gold in a single day, and afraid I was about to empty the company strongroom, he moved to stop me.
But—
"Don't try to stop me. This time I'm going because I have to. If you're going to do a thing, do it so it counts. So they never even dream of coming at us again."