The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (29 page)

The guard recognized the thief under the cart and yelled loudly, “Blast! It’s
him
! Stop him! Stop him
now!
”

The commotion that erupted on the street was terrific! Gully rolled the other direction, to the far side of the cart, and jumped up from beneath it. The two guards had run across the road and were closing hard around both ends of the cart to cut off Gully’s escape from either direction. Gully had only one direction left that he could go, so he jumped up on one edge of the cart, leapt across the apples, then down onto the street again. He dashed off as hard as he could down the side street from which the guards had emerged.

He glanced behind him, the two swordsmen yelling and closing the distance. He cursed his luck to have a guard recognize him at the worst possible moment, and simultaneously had to dodge around a wash woman carrying a large basket of laundry that had appeared in his way. The dodge slowed him just enough that he felt a hand of one of the soldiers grabbing for his surcoat. He spun around a third swordsman that had appeared in his path — one totally unaware of the chase going on. The guard that had almost grabbed Gully ran headlong into the swordsman that Gully had avoided, knocking both to the ground.

Gully took the opportunity to pull his surcoat tighter around him and to put even more distance between himself and the now three guards chasing him. He hoped there were no more guards nearby that would hear the racket and come to aid the ones already on his tail.

He fled out into the Chalk Market, but the crowd was thin enough that he could still be easily spotted there, so he kept running. He crossed through the market, the guards still no more than a couple of cart-lengths behind him, shouting and jostling and pushing people roughly out of the way. He ran towards a narrow alleyway next to a basket-maker’s stall. The stall was tall and piled very high with large baskets of all sorts. As Gully ran past, he pulled on the stall, tipping it over. All of the baskets came tumbling down in front of the alleyway and the owner of the stall began cursing loudly at Gully, who ignored the angry shouts and kept running.

It wasn’t much of an obstacle, but it was good enough to purchase himself an extra moment of time. Rather than continue running, Gully spotted an empty and unattended wagon with a few filthy oilskin blankets in the back. He threw himself into the wagon and pulled an oilskin over himself, then waited until he heard the swordsmen storm by as they still gave chase.

It was barely a second later that he heard the shouts of the soldiers, and he held his breath so they would not see any tell-tale motion in the cart where he hid. As soon as the soldiers had passed, Gully did not wait. He stood up out of the wagon to run a different way.

He was confronted by a very large man, whose face was turning from confused to upset.

“What yeh doing hiding in me wagon there?” asked the man gruffly. His whiskered cheeks puffed in and out in anger.

Gully couldn’t afford to argue with the man and certainly didn’t want the soldiers to hear him shouting.

He said to the man, calmly, but with his heart beating fiercely, “These blankets are far too stiff to make quality bedding linens, good man! And they are scratchy, as well! You won’t sell a one of them, even for no more than a spitcoin or two. You’d best rethink your business, sir! Quality sells itself!”

Gully turned and walked off in a feigned huff, trying to catch his breath and hoping against hope that his comment confused the man just enough.

Fortunately, he turned a corner without the wagon-owner coming after him. He stopped long enough to turn his surcoat inside out to give it a different color from what the swordsmen were looking for. He was off running again as soon as he had accomplished that, back towards the alehouse where he had found the cart with the abducted man. He had no intention of letting this person be taken, or allowing to pass this opportunity to unmask these men and make public their crimes.

To his dismay, when he arrived back at the alehouse where the cart had been, it was gone. He stopped and studied the street to see if he could discern which path through the city it would likely take. From where he stood, though, there were several potential paths, and there was no way to know which it had taken.

He picked a direction and started off at a jog once again to try to hunt down the kidnappers. He wound around, through the likely streets and points in between them, and spied many carts travelling, but none of them were the wagon full of apples for which he was looking. Frustrated and disappointed, he eventually had to stop running and began walking, trying less likely paths, but he still could not find the cart. He knew that what had happened with the guards had to have spooked the kidnappers, and now they were taking extra care to disappear into the city in a place where they would not likely be sought.

Gully sat down, discouraged and exhausted, on the curb of a side of a street to try to think where would be the best place to lead a cart where it would not be expected. He could think of no good solution, though; too much time had passed and the cart could be almost anywhere.

As he sat, it hit him, though. He would have to give up on the idea of exposing the corrupt swordsmen inside the city where there would be witnesses, but that did not mean he had to give up on rescuing the unfortunate man who was their victim.

~~~~~

Gully slumped down against the massive pine, his breath heaving in and out and the sweat beading and dripping from his face. The back of his mind prickled at him with the worry that he was still too late, that the wagon of apples and the sad, kidnapped soul were already deeper in the forest. The fact that it was a half-mule pulling the cart was what kept him from pursuing farther into the wood, though. Half-mules were slower, but could pull or carry burdens for longer distances. That meant he almost certainly had to have beaten them to the woods. He closed his eyes and hoped that this was the case.

He lay back against the tree, settled into a spot where he could watch through some leaves at the road as it approached the woods, and waited to see who came. He began to think through his options for when these men did come. It was one thing to steal from two drunken soldiers passed out in the middle of the night. It was rather another to attack two trained swordsmen directly, ones that were already spooked by the incident in the city.

No good ideas came to him immediately, and after waiting a half-hour, he began to wonder if he had missed the cart and kidnappers after all. He closed his eyes again for a few minutes, resting, until a noise a ways away popped them open.

In the distance, a cart slowly approached with two men driving it.

Gully hid himself a little better among the bushes until he saw that it was the cart and the men for whom he was looking. Rather than attempt any kind of rescue on the edge of the woods, he decided to lead ahead of them deeper into the forest. He paced ahead, out of their sight, while his mind spun for some way of disabling the swordsmen without taking a knife in the side for his efforts. If there had only been one of them, he would have used his throwing knife, but that would only disable one of them and alert the other at the same time.

He paused to make sure the cart was not too far behind, and then came upon a spot in the road with which he was familiar. It was one where it narrowed some, and there it was he spotted what he hoped would be his best chance to disable both guards.

Gully sprinted off the side of the road to prepare himself for the trap. He hid as best he could and trusted that his dark brown surcoat and hood would camouflage him the rest of the way. He would need to remain perfectly still until the last possible moment, blending in with his surroundings.

As he waited and the cart drew nigh to his hiding spot, he held very still, and he reminded himself how he swore to free whoever was under the apples before the man’s tongue had been cut out. It was the only way he would have the courage to challenge two swordsmen this way.

His chest pounded, and he had to force himself not to spring his trap too early or it would not work. He felt sure the soldiers could hear his heavy, anxious breathing, and he tried to calm himself. The cart drew equal to his position, and the two kidnappers seated on it continued their casual conversation, unaware of the threat next to them.

Right when they passed just beyond Gully’s position, he let go of the sapling branch that had grown out over the roadway and that he had pulled back. The young branch recoiled to return to its normal position, and in doing so hit both guards in the faces, hard.

The guard nearest Gully took the worst of the branch and fell off the cart and was even run over by one of the wheels before the half-mule stopped. The other guard screamed at being slapped hard in the face with leaves and twigs, but held his seat on the wagon.

Gully almost panicked when he realized only one of the guards was disabled by the branch, and temporarily at that. He glanced down at the roots of a fallen tree next to him. He picked up a sizeable clod of damp, soft earth and looked at it, and then hoped his aim was true. He stepped out and whistled, getting the guard still in his seat, whose face was now red and cut from the branch, to turn towards him. Gully threw hard the clod of dirt directly into his face. The dirt was far too soft to knock the guard out, but it did smash into his face, getting dirt all into the kidnapper’s eyes and blinding him and causing him to scream even louder. The guard yelled in agony and clawed at his eyes, trying to get the burning dirt out of them.

Gully paused but a second to check that his throw had been true and had had its intended effect. He drew his throwing knife from his boot in case he needed it, but picked up a hard rock from the edge of the roadway to be his primary weapon. A groan turned his attention to the back of the wagon where the first guard was trying to stand up. He ran to him, and as the man lifted to his hands and knees and began to reach to his belt for a hidden knife, Gully struck him on the back of his head with the rock, knocking him out completely.

Gully jumped up onto the bench of the wagon and stuck the tip of his throwing knife into the neck of the blinded swordsman. He ordered, “Move your hands! Sit on them, now! If you move even a mite, I’ll filet you and leave you as a convenient meal for the bears and wolves!”

The guard cried, muddy tears streaming down his face, “I’m blinded! You blinded me! Blessed stars, it burns so badly!”

“Sit on them!” shouted Gully angrily, and pressed the knife into the man’s throat until it drew a spot of blood. The swordsman threw his hands down and sat on them and kept blinking his red and swollen eyes, trying to get the dirt and sand out of them.

The guard started to ask why he must sit on his hands, but before he had gotten the question out, Gully struck him in the back of the head, knocking him out, too. The kidnapper fell off the bench, landing hard on his shoulder in a heap on the far side of the apple cart.

Gully stood and glanced behind him to check on the first kidnapper, but he was still unconscious. He shouted at the piled up apples in the cart, “All is well! Just allow me a moment!”

Gully jumped down and dragged the two kidnappers off the road and over to separate trees. He found a few lengths of rope in their bag, not enough to effectively tie both of them, but enough to buy time to get away from them. He kept the two soldiers separate so that they could not assist each other, and he tied their hands as tightly as he could behind the trees.

He mopped the sweat from his own dirty face and furiously began to throw apples from the cart until he could see the person buried beneath. He pulled the man out of the apples and up onto his knees. Gully jumped out of the wagon and then lifted the man out using his shoulder. He set him down on his feet so that he could lean against the cart. He ignored the terrified look in the man’s face and cut the ropes from his hands and feet and finally removed the gag of canvas that had been roughly forced into his mouth and tied in place.

The freed victim shrank away from Gully and begged as he spat and coughed from the dry canvas, “What... what are you doing to me? What is happening now? Please, I beg, do not hurt me!”

Gully said as he threw the canvas off to the side, “I have no intention of hurting you! I know what these men were going to do to you, and will not stand by while they work their evil trade!”

Getting a better look at the man he had freed, Gully guessed him to have the same build as he and to be about the same age, although the victim was a little more regularly fed than he himself was. The man had a dirty black ganache of cheap fabric pulled around him, but beneath that were a very fine pair of linen trousers and expensive boots.

He looked at the man curiously for a moment, and the kidnap victim watched nervously to see if Gully intended to do him harm or not. When Gully did not, he pulled at the ganache to take it off. Finally free of the flimsy coat, Gully took a puzzled step back at the sight of the very rich and finely crafted doublet that had been hidden underneath and the beautifully cut and detailed tunic beneath that.

Gully reached over, causing the man to flinch and draw back. Gully smiled this time, and reached over again to brush the dirt and dust from the shoulders and chest of the man. He said, “Why, now they’re stealing away very wealthy men, indeed!” His face flashed angrily and he said, “These evil people are utterly indiscriminate with whom... with whom...”

His voice trailed off and then he stopped in mid-sentence. He looked closer at the crest embroidered in gold thread on the chest of his companion’s doublet, and then up to the victim’s face again. In his mind, a memory stirred, and he thought back to the previous year when he had gone to listen at the festival welcoming the Sanctun of Vasahle. In the Bonedown Square, several members of the royal court gave speeches commemorating the disappearance of the trickster moon beneath the horizon for the next six months, leaving Vasahle’s twice-daily path across the sky unocculted. The person standing before him now looked like... in fact,
exactly
like...