06 - Rule of Thieves Read Free Page A

just left the roar of the falls in the distance when I felt it. The familiar tingling sense warning me of another presence. Someone was watching me. Two someones, in fact.
    Nearby, a bird call split the silence of the woods. I knew that signal, long used by the forest outlaws. One of my hidden observers was telling his partner to hold off and let him attack first. The branches of an elder tree shivered overhead, and knowing what was coming, I instinctively rolled aside in time to avoid the dark shape dropping down from above. Without me in the expected place to break her fall, the girl landed hard in a crouched position. Not fazed for long, she faced me with a dagger ready in her hand.
    I met her hard gaze with the point of an arrow, hastily nocked and aimed between her eyes.
    “There’s no need for this.” I raised my voice for the benefit of her partner. Wherever he was, I imagined he had an arrow similarly trained on me. “I’m one of you,” I said. “I’ve been away awhile, but I’ve come back and am looking for Dradac. I know he took the band over after Rideon.”
    The female outlaw looked at me with suspicion. She was young, maybe only a little older than me, with sandy-blond hair. Streaks of dark mud camouflaged her clothing and skin. I didn’t know her, so she must be a newer recruit.
    “How do we know you’re not working with the Praetor’s Fists? Or with the barbarian raiders?”
    “Because if I was, I’d have killed you by now. If you doubt me, take me to the new camp where there’ll be many to vouch for me.”
    “That won’t be needed. I know who you are.” A second outlaw interrupted her, a tall, wide-shouldered man emerging from his hiding place in the bushes. “We used to call you the Hound, but you looked different back then. Skinnier and silver-haired. You’ve grown up.”
    “And found it necessary to disguise my appearance,” I explained. “You’re Marik, aren’t you?”
    I didn’t know him well but vaguely recognized him as a thief who used to stay up at Mole Hill in the old days when our band was divided.
    “That I am, and this here’s Fallon.” He introduced the girl. “We can take you to Dradac, like you ask. But if he says you’re not a friend of ours anymore, of course you realize we’ll have to slit your throat.”
    “Understandable,” I agreed.
    “And there’ll be other precautions. You’ve been away a long time. A lot can change in a year.”
    “You mean I could be the Praetor’s creature now and prepared to sell out my friends to gain his favor,” I said.
    He had a point. My allegiances these days were anybody’s guess. Even I barely knew them anymore. The Dimmingwood outlaws hadn’t survived all these years by being incautious.
    I surrendered my weapons to the scowling blond girl and allowed myself to be blindfolded and led away.
    Dead Man’s Fall was a good choice of location for the new camp. It overhung a swift stream where fresh water would always be on hand, and the outcropping of big rocks offered a little protection from the elements. It wasn’t as cozy as the caves of Red Rock or Boulder’s Cradle, but at least the outlaws had dug out shelters beneath the largest boulders and extended the fronts with pine-bough screens.
    I was glad my escorts removed my blindfold when we overlooked the creek in its ravine, because it took careful maneuvering to ascend the steep incline to the rocks below. I followed the others’ leads, leaping from one sturdy foothold to the next and occasionally catching one of the leaning trees growing out of the hillside to steady myself.
    I caught sight of Dradac seated nearby on a fallen log, where he was busily whittling at something with a belt knife. I felt an unexpected tug in my chest. If I needed any confirmation that I’d been homesick over the past year, this was it. The redheaded giant had been one of the first outlaws to befriend me when I came to live in the forest many years ago. Next to Brig, and later