The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) Read Free

Bekellor and heard the wind get knocked out of the guard, even with his hard leather cuirass to protect him. The thief jumped up, throwing his chaperon hood back over his head, and began to dash. He stopped short, though, before either of the guards knew what had happened. While Bekellor was still fighting to get air back into his lungs, the Snipe pressed a foot down on Pollon’s chest, grabbed his throwing knife from where Pollon had stowed it on his belt, and then deftly picked the small moneybag jangling full of swallowstamps and belders out of the guard’s pocket again. It wasn’t much money, but he had worked for it and wasn’t going to let it go easily.
    “I’ll be needing these, sir, but I’ll leave my tooth with you!” said the thief to Pollon, and then he was off running again.
    The Gully Snipe had to think quickly as there were multiple ways he could run to escape. Luckily, he knew the streets, alleys, and footpaths of Lohrdanwuld very well. Unluckily, after weighing his options, his best one now was to plow straight ahead and through the crowd, which also meant straight ahead and through the three guards he could see rushing to help Bekellor and Pollon. And this time, they had irons for him.
    Behind him were Bekellor and Pollon, now recovering from his escape, as well as the full garrison house teeming with Kingdom Guards. To his left, through the market, was a poorer neighborhood with too many dead ends to get caught in, and to his right was a solid line of merchant houses, apartments, inns, and a few meadhouses.
    Oh well, thought the Snipe as he pushed forward and the crowd magically parted for him as if he were the pox itself running loose, when did a few armed guards ever frighten me from my path?
    He spit another mouthful of blood into the road and stormed ahead, feeling more confident now that he had the hood covering his head and face again. The three guards running towards him were in a standard formation for capturing him, the formation that worked to his advantage — the guards on the left and right a foot or two ahead of the one in the middle so they could flank him.
    He ignored the two on the sides and fixed his eyes instead on the one in the middle, whose own eyes were getting close enough now that he could see the glint in them as they all made right towards each other. The crowd closest to them tried to push back for what was surely going to be a bad run in, and the rest of the crowd behind those in front pushed in harder trying to see better.
    The Snipe hit his top speed, and in advance of the middle guard reaching him, he jumped up, leaned back, and landed hard on his feet, letting them slide out from under him with perfect timing. He landed hard on his back right as the two guards wound up on either side of him and the middle guard was leaning forward, expecting to tackle him directly. But with the Snipe now on the ground, practically under the off-balance guard, he kicked up with both feet into the groin of the guard and pushed back up over his head, in effect using the guard’s momentum to send him flying overhead, flailing enough to strike the other two guards in the process.
    He had used this move enough times that he was now genuinely disappointed that the guards still hadn’t seemed to learn from it and not make the same mistake over and over again. But on the other hand, he had gotten quite good at it.
    He heard the guard land behind his head, hard, and take the other two guards down with him in a heap as he landed. Without a thought, the thief jumped back up onto his feet and sprinted off again, only now he had a path free of guards and leg-irons and gallows nooses in front of him.
    He didn’t stop running because he knew the guards would still give chase, but now he could get into the warren of streets and alleys in the other peasant neighborhood to his right and lose them there. Behind him, the pointless shouts of “Halt!” and the thundering boots of the Kingdom Guards