Circle of Thieves: Legends of Dimmingwood Read Online Free PDF Page A

the leaves to get a look at the
speaker. She was a small girl, scrawny and unkempt, and dressed in gray
homespun. She couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old.
    “Not exactly,” I said as I picked my way down to earth.
    The girl backed shyly away as my feet hit the ground, but
she didn’t flee altogether.
    This was the most interest any of the Hammond’s Bend folk
had paid me yet, and I thought if I handled things right, I might improve my
situation here.
    “Who’s Dunnel?” I asked as if not really interested and
turned my back on the child to pluck more fruit from the lower limbs.
    After a moment I heard her sidle closer. “Dunell’s the
village head,” she told me, after a long stretch which I pretended to ignore
her. “Those are his winter-fruit trees you’re stealing from, and if he catches
you, he’ll be angrier than Mistress Barkin when the goats got into her wash.
    “Or as angry as the men who hung those people in the tree beside
the meeting hall?” I asked.
    I turned in time to see her eyes widen and cursed myself for
being too blunt. Not everyone had my violent childhood.
    I thought the girl would run away after that, but she
surprised me by lingering.
    “Mama says we’re not supposed to talk about what happened,”
she whispered conspiratorially. “But I heard one of the bad men say they wanted
people to see what could happen to all of us. He said…” she scrunched her face
in confusion, “…he said we were to tell our friends . But I’ve never had
any friends except the simple boy, Jerrit, and they hung him up in the tree
with the others.”
    She looked briefly sad but seemed to shrug the emotion away
quickly. “Jerrit stinks now,” she continued matter-of-factly. “The birds used to
come and peck at him, but they don’t anymore. I don’t think there is very much
left for them to peck at.”
    Suppressing a shudder at how easily she discussed such
details, I knelt to be level with her and asked, “How long have Jerrit and the
others been in the tree?”
    She thought a moment. “A long time, I think. Since the day
Sunflower dropped her kids.”
    I didn’t care anything about Sunflower or her kids. I tried
another approach. “Tell me about the men who hanged them,” I said. “Did they
wear armor of shiny metal? Was it black and red, like the colors on a
crest-feather’s back?”
    She screwed up her face. “Maybe. It was a long time ago. But
they were loud and mean. They asked questions and one hit Dunnel. Then they
dragged Jerrit out of his sister’s house ’cause they said he was lawbreaking . ”
She stumbled over the unfamiliar word before continuing. “His sister said he
didn’t do anything, but they didn’t listen. They took him and a few other
people to the tree, and they hung them up, and then they were dead. Well, not
right away, some of them weren’t, but after a while they all were.”
    I felt a little queasy at her crude description. “And then
what happened?” I asked.
    “The scary ones made us all stand around the tree while they
yelled about…things. About how we didn’t mind the Praetor good enough, and how
we were friends of thieves. They said if we didn’t all do what we should from
now on, we would be dead too. I don’t remember what else they said, but they
rode away later that day and Jerrit and the others have stayed in the tree ever
since. Dunnel says we’re not to take them down.”
    She had drawn me a pretty clear picture of the scene, and
any question I’d had as to the Fists involvement were closed. Clearly the
Praetor had decided to take a firmer stance against the outlaws of Dimmingwood
and their friends.
    I felt a stab of guilt, wondering how many more of the woods
villages would suffer similarly for their connection with us. One thing was
certain, the folk of Hammond’s Bend had paid a high price for befriending us. I
wondered if we were worthy of their loyalty but swiftly pushed the thought
aside. I had been living with