Circle of Thieves: Legends of Dimmingwood Read Online Free PDF

Hadrian too long.
    Thunder rumbled in the sky, and a few fat droplets of rain
spattered on my head and shoulders. I realized the girl was watching me.
    “You’d best get indoors,” I advised her absently. “Your mama
will not want you standing around in the rain and tracking mud across her
floors when you get home.”
    At my warning, she looked duly concerned, so I guessed she’d
been punished for similar infractions before. She nodded and started to run off
but had gone only a few steps before stopping and turning back.
    “What about you?” she demanded. “Won’t you get all wet and
cold?”
    I smiled at her concern. “I’ll be all right,” I lied. “I
like the rain.”
    She bit her lip, hesitating for a moment. “We don’t take
travelers under our roof anymore,” she told me. “Da says best to take no
chances. But we’ve a shed for the goats behind our house.”
    She smiled secretively. “It’d be warm and dry in there, and
Sunflower and her kids don’t take up much room. Da would never know if someone
slept there, especially if they were away early in the morning before he goes
out to feed the animals.”
    My gratitude was genuine. “That sounds like a very cozy
arrangement. I just might take you up on it.”
    She nodded, pleased, then wordlessly spun away and scampered
off into the rain.
    I followed at a discreet distance.
     
    *  
*   *
     
    Sunflower was mean tempered and smelled like a walking
privy, two conclusions I arrived at within moments of bedding down in the
filthy straw of the dark little goat shed. I almost would have preferred to
sleep outside, except a steady downpour was descending now, raindrops drumming
a staccato beat on the low roof overhead. I curled up and pulled my coat more
tightly around me to keep out the cold wind swirling in through the open front
and tried to get a little rest. I eventually drifted off, listening to the howl
of the wind and the soft bleats and rustling noises of my bunkmates.
    Sometime during the night I woke with a start, bolting
upright. I held my breath and tried to figure out what had awakened me. The
nanny goat was stomping her hooves, and the kids were shifting around in the
straw, but I knew it hadn’t been any of these that had jolted me awake. It hadn’t
been a sound at all, I realized, as I shook the lingering haze of sleep from my
mind.
    I cast my magic sense out like a net, but it told me little
I didn’t already know. I was surrounded by unfamiliar presences, but then I was
in the midst of a village after all. What then was this warning sense of
impending doom throbbing through me? My talent had never spoken to me in such a
way before… Or was it my talent that prodded me?
    My eyes darted to the spot where the bow lay in the straw.
Even in the dark I knew exactly where to find it. The suffocating sense of
dread was growing. My belly felt weak and my palms sweaty. Whatever the bow was
trying to tell me, it was a prodding I couldn’t ignore. My hands went to check
my knives, and then I snatched up the bow and its quiver and scrambled for the
entrance.
    As I crawled out of the shed and into the drizzling rain, a
series of inhuman, unearthly screams split the night air, followed by a great
pounding as of many feet thundering over the earth. I whirled, trying to get my
bearings, but the uproar seemed to come from every direction at once. After a
moment’s indecision, I dashed for the green, where the greater part of the
commotion seemed to originate. I heard human screams joining with the
animal-like howls even as I approached. After rounding the corner of a cabin, I
skidded to a halt.
    The green ahead was a scene from a nightmare. Everywhere was
blood and chaos amidst a scrambling, seething mass of shoving, fighting bodies.
Horrible howling monsters on two legs made up the larger part of the mass. Even
now, more of them flooded the green, brandishing spears and clubs as they
poured in from the surrounding woods. It took me a moment to