Liars and Thieves (A Company of Liars short story) Read Online Free PDF

and hugging her and by her trying to press against his shoulder. He helped her up and they stumbled towards us.
    ‘Hurry,’ Osmond whispered urgently. ‘We have to get out of here before the outlaws return.’
    ‘We can’t leave without Zophiel,’ I said. ‘They’ll kill him.’
    ‘That won’t be any great loss,’ Osmond said, sourly. ‘Anyway, he can take care of himself. I have to get Adela away now!’
    Adela shook her head. ‘You don’t know what they could do to him. They said  . . . said there was a quarry filled with rotting corpses. Some aren’t even dead when they throw them in. We must help him.’
    ‘This one of yours too, is it?’ a voice sang out in the darkness behind us.
    We all whipped round. The four outlaws stood on the other side of the clearing, Zophiel still bound between them. They had extinguished their torches, but the wind gusted the flames in the fire, so that their faces were for a moment illuminated like ghostly skulls and then they vanished back into the darkness. As the red glow lit them up once more, I saw there was another figure with them. Rodrigo recognised him at the same instant I did and gave a cry as he saw his young apprentice, Jofre, held fast in the grip of Dye and Weasel, Dye’s knife at his throat.
    ‘Let them go!’ The child’s voice was shrill enough to pierce even the shrieking wind.
    The outlaws stared around, as did we all, for it was impossible to say where it had come from.
    ‘That’s Narigorm,’ I whispered to Rodrigo. ‘Where is she?’
    ‘She should be hidden with the wagon,’ Rodrigo muttered angrily. ‘I told Cygnus to keep her there.’
    ‘If you don’t let them go, I’ll throw the stone in the water with all those dead bodies,’ Narigorm sang out.
    We were all peering into the thick darkness, but we couldn’t even glimpse her. Pecker and Weasel were beginning to look unnerved, as if they feared the voice might be that of a wood sprite or wraith.
    ‘What stone?’ Pecker called, turning his head this way and that, like an agitated squirrel.
    ‘The one you’ve been looking for. I found it.’
    The outlaws glanced uneasily at each other. Jack muttered something to Pecker, who shook his head vehemently.
    With a cry, Dye pointed upwards and fear spread across the faces of the outlaws as they saw what she was staring it. On top of the tallest part of the ruined wall was the disembodied head of a girl. The long hair writhing around her face was ghost-white against the black sky. Weasel gave a shriek, let go of Jofre and fled into the trees. Holy Jack dropped to his knees, crossing himself repeatedly. Dye and Pecker simply stared.
    Rodrigo didn’t hesitate. With a bull’s roar, he charged across towards the little group, his knife upraised like a sword. He was a weighty man, and as he hurtled into Pecker, they both crashed to the ground. Dye leaped onto Rodrigo’s back. I saw the flash of a blade in her hand, and yelled a warning, cringing as I saw her strike down, for I could do nothing. But Jofre had seen it too. He caught Dye by her hair, jerking her backwards, and dragged her, shrieking, off his master. Osmond had also reached the outlaws and was wrestling on the ground with Holy Jack, both of them cursing and swearing at each other. Zophiel, still trussed up like stuffed meat, was knocked to the ground, but managed to roll away and vanish into the night.
    They fought themselves into exhaustion, while Adela cried out in alarm, terrified that one of the blades would find its mark in Osmond. Eventually her pleas must have penetrated his ears, for he called a halt and Dye wisely backed him.
    Osmond and Rodrigo, his arm clapped around Jofre’s shoulder, limped back towards us. All three were smeared with mud and blood from grazes and cuts, but mercifully none seemed to be seriously wounded. Dye, Holy Jack and Pecker had clambered to their feet and were staring up again at the top of the wall, but there was nothing to be seen. They too