It broke. Shards punched through knife holes and widened them to let quicklime spill down in a candent stream. Hanse was sure it hissed in the moist grass about the moist base of the strangler plant - but Hanse could not hear that hissing or anything else save the roar of a surf more powerful than life could withstand.
He slumped, dead now with streamers of caustic steam rising above his legs - and a suddenly frenetic shrub began waving and snapping its tendrils about as if caught by the very Compass Bag itself, whence issues the wind of every direction at once. In those whipping throes it not only released its prey, it hurled him several feet backwards. He lay sprawled, away from the plant and clear of the smoking corrosive death about its base, and the soles of his buskins smoked. Rain pelted his face and he lay still, still, while the killer plant died.
It was not raining in Sanctuary but out of a clear night sky came a sizzling bolt that hardly rocked the structure that grounded it. The graven name VASHANKA, however, abruptly disappeared from the facade of that structure, which was the Governor's Palace.
4
Oh damn, but my damned head aches!
Pox and plague, that's rain on my face and I'm getting soaked!
Holy cess- I'm alive!
None of these thoughts prompted Hanse to move, not for a longish while. Then he tried opening his mouth to let rain assuage a sore throat, and choked on the fifth or sixth drop. He sat up hurriedly. His grunt was not from his head, which felt fat and swollen and stuffed to bursting. He rolled swiftly leftward off a source of sharper pain. He had been lying on his back. Under him, thonged to his belt, had been the ruins of a nice leathern bag of broken pottery.
If I don't bleed to death I'll be picking pieces of pottery out of my tail for a week!
That thought made him angry and with a low groan he rose to glare triumphantly on the faintly smoking remnant of a destroyed shrub. Its neighbour looked almost as bad. Shadowspawn took no chances with it. Avoiding shrubs and indeed anything herbaceous that was larger than a blade of grass, he went to the nearest window. Just as he completed his slow slicing of the sheet of pig's bladder stretched over the opening, he heard the awful sound from within. A groan, long and wavery and hideous. Hanse went all over gooseflesh and considered heading for home.
He did not. He peeled aside the ruined window and peered into a dark room containing neither bed nor person. Mindful of his punctured and lacerated buttock, he went in. There was nothing to do about his head. He had, after all, been strangled to death. Or come so close that the difference wasn't worth considering -save that he was alive, which was absolutely all the difference that mattered.
After a long measured while of standing frozen, listening, staring in effort to make his eyes see, he moved. He heard nothing. No groan, no movement, no rain. The moon was back. It was not in line with the window, but it was up there and a little light sneaked in to aid a thief.
He found a wall, a jamb. Squatted, then went lower, wincing at rearward pain, to ensure that no light showed under the door. The latch was a simple press-down hook. He took his time depressing it. He took more time in slowly, slowly pulling open the door. It revealed a corridor or short hall.
While he wondered whether to go right or leftward, that ghastly sound of agony came again. This time a pulpy mumble underlay the moaning groan, and once again Hanse felt the icy, antsy touch of gooseflesh.
The sound came from his right. He slipped his knife back into its sheath, patted other sheathed knives, and undid the thong at his belt to get the bag off. That hurt, as a shard of pottery emerged from his clothing, and him. That hand he moved very slowly, mindful of the clink of broken pottery. He squinted before he glanced back, because he did not want his enlarged pupils to shrink.
The window showed a pretty night, small-mooned but dark of sky, without clouds or rain. Without even knowing that the rain had been confined to Kurd's grounds, Shadowspawn shivered. Did gods exist? Did gods help?
Hanse took a long step into the corridor and turned right. The bag swung at the end of its thong from his right hand. Just in case someone popped up, that might make him look less deadly: anyone sensible would assume him to be normally right-handed.
As he reached the end of the hall with a big door ahead and another on his left, someone popped up. The side door opened and light rushed forth. It flared from the oil lamp in the hand of a gnome-like man who wore only a long ungirt tunic; a nightshirt. 'Here -' he began and Hanse said 'Here yourself and hit him with the wet, rent bag of broken pottery. Since it struck the fellow in the face, he moaned and let go the lamp to rush both hands to . his bloodied face. 'Damn,' Hanse said, watching hot oil slosh on to the man's tunic and bare legs and feet. It also splashed wall and door and ran along the floor, burning. At the same time, a third groan of unendurable agony rose behind the other door, the big one still closed.
'Master!' Hanse screeched, high-voiced. 'FIRE!' And he shoved the squatty fellow backwards, kicked the burning lamp in after him, and yanked the door shut. Instantly he attacked the other one, and soon entered Hell.
Part of a man lay on a table, a short skinny fellow. He was even shorter and skinnier now, bereft of both legs and both arms, all his hair, and his left nipple with part of the pectoral. Even as Hanse shuddered, he knew there was only one form of rescue for this wretch. Ignoring the shining sharp instruments Kurd used, Hanse drew the arm-long blade those crazies up in the Ilbars Hills called a knife, got his best two-handed grip, and struck with all his might. Blood gushed and Hanse clamped his teeth against vomit. He had to strike again to complete the job. Now only a torso lay on the table, and a shuddering Shadowspawn clung to the weapon as he squinted around a chamber full of tables and thoughtfully provided with graded runnels in the floor, for the carrying off of blood.
'Thales?'
Two groans replied. One of them ended with 'help', weak as a kitten. It was not Tempus's voice, but Hanse went to that table.
'He - he - he's cut off my right arm and... and three fingers of my-my 1-1-le eft hannnd ... just 10 ... just to...' An enormous bodyshaking shudder refused to let the man finish.
'You do not bleed. Your legs? Feet?' Hanse was squinting without really wanting to see.
'I -I - they ... there...'
'Think,' Shadowspawn said, swallowing hard. 'I can cut these straps or your throat. Think, and choose.' He started to turn away.
'I am ... ali-i-ive ... I can wa-a-alk...'
Hanse sliced off the man's restraining straps. 'I seek Tempus.'
'You seek death here, thief!' a voice said, and light flooded the chamber.
Hanse didn't pause to reply or look to see who bore the light. He turned, plucking forth a guardless knife like a leaf of steel, and threw. Only then did he really look at the man in the doorway; throw once to disconcert, the second time with aim. Lean and more than lean the man was, pallid skin taut. A man in a voluminous nightshirt, a man to get a chill from a south wind in June. A man who held a cocked crossbow in one hand, awkwardly, and a closed lamp or lanthorn in the other, sleeve sliding back to show an arm of bone plated with parchment. Kurd.
He was ducking the whizzing knife that missed by several inches. The lanthorn Swung wildly, splashing lunatic flashes of yellow light off walls and floor and tables with ghastly stains. The doke should have put the light down first, Hanse thought, plucking out another sliver of sharp steel. With both hands on that little crossbow Kurd might be dangerous. Instead his arm was nailed to the door by a knife that caught cloth but only raked skin - there was no flesh - so that the monster cried out more in fear than in pain. The crossbow hit the floor, thunked, and sent its bolt thunk-twanging into a wall or a table leg or - Hanse didn't care.