He burst into a tiny clearing unexpectedly, knife at the ready, practically on top of the kid.
"Marco!"
Benito flung himself at his brother, heedless of the knife Marco held, looking well and truly frightened. He clung to him as they both teetered in icy, knee-deep, mud-clouded water. Marco returned the embrace, relieved almost to the point of tears to find him safe.
"Benito--" He hugged him hard. "Thank God--thank God you're all right!"
Then Marco looked up from the kid clinging to him, to see that they had been surrounded on three sides.
It was the Squalos; a banditti gang of marsh locos. A bad bunch, too. Mostly younger than the general run of the swamp folk; late teens to early thirties. Rumor had it they worked for slavers. When supplies of suitable bodies in town ran low, bodies tended to start disappearing from the swamp.
There were ten of them, ragged, dirty, and predatory. They had spaced themselves in a rough ovoid, standing on high spots at irregular intervals between the reed hummocks, at distances from fifteen to twenty feet from the two boys, except on the side bordering the deep water. Feral eyes gazed hungrily at them from within tangles of filthy hair and beard.
They were in deep trouble.
Marco slipped his spare knife from his belt, feeling the hilt like a slip of ice in his hand, and passed it wordlessly to Benito. Then he shifted his own knife to his left hand and felt in his pocket for his sling and a stone. He got the stone into the pocket of the sling one-handed, and without taking his attention off the gang. With the sling loose and ready in his right hand, he shifted his weight from side to side, planting himself a little more firmly in the treacherous, icy mud. And prayed his numb feet wouldn't fail him.
"Hear ye finished off Big Gianni, Marco."
One of the least ragged of the gang members stepped forward. Marco recognized the leader, Grimaldi, by his shock of wild reddish hair.
"Hear yer got pretty good wi' that sticker." The redhead made a vaguely threatening gesture with his own thin-bladed knife.
Marco's hopes rose a little--if he could somehow convince them to go one-on-one with him, they might have a chance. Benito would, anyway, if he could talk the kid into running for it while the gang's attention was on the fight.
"Good enough to take you, Grimaldi," he said, raising the knife defiantly. "You want to dance?"
"Maybe, maybe--" the filth-caked, scrawny gang leader replied, swaying a little where he stood, knee-deep in muddy water, wisps of greasy red hair weaving around his face.
"What's the matter, Grim? What's matter? You scared?" Marco taunted, as the blood drained out of Benito's face and his eyes got big and frightened. "I'm not a kid anymore, that it? Afraid to take me on now?"
"Marco--" Benito hissed, tugging urgently at his soggy sleeve. "Marco, I don't think that's too smart--"
The gang leader hesitated--and his own followers began jeering at him, waving their arms around and making obscene gestures. Under cover of their catcalls, Marco whispered harshly to his younger brother.
"Benito--don't argue. For once, don't. I know what I'm doing, dammit! When you figure they're all watching me, you light out for deep water. You swim--"
"No! I'm not leavin' you!"
"You'll damn well do as I say!"
"No way!"
"Shut up!" Grimaldi roared, effectively silencing all of them. He sloshed forward a pace or two and grinned. "I ain't afraid, Marco, but I ain't stupid, neither. I ain't gonna get myself cut up for nothin'--not when we can take both o' ye, an' make a little bargain with the Dandelo buyers for two nice young eunuchs--" His knife described a fast nasty low flick.
He sloshed forward another step--his last.
Marco's right hand blurred, and Grimaldi toppled sideways into the mud, wearing a rather surprised expression, a rock imbedded in his temple.
There was a moment of stunned silence, then the rest of the gang surged forward like a feeding-frenzy of weasels.
* * *
Harrow lost the boy as soon as he slid into the reeds. It took him longer than he liked to get to the place where the boy had vanished. If this had been the mountains, or a forest or a city--even a weird city like Venice--he'd have had no trouble tracking the kid. Here in this foul wilderness he was at something of a loss. He floundered around in the mud, feeling unnaturally helpless. Fine vessel of the Goddess, he was--he couldn't even keep track of a dumb kid!
Then he heard the shouting; there was enough noise so that he had no trouble pinpointing the source even through the misleading echoes out there. It sounded like trouble; and where there was trouble, he somehow had no doubt he'd find the boy.
But getting there . . . was a painfully slow process; he literally had to feel his way, step by cold, slippery step. Waterweeds reached out for him, snagging him, so that he had to fight his way through them. The noise echoed ahead of him, driving him into a frenzy of anxiety as he floundered on, past treacherous washouts and deposits of mud and silty sand that sucked at him.
Until he was suddenly and unexpectedly in the clearing.
He blinked--there was the boy--no, two boys, standing at bay, side by side on a hummock of flattened reeds. They were holding off--barely--a gang of mud-smeared, tattered marsh-vermin. One boy was Marco--
Merda!
The other was Benito!
Harrow saw the pattern of the Goddess's weave. It was too much to be coincidence; first the vision, then Marco just happening to be holing up out in this Godforsaken slime-pit--and now the other boy also turning up--
But the boys weren't doing well. They'd accounted for one of the crazies, now floating bloody-headed within arm's reach of Harrow. But the others were going to overpower them before much longer. Marco had an ugly slash across his ribs that was bleeding freely and soaking into a long red stain along the front of his mud-spotted tan cotte. And even as Harrow moved to grab a piece of driftwood to use as a weapon, one of the crazies started to bring down a boathook, aimed at the younger boy's head.
"Benito!"
Harrow saw the horror in Marco's eyes as the boy saw it coming, and before Benito could turn, the older boy shoved him out of the way and took the blow himself.
The deadly hook missed, but the boy took the full force of the pole on his unprotected head. The pole broke--the boy sank to his knees--
And Harrow waded into the fray from behind, roaring in a kind of berserker rage, wielding his driftwood club like the sword of an avenging angel. The ex-Montagnard assassin used a blade by preference, but he was every bit as expert with a cudgel. His first blow landed on a skull with enough force to cave it in. Thereafter, his opponents warned and trying to fend him off, he shifted to the short and savage thrusts of an expert brawler and killer. One throat crushed; a rib cage splintered; a diaphragm ruptured--two more sent sprawling by vicious kicks. The rest fled in a panic and faded into the swamp; leaving behind four floating bodies and another crawling into the reeds coughing blood as he went.