Read Online A Thief in the Night by David Chandler - Free Book Online

off,” Mörget suggested. “You made it sound as if an army was after us, when it was just five little men with halberds.”
    â€œI’m sure you could have smashed them into paste,” Malden said, scowling, “but then you would have had an army after you. Don’t they have watchmen where you come from? If you fight one, you have to fight them all.”
    â€œMen whose only job is to watch their fellows and make sure they are not breaking laws? Why would we need such a thing? In the East, when a man wrongs you, you go to his tent and call him out to fight. You pummel him until he apologizes, or pays you what is owed. It’s a very simple system, but it works.”
    â€œAnd what if you call out a man who has done you some injury, but he’s bigger than you, and he wins?” Malden asked.
    The barbarian squinted in confusion. “I wouldn’t know.”
    Malden shook his head. “Well, here, when you attack six men in a tavern with an axe—”
    â€œCome now, I didn’t kill any of them.”
    â€œâ€”the watch will send as many men as it takes to cart you away. Then they put you in gaol to wait for a trial.”
    â€œI would have died before they put me in a cage,” Mörget said.
    â€œOr afterward, when they hanged you. They would have probably arrested Croy for helping you, and detained me on pure suspicion because I happened to be nearby.”
    â€œThanks to Malden it did not come to that,” Croy said, and slapped the thief on the back.
    â€œI suppose I owe you at that,” Mörget admitted.
    â€œThink nothing of it. But perhaps you’ll tell me one thing. Why did that fight start in the first place, and how did it get so out of hand? Normally a tavern fight ends with bruised knuckles and maybe a chair being broken over someone’s head, not axes and maces and faces getting chopped off.”
    Mörget shrugged. “A man insulted me. He besmirched my honor.”
    Croy nodded in understanding but Malden had to look away.
    â€œYou Ancient Blades and your honor will get me killed one of these days. All right, what did he say? What was such a dreadful blasphemy?”
    â€œHe saw me drinking milk and said I was the largest babe he’d ever clapped eyes on. I thought it a nice jest, and saw no harm in it.”
    â€œMen in taverns often joke and make sport,” Malden said. “It means nothing.”
    â€œBut among clansmen, one must always respond to a jape with another. So of course I had to tell him that in my country, even infants were bigger than the men that I’d seen in this city. He didn’t like that much.” Mörget shrugged. “He tried to grab my arm—as I have said, that is forbidden to strangers in my land. So I picked him up and threw him against a pillar. I thought that was the end of it, until I saw his friends drawing their knives.”
    Malden made a mental note never to try to shake the barbarian’s hand again. “All right,” he said, “that explains how we all came to meet. But now, tell me, pray thee, what you’re doing in the Free City of Ness in the first place. We don’t get . . . ah, that is to say, a man of your people is a rare sight this far west.” Malden had grown up hearing horror stories of the barbarians, of how they ate their own babies and that their women were all seven feet tall. As an adult he’d often heard them spoken of in hushed tones, as it was commonly believed that the barbarians would sweep over the mountains any day and invade Skrae and enslave them all. It was all hearsay, of course. He had never met a barbarian before, nor ever expected to.
    â€œAh!” the barbarian said, and looked like he might start laughing again. “I am glad you asked. I am looking for Sir Croy.”
    Malden was confused. “Well, you found him—but did you expect to find him in that tavern? It’s not the sort of