Read Online The Colour of Vengeance by Rob J. Hayes - Free Book Online Page A

turned and fled, jumping from one rooftop to the next with two men chasing him up top and two more on street level, shouting as they kept pace.
    Skidding to a stop Betrim changed direction and headed off to his left. It let the rooftop followers gain a valuable second but those on the street lost sight of him and would be forced to cut through alleyways to keep up. The alleys of Solantis were well known to be dangerous places. Always folk willing to stab others for little more than a couple of bronze bits or whatever they might find on the body.
    The smaller buildings were coming to an end now, replaced by larger, better built dwellings of good grey stone and multiple floors. Betrim snaked to his right and leapt a slim alleyway, he heard the shouts of a man below him, trying to keep up, but ignored it. He was aiming for one of the larger buildings with a balcony, if he could time his jump right he would be able to clamber inside.
    Betrim had always had a problem with chases, though usually he was on the other end of the situation, he wasn't built for it. Truth was the Black Thorn wasn't much built for running at all; he was built for fighting and for killing. He could feel his lungs burning as he sucked in air, feel his legs aching from all the exercise. He was moments away from giving up the chase and taking on the four sailors when he ran out of time to think about it. The balcony was right there in front of him and his momentum wasn’t about to let him change his mind.
    With a growling grunt Betrim launched himself towards the overhanging balcony. Seemed it was further away then he'd reckoned and for a heart-stopping moment he was certain he'd fall short. A horrible vision of himself collapsed on the street below with four angry sailors standing over him flashed into Betrim's mind but vanished when he hit the stone railing of the balcony chest first. Before he could consider how close he'd come to missing the jump Betrim scrambled and pulled and pushed and flopped over the lip of the balcony. He heard a body hit the stone behind him and decided not to check whether the sailor had made the jump or not.
    Betrim pushed through a light curtain to find two women staring at him. Both were naked and in bed. One woman, with skin as dark as the night and nipples as large as grapes was straddling the other. Both looked terrified. Seemed to Betrim something was off about the scene but he wasn't about to stop and ask questions no matter how much he might like to.
    He thundered through the door at the far end of the room shoulder first to find a stair case leading up and down. He chose up and sprinted up the stairs as fast as his complaining legs could take him. The stairs ended on the top floor and a long corridor stretched out in front of him with doors on either side, all were closed, no doubt locked. At the far end of the corridor was a single window, shutters open to the cool air outside.
    Betrim ran-limped towards the window. Seemed his ankle had picked up a nagging pain, he wasn't sure when it had happened but it wasn't ideal. He reached the window just as one of the sailors appeared at the top of the staircase and shouted back down to the others. Without another thought Betrim launched himself out of the window.
    On his way down the thought occurred to Betrim that he should have looked out of the window before jumping. There were no more buildings close enough to land on, nothing close enough but the hard stone of the street three floors below in fact, well that and a few painful looking crates. Betrim decided to aim for the crates, not that he really had any sort of control where he fell.
    There was a noise something like a crunch or maybe a crash and pain, the type of pain that registers throughout the entire body all at once and feels a lot like landing on something hard having just fallen from a high height. Still, it seemed something broke his fall somewhat, because he had that nagging feeling he got when he wasn't dead