Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

balcony and draw a bead on Owen's unprotected back. The assassin's finger tightened on the release, and a stone from Cat's slingshot hit him right between the eyes. He fell backward out of sight, and the arrow disappeared into the mists. A cat
    shrieked briefly in outrage. Cat grinned and recovered his balance on the outcropping gable he was crouching on opposite the balcony. Funny thing about assassins; it never seemed to occur to them that while they were stalking someone, someone else might be stalking them. This was the seventeenth bounty hunter he'd deterred, and he was running out of stratagems. Not to mention stones for his slingshot. He wished Owen and Hazel would work out where they wanted to be and settle there. It was hard work tracking them across the city, jumping from roof to roof and taking care of the apparently endless stream of would-be assassins who dogged their I trail. And now they were off again, heading even deeper into Thieves' Quarter, into areas people usually had enough sense to leave well enough alone. Cat sighed heavily and set off after them, eyes alert for further dangers. He hoped Cyder had some plan to make money out of these people. He'd hate to think he was doing all this for nothing.
    The Rabid Wolf was a festering dump tucked away up a side street with no lighting, as though even the street was ashamed of its presence. The only light came from a brazier burning unattended halfway down the street. Owen wasn't sure what was actually burning in the brazier, but it smelled awful. Also, from the look of the street, several horses had recently taken the time to use the street as a toilet. At least, he hoped it was horses. He looked at Hazel, who was looking calmly down the street as though she'd seen worse.
    "We don't really have to go down there, do we?" said Owen. "It's going to ruin my boots."
    "Don't be such a wimp, Owen. Just watch where you're treading, and don't talk to any strange women, and you'll be fine."
    She set off down the street, and Owen followed her, being very careful where he
    put his feet. The Rabid Wolf looked as though it had seen a great deal of hard use down the years, not to mention the occasional firebombing and outbreak of plague. The front of the inn was covered with scars and gouges and suspicious stains, and the two windows had been boarded over long ago. The open door was guarded by a huge hulking figure with bulging muscles and glandular n problems.
    The last time Owen had seen something that big it standing upright, it had been glaring back at him from its cage in the Imperial Zoo, as though telling him where he could stick his peanuts.
    Hazel walked right up to it, stuck her face into its, and the two of them exchanged tough sounds for a moment, just to establish they were both hard, desperate types, and then Hazel slipped the figure a coin, and it stepped back from the door to let Owen and Hazel enter. Hazel stalked past it with her head held high, and Owen hurried after her, keeping a wary eye on the doorkeeper as he dodged past it, his hand never far from his sword. He tried a tentative smile, and the doorkeeper opened its mouth to reveal four sets of gleaming steel teeth. Pointed gleaming steel teeth, in neat rows. Owen knew when he'd been out-smiled. He looked away as though he'd meant to all along, and almost bumped into Hazel from behind. She'd stopped just inside the bar and was looking around with barely disguised nostalgia.
    Owen wrinkled his nose at the smell and thought he could detect several kinds of smoke in the air that were banned throughout the Empire on the grounds that they were dangerous to whoever happened to be around when someone else was smoking them. The light was dim, not helped in the least by the thick smog in the air.
    The inhabitants of the bar looked the kind who preferred it that way. At least, if Owen had looked that unsavory, he'd have preferred not to be seen too clearly. There was no sawdust on the floor, presumably because the rats had
    eaten it. He could see a few of them darting busily about in the far shadows. If one of them runs up my leg, thought Owen, I'm going to scream.
    Hazel made her way through the smog to the bar, and Owen went after her rather than be left alone. The last time he'd felt this threatened, two starcruisers had been firing at him. The bar itself was encrusted with filth and the remains of spilled drinks, some of which appeared to have eaten holes in the wood.
    Either that, or the woodworm