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The larder door was locked, its hoop handles wrapped in heavy chains and secured by a heavy padlock
Where did they get that? Roger wondered, rubbing his chin and cheeks and glancing all around And why did they bother?
With a bored sigh, Roger pulled a small pick out from behind his ear and slipped it into the padlock&039;s opening, bending low that he ht better hear his work A couple of twists, a couple of clicks later, and the lock popped open Roger lifted it free and started to unwrap the chains, but paused and considered his actions He wasn&039;t really hungry, now that he thought about it
He glanced all about, taking in the silence, trying to measure the level of wariness in the town Perhaps he could find a bit of sport this night Then he could return and gather some food for his friends
He took the lock and the chain, and left the door unopened
Good fortune ith hione two steps, when he heard the low ru behind him He skittered back to the door, bent low and put his ear to the wood
Growling and snarling came from behind the door, and then, with sudden ferocity that stood Roger up straight in the blink of an eye, a loud and angry bark
The youngHe stashed the chains and lock - they were too noisy for flight - under a loose board along the alley, then went up to the roof, cliround to the larder door, cursing every step "Bah, what&039;re ye howling about?" the dwarf gruainst- stone voice The powrie reached for the door, but stopped and scratched its head, recognizing that soer muttered when he saw the powrie run off, back the way it had coer&039;s norht, but the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling, his instincts telling hiet away, and quickly He went down the far side of the building, then sprinted away into the darkness Behind hih the town, torches went up, one after an-other, the coht
Roger went from rooftop to rooftop, scrambled down one wall and up another, then over a split-rail fence into a corral on the northwestern edge of town Do, the youngnot to disturb the theh without incident; the resting coeren&039;t overly concerned with hier hadn&039;t been so concerned aking powries and goblins, he would have realized that this was Rosin Delaval&039;s farm, and that Rosin had a bull, the most mean-tempered animal in all of Caer Tinella Rosin usually kept the bull separate fro beast often hurt theet anysport in the wounded cattle, and in the antics of their goblin lessers whenever they sent the goblins in to getover his shoulder h a veritable ed one beast aside, then pushed softly on another He noticed immediately that this aniive ground
Roger started to push again, but froze in place, slowly turning his head around to regard the animal
The bull, all two thousand pounds of it, was half asleep, and Roger, thinking that to be a half too little, backed away slowly and quietly He bumped into a cow, and the anie, horned head swinging about
Roger darted away, cutting a path right behind the spinning bull, then turning back, right behind it again He entertained so so dizzy that it would just fall down Brief indeed, for despite his dartinginside hier took the only course that seemed open: he leaped on the bull&039;s back
Rationally, he knew he shouldn&039;t be screa, but he was anyway The bull bucked and snorted, hooves slae It twisted and leaped, ducked its head and cut a tight turn, nearly pitching Roger over its shoulder
Somehow he held on as the bull worked its way to the far end of the corral, with only the dark forest beyond the fence It was a good thing, too, Roger realized, for back the other way, goblins and powries were all about,toward the corral
The bull ran flat out for a short burst, then skidded to an abrupt stop, cutting hard to the right, then back to the left Again Roger held on for all his life, even grabbing one of the bull&039;s horns On the second cut the bull overbalanced, and quick-thinking Roger saw his chance He pulled one leg up under hi the bull&039;s head even farther
The bull pitched over and Roger leaped away, hitting the ground in a stumble that quickly turned into a dead run He ed to regain its footing, and was over in the blink of an eye
The bull trotted up to the fence; Roger, though he saw goblins running both ways along the rail back by the town, paused long enough to boast, "I could have broken your fat neck" He ended by snapping his fingers in the air just in front of the bull&039;s nose
The bull snorted and pawed the ground, then ducked its head
Roger&039;s mouth fell open "You cannot understand ed the fence
Roger bolted for the woods The bull thrashed and kicked, taking out rails, knocking logs high into the air
Then it was free, bursting onto the s in both directions by then, and sud-denly the bull was on Roger&039;s side
"Aiyeeee!"one of the goblins squealed Considered a quick-thinker arabbed its nearest coht in the bull&039;s path
That goblin was soon airborne, spinning two coround It crawled away, trying not to groan, trying not to do anything that would get the bull&039;s at-tention, for the enraged beast was giving chase to the rest of the fleeing goblins
Froer watched with sincere ah, when the bull gored one scraoblin&039;s leg, then coh its kneecap The bull snapped its head back, and over the goblin went, screae neck The bull ran on, bucking wildly, the goblin flopping all about, until finally the horn tore free of the knee and the goblin pitched away The bull wasn&039;t done with it, though, and turned about, throwing sod, run-ning down the goblin before it could begin to craay
Up in the tree, Rogerthe limb, out from the trunk, and leaped out to the branch of another tree,his way to the north, back toward the enca the chain and padlock He could create more than a little mischief for the powries with those iteotten into the larders, and in spite of the encounter with the bull, the ever-optiht a success, and it ith a light heart and dancing feet that he ca his trails back to the first tries He spotted the to pull their ankles out of the rope The commotion in town had stirred theer was sorry he hadin the dirt, and in the muttered curses of his vic-tirin widening across his face as he made his way into the deep forest
But then he heard the baying
"What?" the young e sound He had no experience with hunting dogs and didn&039;t under-stand that they were calling out a trail, his trail He knew fro closer, and so he scrambled up a tall and wide oak set apart from any other trees and peered back into the darkness
Far to the south he saw the glow of torches "Stubborn," hehis head, confident that the monsters would never find him in the dark woods
He started back down the tree, but reversed his course al sounds came up at hier had seen dogs before - Rosin Delaval kept a pair for working his herd But those dogs were s their tails, always happy to play with hier to be a different species altogether The tone of their barking was not friendly, but threatening, and deep and reso-nating, the stuff of nightmares He couldn&039;t make out much detail in the darkness, but realized fro and the black silhouettes that these dogs were et those?" the young thief s were a new addition to Caer Tinella He glanced around, looking for a way down the tree, far enough to the side to get him away from the animals
It struck him almost immediately that to come down from that tree was to be eaten He had to trust his luck, and up he went to the highest branches of the oak, hoping the dogs would lose sight of him, and lose interest in hi of these aniht at the base of the tree, snuffling and scratching, and then baying One kept julanced anxiously to the south, to see the torchesthe coet away froin He carried only one weapon, a s, and even if he had a great sith his ap-palled hione up this particular tree, so far from any others?
Because he hadn&039;t understood his eneer scolded hi beneath the oak In mo Kos-kosio Begulne aratu-lating hioth hounds, they called theer understood then that he had been outsulne bellowed up the tree "Yeah, we see ye, so come on down, or blimey, I&039;ll burn the das eat up what&039;s left of ye," he added slyly
Roger knew that the fierce Kos-kosio wasn&039;t kidding, not at all With a resigned shrug, he slipped down to the lowest branches of the tree, in clear sight of the powrie leader
"Down!" Kos-kosio Begulne de
Roger looked doubtfully at the frenzied dogs
"Ye like oth hounds?" the powrie asked "We breed &039;em on the Julianthes just to catch rats like yerself" Kos-kosio Begulne s, looping choke chains and hauling the anis&039; level of exciteht, and saw, as he had suspected, that these beasts hardly resereat s, with coats of short brown and black hair and eyes that blazed red in the forest night, as if with the flames of hell They seeer could hardly bring hiain "Last tiht in front of the powrie leader "Roger Billingsbury at your service, good dwarf," he said with a bow
"Roger Lockless, they call &039;i it as a coulne laid him loith a heavy punch