Free The Tower of Fear by Glen Cook Page B

want to know that he had been here.
    Azel moved almost before Edgit was out of sight. He had scouted the house. The best way in was through the front door. If he got there quickly whoever had let Edgit out might think the guest had returned for something.
    He knocked. In seconds the door opened. An irritated voice started to say, “His Lordship…”
    Azel shot his left hand to the man’s throat, gripped. He brought his right around in a hook to the temple. A brass knuckleduster took the impact. The man sagged.
    Azel lowered him to the floor, easing him out of the way of the door, which he closed but did not latch. Quickly, but with care because he did not know the interior layout, he passed through the house to the back, then to the east side, to unlatch the doors there and open alternate avenues of retreat. Only then did he approach the one room from which sounds of life could be heard.
    The door was not latched. And the sounds were what he’d suspected them to be: those of a man and woman rutting.
    Gorloch be praised! Or the Fates, if it be deserved. The woman was astride, facing away, and the man had his eyes closed. Azel slipped into the room. He picked up a discarded sash as he crossed the room, wrapped one end around his left hand, let the other fall free.
    The woman sensed his approach in the last step, started to turn. His blow stilled her curiosity before she caught a glimpse of him
    No stopping the man from seeing him and loosing a startled, squeaking, “You! What the hell are you doing?” as he thrashed out of his entanglement with the woman and started to flee on all fours. “Who sent you? The General? Is he trying to scare me? I don’t have to put up with this!”
    Fat jiggled olive skin. Absurd broad buttocks humped and swayed. He gained ground. He reached the corner where Azel wanted him, scrabbled at the walls to get to his feet, spun with a mouth full of bluster and threats.
    None of which got spoken.
    “Oh, Aram! You mean it! Damn it, man.… I’ll back down. Tell him! I’ll do it his way. You don’t have to do this! We can deal!” He raised pudgy hands, pushed at the air. “Don’t! What do you want? I’ve got money.… Please?”
    Azel was close enough. Leaving one imaginary opening to his right, he feinted with the sash in his left hand.
    Sagdet darted for the perceived opening.
    Azel’s fist smashed into the side of his head. He spun against the wall. Before Sagdet could recover his wits Azel had the sash around his neck and a knee in the middle of his back.
    Sagdet struggled, as any dying thing must, but his efforts only served to put him facedown on the floor, where his assailant had a greater advantage. Once there he could do nothing but paw and claw and pound the stolen carpet against which he was being crushed.
    Azel felt the body shudder, smelled the stench as sphincters relaxed. Sagdet must have had an abominable diet. He held on for a count of another twenty, then knotted the sash in place.
    He went to the woman, touched her throat. Her pulse was strong and regular. Good. None should be hurt who had not earned it.
    He walked a reverse course through the house, leaving the side and back doors open wide. He checked the pulse of the man he had left inside the front door, found it a little ragged but not dangerously so. He looked outside carefully before he departed. Leaving the front door standing open, too.
    It would not be long before thieves accepted the invitation and swept to the plunder, obliterating completely the reality of what had happened.
    *   *   *
    The General wakened to the whisper of the street door. The light of the lamp moved across the outer room. “Is that you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Back already?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s done?”
    “It’s done. The man Edgit was leaving as I arrived.”
    Something stirred in the old man’s innards, settled in the pit of his gut like ten pounds of hot, poisonous sand. He could not become accustomed to ordering executions.