Free DW01 Dragonspawn by Mark Acres Page B

incredulously.
    “I must go,” Shulana said, turning to leave the room. Then she turned back, and for an instant the elven face reappeared in midair. “You’ll do it, Bagsby,” she said softly and seriously, “because you think you can do it.”
    Bagsby glared at her, then slowly his face broke into a grin. “Well,” he admitted, “there is that.”
    The face disappeared. The door to Bagsby’s chamber swung silently open, then silently shut. Bagsby was alone.
    “Yes,” he said aloud to no one. “There is that. It would be the greatest theft of all time and I,the greatest thief.” Laughing, Bagsby bounced up from the bed and strode to the large shutters that guarded the great window of his room. He threw them open in time to see the first rays of dawn light the gray, overcast sky. Yes, he thought, the greatest of all time.
    Bagsby took a deep breath of the chilly morning air, smiling with self-satisfaction. He gazed out on the neatly manicured gardens at the front of the viscount’s mansion, where the ranks of shrubs and carefully pruned low trees struggled to maintain their dark green coloration on a cold, gray day. He noticed the arrow just in time to do a back flip, the arrow whizzing past just beneath his short salt-and-pepper hair. He landed on his hands and, with a second flip, bounced to his feet, running toward the door. The second arrow thudded into the wood of the door about a half inch above his head.
    He’s good, Bagsby thought, dropping to one knee while opening the door. He had to make that second shot on pure calculation; he could not have seen me this far inside the room. The short thief held his dagger at the ready in case a second foe was bold enough to rush in the open door. No—nothing happened. The second man could be waiting in the hallway for the easy shot when Bagsby came running out. Bagsby crouched behind the door, slammed it shut loudly to raise an alarm among the household, then sprang in one leap toward the bed. He landed short with a thud on the hard floor.
    Cursing at the pain, Bagsby reached up with his left hand and grabbed at the bedclothes. He pulled down a wad of satin sheet—that would do. He crawled under the bed—no use leaving his back open just in case someone burst through the door. He tied one end of the satin sheet to a leg of the bed, and then made his way in a sideways crouch back toward the window. Chances were the archer in the garden was already in the house. Bagsby would risk the window.
    The little thief tied a large double knot in the remaining end of the sheet. He stuck his dagger between his teeth. Grasping the sheet tightly just above the knot, he hurled his body through the open shutters into space. He plunged straight down six feet before the sheet’s length was run out; and the snap as the sheet unfolded to its full length brought him up short. His own weight pulled hard at his elbows and shoulders, but his vice-like grip held. It took him only three seconds to gain a foothold against the nearby wall, and three seconds later he was swinging, back and forth like a pendulum along the front of the building. As his swing reached its highest point near a fig tree, he let go and somersaulted through the air, landing in the branches with only a slight bump on one shin.
    “Curses!” Bagsby whispered to himself. “Getting clumsy in my old age.”
    It took him five more seconds to scramble up the tree, climb onto a balcony, and position himself, dagger ready in his right hand, beside the large glass doors that led to the second-story hall. By now, Bagsby calculated, the assailant in the hall—for he was sure there was one—would be carefully making his way to the door to Bagsby’s chamber. Bagsby reached out with his left hand and opened the latch on the glass doors. Then, with one seamless motion, he threw open the door, whirled inside, and tossed his dagger, tumbling as it flew, straight at the back of the crossbow-armed figure in black who was creeping