“What do we do now?” April asked.
We’d escaped for the moment, but there were many people coming after us. They’d arrive at this route sooner or later.
“Naturally, clever Matthew has a plan,” I boasted. “We’re taking the big street right to the center of town.”
“To the center of… You mean, to the guild?”
“No,” I said. “To the dungeon…the Millennium of Midnight Sun.”
Ralph made a noise like a strangled chicken. April’s eyes were wide.
“Have you lost it?” Ralph asked.
“I’m not positive I haven’t.”
If I were a sane man, I probably wouldn’t have lived so long.
“What if we get attacked by monsters? It’s too dangerous!”
“Who said we were going into the dungeon?” I retorted. Why would we willingly enter the den of monsters? It would be the end of us for sure. “We’re just going to the entrance. The hidden treasure is there.”
He just gaped and blinked. His mind obviously wasn’t keeping up.
“Look, we don’t have time. I’ll explain when we get there.”
Those bounty hunters were going to catch up with us if we just sat around wasting time.
“But there are guards stationed outside the dungeon. And they’re former adventurers,” Ralph said, finding his voice.
“That’s where you come in.”
They were just retirees who’d stepped back from the field. Ralph should be able to handle them. At worst, he could be a decoy. The real question was if we could get there without being spotted first. If people noticed us, they’d call the gangsters and the town guards down on us.
“Either way, we have no time to waste.”
Sure enough, I could hear faint sounds coming from the stairs.
“All right,” said April. “I trust you, Matthew.”
“Thank you.”
I found a nun’s wimple in the back and put it over April’s head. Her silver hair would stand out otherwise.
“Let’s move.”
We headed out the church door, cool as cucumbers. If we stopped in our tracks or tried to hurry, it would only draw attention to our activity. If we got attacked in a narrow alley, there would be no escape. I’d been feeling eyes on my skin for a while. Hopefully it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but I couldn’t be too careful. Walking on thin ice like this made my heart race.
April was beyond nervous. Sweat was beading on her skin.
“Don’t worry. They won’t find us that easily,” I said reassuringly.
“There he is! That’s him!” cried a distant voice. “The giant lug! Tell the boss!”
Well, shit. That stood to reason—tall people like me tended to stand out. I’d ruined everything at a critical moment.
We ran for our lives, but our pursuers were adults. Ralph could manage, but a little girl and Matthew the slowpoke couldn’t.
“Hey, that girl…”
“That’s right, the one worth all the money…”
“Catch her!”
More people fell in behind us, some of them just ordinary folks. The housewife who’d been perusing fresh vegetables, the carpenter who silently pounded nails into wooden beams, the merchant who kicked over his roadside stand—all racing after us, blinded by greed. The idiots.
Our pursuers knocked over random passersby who’d stopped to see what the fuss was about on their desperate way to capture an innocent little girl. The bastards deserved to go to hell. Or maybe we were already there—the hell where all the greedy and covetous were sent.
“Aaah! Shit!” Ralph suddenly turned on his heel and started racing in the other direction. “You keep going!”
He drew his sword and started waving it around, not to attack them, but to threaten them. It seemed to be working; the pursuers came to a stop in consternation.
“Ralph!” April cried, trying to stay with him, but I grabbed her elbow and kept her running.
“It’s okay. He won’t die.”
If he wasn’t strong enough to keep himself safe there, he wasn’t fit to protect Arwin. So stay alive, kid.
We hit the main street. All we had to do was run south until we reached the dungeon. The greedy scum pursuing us had dwindled in number, but they were still coming.
I’d thought they would slow down and behave themselves in front of a larger crowd, but I was wrong. Instead, they were even more determined to finish the chase faster. Give up, people—if you get all that money, you’ll just waste it all on booze and women and dice. Just like me.
“Matthew, I…I can’t keep…”
I squeezed April’s hand. “I know you can’t go on, but you have to find a way. And I’m not going to listen to you tell me to leave you behind and keep going. If you stop, I stop. We share the same fate,” I told her.
“Okay!”
With my lead, we rushed through the crowds of stopped pedestrians. Just when we were nearly through, April suddenly lost her balance and fell. I rushed to help her up, but someone tripped me. Then there was a crowd on top of me. It was already cloudy, and now I had a gang of people preventing me from moving.
Before my eyes, a man was sitting atop April, straddling her, roaring in triumph. He grabbed a fistful of her silver hair and lifted his other hand.
“I’ve got her! Yes! Yes! I’ve got—”
But the words had barely left his mouth when another fist slammed into his cheek, hurtling him into a nearby wall. It was an older housewife who’d struck him. She pressed April’s head to the ground and screeched for all to hear.
“You see it! I’ve caught the girl! The money belongs to me!”
“Move it, you old bitch!”
A different man kicked the woman away, and on and on it went. Each new person attacked the last one, all of them clamoring that they had the rights to the bounty on April, who could only lie on the ground, squashed under the fray.