The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) by Tim Stead Page B

same time he was thinking of Arla. Her day of grace would expire some time this afternoon and if the king was determined to kill her then he would. There was nothing that Sam could do to stop him other than what he had already done and said.
    He had not been bluffing. If the king killed Arla he would shut down the lawkeepers and he would do it for the reasons he had stated. One law. The law applied. It didn’t matter who you were or how much money you had there was only one law. He was reasonably confident that any trial would result in her release.
    They crossed the bridge and turned south into Gulltown.
    Sam watched the houses along the river road. Dilapidation was the rule here. Windows were boarded, slates missing from roofs, and nothing had been painted for decades. The smell of poverty, an unpleasant cocktail of human waste and rotting vegetation, pervaded the place. There were a few people in the street, but this was a quiet part of town. People lived here, but nobody worked on the river any more. It was a good place to do things that you wanted to go unnoticed.
    They arrived at the burned out dock.
    Sam took the knotted rope out of the wagon and tied it to the axle again. He threw it over the side and sent the spade after it. He climbed down onto the mud. This time he started with a grid, making it bigger than the last one, marking the lines with his knife. Occasionally he glanced up at the sea wall, looking for a sign of the watcher.
    He began to dig. It was important that it looked genuine, so he dug down at least a foot in each grid square, running his knife through the mud and sand to see if anything solid was there. He found a bent spoon, a rusted piece of iron that could have been anything, an old wheel rim, or part of one.
    Sam had dug his way through twelve squares when the watcher appeared. He had stood up to ease his lower back, digging his fists into the muscle, and there he was, a lone figure standing about a hundred paces down the road. Sam looked down quickly. He turned his back on the figure and glanced across at Donnal and Findaran. They were both visible.
    “Donnal, there’s a white cloth in the back of the wagon. Bring it over, will you?”
    The guardsman stood up and did as he was told. The cloth was large, and Sam had made sure that it was untidily piled so that as Donnal struggled to gather it, it could be clearly seen up and down the street. That was the signal.
    Sam watched him bring the cloth over. When he stood on the edge by the rope Sam waved him back.
    “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I’m coming up.”
    He was two thirds of the way up the rope when he heard the sound of steel on steel. The guards’ heads snapped round at the noise. Sam heaved himself over the lip of the sea wall and stood, panting, looking towards the watcher.
    Gilan had reached him first. He could tell it was Gilan by his size. He was a head taller than the watcher, and now they were fighting. Sam wasn’t a fighter. He was less use with a sword than he was with a bow, and he couldn’t shoot a barn door five times out of ten, but he knew talent when he saw it, and Gilan was good, even for a guardsman, but watching the fight he could see that Gilan was losing.
    The other lawkeepers had broken cover and were running to Gilan’s aid.
    The guards looked at Sam.
    “Go,” he said, and Donnal and Findaran drew their blades. They, too, ran towards Gilan and the watcher.
    It was only seconds - ten or fifteen seconds between Gilan facing the watcher and the next lawkeeper arriving. It was Gadilari. Sam saw the big man go down and the watcher turn to face the new threat. But Gadilari was a different prospect. Swords flashed and the watcher stepped back. A couple more passes and it was the watcher who fell.
    Sam was running, too, but he was the last to arrive.
    Gilan was cut, but he wasn’t dead. The watcher’s sword had taken him in the left shoulder, and even now the other lawkeepers were stripping off his shirt