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Gaspar The Thief
Category:
Fantasy
Publisher: Balmerino Publishing
Type: Fiction
Pages: 90
Copyright: Feb 24 2013
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
Gaspar And The Fantastical Hats is a humorous light fantasy that will appeal to fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
Life isn't easy in a cut-throat city ruled by guilds, especially for a freelance thief who refuses to swear fealty to the local thieves' guild.
Beset by thieves and threatened by assassins, Gaspar is forced into a madcap hunt for a magical artefact. Confronted by danger at every turn, he and his friend, Hubris the Spellbroker, become entangled in a bizarre web of intrigue, politics and outlandish fashion. They soon realise that they are just pawns in a greater game, but who is their real adversary and how can they disentangle themselves without ending up seriously dead?
Excerpt
Gaspar left The Bag O’Silver Inn, took a quick turn left along the cliff-top, followed by a quicker turn right into a darkened alley, and then stopped abruptly in the shadows, looking back the way he had come.
The hour was late, yet there was still enough light to see by. Moonlight glistened on the cobbles and lamplight cast brighter pools at intervals along the street. Glimpsed through a gap in the houses opposite the alley, the wide sweep of Fleet Bay was marked out by the milky wash of breakers across the harbour mouth and the ghostly masts and mainsails of a flotilla of barques, brigs, caravels and fishing boats bobbing gently upon the tide. Here and there, dotted among them, watch-lanterns shone like fireflies flitting in the autumn breeze.
Gaspar pulled his cloak tight, raised his hood, and pressed himself back into the shadows. Though accustomed to calamity, mishap and misadventure in equal measure, his heartbeat still quickened as he watched and listened for any sign of pursuit. He counted slowly to ten, and then twenty, and then started again. Below his cloak, his hand rested uneasily on the hilt of his dagger, ready to draw it, but hoping that the need would not arise. A low murmur of noise drifted from the direction of the inn, but this was merely the usual hubbub of mingled voices and laughter, and not at all out of the ordinary, while the raucous cries of gulls and kittiwakes overhead was so commonplace a sound that it barely registered at all. What he was listening for was different entirely: muffled footsteps perhaps, or furtive whispers, or the quiet, metallic slither of a drawn dagger.
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