The Thief in the Night Excerpt

Over the past few days, I've been trying to think up something new to post here, to get my writing flowing again. I'm working on a little something right now, but rather than post something new, I've decided to share something else with you. This is a small excerpt from a project I was working on about a year ago, over last winter break at home. It's clearly just an intro piece, and not even a complete one at that (you'll notice, it ends abruptly), but it'll give you a feel for how I write. If you like it, please let me know, I could use some feedback. Obviously, it's a bit old, and my writing philosophy has evolved a bit, but any comments are appreciated. Thanks, and enjoy.

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Chapter 1: The Thief in the Night

            He rounded the corner with a skid, panting, blood and sweat dripping gently from his body and onto the dusty ground. He backed against the wall and sat down, his left hand still clutching the small cloth pouch laden with coins inside its leather gloved palm. After looking around and being completely satisfied he had lost all pursuers, he finally took the time to dump the pouch out into his other hand, and with a small sigh, counted the coins. Two gold, twelve silver, a couple copper… Not the greatest of all pulls, but it would feed him for the next couple weeks while he looked for more honest work. He placed the coins in his own empty pouch tied to his waist, then stood.

            A quick glance around once more revealed still no one in eyesight, and quickly he removed his hood and cloak, blood smeared down the back of it. The boy beneath the cloak was barely considered to be of age, perhaps eighteen, though with a look much younger and more listful. His hair, perhaps once a light brown or blonde, was grey – not the grey of age, but the grey of dust and dirt having layered into the hair itself, and finally having dyed the hair fully. It was chopped short, with many quick, uneven-looking cuts, revealing the amateur work done to it with an instrument ill-suited for the job. His face was kind, smooth, and young, with surprisingly little hair showing signs of growth; what few signs of a beard existed were cut incredibly smooth, showing much more attention than the hair resting upon the head. The rest of his body showed much the same story, all showing a poor, rushed life – loose, perhaps improvised clothing, a scrawny chest and stomach, strong legs developed from running, shoes that were little more than cloth sewn to a leather footpad and tied to the ankles with pieces of ropes… His body was in poor shape, clearly.

            Perhaps the most interesting part of the boy’s entire appearance was the belt that held his loose cloth shorts to his tunic. It was a dark, deeply tanned leather belt, of very high quality. The belt was much too large for the boy, and had several inches between its original holes and the notches at which the boy wore it. Hanging from it were objects that reflected the life of the boy himself. The small cloth coin pouch hung close to the inside left of the belt, now laden with his recent grab. Opposite it hung a small sheath and perhaps a six-inch iron knife, revealing both the danger of the boy’s work and the fact that he was left handed.

            He knelt on the ground on one knee, tightening his cloth shoes and shooting cautious glances around again, staying vigilant and proving to himself that no one had seen him or followed him. He could feel the blood running gently down the back of his neck. What had just happened was quite a disaster, but at very least his job had been done.

            He had stalked the man for a full ten minutes, watching his every move while skirting back and forth through the crowd. The man was clearly a priest of some sort, carrying a tithe box to a safe location. The man kept the small, ornate wooden container concealed inside his cloak, but the boy had spotted it when the man stopped to buy a loaf of bread, revealing it as he reached for his coin pouch. The boy had dealt with tithe boxes before, he knew that at least in this community they usually contained small change in a small compartment, smaller donations from the poor of the population, and then a larger compartment containing coin bags, each holding a much larger tithe from the richer portion of the populace. The priest himself usually carried little money. The tithe box itself was heavy and bulky, too difficult and too obvious of a theft. The small change was loose and held little use, but the larger bags were a real target. Perfect amounts, not enough to be missed by the targets, but enough to live on.

            The boy had followed the priest around the spacious market square and into what appeared to be a church-owned bank building. The holy man went up the stairs to the building and through the door, then into a private office where he appeared to be alone. The boy, not content to simply walk in the door and alert the guards, instead made use of a side alley and a nearby clothesline to scale the wall of the bank, all just to be able to reach the window of the office. What happened next was quick, but painful. The youth took a moment, looking into the window and hanging on to the clothesline, hoping the priest would leave the box for a lesser member of the clergy to sort, and would leave the room. The boy didn’t count on the priest looking out the window and spotting him. In one swift motion, the boy had swung into the room and taken an elbow from the priest to the back of the head. Injured but unfazed, the boy slipped under the priest’s next blow and caught him in the back of the leg, knocking him to the floor and breaking his nose on impact. The priest, now desperate, had just enough time to shout for help before the boy put his foot on the priest’s neck. With little other option now, the boy stepped down and crushed the priest’s throat completely, then quickly threw the box open, grabbed a pouch, and jumped out the window, landing just in time to hear the door of the room above crash open.

            He panted, coming back to a standing position, now all but sure that the bank guards had not spotted him as he made his retreat around the back of the bank, onto another clothesline and to a neighboring roof, and then back down into an alleyway two blocks away. He’d made an expeditious escape, and had earned some profit to show for it. He hoped he had not killed the priest, but such wouldn’t be the first time, nor likely the last. He’d become quite a renown thief in the city, but known only by reputation and assumption. To his knowledge, no one had ever seen him hit a mark, and he sincerely hoped no one ever would. He kept himself as hidden as possible, under a thick double-layered cloak. Uniquely to this cloak was the fact that each layer was a different color, and the cloak itself was easily reversible, leaving him with a quick disguise should he ever need it. The side he wore on the outside at the moment was very plain brown cloth, easy for staying hidden and overlooked during the daytime, blending into the shadows of the dirt and clay buildings. The opposite side was a deep black leather, made out of some sort of hide and tanned and dyed deeply to be easily workable. This side of the cloak was much more useful at night, when the black of the cloak made being seen in the darkness very much more difficult.