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Page 378
waited. Off to the side, there was a faint scratching. He wondered whether a neighborhood cat was cooperating with them, then smiled to himself. More likely it was Siorl. The guared's head turned and he took a single step forward, staring hard. Simon did not grin for fear his teeth would gleam, but he was laughing inside as he slipped from the stone, crouched low, and scuttled quickly into the dark area right against the wall of the church. Two steps, three . . . the strangling cord was ready in his hands.
To the anxious watchers it seemed that the guard had momentarily stepped back into the deeper shadows near the wall. Almost simultaneously the second guard did the same, but the first was already coming forward. Bassett was obscurely disappointed. When the guards had disappeared into the dark like that, he had thought they had been taken. It was too soon, he told himself. Waiting always made time seem long, and such invisible movement must be slower than normal.
Even as he braced himself for more waiting, a hand touched his arm. Bassett barely restrained a cry. Despite knowing, he had been startled by the near-invisibility of the mottled clothing and blackened face and hand. He was being beckoned forward, drawn from shadow to shadow. But the guards . . .
Only the guards were Simon and Echtor, wearing the helmets of the men they had strangled into unconsciousness. Siorl fetched two of Bassett's men-at-arms and prodded them into taking the places of Simon and Echtor while Simon led Bassett forward and helped him lift the bar that locked the back door. All the fittings had already been liberally coated with goose grease, and the two men, raising the bar straight up, freed the door with no more than the faintest of creaks. Simon lifted the latch and opened the door minutely, then more, then more, less than an inch at a time, feeling gently for sticky spots on the hinges

 
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