“Catch him, catch the thief! Don't let him get away!”

the thundering command followed him as the boy sprinted through the yard.

As he reached the wall, Kjartan's bare feet pushed downwards against it and sprinted up. He was wearing a dress - a full womanly attire, apron too - and it was hindering such moves. But his right hand managed to grip the edged stone while his left was grasping a bag tightly. He slung the bag to the other side, but its corner remained hooked in the branches of a shrub. 

Kjartan gasped, as this mishap disrupted his momentum, and pulled at the bag briskly to detach it, the corners of his eyes watching the gap between him and one of his followers closing down. A brief moment later, the bag was loose and Kjartan pulled himself up the wall again. But the man behind reached him already: he grasped the boy by the ankle and dragged him down.

Kjartan panted as he stumbled back inside the yard he had been struggling to escape. His knees and feet grazed against the rough stone, his arms squeezing the bag tightly as the man yanked at it.

“No, it's mine! it's mine!” he breathed, his voice shaking. “It's my clothes!”

The wide silhouette of the master of the house profiled against the dim evening light.

There was panic in the boy's demeanor: tenseness in all his muscles as he was crawling back, rush in the laboured gasps of his opened lips, fear in his steel-blue eyes that drifted wildly from side to side – as if looking for a way out – and then gazing upon the opponent marching threateningly towards him. His grasp loosened and he released the bag from his arms; his captor took hold of it, throwing it at its owner's feet.

“Yours?” the silhouette was now before him. “And what's this, then?”

He turned the satchel over, several objects tumbling into the grass: trousers, a shirt, a sculpted bone cup, three spoons, a little lamp.

“I deserve to be paid...” the boy sniffled.

“Ha, listen here! He thinks he's worth all that!” other voices came, amused.

But the master seemed nothing but amused.

“Thieving whore! You give him clothes... give him food... keep him warm... and then he steals from you! Fucking vagrant...”

“Please!” Kjartan moaned. “Please, Flatnose... I did everything you wanted...!”

“Just let him go, Flatnose,” said the man's second companion, catching up. “He did his job...”

“He's done shit for me...”

Cornered, Kjartan stretched out his arms before him in a gesture of despair, palms opened like a shield before whatever may come:

“No... please!”

But Flatnose signalled one of the men, the strong one, to hold him. He dragged him up to his feet, though his knees refused to stand straight. Kjartan felt his wrists caged in a vice-like grasp, his smallish figure encased before his captor's towering frame. Immobilised, panic turned to anguish and then to surrender. Flatnose's shade was cast over him as his face neared his threateningly. Mustering a last burst of nerve while bracing himself for the inevitable, Kjartan widened his lips in a challenging snarl:

“Heh... it's not my fault that you're im...”

but Flatnose's fist stopped him mid-utterance. His eyes filled with tears at the sensation.