Elminster Enraged

around showing him that his eyes were blazing …

Could this be so? Could Elminster really be commanding the minds of Cormyr’s Crown mages?

The future emperor of Cormyr got up and started to pace, which in the tiny anteroom was not easy. He paced, over and over, his mind lost in furious thought.

It could be so! Every last damned wizard of war …

“Urgh!” Harbrand grunted in pain, rebounding off his saddlehorn for the fifty-four-thousandth time, and rubbing at the eye beneath his eye patch. It itched, whereas his groin had long since become one huge and tender bruise. “These saddles aren’t getting any more comfy!”

Hawkspike’s reply was a sullen growl. His own creaking rides were always uncomfortable, owing to his hanging as heavily in even a high-cantled saddle as a sack of potatoes. “You should’ve worn a bigger codpiece!”

“There are no bigger codpieces, friend Hawkspike! Not when one is-”

“Endowed like several competing stallions? I’ve heard your lines before, remember? Tell me, did they work on Old Skullgrin?”

“Hawk, Lady Dawningdown is our client. I’d hardly have managed to land us our commission-or escaped her mansion without my backside tasting a good lashing-if I’d been foolish enough to let my tongue run that freely!”

“It’s run a mite too freely before,” Hawkspike reminded his partner sullenly.

Harbrand sighed. “Hawk, this is getting us nowhere, and despite these sad excuses for horses-”

Their third pair of stolen mounts had been less fresh and fit than they’d gambled on, and for the last little while had been stumbling and faltering under them, clearly exhausted. However, this wild mountain country was no place to stop in. Raw rock peaks on one side, the outlaw- and monster-haunted Hullack Forest dark and close on the other …

“-we are drawing near to Irlingstar-”

“At last.”

“-at last, indeed, and it’s more than time for us to settle on a plan-however tentative-for how we’re going to fulfill Lady Dawningdown’s commission.”

Hawkspike spat on a defenseless stone they were passing. It wasn’t the one he’d aimed for, but it was a stone. Not that they were rare targets, along this gods-forsaken excuse for a road. “So talk.”

Lady Dawningdown had hired them to free her son and heir, young Lord Jeresson Dawningdown, who was imprisoned in Irlingstar. They were to get him across the border to Bowshotgard, a hunting lodge in forested northern Sembia.

However, it had dawned on both surviving partners in Danger For Hire that they were more likely to be handed their own deaths at Bowshotgard rather than their promised payment, so they devised their own variant to Lady Dawningdown’s arrangements.

They would free Jeresson, get him into Sembia, drug him to sleep and then bind and hide him. Then they’d hire a Sembian intermediary to go to Bowshotgard with the news that Hawkspike and Harbrand were betrayed by hirelings and slain, and those hirelings are now heading back to meet with Lady Dawningdown and demand a huge ransom for Jeresson. The intermediary would claim to venerate Bahamut, Lord of Justice, above all other gods, and to be shocked by the behavior of his fellow hirelings-so he fled, to reveal Jeresson’s whereabouts to those at Bowshotgard, and enable them to go rescue him.

If those at Bowshotgard didn’t believe the intermediary, or enspelled him to learn the truth, or slew him, Hawkspike and Harbrand would simply move on, forgetting all about the Dawningdown coins, to try their fair fortune in northeastern Sembia and more distant locales. But, if the Dawningdown allies at Bowshotgard sallied forth to go find Jeresson, Danger For Hire could covertly plunder all they could carry off from Bowshotgard, by way of payment in lieu of their commission, and move on far wealthier.

However, all of this thinking began with the glib words “free Jeresson,” and that was the part of it all that still needed discussion. They had the sleep drug, and plenty of waxed cord to bind a prisoner with. They even had a capture hood, to muffle and blind a captive. They had a vague idea of the layout of Castle Irlingstar, and the names of its seneschal and lord constable. And that was about all they had.

Harbrand gave his partner a weak, twisted smile. The sort of grin that more sheltered and civilized folk would have called a “sheepish” smile.

“Well,” Harbrand began, not having the slightest inkling of what he was going to say next, “I-”

Something gray rose into view above the trees, then, and he thankfully interrupted himself to point and say, “Behold! Our destination, Castle Irlingstar!”

Hawkspike grunted wordlessly, managing to convey his deep lack of being impressed. “Looks like a-”

Whatever architectural judgment he’d been planning to deliver was lost forever in what happened next.

There was a sudden, thunderous roar that rebounded off many mountainsides, and a bright flash amid billowing smoke, as an explosion burst upward from the battlements of the prison castle.

In its wake, something huge and black and scaled flapped hastily away from the keep, roaring in startled pain.

A dragon! A black dragon, its groans deep and angry as it circled back into the mountains.

Hawkspike looked at Harbrand, and Harbrand looked back at Hawkspike. Then they both put spurs to their mounts, to hurry on toward Irlingstar.

Complaining, their exhausted horses broke into uneven gallops, plunging two bruised and unhappy riders into fresh, lurching saddle-buffetings.

The two surviving partners in Danger For Hire traded a second set of glances.

After which they both reined in their mounts, hard.

If that dragon came their way …

Both somehow clung to their saddles through the wild rearings, kicks, and buckings that followed.

But then they decided instead to leap off and tether the snorting, head-tossing beasts to nearby trees in frantic haste. The men got their saddlebags undone and safely rushed into cover.

Their swords and daggers had been freshly sharpened, and went through the tethers in a trice, freeing the nags to wander at will.

Into the yawning jaws of an angrily swooping dragon, for instance …

The two hireswords sprinted back into the trees, grabbed up the saddlebags, and ran.

They were soon panting hard-the saddlebags were hrasted heavy-but kept at it until their wind ran out.

Whereupon they crashed down into the dead leaves and dry needles, to lie there side by side, gasping.

They were well away from where they’d freed the horses, but a bit too far into the deep gloom of the endless forest.

They looked to where the sunlight was brightest. They’d go back to the edge of the forest, where the road was, and skulk the rest of the way to Irlingstar on foot, keeping under the trees.

Explosions, dragons … those extra offerings to both Tymora and Beshaba hadn’t won them anything different than their usual luck.

“I told you,” Harbrand said suddenly, “stolen things are no good as offerings. Goddesses can tell.”

Hawkspike’s reply was swift, pungent, and probably more of an affront to Tymora and Beshaba than any altar offering could have been.

“I am Lord Constable here,” Farland reminded the tall, laconic, slab-faced war wizard sharply.

“So you are. I’d almost managed to forget that, despite your nigh-constant minders,” Gulkanun replied. “Almost.”

And he winked.