Elminster Enraged

A tax collector. This was going to be fun.

“Stay,” Farland ordered Amarune and Arclath curtly, as the horrid gurgling faded. “I’ll go and see.”

The young couple nodded obedience.

“So,” the lord constable muttered under his breath as he hurried along the passage, his drawn sword in hand, peering at prisoners in their doorways and heeding their fingers pointing him onward, “behold the brave and stalwart lord constable of Irlingstar, arriving for the latest viewing of a victim of the unseen slayer.”

This time, the throat-slit noble sprawled in his blood in his cell doorway was Bleys Indimber. Well, no loss, he, and-

Something slid into Farland’s wrist, a sudden kiss like fire and ice.

He jerked away as blood spurted.

Naed! The very air was slicing at his sword wrist!

He swung his sword at his invisible attacker, or at least where his attacker must be standing-but slashed only empty air.

Farland cut at the air wildly in all directions to try to keep his unseen foe at bay. His eyes told him there was nothing there, that his sword was cleaving emptiness, but … was that something solid, just for a moment, brushing against his arm?

Farland spun and grabbed, lunging with his free arm and trying to grasp whatever it was, the unseen solidity that-

“Eeeearrgh!”

It stung like fire this time, as more blood spurted and some of his fingers flew off! An invisible blade had cut them-but there was nothing for him to grab.

His own sword had just chopped and backswung and hacked and there was farruking nothing there.

Farland spun around and fled back down the passage as fast as he could sprint. Wizards … he needed the wizards, or he was a dead man! The prisoners called taunts or encouragement or shrank back in fear as he pelted past them, running for his life.

A few running strides later, the unseen blade bit into his sword hand, hard, above his half-sliced wrist. He roared in pain, stumbling with the sheer burning fire of it, but he didn’t slow. He didn’t dare slow. His sword clanged on the flagstones behind him. Most of his hand, he knew, was still clutching it.

He had to keep running, had to …

Rensharra looked up. “Can I help you? This is the office of the Clerk of the Rolls, not …”

The four men wore rather ruthless smiles. They had quietly and carefully closed her office door in their wake, and strolled toward her.

“Are you Rensharra Ironstave?” the foremost, oldest-looking man asked her. “Who just now spoke with Lady Jalassra Dawningdown?”

No. Oh, no. Rensharra put her foot on the pedal that would ring the alarm gong, stood up and stamped on the pedal again, then slid around behind her chair.

“What are your names, gentlesirs?” she snapped sternly. “Are you behind on your taxes?”

The nearest man gave her an unlovely sneer and said over his shoulder, “She’s the one. If we cut out her tongue, it should quiet her a bit.”

Then he flung his cloak. Its edges were weighted to make it swirl fashionably-which would help it encircle her head and shoulders.

“I like what I see,” said one of the younger three. “Can we play with her a bit? After we separate her from her tongue?”

Rensharra snatched up her chair in desperate haste, intercepting the cloak. Then she ducked aside as its wielder came around one side of her desk, slashing at her wildly.

His knife got caught in the cloak, of course, and Rensharra dragged the chair free and brained him with it. Which left her exposed to a hard punch from the man coming around the other side of her desk.

“Help!” she screamed as she staggered back to the wall with her head ringing and one eye watering, the chair up in front of her like a shield. “Ruffians! Murderers! Help!”

The third and fourth men, their grins wide and delighted, came right over the desk.

“That’s Farland,” Arclath snapped, listening hard.

“He’s running this way,” Rune agreed tensely, peering down the passage.

Then they saw him. The lord constable was running full-tilt toward them, his eyes wide. He was streaming blood-gods, his sword hand was gone!

“Gulkanun! Longclaws! Stop your spells!” Arclath barked, as firmly as any Crown oversword or battlemaster. “Now!”

Farland was cursing, or trying to through his frantic gasping. He was close, and getting closer fast, his eyes wide with pain and fear.

“Stay back! Guard yourselves! I’m under attack!” he panted. “Invisible blaae-”

The air beside Farland’s head thickened into a knifelike edge, and they saw the merest shadowy suggestion of two dark eyes and a scowling, sweating brow above them, a malevolent, determined presence …

As that edge whipped in and around, and Farland’s throat burst open in a shower of gore.

“Elminster!” Arclath and Amarune shouted together, in desperate unison-but the sinister presence beside the lord constable was gone in the next instant. Farland stumbled, sagged while still running, and crashed untidily to the flagstones.

He slid to a bloody stop at their feet, his legs still moving feebly, his life-blood spurting in all directions.

It was a solid chair, of olden style, with a high back and long, thick legs-which was all that kept the knives from her face. For a breath or two, until one of them ducked down and stabbed at her legs.

“Help! A rescue!” Rensharra screamed, as loudly as she could. The man she’d hit with the chair was rubbing his head and giving her dark looks, and the other three were close around her, crowding in against the chair. In a moment they’d grab her arms from both sides, and it would all be over-

Behind them, her office door opened.

Her underclerk’s astonished face appeared, his mouth dropped open in astonishment-and that was all she saw of him, as one hairy hand appeared from behind him and shoved his head down and out of the way. Its owner trampled him with a roar of obscenities and hurled a dagger that thunked solidly home into the shoulder of the gloating attacker on Rensharra’s left.

Who stopped grinning to shriek and reel away from her along the wall, cursing and groaning.

“Mirt!” she sobbed. “Save me!”

Before the words were out of her mouth, a second dagger hit the man right in front of her in the back of the neck. He spat blood at her, his eyes wide and staring … and he started to slump, dragging her chair with him.

The third man backhanded Rensharra hard, tumbling her onto the floor atop the second man and the chair. Her eyes blurred with tears and a sudden burbling in her ears. Then he ignored her in favor of facing the new and bellowing threat who’d just felled two of his fellows.

The man she’d first hit with the chair also turned, bent to tug something from his boot-and straightened up again with a short iron bar in one hand and a long, wicked looking dagger in the other. “Just who the tluin are you?” he growled, stalking back around the desk.

“Mirt, Lord of Waterdeep,” came the reply, “and your death!”

The man with the iron bar burst out laughing, and waved his two fellow bullyblades forward. The one who’d taken Mirt’s dagger in his shoulder was moaning in pain and cursing, but he got on his feet and headed menacingly toward Mirt.

Rensharra got up, picked up her chair, and swung it hard.