A Harper? One of Vangerdahast’s spies?
Ignoring the hargaunt’s curious queries-chiming so rapid and shrill it sounded like a tree-cat chittering- Horaundoon closed his eyes and felt for that errant mind with his spell, putting a hand on the scrying orb to call on its energies, to make his seeking more powerful…
There! In the chamber next door, a mind dark with fear and despair, the glows of feeble spells riding it-one of the Sword magelings!
Charging into her mind would burn his own; even those feeble spells would burst, blaze, and sear, wrecking her mind but doing him harm he neither wanted nor dared suffer.
Horaundoon snarled and thrust himself back at the two handy mindworms, bringing Agannor and Bey out of their room in a snarling rush. Sometimes a sharp sword is enough.
Martess heard the thunder of boots through the wall and thrust herself up and away from it, feeling sick. Against those two she was nothing, less than nothing. She must The door behind her burst open. She whirled, gasping in alarm-and managed the beginnings of a shriek before Agannor’s sword, his teeth furiously bared behind it, burst into and through her, plunging like ice, driving her stumbling back.
Bey Freemantle, wearing the same wide and friendly grin on his face she’d seen so many times before, rushed in from the side.
His steel slid into her like fire, so hot against the cold of Agannor’s blade that Martess couldn’t breathe.
So the spell she might have lashed them with, that she not perish without at least dealing pain to her slayers, faded unleashed as Martess Ilmra sank down into soft and endless darkness, fire and ice fading around her.
Pennae knew what that sliced-off scream meant.
Martess was dead or dying-and if the gods willed it, she’d see that Agannor and Bey followed her!
She came out of the room she’d been peering into like a dark cloak hurled along in a gale, cursing herself for leaving her sleep-dosed daggers back at their rooms this night. Well, she’d just have to make this a little more personal.
She was still four doors away from the one Agannor and Bey were ducking out of, running hard with daggers raised to hurl, when something like a fog with fists descended on her mind.
Rolling and shaking Pennae like thunder, it struck her head from the inside, thrice and a dozen times and more, sending her stumbling.
Agannor grinned from ear to ear, a light like madness in his eyes, and raised his sword. “Yes, my beauty!” he hissed. “Come and play!”
His blade lashed out, flashing.
Fetching up bruisingly against the wall as the floor seemed to heave under her, Pennae clenched her teeth and fought for balance. Bey’s sword was coming at her, too “Alura Durshavin, you’re one strong little tigress,” Horaundoon of the Zhentarim murmured, hurling his mind against hers again.
The scrying orb in front of him was flickering, enfeebled by his drainings. Yet even as it drifted lower, he could see in its darkening depths the thief fling herself into a blackflip, as supple as any eel he’d ever watched eluding the nets of eel-cooks back in the keep.
His two warriors thrust and hacked at her again-and both missed. Again.
Dazedly, Pennae got herself turned around and fled.
Horaundoon bore down hard. If she got to the taproom, or managed to shout an alarm down the stairwell, he’d likely soon lose both of his Sword minions. She was worth ten of them, but she was fighting him even now; taming her would take all his power and attention, day and night.
Hah! Horaundoon thrust into, shook, and tumbled Pennae’s mind, watching her moan and stagger. Bey was right behind her, now, blade raised to In the orb he watched the thief thrust herself back and down, rolling into an erupting, kicking ball that had Bey toppling over her, and her spinning on one hip to scissor her legs around the ankles of the onrushing Agannor, sending him helplessly crashing down onto Bey, sword stabbing air and shouting in fear.
Pennae sprang over them, or tried to, but the battering, snarling weight of Horaundoon in her mind drove her aside into a wall. She fell hard atop the two tangled, vigorously cursing warriors, rolling and kicking.
Agannor grabbed at her, tearing her leathers, and she sliced and stabbed viciously, managing to catch his palm briefly with the point of her blade. He shrieked in pain and snatched his hand back and away-just as Bey’s sword thrust across her stomach, slicing leather with swift ease.
Pennae twisted, heaved, and managed to win free, her sprint down the hall becoming a whimpering crawl that had her clawing her way to her feet, leaning hard on a wall to keep from falling. Staggering on, she slid along it, trailing smears of blood, as Horaundoon hammered in her head and Bey came pounding along the hall behind her, Agannor right behind him.
The stair had a rail, and Pennae caught hold of it just in time, swinging herself up and aside as a sword bit deep into the floorboards she’d just been standing on.
Bey hacked at her again, and again, hewing air hard enough to smash ribs and limbs if ever he hit leather- clad thief.
Pennae ducked, kicked his knee hard to send him staggering back into Agannor, and raced up the stairs, hoping the trapdoor at its top wasn’t locked.
The gods were with her. A simple through-two-straps longbar kept anyone lifting it open from above. Pennae plucked out the metal bar and smashed aside Bey’s seeking blade with it, leaving the sword ringing like a bell and him shouting at the eerie pain of a numbed sword hand.
And Pennae was across the roof, the slammed trapdoor bouncing in her wake, and running hard for the next roof along. ’Twas the first of seven in the block, if she remembered rightly, and at least two of those shops had wooden stairs descending from their rooftops to balconies.
She jumped, landed awry and bruisingly as the foe in her mind slammed into her wits, hard and sudden, just as she was launching herself, and staggered sidewise until she fetched up against a crumbling fieldstone chimney, brittle old birdnests crunching underfoot. Pennae winced; if these head-splitting, nigh-blinding attacks continued, she’d best get down to street level, where at least she couldn’t die just from falling over!
Agannor shouted, behind her, and Pennae hissed a curse and ran on, heading for the next roof-and the next stab inside her head.
Horaundoon frowned. Out in the open, the wench would swiftly best his two lumbering minions. He ached to finish her, to burst her mind like a new-laid egg flung against a wall… but-whiteblood! — he’d been trying to do just that for how long now? And still she fought him.
No, ’twas time to leave off trying to fry her wits, and cast a spell that would send his orders thundering into the minds of a score of Zhent agents all over Arabel. Telling them it was high time to load their crossbows and go Pennae-hunting.
In the wake of the shrieks, shouts, and the ringing clang of swords, there came the thunder of boots on the stairs, and the booming thunder of something heavy falling, twice.
“I’m going up there!” Florin snarled, struggling in the grip of the four grim, plainly clad Purple Dragons who’d risen from a nearby table to drag him down when he’d first drawn sword.
“ No, outlander,” one of them snarled into his face, as they twisted and strained together in a sweating, grunting heap on the floor, “you’ll not. Our orders-”
“Unhand Florin Falconhand, and get back, all of you! ” Jhessail shouted, her high, usually gentle voice ringing out across the taproom of the Lion and bringing down a hush of tensely staring drinkers. There was a dagger in her hand, and bright flames raced up and down its blade. “Or I’ll cast the strongest spell I know, and bring down this tavern on us all!”
The attacks-thank Mask! — had ceased, but her head still throbbed as if she’d taken a solid mace-blow. Worse than that, other men seemed to have joined the chase: men with swords and daggers and no hesitation in using them. So where were the lady lord’s oh-so-efficient, thrice-accursed watch now?
Agannor was stumbling along well in her wake, obviously winded, and Bey was ever further back, but- naed!
This unwashed, stubble-faced man, stepping out of an alley right in front of Pennae, had a cocked and loaded crossbow in his hands. It cracked even as she flung herself aside and brought her daggers up.
A moment later, she was wringing a numbed and bleeding hand, the dagger that had been in it was gone, and she heard the crossbow bolt bouncing and splintering on cobbles far behind her left shoulder.
