Halfhap wasn’t that big, so this sagging black-painted dump before him had to be the Oldcoats Inn.
A man and two maids were standing together on its front steps. The wenches were dressed alike, with matching vests over their gowns-inn staff. By his manner, the man was their master, and had the look of an innkeeper, though less stout than most.
Dauntless halted his tired mount in front of them, and looked down from his saddle at the man. “Is this the Oldcoats Inn? And are you master here?”
The man looked up at him expressionlessly. “I am, and this the Oldcoats Inn. Fitting lodgings for Dragons of the Realm. Ondal Maelrin, at your service.”
Dauntless didn’t bother to nod. “You have adventurers staying here who call themselves the Knights of Myth Drannor, I believe?”
The innkeeper shrugged. “We have guests, yes. I haven’t heard that grand title before, no. You can examine my lodging ledger, of course.”
Dauntless glowered. Maelrin stared back at him.
“Well,” the ornrion snapped, “get it, man! The duty of all good citizens is to obey Dragons and officers of the Crown without hesitation or dispute!”
Maelrin’s eyes went cold, and he snapped right back, “You’re mistaken, soldier! I have this from the lips of the King himself: the duty of all good citizens are to watch those who govern them like hungry hawks, and to defend whoever needs defending!”
“His Majesty was a young lad when he said that; an adventurer!”
“So he’s changed the brain in his head since then, has he? I must have missed that proclamation!”
Dauntless snarled in wordless anger and swung himself down from his saddle, pretending not to hear a lone snicker from the five Dragons at his back. Wincing, he strode stiffly past the innkeeper.
Who said, without turning his head, “Ledger’s on a table at the bottom of the cellar stairs. They descend from the center of the common room, which you’ll be standing in when you pass through the front doors.”
Without replying, Dauntless and his five men stalked into the inn.
Maelrin turned to smile frostily at their backs ere murmuring to the maids, “Time to get up there and plunder the Knights’ belongings, lasses. Then out the back and gone. They’ll soon be hurling spells that’ll blow this place into the sky even before it gets burned to the ground!”
Chapter 13
Oh, I am proud to be a Dragon loud
There is no higher calling
We swagger along, villains a-trawling
And merchants and maids a-mauling
But be ever so bad, there’s nothing we do
To blacken the Crown, to match the rue
Of high nobles who start a-bawling
Yassandra Durstable went down the stairs like a gloating shadow, the blue-green fire of the two wands in her hands still crawling away from her in a deadly, staggering wave of struggling crossbowmen dying on their feet. The only living war wizard she’d seen in the cellars had gone down into a silent heap of protruding bones in her first wand-burst, but these magnificent brutes were still fighting her magic, clawing at the air as it rode them and cursing their inevitable doom.
She’d blasted them all from behind, of course. Why tempt the gods to hand any foe a chance?
Now the last crossbowman was down, and with him the last dying flames of wandfire, leaving but one sound ahead of her in this dark and cool cellar. From the only light here in the cellars, a little way down the room, came the faint sizzling of cooking flesh.
One of the war wizards-and she couldn’t see all of their corpses; some could well be very much alive, and lurking in other cellar chambers ahead of her-had blasted a Zhentilar warrior with a spell that had left his body burning like a hearthfire.
A fire in a hearth that had a good chimney-it made very little smoke but a lot of racing, flickering flames. The corpse-light wouldn’t last long. Smiling grimly, Yassandra advanced past him cautiously, wanting to get out of the view of anyone standing at the top of the cellar stairs with a wand or a crossbow, before she cast light magic of her own.
Doom fell on her-hard-without the slightest warning.
Pennae swung down on the war wizard from above and behind, arms trembling from the strain of bracing herself between two rusty hooks. She hurled herself out of the inky darkness in the lee of a ceiling-beam and scissored her legs viciously around the wizard’s head, swinging hard to the left and kicking upward as she did so.
Yassandra’s neck broke with a horrible wet crunch-and Pennae put all her might into a frantic shifting of herself forward, so as to pass over the lolling head and down on the wizard’s arms from above, rather than ending up with her feet pointing at the ceiling, head-downward with the dying woman toppling back over onto her.
She had to gain control of those wands- had to!
Pennae was still clawing at the air and a swinging beam-hook for balance when Yassandra sobbed the words that set off the wands, blasting the ceiling above with more blue-green fire.
“Tluin,” Pennae announced calmly, as the spraying magic shook the dying body under her, driving it back just enough that she could overtop Yassandra and reach down the war wizard’s failing, spasming arms.
Hopefully before hungry blue-green fire thoroughly cleaned Pennae’s teeth-and throat, and her gizzard and whatnots beyond it too-for her.
Dauntless and his Dragons were halfway across the deserted common room, swords singing out of scabbards and striding hard, when the floor to the angry ornrion’s right, just behind him, burst upward in a splintering roar and flood of blue-green flames.
Shattered floorboards erupted in a deadly spray, hurling two Purple Dragons bodily up into the ceiling above.
With a roar almost as loud as the wandfire, Dauntless launched himself at the cellar stairs in a furious rush, the three remaining Purple Dragons right behind him. They were pounding down the steps even before the bloody, broken remains of their two comrades peeled free of the riven ceiling and fell wetly onto impaling splinters below.
Pennae struck the wands out of Yassandra’s weak hands as they fell, and the wandfire abruptly stopped.
They hit the floor together, hard, the war wizard’s body slamming down atop the wands, and out of long habit Pennae slashed Yassandra’s throat open; for who knew what sort of spells a war wizard might have, to snatch herself back from the sword-edge of death? Mute mages hurled fewer spells.
Fearful and angry shouts rang out, deeper in the cellars-and no wonder; a sleeping man could have heard every instant of the wandfire! Pennae rolled hastily over to lie still among the bodies, dragging the dead war wizard atop her.
Feigning death was wisest until she knew who held sway down here. There! In the flickering corpse-light she could see a few crossbowmen coming cautiously into the room from somewhere deeper in the cellars, peering around with their poisoned-quarrel-loaded bows held ready.
