They stared into each other's eyes until Taeros shook his head angrily and snapped, 'Faen, Lark: help me! Let's get Korvaun into yonder cellar-end.'
'And what?' Roldo demanded. 'Just leave him there?'
'Lark can stand guard. We'll go get a healer, and return as fast as we can.'
Roldo looked to Korvaun.
'Listen to Taeros, my friend,' the youngest Lord Helmfast said, his eyelids drooping. 'He knows what must be done.'
His eyes drifted shut. 'Advising sage,' he murmured. 'The role you seek… suits you well. Take it up again when you can. For now, you must lead.'
Taeros found himself choking back tears, for he knew no healer could come in time. 'I'll take it up in Torm's halls,' he said roughly, 'when again I find myself at Korvaun Helmfast's side.'
Korvaun smiled faintly. 'I'll keep your seat warm and your ale cool. Go now, and see this through!'
A man with serpents as long as spears sprouting from his forearms dodged out of a sewer-tunnel behind one of Elaith's hurrying jackcoats.
The man whirled, sword flashing, but by then three or four snakeheads had sunk their fangs into him, and a fifth made short and savage work of his face.
Taeros Hawkwinter crouched grimly watching, one hand raised in an imperious 'all keep silent' signal, his sword ready in the other.
Roldo whispered, 'Are we just going to watch? Why aren't we-'
The beastman left the writhing, foaming jackcoat to die and ran on, calling some sort of wordless signal. Side- passages erupted with streams of monster-men, running up into the winecellars of the Purple Silks.
'That's why,' Taeros muttered, eyes fierce and face hard. 'If we throw our lives away trying to be glorious heroes, Waterdeep won't get warned in time, and all of those will be out in the streets, lurking and awaiting every nightfall, to slay at will!'
A tunnel rang with a sudden clash of steel, and a beastman staggered out of it, body transfixed by the blades of half a dozen of Elaith's jackcoats. Groaning, the man-monster fell on his face. The jackcoats jerked forth bloody blades and ran on-back up into the winecellars.
'It seems the Purple Silks is filling up again,' Taeros observed caustically. 'Ready for more festivities, everyone?'
More jackcoats and a few beastmen darted out of various tunnels to ascend into the wine cellars. The sewers were growing quieter-and darker, too, with almost all the lanterns and torches gone out. Soon there'd be none left but the dead… and whatever might come along to feed on them.
'Everyone's ready,' Roldo announced grimly.
The Hawkwinter nodded curtly. 'You step out that way, facing down into the sewers, and I'll face that way, toward the cellars. Everyone else come out between us. We form a ring of steel and go up, everyone looking to the sides as we go. Roldo, keep watch behind, and shout the moment you see any movement, even if it's something very small coming at you.'
Roldo stared at his hitherto easy-going friend. 'You sound like a veteran warcaptain of Hawkwinter Hall!'
For once, Taeros wasted neither time nor wit on a sharp response. If he fell short of a warcaptain's wisdom this night, there were graves waiting for them all.
Lord Ulb Jardeth staggered wearily into the feasting hall, face blood-streaked and leaning on a notched and blunted sword. He blinked in surprise at all the bright light.
There was a little cry of relief, and a familiar, long-gowned woman burst through its archway and came running to him, arms spread.
'Allys,' he growled, throwing his free arm around her as she embraced him fiercely, sobbing. 'I'm-I'm all right. Steady, pet, steady. What by the Harbor Deep has befallen up here, while we were all killing each other down below?'
Lady Allys Jardeth pointed with the hand that held her little jeweled belt-dagger. 'Men who look like monsters have been coming up-just a few of them-and when they saw us all looking, they went through those doors there, and there-and there!'
'The big bedchambers,' Lord Jardeth said grimly, not caring if he was revealing his familiarity with the festhall to his wife. 'Well, they can only get out of there through a stair up onto the galleries or a tunnel back down to the sewers… or right back out yon doors to face us again, so they'll keep for now. Gods, lass, 'twas butchery down there-who else has come up?'
Allys Jardeth stiffened in her husband's arms. This time words failed her, so she contented herself with screaming.
Lord Jardeth swung them both around-in time to see an army of monster-men running across the shattered forehall toward him. 'Oh, blast,' he growled, 'I'm getting too old for this! Allys, get out of here!'
Shoving his wife behind him, he hefted his sword and planted his feet to await the doom charging so swiftly down upon him.
Screams burst from the watching women in the feasting hall as the beastmen raced toward them.
'For the Amalgamation!' a huge, caterpillarlike monster-man thundered, rearing up amid the running throng as tall as two men.
'For Waterdeep!' someone shouted from behind the running beastmen, as Lord Jardeth swung his sword and prepared to die.
Then a bolt of lightning crackled between two drawn blades, searing the hands of the astonished jackcoats who wielded them and dealing death to a score of beastmen caught between.
'We're under attack!' a stag-headed man snarled, whirling around, and the loping, wolf like creature who was about to pounce on Lord Jardeth turned as swiftly as most of his fellows.
Not much more than a dozen of Elaith's jackcoats had come up out of the cellar on their heels, but until that war-cry, they'd been stabbing, tripping, and slaying with swift and stealthy ease, leaving a trail of half-beast bodies.
Seeing their own losses, the monster-men of the Amalgamation turned their backs on the feasting hall in an instant to face their dark-clad foes.
The cavernous forehall became a furious battleground in the space of an angry breath, as beastmen howled, trumpeted, roared, and died. Jaws, claws, and tails, both scything and stinging, made short work of unarmored jackcoats, but many of Elaith's men bought with poisoned blades, and there was fearsome slaughter.
When all the jackcoats were dead, less than a dozen monster-men remained to turn and rend the lone old lord who stood in their path-which was when the Gemcloaks came racing up out of the cellar to plunge in among them, hacking and stabbing with neither war-cry nor hesitation.
With shouts and roars of rage and dismay, the monster-men whirled around again-to find a foe already in their midst.
'Die,' Taeros gasped furiously, as he chopped aside eyestalks and fangs, his hands as black with blood as his sword. 'Stop being so bloody stubborn and just die!'
'Starragar?' old Lord Jardeth roared, catching sight of a face he knew in the fray. 'Starragar? To me, boy! For Jardeth and Waterdeep!'
That war-cry was echoed from Ulb Jardeth's flank. He turned in astonishment as his wife, tangled hair flying around her, burst in among men with scales and horns and barbed arms. She stabbed with her dagger, grunting with effort. Tearing it free, she gasped, reeled, and struck again.
Other elderly nobles and merchants were advancing from the feasting hall now, unsteadily or uncertainly or
