adjoining kitchen. The two Harpers looked calmly around to see hands on sword hilts all over the room. These men seemed to know Elminster's name.
'And what are your names?' their interrogator asked from a safe distance away. He stood now beside his seat, and his sheathed sword lay on it near his hand.
'Gondegal. The Older,' Belkram replied merrily, using the name of the legendary Lost King of Cormyr, a vanished usurper. Itharr added brightly, 'Gondegal the Younger.'
The man showed his teeth. 'Smart tongues and ragged clothes usually mean Harpers,' he said, and turned to address the tables of armed men. 'Take them!'
There was a general rush. Itharr snatched up the last of the frybread and Belkram snatched up the table. He flung it easily, as a child lobs a stone, and took down one Wolf. His chair took down another.
Amid the general tumult, Itharr swept up his own chair and held it as a shield. 'Brawling in an inn? What knavery's this?' he cried loudly. 'Does justice rule no longer in the High Dale?'
Belkram nodded. 'Aye! We demand to speak to Irreph Mulmar. A man should not have to fight to have a little dawnfry in this dale!'
One of the men chuckled, advancing. 'Mulmar rules here no longer.'
'What have you done with Irreph?' Belkram asked, his voice slow and quiet. 'I knew him, long ago.'
Itharr, who knew Belkram well, shivered a little despite himself when he heard his friend's voice.
The Sword laughed, not pleasantly. 'He works full days at the mill now,' he said, 'docile as a well-whipped ox since Lord Angruin's magic bent his will.'
'What?' said Itharr and Belkram together as their blades hissed out.
'Take them!' the order rang out again, and the room erupted into steely war.
The crack of the whip and the cold shock of the slop that was his morning meal being dumped on his sleeping body always awakened him. In the cold, misty grayness before full dawn, the dull-eyed thing that had once been a man always licked the slop from his flesh and the smooth stone he walked on.
They watched him. The moment he was done, the stinging crack of the whip came again, and his chains pulled him forward. It happened again about the middle of each day.
He was shackled to a massive wooden lever that ran to a central spindle. He walked on a great circle of stone in the darkness, around and around that spindle all day, pushing the lever. Above him, grinding stones rumbled and grain spilled endlessly down with a dry rushing sound. Thick dust rose and water always dripped somewhere, unseen in the echoing dark.
His hands had stopped bleeding an age ago. Shackles of stout metal encircled his throat and wrists. From each shackle, a chain as long as he was tall led to rings on the great lever.
When his body grew too foul for the overseers-he never saw them, just whips lashing down out of darkness- pipes were opened above and icy-cold water washed away the filth. The whips and water had taken his clothes long ago; he wore only a few tattered wisps of cloth around one ankle. His arms, shoulders, and thighs had grown huge and hard, covered with a latticework of white whip scars. His hair had grown long, jaw and chest covered with matted, furlike tangles. His eyes were always dull, no fire alight behind them.
Until this morn. The millstones rumbled overhead as usual, dust swirled, and the lever, as always, was smooth and very, very heavy. He pushed against it, driving forward a weight that seemed more than three or four dead horses. Endlessly forward. He had to shove and heave and snarl until he got it rolling, then he bent into a smooth, steady push that ate up the endless breaths of the day, around and around and around.
A thought came to him then, as he trudged, the first unbidden thought in a great while. His working day was really not so different from that of a lot of free men.
He chuckled at that as he pushed. It was a sound he had not made in a long, long time.
Belkram chuckled coldly as his steel found the throat of another Wolf. The Shepherds' Rest was awash with blood and smashed furniture draped with bodies. The warriors who'd been so loudly arrogant when the fray began were now silent forever or backed into a corner, fear in their white faces.
A few deaths back, several of the Wolves had tried to break past the two Harpers and escape. Out of a side passage to bar their way came the grizzled old serving man, smiling grimly, an ancient and rusting battle-axe in his hands.
One Wolf contemptuously tried to run him through. The old man slid aside from his lunge, punched his assailant hard in the throat, and trampled the fallen Wolf as he swung his axe at the next. When the Wolves fell back from that old axe, it descended to meet the head of the man on the floor, rising again before they could advance.
Itharr had reached the rear of those Wolves. Steel leapt and bit, men grunted, swung, and screamed… and a little silence befell. Itharr and the old serving man used it to share a ferocious smile across the bloody fallen.
Belkram stalked forward to confront the last few Wolves. 'We've important business at the castle,' he told them almost sadly, 'so we haven't time to take prisoners.'
Itharr sighed. 'So sad,' he murmured, and lunged. A Wolf shrieked and struck the Harper's blade aside at the last instant. His eyes were still on it when the dagger in Itharr's other hand came up into them.
As the man fell, two Wolves charged in desperation, swinging their blades wildly. Itharr ducked under the falling body and rolled aside, lifting a boot to trip one Wolf. Belkram's blade took the rearmost in the neck.
The serving man stood in the door, axe raised. 'Who's first?' he rumbled, eyes cold. 'Who'll die first?'
The Wolves hesitated for an instant, and that was long enough for Belkram to slay the one who'd fallen and for Itharr to rise again. The last two Wolves plunged forward desperately.
The old man's axe bore the first to one side, and Itharr thrust him through from behind. The second leapt for the door and fell through the opening with Belkram on his back, stabbing with cold ruthlessness.
Silence fell again. Then the two Harpers rose, dusted themselves off, retrieved their weapons, and smiled at the old man. Belkram handed him six gold pieces. 'For the furniture… and the floor show.'
'Aye,' Itharr agreed. 'Our thanks. We must be off now.'
A light was dancing in the old man's eyes. 'Whither, lads? Come you to bring down this Longspear who lords it over us?'
The two Harpers nodded slowly.
'We came to find a friend of ours,' Belkram said quietly. 'But it seems the High Dale needs more attention than he does just now. If he were here, he'd been doing what we aim to. We're off to the castle, to rouse the dale against these Wolves and their wizards.' He frowned then as a thought struck him. 'Does the high constable yet live?'
'Aye,' the old innkeeper said grimly. 'After a fashion. As that carrion said, he's in chains, working the mill as if he were an ox.'
Belkram looked at Itharr. 'That ends first.' His fellow Harper nodded, the grim expression matching his own.
'I'm coming with you,' the old man said without another glance at the sprawled bodies in his taproom. The axe lifted a little. 'I fought off outlaws aplenty, in my day.' He handed back the gold. 'And I won't take coins from men who do our work for us. No, take 'em! I haven't felt so good in many a year.'
He stepped out to look up and down the street, then squinted thoughtfully at the frowning walls of the castle rising above the rooftops nearby. 'Who's this friend you came seeking?'
Belkram saw faces peering at them from nearby doors and windows. 'One Elminster, a wizard. Have you heard of him?'
The old man's eyes widened a little. 'The Elminster?' he asked. 'The Old Mage? That wasn't just talk, what you told the Wolves?'
'No,' Itharr said. 'We mean to find him. We promised a lady we would. Not to do him ill, either.'
The old man nodded. 'I saw him beat six wizards once in a battle of spells. East of here, in Sembia it was. They were slavers, going about using spells to make folks follow 'em willingly by chaining their wits. He got proper hot, I tell you.'
He shook his head, a slow grin broadening his face at the memories. 'It was something to see, that. He smashed 'em with lightning, hurled back the balls of fire they threw at him, opened a hole in the sky to swallow up a-a great tentacled thing they conjured up and sent after him, and crushed one of 'em under a huge rock. Snatched
