She shrugged. Left, then. Sharantyr climbed into the tunnel, slid along uncomfortably on her knuckles for a time, thought about what a target her backside must make for anyone shooting a crossbow down this tunnel, and carefully sheathed her sword. Empty-handed, she could travel at twice the speed and found it far easier to be quiet. She went on, groping in deepening darkness, as the tunnel rose, met with smaller side tubes, and grew a little smaller.
Well, she was in the castle, but how to get out of this dark, close tunnel? Something small and four-footed scampered momentarily across her way. A rat, no doubt. Sharantyr started to wish she could see.
What if she met with something larger and hungrier, or a trap of some sort? She wouldn't even see it in the darkness.
She forced that thought down, concentrating instead on the sure knowledge that the chute carried waste down from somewhere, and so she must inevitably reach that origin.
Sharantyr hoped someone's backside wouldn't be covering it when she did. She could almost hear the sly voice of the thief Torm, her sometime tormentor in the Knights, making that snide observation. She smiled to herself and climbed on.
Then, very suddenly, her hands found a hard stone wall. She felt upward and discovered that her tunnel had ended in a shaft a little taller than she was, with some sort of grating as its ceiling. She drew her sword and probed carefully, searching for a trap. Her sword point pierced something yielding-cloth-and a stream of tiny pellets hissed down in a trickle past her face. She held out her hand to catch some of the grains and brought it to her nose. Rice! She had cut into a bag of rice.
Sharantyr probed carefully, tracing the outlines of the grating. Then she sheathed her blade, took a deep breath, crouched, and sprang up high, hands outstretched.
One hand smashed into a sack, scrabbled, and found a grip around a bar. The other smashed hard and painfully into metal. She gritted her teeth and hung by one hand for what seemed a long time, nursing throbbing fingers and shaking them in hopes nothing was broken.
Then she reached up, got a grip on the grating with her hurt hand, and started tugging and bouncing up and down. Her hand throbbed with every move, but the grating shifted slightly, lifting with her movements. She continued, as hard as she could, but the rice bags above held the grating down, and at last she had to admit defeat.
Sharantyr dropped again, drew her blade, and attacked the rice above her, stabbing again and again as hissing rice ran down into her hair, her bodice, and even through sliced and torn spots in her leathers.
She went on stabbing and jabbing until she could feel no weight on the grating above, then carefully worked the empty bags aside with her sword through the grate.
It was dark and cool in the chamber above. Very faint light filtered down to her. Sharantyr leapt up again.
This time the grating shifted as she struck it. She let go, dropped, and instantly sprang up again, striking the grating on an angle. As it lifted, she kicked the air hard and arched her body. The grating slid sideways with her clinging to it. The lady ranger twisted and arched her body again, and before the bars could fall back into place, she got the toe of one boot up through the opening.
The grating came down hard on her boot. Sharantyr grunted, heaved, twisted, and rolled all at once. She found herself sprawled atop more sacks of rice, still entangled with the grating, in what seemed to be a large and dark storage cellar.
Shar laid the grating carefully back in place, found the sacks she'd emptied, and covered it with them. Then she climbed over a great many sacks-some, by the sound, held dried beans-into a narrow trail among the sacks, crates, and barrels that crammed the room.
If this place was barred or locked from the outside, she was not going to be pleased. Sharantyr drew her blade again, held it carefully upright close to her breast, and went cautiously eastward, for the trail seemed to widen in that direction, and the faint light grew slightly stronger.
Her way ended in an old, stout wooden door. She pushed at it and then pulled, but it had no handle on this side. She felt around the door, found its edges, and carefully slipped her dagger up one of them.
As she expected, the blade struck a catch or hasp. If it was locked or pegged down, she was in trouble. But if it could be lifted by driving the blade upward-Yes! The door swung open, and Sharantyr reached for the hasp with racing fingers to quell any noise of its falling.
Done. The room beyond was also unlit, but light reached long fingers into it from a torch in a wall bracket beyond a door or wooden gate that was more gaps and knotholes than wood. Sharantyr drifted up to it, put away her dagger, reached nimble fingers through to lift the peg that held it shut, and peeked out into the corridor.
Two bored-looking men were seated not six paces away, sorting potatoes on a long table covered with what looked like a very old tapestry. They worked in silence, and when one of them suddenly spoke, his voice seemed very loud.
'If you'd just kept your jaw still when he asked about the wenches instead of tryin' sly stuff, he wouldna found us out, an'-' The voice held the exasperation of a renewed grievance.
'Shut up,' the other man said in a tired voice. 'Be glad ye're down here carving dirt-balls instead of up there, sweating in your armor and being carved up by the idiot merchants and farmhands that some crazed-wits has stirred up. They're still attacking the castle!'
He tossed a potato lazily over his shoulder. Sharantyr swallowed, reached up-There! — and snatched it silently out of the air. She set it down very carefully at her feet and took another silent step forward.
'Ye should have heard His Awfulness,' the man went on, 'when I went up to the kitchens. Fairly frothing, he was. He'd just finished telling the council that he was lord now-so there! — cool as ye please, when some wench in leathers comes tumbling down the stairs and nearly runs him through with a sword. He was screaming and scrabbling on the floor, they say, and had to 'port away, to escape. As it was, this gal carved up his entire bodyguard and some of us, too!'
'What?' the other man gasped. 'All by herself? She took out Dannath?'
'And Uthren, and Balagh. Oh, aye, this must have been some play-pretty, in truth! I'd like to see her, let me tell ye! In the dark, and her alone, if ye catch my warmest thought…'
'May the gods,' said Sharantyr conversationally into his ear, 'grant thy every wish.'
As he spun around to face her, she drove her knee up hard. The man could not find breath to scream. He simply bent double, eyes staring at her in disbelief as he collapsed. Sharantyr was already stepping past him to drive her sword into the other man's throat.
He gurgled and went down. She spun back to the first, caught his throat in a strangling grip to quell any outcry, and said softly, 'Now that you've seen me, Zhent butcher, I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn down your 'warmest thought.' Here, have a potato.' She plucked a smallish potato from the table, rammed it into his mouth, and held it there as her blade went into his stomach.
The body bucked under her, and Sharantyr felt sick. If he cried out she might die, so she held him down, vomited all over him violently, and then picked up her sword again. She held her aching ribs for a moment and leaned against the wall to clear her head before moving on.
The corridor ended in steps leading up into a passage heavy with the smell of stew. Her stomach lurched again.
Sharantyr shook her head and stepped boldly into the hall. She strode down it, past open doors and people chopping wood and bustling about stoking cookfires. One sad-faced, gray-haired woman caught sight of her, but Sharantyr raised a finger to her lips and went on. No alarm was raised behind her.
The passage ran east and upward. Sharantyr went up with it and was almost relieved to enter a room full of sprawled Wolves, half out of their armor, with a gaming board on a table in their midst and bloodied weapons leaning against the walls.
She tore into them, slashing and stabbing like a maniac. Startled men cursed, scrambled to reach weapons, writhed in agony-and died. Covered in their blood, Sharantyr went on. Gods grant that after this day she would never have to kill again.
But it is the nature of men, she thought savagely, remembering Elminster's dry voice at a campfire long ago, to forget promises, to break agreements-and to kill.
'Gods curse and damn all Zhent Wolves!' she roared, close to tears. Her outcry brought running, booted feet and their Zhentilar owners with them, many blades raised against her.
