Arch Wizard

Ahead of them, there was a brief flicker of lantern-light as the scullery port swung open again-and the hand on Rod's shoulder forced him down onto his knees. He froze there, seeing the knights ahead of him doing the same, as a muttering of low voices rose briefly by the port ere it swung shut once more.

Oblivious to the stealthy doom fast approaching them, Lord Lyrose's guards seemed to be busily engaged, this night, in their usual habits of visiting some of the maids to trade coins for their embraces and for leftovers from Castle feasts. The scullery port had swung open and shut seven times now, just since the Hammerhand band had rounded the fishpond.

Though it was now too dark for Rod to see Syregorn, he knew the warcaptain was frowning like a grim mourner at a funeral. An entire Lyraunt Castle guard patrol was missing.

Usually, according to Thalden's latest whisper nigh Rod's ear, there were guards stationed outside the scullery port, to prevent this nightly commerce becoming a vulnerability to any skulking warbands from Hammerhold and Imtowers. Yet not a guard had they found, aside from those waiting their turn to shuffle briefly in through the scullery port.

'Come on, Larl,' someone growled resignedly, startlingly close at hand. 'Rut with her faster. I'm getting cold.'

A gentle breeze arose then, covering the faint sounds the Hammerhand knight in front of Rod made as he rose to clamp a firm hand over that Lyrose guard's mouth.

Then the quickening wind shifted some branches, making them dance and let in moonlight just long enough to let Rod see the knight's dagger slice across the back of one of the struggling guard's hands.

The knight held the man tight, holding the knife high rather than trying to stab him again.

When another moment of moonlight let the hard-swallowing Lord Archwizard see the struggling pair again, long seconds later, the guard was sagging and the knight was trudging a few steps across the lawn under the man's dying weight, to let him down out of the way.

That knife was poisoned. It had to be.

Rod swallowed again, finding his throat a more rough and dry place than ever. Poison cared nothing for titles or high station.

Certainly not for a title like 'Lord Archwizard of Falconfar.'

'We'll do it,' Isk told the Aumrarr quietly. 'But then, you knew that.'

'We could not be sure. We compel no one against their will,' Dauntra replied with dignity.

Then she froze, as Garfist's loud snort turned into barks of derisive laughter. As that harsh laughter rose to roll about the moonlit room, Juskra joined in, the same disbelief in her bitter mirth. A moment later, Isk chuckled.

After a long, reddening time, Dauntra chuckled, too.

The scullery port closed again. The wind had died, and the night was very quiet.

'Now what?' Thalden whispered, his voice the faintest of ghostlike murmurs. 'There are none of Lyrose left alive out here, but surely they'll send a patrol around the outside walls some time.'

Syregorn nodded, and reached out to tap the nearest knight in a certain manner Rod couldn't see. The signal was passed along, and in a few almost silent moments, the band that had come from Hammerhold were crouching on hands and knees in a ring, faces almost touching. Someone's breath was foul with fish.

'I dislike the standing guards who aren't here, and should be,' someone whose voice sounded rough and old muttered. 'This feels like a trap to me.'

'I am just as uneasy over that,' Syregorn replied, 'yet suspicious or not, it's let us get very close to Lyraunt before we had to do much killing.'

'You dislike killing? You surprise me,' a deeper voice muttered.

Syregorn sighed. 'Slaying bothers me not, but every killing is a chance you'll be discovered, and the alarum raised. Hence the…'

'Poison,' Thalden murmured. As Syregorn's furious hiss arose, he added, 'The wizard knows, Gorn. While he was watching us use it, and realizing what he was seeing, I was watching his face.'

'Ah yes, the wizard,' the deep voice muttered again. 'So here we are with the great Lord Archwizard, and do we blast the castle apart? No. We go creeping in like thieves, in the mud and thorns, and him with us!'

'Use magic, when there might be a Doom inside those walls? You are a dolt,' the old voice hissed. Then it came to Rod's ears a trifle louder, as its owner turned to Syregorn. 'What'd you do to the outlander to turn him into Lord Wizard Babbling-Tongue, anyway?'

'Followed orders,' Syregorn snapped. 'Now silence. Or he'll start with the questions again, and get us all killed! Quick, now!

To the port-to the walls on either side of it. Tarth and Reld standing, steel ready; everyone else farther along and lying flat. When yon port opens, I want us there and ready. Let the man get out before you fell him, so those within hear and see nothing amiss. Then we slip in, as the latest lusty guards. If a maid screams, mind, we'll probably all die.'

The ring melted away into moving shadows, so quietly that Rod blinked in disbelief. He stayed where he was until the familiar firm hand tightened and tugged on his shoulder in an unmistakable 'come with me' signal.

Obediently he went, crouching low and making so little noise that the owner of the hand sighed in disgust only twice on their way to the wall of Lyraunt Castle.

I thought this castle had a moat, Rod thought to himself as he went to his knees and then down to rest on his chest and stomach in short-scythed grass, a moment before Thalden whispered, 'Malraun's ward-spells did one good thing, anyway: let the Lyroses fill in that stinking moat.' The whisper changed, sounding amused. 'They regretted it soon after, when they had to start digging graves, not just rolling their dead off the walls and into the water.'

Then the scullery port opened with a brief flare of light, a man was butchered in swift and efficient silence in front of Rod's eyes, and the night was full of swift-moving Hammerhand shadows.

The firm hand returned, and a moment later Rod Everlar was bruising his elbows on hard stone as he was thrust forward. The terrified eyes of maids feeling poison burn inside them stared at him helplessly over the brutally-tight hands that covered their mouths and noses.

Then he was past them, turning to try to watch but seeing only the night outside vanishing behind the closing scullery port ere he was wrenched around to face forward and shoved into a dark chamber.

Where the Lord Archwizard came to a stumbling halt, well and truly inside Lyraunt Castle.

Nearby in the darkness, someone laughed. Coldly and menacingly, of course.

Chapter Fifteen

Hammerhand vipers,' the unseen man who'd laughed greeted them. 'Welcome to your deaths. You won't last aaaaaaa…' The voice trailed away in a dying, fading moan. 'That wasn't necessary,' Thalden chided someone. 'He was a prisoner, chained to the wall. Probably a Tesmer man, who hates Lyrose as much as we do.'

'He was being too loud,' came the hissed reply. 'What if he'd shouted for guards, hey?' The whisper turned less fierce. 'This

poison works fast.'

'So keep your blades pointing down, not out,' Syregorn said grimly, from somewhere behind Rod. 'Now silence, all of you. If this Lord Archwizard is to have any chance of defeating the Doom Malraun and getting the Aumrarr he came for out of here alive, it's best he arrives in Malraun's lap as a surprise-not in a grand confrontation, after all Lyraunt's been roused.'

Those words were barely out of his mouth when a Lyrose man in livery came around the corner, head down and hurrying, hands already busy at his codpiece. 'Falcon bugger all,' he was growling to himself. 'Late relieving me, taking his own sweet sated time over telling me a jest I didn't want to hear any-'

His words trailed off forever then, but he'd been doomed since Reld's kissing-sharp dagger had sliced him,