intention.
'Well, now,' the mercenary captain said, 'the tapestries here at Ombreir aren't
Neither of the Amnians bothered to smile at his feeble jest. Mirt sighed and wondered what to say.
As the Year of the Striking Falcon warmed into full summer, war was raging anew, not merely in the Dauntir —the gently rolling, heavily farmed hills between the Trade Way, the River Esmel, and the mountains prosaically known as the Small Teeth—but all across Amn. Every ambitious merchant cabal that dared to enter the struggle was riding around with copious sellswords, trumpeting 'royal heirs' who had seemingly been found in closets, dropped from the clouds by the gods, or stitched together in graveyards.
This throne-strife had been raging for more than half a century, and Mirt held the same opinion as most war-weary folk of Amn: that any true heirs had been slain or died of old age years ago, and the fighting still going on was but the most grimly determined merchant families of the land trying once more to openly seize the throne. Mirt wondered why anyone would want to put on a crown to so splendidly mark himself a target for all, but then... power did strange things to many folk.
It had done strange things to the Araunvol family, formerly a capable and haughty force to be reckoned with in gilded Athkatla, but in the end reduced to a handful of embittered nobles who walled themselves away in Ombreir, their fortified country citadel halfway between Imnescar and the Esmel—for a rider galloping arrow-straight northeast—to await their doom.
Mirt's sword had delivered that doom, for many of them, and the army he rode with had readied the others for their graves. Wherefore the Araunvols were extinct, and the Rightful Hands of Prince Elashar held the walled mansion of Ombreir. They'd buried the last bodies that very morning, in the gardens.
Across the table, the Amnians waited in silence for his response.
They had to. There was no one else they could turn to.
One of the younger sellsword captains offering his battle skills in Waterdeep, Mirt had been hired by the Durinbolds and the Hawkwinters to ride sword with the Amnian army they sponsored: the Rightful Hands. For Waterdhavian nobles, the seemingly endless war in Amn was all about coin. Rival claimants were sponsored by the Gauntyls and Gralhunds, who had also come looking to buy the services of the mercenary newly risen in reputation for his sword work in the South.
What had decided things for Mirt between the two entreaties had been the Hawkwinters. In matters of war and guardianship, they were held in the highest regard in the City of Splendors. If he served them well, any blades Mirt the Merciless commanded would entertain many offers in the years ahead.
If, that is, he survived this first hiring in the lawless cauldron Amn had become.
No noble of Waterdeep personally risked his neck in those bloody fields, for Amnians did not take kindly to outlanders meddling in their affairs. Mirt's commander these few fleeting months had been no clear-eyed Hawkwinter veteran, but a man of Amn. A tall, emerald-eyed, neatly bearded, and gently smiling ruthless murderer of a vizier, Harlo Ongalor. Mirt hated his very shadow, and strongly suspected the vizier loved him about as much.
Ongalor ruled Prince Elashar just as he did Mirt, which surprised Mirt not at all. Prince Elashar Torlath was purportedly the descendant of Prince Esmar, a son of King Imnel IV of Amn who'd long been believed to have died soon after birth.
That much, Mirt believed. What he did not believe was the rest of the tale the vizier spun so glibly whenever it seemed necessary: that all those years ago, Esmar had been spirited away to provide a royal line in hiding for Amn, 'awaiting its dire hour of need.'
For one thing, there was more than one Prince Elashar. Or rather, more than one man of the Rightful Hands riding with a closed helm whose seldom-seen face was identical to that of the prince. Coincidence, perhaps, but Mirt himself had bull-broad shoulders that were unusual, and doubly so in a man of his height. Such builds were more often seen in men a head taller than he—yet another man riding with the Rightful Hands looked just like Mirt.
Moreover, the Hands had captured several members of rival merchant families—including the Lady Helora Roselarr and Gorus Narbridle—and as he'd been alert enough to watch for all briefly-bared faces, Mirt was certain 'doubles' of most of them were riding under the vizier's command.
Nor was Ongalor working alone. Magic aided him out of nowhere when he needed it. Which meant that his mutterings from time to time with various riders were conferences with disguised hurlers-of-magic.
Mirt's eyes might miss nothing, but he knew how to keep his mouth shut. He was, after all, being paid to do so.
So he nodded respectfully to the pretender riding with them, and held high the princely banner: an emerald- hued human right hand clutching a horizontal dagger, point to the sinister, erupting vertically out of the top of a large, faceted emerald. Tasteless, and bad blazonry to boot, but then, Mirt wasn't being paid to be a herald, either.
There were armies riding all over Amn, some backed by wealthy traders from Tethyr or from Calimshan, and every one concealing their true natures behind this or that false heir from the various fallen royal families of Amn; ambitious—or trapped—pretenders, all.
One of those rival armies, the Just Blades, was on its way even then. A strong band of well-armed and armored butchers, sponsored by the Gauntyls and Gralhunds, and backing Prince Uldrako, a true pretender. Which was to say an ambitious young Amnian who knew full well he had no royal nor noble blood, and was passing himself off as the scion of an entirely fictitious elder branch of the royal family. His skills consisted of good looks, a complete lack of scruples, staggering indebtedness to his sponsors, and the good sense to accord them the utter loyalty of a fawning slave. Mirt happened to know that his banner (a stylized side-on crown, depicted as a black arc with five spires erupting from it, on a gold field) had been designed by the Gauntyl house limner, and Gauntyl tutors had coached 'Uldrako' in his invented lineage and life story.
He had no doubt that Harlo Ongalor had done likewise with the doubles of Prince Elashar, the Amnian noble captives, and a certain Mirt the Merciless. All part of preparing for the right moment to eliminate the troublesome originals—who stubbornly persisted in having opinions and aims of their own—for replacement with their loyal- to-Ongalor duplicates.
And that right moment, Mirt suspected, had almost arrived. Why else would the vizier have ordered Mirt and only 'this dozen' of his warriors to remain in Ombreir and guard 'the valuable ones,' with the Just Blades sweeping across the Dauntir to storm the Araunvol mansion while the main might of the Rightful Hands rode elsewhere with the doubles? The Merciless hadn't failed to notice that the vizier's chosen dozen consisted of the veterans who were most personally loyal to Mirt—and Torandral, the most inexperienced, trouble-prone youngling in the Hands.
The vizier and his wizard friends would vanish at the last possible moment, of course, once the Just Blades were at the mansion's very gates and escape was impossible. Leaving Mirt and his warriors to a bloody doom and any surviving hostages to be later spell-switched with their doubles, or magically blown apart from afar, to shatter any chances of Gauntyl and Gralhund success.
Mirt had long since become disgusted with various atrocities ordered by the vizier, as the Rightful Hands butchered their way across Amn—to say nothing of the general ruin of the fair country around the Hands—and had begun looking for a way out. Only to discover Ongalor's hidden wizards, and how closely they were watching to thwart just such desertions.
'We're trapped here,' Lady Roselarr said quietly. 'Are you trapped, too? Is that why you're keeping silent?'
'Or have you been enthralled by the vizier's pet wizards? Or hatching your own betrayals?' Narbridle asked, even more softly. Mirt did not have to look to know that the bald noble had drawn a little poisoned needle-dagger, under the table.
Instead, he looked to Roselarr. 'To your queries: yes.' Then he turned to Narbridle. 'To yours: no. So put your tainted steel away.'
Sighing heavily, Mirt told them truthfully, 'I have no intention of betraying either of you, yet I see no road by which I
