Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [104]
And then she thought: He has spoken truth to us since we met. Lied with truth perhaps, but cleaved to truth. Very well. I shall do the same.
"This blade was given to me by the goddess Mystra," she said. "I am here under her protection, and she watches what we do even now."
The Shadowmaster stood as if frozen, and she wanted -suddenly wanted desperately-to see him show just the smallest amount of shock. Or surprise. Anything but that smooth, almost mocking confidence.
His mouth did not fall open, but he did lick his lips and hesitate before choosing his next words, almost whispering, "And your true mission here, Lady Sharantyr?"
"Is not something I can reveal to you," Sharantyr told him gently, "if you would live." She saw his eyes flicker and added almost pleadingly, "It is not something that should bring doom upon you, if you behave well toward us."
Amdramnar bowed then, and they saw his mocking confidence return. "Then I shall strive to be the perfect host, Lady," he murmured, bending over her hand.
Smoothly she took her hand from his grasp, pretending not to see the little barbs that were showing just above the skin of his fingers, and smiled at him. "I have no complaints at all about your behavior," she told him softly.
"Uh-oh!" Belkram told the ceiling loudly. "We know what those words mean, don't we, Itharr?"
Itharr nodded. "We get to sleep in the passage tonight," he said forlornly. "I hope it's softer than the last hallway was."
Sharantyr gave them both murderous looks and tried to keep all hints of the laughter welling up within her off her face. These two Harpers! What a pair! Catching sight of the Shadowmaster's quizzical expression, she lurched a dangerous step closer to open laughter.
And then she saw the first glint of what might have been fear in Amdramnar's eyes, and her heart surged in triumph. They'd just won the respect they might need to stay alive this night.
Of course, it was also the respect that might drive him to betray them on the morrow.
* * * * *
Somewhere in Faerun, Kythorn 19
"Warriors of the Nose Bone obey no coward's orders!" The hobgoblin askarr almost spat the words. "We run only to hunt down those who flee from us! We do not run-ever-to flee from battle!"
"Then warriors of the Nose Bone are fools," growled the other hobgoblin, "and are better off dead fools, leaving the fields of Thar to those more worthy."
"More worthy?" The askarr followed that last snarled word by swinging his rusty-spiked morningstar with all his strength.
It whistled past its target's shoulder with a rattle of chain and crashed to the stones underfoot as its wielder fell forward, the blood-drenched point of a broadsword protruding from his back.
"Aye," its wielder said, snatching a replacement blade from the fallen askarr's scabbard. "More worthy, I said. Are yuh deaf, too?" He laughed harshly, made a rude gesture with his new sword-and with the long, dirty knife in his other hand-at the ranks of the Nose Bone, and trotted away.
And with a ragged roar, the hobgoblins of the Nose Bone turned from the cowering warriors of the Thentian caravan they'd attacked, and charged after the running hobgoblin who'd slain their leader.
The battlegar of the Splintered Sword, he was, and if they had their way, he'd soon be shattered bones on a cookfire, with all his band on side platters!
In moments, the crest of the hill was a shrieking, hacking mass of dying hobgoblins. One of them, who'd come up that hill running, just kept on going, flinging his captured Nose Bone blade away… and then his knife… and then his helm.
He seemed to dwindle as he ran, and by the time he reached the nearest tree, a trail of greaves and bracers and armor plate marked his route, and he stood almost naked, his unlovely hide dark with dirt. Then he grinned at the sky, scratched at his ribs, and became Elminster again for a moment before he shrank into a crow once more and leapt into the sky. He circled over the hilltop, cawing