Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [122]
Then the Zhent turned and ran after Mirt, grabbing at Shandril's dangling throat with the gauntlet. Mirt snarled and thrust with his blade, but Shandril's body hampered his weapon; he could not get a good strike at the mage without carving her, too. He lowered her to the ground so that he could battle this wizard-but the Zhentarim already had his gauntlet locked around her throat in a strangling grip, and had begun to mouth the words of another spell.
Mirt dropped both Shandril and his sword. His fist crashed into the man's mouth-and the wizard's head snapped back, spun, and slumped. Sightless, fading eyes swung past him as the man dropped to the street.
"Getting old, am I?" Mirt growled as he hoisted Shandril onto his shoulders again. With great satisfaction, he kicked the Zhent's body, hard.
Oelaerone was helping Belarla up.
"How much farther is this way to the sewers?" Mirt snarled, looking around for other Zlients. He saw none-only curious citizens glancing up from their daily business. Thank Tymora for that. Oelaerone was pointing again, and Mirt anxiously lumbered in the indicated direction.
"I've run down more streets in the Realms…" he muttered as they turned another corner. This street was narrower, and it smelled; strewn garbage and pools of water were frequent, and Mirt's boots skidded more than once.
"Not far now, Old Wolf," Belarla said from somewhere near his elbow.
Mirt looked around at the squalid street and replied, 'You know this area? I just hope he was worth it, Belarla-whoever he was,"
"If you weren't carrying the most important being in Faerun right now," Belarla replied calmly, "I'd trip you into that next pool."
Mirt grunted, swayed, and managed to get through it upright "I always wondered what pleasure-queens did for entertainment."
"Go down sewers, of course," Oelaerone said sweetly, from just ahead, "After all, folk say our morals belong in the sewer-why shouldn't our bodies keep them company?" She led the way into a short, stinking alley and, with a grand flourish, indicated a pile of dung.
Mirt set Shandril gently down in the crook of his arm, and stared at it. "I was picturing something a little closer to a door," he rumbled.
Belarla sighed and dug into the pile with both hands. "Come on," she said over her shoulder, "We'll have plenty of chances to wash all this off, down below."
"I was afraid of that," Mirt growled, handing Shandril's limp form to Oelaerone.
Water dripped, echoing somewhere in the dim distance. The archways overhead were old and cracked and covered with slimy growths. Here and there, the ends of pipes dripped filth clown into the thick, oily brown waters they toiled through, The muck was chest high.
Mirt ducked under a sagging pipe and muttered, "No sneezing, now,"
Belarla struggled along at his elbow, helping to keep Shandril's face out of the grime, "Could this be the worldfamous Mirt the Moneylender I see? Lord of Waterdeep? Harper Lord? Scourge of the Sea of Swords? Mirt the Merciless, Old Wolf of the North? This same old man, plastered with excrement?"
"I'm in disguise." Mirt growled, squeezing under another pipe, The smell was indescribable; as far as he could tell, the sewers here never drained out except during snowmelt. This would be a great place for a gulguthra lair… and as soon as that thought occurred to him, he wished it hadn't.
He peered around in the gloms; light drifted down from street-gratings high overhead-sometimes accompanied by brief deluges as citadel folk dumped chamber pots or washtubs.
"Are we heading anywhere in particular-" he asked "-besides toward our graves, I mean?"
You mentioned Myrintara, earlier," Belarla answered carefully, keeping her chin up as she walked over an uneven spot and the filth rose to her lower lilt. Bubbles broke on the