Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [58]
Off to one side. Mirt had just broken his chair over the disarmed swordsman, who was falling now in a strangely boneless, flopping way to the floor.
There was no foe left to smite. Shandril stood there, hands smoldering, facing a frightened innkeeper and two red-faced but rapidly paling cooks with cleavers and crossbows in their hands. Other patrons stood farther back, swords and daggers and eating-forks held outs, fear on their faces. Silence came again to the taproom of The Wanton Wyvern.
"No, lass," Mirt rapped out al her, pointing to where Narm lay on the table. The bloody dagger stood out of the young mage's side, just below his left shoulder. "Delg, take his feet, will ye? We've no time to lose!"
Delg got up. dripping his victim's gore and panting. "Anyone else hurt?"
Not pausing to answer, Mirt raised his voice in a bellow addressed to everyone in the taproom. "All of ye-stand aside! I've no quarrel with any of ye, but any who bar our way will end as these did, by Tempus! And any who raise blade against us will answer for it to King Azoun!"
In the shocked silence that followed, the frightened onlookers silently parted to make way for them, and Mirt hurried them out to the doors.
"Delg, scout!" he barked, and the dwarf lowered Narm s legs to the ground and hurried past them into the night outside. "Shandril," the stout merchant added, holding Narm by the shoulders, "take his feet, gently-but haste matters more than handling, now… Good, good… hurry, now…"
Delg was waving them on. They hurried out into the night and across the dark and muddy inn yard.
Narm's eyes were closed, and he was breathing raggedly, breath rasping and wet.
"Where are we going?" Narm asked. Mirt's shaggy, lionlike head was looking this way and that. "To the gate," he roared and trotted on. In a few jolting seconds they were there, and the old merchant thrust Narm into Delg's arms.
"Hold him," he panted, "and don't let him fall." And he whirled away from the staggering dwarf to attack the props and bars of the gate like alt angry bear, snatching and grunting and clawing.
Wooden spars bounced and crashed aside, and before they'd stopped bouncing, lie had the gate open.
Out into the road lie stumbled, looking this way and that – "Baergasra? There ye are! Quickly, we've need of thy healing." Mirt said in a voice halfway between a snarl and a sob. A breath later, the old derelict in tattered rags appeared out of the night, running hard. An astonished Shandril realized she was watching a healthy and fastmoving woman, not a drunken cripple. Mirt waved her in through the open gate and came after, straight to Narm. "Delg?" Mirt snapped. "All safe?"
"Looks clear," the dwarf replied grimly as he shifted Narm's limp body across his shoulders. Shandril had been holding her man's head tenderly, but site let go in haste as Mirt plucked him from Delg's shoulders and laid him against the base of the high fence. Then the Old Wolf snatched out his dagger.
By the glow from its blade, Shandril saw the stout, filthy beggar woman kneeling beside Narm. The knife stood out of Narm's narrow chest, just forward of the armpit.
Baergasra's grimy fingers plucked the blade deftly out, and Mirt's hand was there to press hard against the blood that followed. The woman waggled the bloody dagger so that its blade caught the light. She stared at it a moment, flung it aside, and spit after it.
Baergasra then laid her hands on Narm and murmured something. Her fingers glowed briefly. When the light died she slowly sat back, sighed, and rested her hands on her thighs. With careful fingers, Mirt began to unlace and draw off Narm’s robes.
The beggar woman helped him. Shandril could hear her talking to the old merchant now. "It went deep, indeed. but it carries only sleep venom, not the usual Zhentarim killing