Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [8]
"I asked you a question," Bui's voice blared. More laughter, less restrained this time, chased the heels of the woman's taunt.
Studiously ignoring the provocation, Warian merely looked at Shem and Yasha, saying, "Let's finish this hand and call it. What do you say?"
Shem nodded, but Yasha the Weasel folded his cards and put them down.
"No," said Yasha. "Why don't you answer Bui's question first? I can't concentrate with her yelling." Yasha smiled a knowing smile.
Warian tensed. He had one chance to deflect the gathering attention onto Bui. If he could make her look a fool, perhaps the rest would just laugh her down.
"She's loud, isn't she?" Warian asked. "Not so loud as when she lost her stake to me a little while ago. But…"
"Hey!" boomed Bui, closer now. Too close.
"Guess she had enough copper wedges in her pockets to pickle herself in ale. By what I can smell," continued Warian, "she forgot how to find the outhouse to let it back out." While he spoke, he scooped his stake into an open pouch, wistfully eyeing the unclaimed pot. "She must be smelling herself."
A few patrons laughed… but not enough. Warian understood he'd miscalculated.
"Why, I'll…!"
The sound of something breaking heralded Bui's furious approach. That woman must have some orc blood in her, Warian mused ruefully. That, or she was a berserker from the north. Either way, time to run.
Warian put his cards down on the table, stood, and whirled. He'd left his sword up in his room, peace-tied in its sheath. It looked like he'd be kissing that, and whatever else he'd left up there, good-bye.
Rough hands grabbed him from behind before he could make good his escape. Yasha's voice purred in his ear. "Stand still, outlander. This'll go easier if you don't make a fuss." Yasha's laugh revealed his words for the lies they were.
Catcalls and more laughter answered from the room at large. Just over a dozen customers patronized the inn, none of whom seemed the least bit concerned about Warian's situation. That he'd failed to gauge the growing dislike for himself was a surprise. Warian fancied himself a skilled diviner of others' intentions-after all, he relied on the same skill to excel at his games.
Bui reached him, her face red with anger, and her right hand gripping a broken chair leg. Things had gone much further than they should have. Warian regretted his jibes all the more-they had spectacularly backfired.
"Bui, I'm prepared to return everything I won from you," stammered Warian, fear threatening to break his normally cool demeanor.
"Damn right you will… after I smash that glass arm into splinters!" Bui screamed in his face. She was drunk on beer and fury.
Reasonable talk died a whimpering death, a casualty of the dire situation. He shifted his weight and ground his heel on Yasha's toe, simultaneously shrugging his arms free of the man's ungentle grip.
Bui brought down the chair leg in a brutal snap.
Despite his arm's imperfect control and slow response to his desires, he managed to wrench his prosthesis up to block her blow. His artificial arm was crystal, far tougher than glass-Datharathi crystal, mined by his own family and enchanted to move almost like a regular arm. Datharathi crystal, so enchanted, was stronger than bone and sinew. The chair leg struck the translucent, violet-tinged crystal with a sick thud. The painful jolt traveled up Warian's crystalline arm into his living flesh.
His mind noticed a haze of darkness spiraling through the center of his artificial limb. He'd never seen that before…
One of Yasha's arms snaked from behind, encircling Warian's neck, the man's elbow crooked below Warian's chin. With the counter pressure applied from Yasha's other arm on the back of Warian's head, the supply of blood to his head was instantly restricted. Yasha was trying to choke Warian out. At the very moment Yasha began to exert pressure, Warian's eyes bulged, and his head felt as if it had swelled to half again its normal size in only two or three heartbeats. Black spots swam before him. The effect shocked