Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [99]
“Y-yes,” he stammered. “He’s the one in the jerkin with the horned shoulders and black musterdelvys with white luster-stars all down it. Fair hair, green eyes, sharpish nose. H-has at least six bodyguards with him.”
Those fierce smiles never wavered. “Good,” the taller man wreathed in blue flames rumbled. “I’ve never liked bodyguards.”
“There—,” Belgryn started to blurt then fell silent.
“Yes?” the shorter burning man asked silkily.
“There … there are a lot of other nobles in there, saers, and all of them have bodyguards.”
“Thy concern,” the taller man told Belgryn, “is touching. Live, then, man.”
He clapped Belgryn on the shoulder—a light, brief touch that scorched nothing but left the wine merchant chilled to the bone and shivering uncontrollably—and strode past into the Bold Archer.
The other man in flames waved to Belgryn and hastened into the club on the heels of his blazing companion.
Belgryn knew he should run away, far and fast. When he could master his trembling enough to keep his feet, he dashed as far as the other side of the street, where his reeling made him bounce hard off the wall of a shuttered-for-the-night bakery. Panting, he turned as something made him stop and turn to look back at the Archer.
Faint shouts came through the club’s doors—an inner and an outer pair, of heavy, copper-sheathed duskwood—followed by the unmistakable ring of steel, of swords crossed in anger. There came a scream, some crashes, and more clangs of clashing blades.
Then the doors banged open and richly dressed men were streaming out, white-faced and frantic, clawing at each other to find freedom enough to flee into the night. The tall, blue-flame-shrouded warrior came bounding along in their wake, lunging and slashing. Men were screaming and choking and falling on their faces as he killed them, never slowing as he raced on down the street after some of those who’d fled, as fast as a storm wind, catching men up and butchering them viciously, all the way.
By then, Belgryn Murenstur was almost too busy spewing out everything he’d downed earlier in the evening all over the nearest wall to see the sea of blood and heaped bodies that was briefly visible through the doors of the Archer, ere they swung closed again.
Almost.
Arclath and Amarune stared rather wearily at each other across the table. Around them, Tress was bustling about, firmly directing her staff in the ongoing cleanup of the Dragonriders’ Club, which by Dragons’ orders was shuttered for the rest of the night. Someone had found Amarune’s robe for her and someone else’s slippers to go with it.
Various Purple Dragons and war wizards—they’d lost track of exactly how many but retained the impression that “various” was a rather large number—had asked Arclath and Amarune many, many questions about the events of the evening and their previous experiences, if any, involving the younger Lords Windstag, Dawntard, and Sornstern. From time to time, the lord and the dancer had been separated, so their stories could be compared—and, it seemed, had matched. Those questions had all been fairly friendly and civil … but there had been a lot of them. Not to mention more than a few spells gravely cast their way, and carefully expressionless men eyeing them thoughtfully.
Wherefore the decanter that Tress had wordlessly deposited on the table between them was deeply appreciated.
In silence they’d begun to pass it back and forth across the table, taking turns to sip, and murmuring questions of their own.
Not the probing sorts of queries they’d just finished—at least, they fervently hoped they were finished—answering, but the short, simple exchanges of two people getting to know each other better.
A guarded trust, of a sort, was slowly growing between them, because they’d been through danger together and had stood up for each other … and because, it seemed, they genuinely liked each other.
“Noble lord,” Amarune murmured, “I need an ally. Not a lover. A friend.”
“I, too, have need of one of those,” the elegant lordling told her, his gaze