Shadows of Doom - Ed Greenwood [62]
"After him!" Itharr yelled excitedly. The old man shook his head as the two Harpers rushed off, muttering, "I'm young enough to fight but too old for a lot of charging about," as he retrieved his axe. Going from one darkness-shrouded form to another, he let his axe fall where their heads must be. Then he walked up to the writhing man with the crossbow, shook him, and growled, "How many guards are there here?"
"I-I daren't tell-" the wounded man began. The innkeeper punched his injured shoulder firmly, and when he repeated the question, the shrieking Zhentilar found sudden courage to dare an answer.
"Ondarr! Ondarr! We're being attacked!" the fleeing jailer shouted as he pounded down the passage. Belkram and Itharr sprinted after him in the dimness, bouncing painfully off the corners of stacked crates and the projecting ends of barrow handles. "Ondarr!"
They were running into the heart of the mill, where rumbling wheels ground endlessly. Passing through a succession of crowded chambers, they abruptly came out into a lamplit room where a sleepy-looking Wolf in chain mail was rising from a couch as darkness frantically tugged at his arm.
The Wolf's eyes widened as he saw the two Harpers bearing down on him. "Ondarr, I presume?" Belkram asked pleasantly. The Wolf got his blade out just in time to parry Belkram's thrust, leaving his left arm raised and underarm exposed to Itharr's blade.
Itharr of Athkatla ended his charge in a leap that brought him onto the bed, feet up. His blade burst through the Wolf's shoulder an instant before his feet slammed the man against the back of the couch, which broke off with a splintering crash, twisting the unfortunate Zhentilar onto the floor with Itharr atop him. The Harper's dagger made short work of the guard, and Itharr looked up to see Belkram slamming the last darkness-shrouded jailer against a pillar. The man collapsed, and Belkram thrust his hands into the blackness, groping.
"Lost something?" Itharr asked lightly. "Or is this some new thrill?"
Belkram made a face at him. "I'm looking for keys, Great One. If the high constable's here, he must be in some sort of cell-"
"Or right there," Itharr said, pointing. Belkram looked up and stared. The great wheels had ground to a halt because the man chained to the lever that drove them had stopped walking and was standing glaring at them with eyes that shone in the dimness like two flames.
"Irreph Mulmar?" Itharr asked.
"Aye," the man snarled, bunching his chains with a menacing rattle. "Who are you?"
"Harpers," Itharr said simply. "Itharr, once of Athkatla, and this is my blade-brother Belkram, from Baldur's Gate. We mean to drive the Zhents from your dale."
"But first," Belkram said, rising from the unseen body, "we have to find the keys to your shackles."
"Don't bother," the naked man in the chains said in a deep voice. "Just thrust yon spike into the spindle stop over there."
Itharr did as the man directed, and with a rattle of chains the man shoved at the lever. It shuddered but did not move. The man nodded in satisfaction, ducked under the lever-a wooden bar as thick as his arm, worn smooth by the hours his hands had grasped it-and braced himself against it, shoving in the opposite direction from the way he'd been pushing it for so long.
The lever groaned, and the man pitted against it snarled, veins standing out like ropes on his neck. His body quivering like a bent bow, he took a slow, deliberate step forward-and the great lever groaned and shivered and… broke.
And Irreph Mulmar, former high constable of the High Dale, stood tall amid the wreckage, tearing his shackles loose from the splintered wood, and