The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [57]
"So was that good… or bad?" he asked the gloom in bewilderment. "Oh, where are the priests when I need them?"
"Whoah!" Tabarast cried. " Woaaaaah…" His cry ended in a thump as his behind met the road hard, hurling dust in all directions. The mule came to a stop a pace farther on, gave him a reproachful look, and then stood waiting with a mournful air.
Beldrune sniggered as he overtook his winded colleague, urging it on with a small, feather-plumed whip, his splendid boots outthrust like tusks on either side of his mule. "You seem quite fond of fertile Faerun beneath us this day, friend Baerast!" he observed jovially…an instant before his mule came to an abrupt stop beside the one Tabarast had lately been riding.
Overbalanced, Beldrune toppled helplessly over his mount's head with a startled yell, somersaulting onto the road with an impressive crash that made Tabarast wince, then sputter with repressed mirth as the two mules exchanged glances, seemed to come to some sort of agreement, and with one accord stepped forward, trampling the groaning Beldrune under hoof.
His groans turned to yells of rage and pain, and he flailed wildly with his arms until he was free of unwashed mule bodies and mud-caked mule hooves. "A rescue!" he cried. "For the love of Mystra, a rescue!"
"Get up," Tabarast said grimly, pulling at his hair. "This Chosen must be half the way to wherever he's going by now, and we can't even stay in the saddles of two smallish mules, by the Wand! Get up, Droon!"
"Arrrghr Beldrune yelled. "Let go of my hair!"
Tabarast did as he was bidden…and Beldrune's head fell back onto the road with a thump that sounded like a smaller echo of the one Tabarast had made earlier. The younger mage launched into a long and incoherent curse, but Tabarast ignored him, limping ahead to catch the bridles of their mules before the beasts got over the next rise in the road, and clean away.
"I've brought back your mule," he said to the still-snarling body on its back in the road. "I suggest we walk beside them for a time… we both seem to be a little out of practice at riding."
"If you mean we've been falling off all too often," Beldrune snarled, "then we are out of practice…but we won't get back in practice unless we mount up and ride!"
Suiting the action to the words, he hauled himself into the saddle of Tabarast's mule, hoping the change of mount would improve his ride a trifle.
The mule swiveled one eye to take in Tabarast standing beside it and someone else loudly occupying its back and didn't budge.
Beldrune yelled at it and hauled on the reins as if he was dragging in a monstrous fish. The mule's head was jerked up and back, but it started trying to twist the reins out of Beldrune's grasp, or draw them into its mouth by repeated chomping, rather than move even a single step forward.
Beldrune drew back his heels, wishing he was wearing spurs, and kicked the beast's flanks as hard as he could. Nothing happened, so he kicked again.
The mule shot forward, leaping up into the air and twisting as it did so.
Beldrune went over backward with what might have been a despairing sob, landed hard on one shoulder, and rolled helplessly back down the road. His splendid doublet was rapidly becoming a dung-stained rag as he tumbled along an impressive length of road before negotiating contact…a solid, leaf-shaking collision, to be precise…with one of a pair of duskwood trees by the roadside.
Tabarast snatched at the reins of the growling mule…until now, he hadn't known mules could growl-made sure he still had hold of the other mule's bridle, and looked back down the road. "Finished playing at bold knights on horseback?" he snapped. "We're on important mission, remember?"
An upside-down Beldrune, who'd been staring at I. booted feet a good way up the tree, above him, looked back at his colleague groggily for a moment, then slowly unfolded himself back into the road. When he was upright again, he raked showers of dust from his hair with one hand