The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [102]
"Somehow," Embra shouted, slashing fire across another grimacing face and following it with a crack of the table leg across a nose, "I don't think this venture's going quite as these reavers had planned! Any chance of keeping one of them alive for me to use a little prying magic on as to who sent them, and why?"
"A swift question, lass," Hawkril growled, wincing back from a sword-cut that left a ribbon of crimson across his breast, "but it may take us a little time to win an answer."
A bladesman drove his sword into the upturned face of a guard trying to clamber up the outside of the stair-rail, and the man's shriek turned into a bubbling fall down into the gathering crowd below.
"I'll get to work on it," the armaragor added gravely, driving his fist into a bladesman's face and then slashing the man's gauntlet right off his sword-hand while the man reeled. "In the meantime, may I tell you what an idiot you are for charging into a fray dressed-ah-as you are?"
"No," Embra replied sweetly, catching hold of the stair-rail and swinging herself out of the way of a vicious swordcut.
"Ah," Hawkril rumbled, kicking Embra's attacker in the chest, "I see. Well enough, then. I'll say no more on this trifling matter."
Doors banged open up and down the upper passage, lamps flickering in hands and bleary-eyed people fumbling with clothes and weapons. Feet pounded, blades flashed as men shouted at each other, and the Flagon seemed to be full of milling, frightened folk.
"Stand back, you!"
"What's going on?"
"Take that, outlaw! Taste my steel!"
"Ahhh! A rescue! A res-urrghkhh!"
"Have a care, you! Back, I say! I'm a friend to Baron Brostos!"
"Really? Yet I see him not! Die, reaving bastard!"
Swords rang here and there in the gloom and confusion, and running, shouting folk tripped over more than one sprawled body in the darkness. More doors banged open.
"What's going on?" someone shouted, peering into the tumult. "Is there a fire?"
"Fire!" someone else bellowed, mishearing the bellowed query. "Fire!"
Others took up the cry, and more guests who'd kept behind their barred doors snatched up lamps and weapons and pounded out into the passages. "Fire! Get out! Get out?"
Everyone seemed to be running now, wild battles erupting here and there as men with drawn swords jostled or collided-and started hacking.
"Out of my way, murderous dog! Out of my-uhh-way!"
A body slumped heavily to the floor, and the man who'd sent it there clattered thankfully down the stairs. He had to get out before the smoke started, and get his precious Lighthooves out of the stables! He had to-
Someone opened a door and he crashed hard into it, clawed at the air blindly, blade spinning away, and slid down it, everything dimming into slumber. Six men or more trampled the body before it stopped moving.
"Stop!" a guard bellowed. "All of you-halt! I comm-"
As the guard sprinted down the passage to get to where three men were frantically hacking apart a window, a small woman shuffled out of her room in her shift. She saw his sword sweep up, glittering in the light of someone's lamp, and swung her only weapon, hard.
The chamberpot broke across the running guardsman's face, shattering into a thousand shards. He took another three staggering steps before felling on his face, and his senseless form slid on-taking the bowed legs out from under a sleepily squinting merchant in a nightshirt. Together the guard and the merchant bumped and crashed noisily down the back stairs.
The woman screamed. An older, far more deaf woman stuck her wrinkled face out the door of the next room and inquired of the world, "Is it always like this in backland inns? Or is there a revel going on?"
Even the candle-lanterns hanging from the ceiling were swinging crazily now, as the stairwell erupted into a veritable flood of shouting, sword-waving men. From every passage, above and below, sleepy folk were converging-and not least among them was the mistress of the Flagon.
Margathe glared around the room, got one look at the sorceress on the stair stabbing at men with fire and