Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [73]
Things didn’t quite work out that way. The woman hit the floor first and kicked her feet up and out. Ebenezer felt the cavern shift weirdly, and his boots described a fast arc over his head. Over he went, flipping like an oat cake on a griddle. He soared over the woman and landed hard on his backside.
Quick hands swept his beard up past his face, crossed, then pulled back down. Before his head crashed to the stone, Ebenezer felt a quick, strangling tug. Disbelief coursed through him, along with a fresh wave of anger. The woman had the stones to try to strangle him with his own beard!
Ebenezer struggled to his feet, dragging the stubborn woman up with him. He twisted this way and that, but she clung to him like a burr on a mule and only tightened her grip. His lungs began to burn, and his vision turned dark around the edges. The pounding of his own heart grew until the roaring in his ears thundered and rolled like the dingblasted sea.
This was not the sort of death that would earn him a place in the hall of heroes. Determined not be brought down in this ignominious fashion, Ebenezer staggered over to the cavern wall. If he could get there before he fell, if he could slam her up against the stone a few times, maybe he could break her grip.
He was almost there when her stranglehold suddenly loosened and her weight slid down his back. Ebenezer dragged in a ragged breath and dug his fingers beneath the suddenly slack strands of his beard. He started to pull, but stopped suddenly when he saw what she had seen.
“Stones,” he muttered in a voice raw from near strangulation.
* * * * *
The conquest of Thornhold was complete. Dag Zoreth walked through the fortress reviewing the work his men had made of the job.
They had certainly been thorough. Only a few of the servants remained alive. The man who kept and butchered the pigs and chickens, for instance, the brewer, a few of the kitchen staff. Most of the fortress’s inhabitants had been too infected by the paladins whom they had served and were even now turning to ash on the massive bier.
Smoke rose in dark, fetid clouds from beyond the fortress walls. The slain paladins and their followers had been tossed onto a burning pile of driftwood and old straw. Such fuel did not produce the hottest fire, but Dag’s new castellan-a thin, dark man who would have been handsome but for the livid brand on one cheek-was a practical steward and manager, and he decreed that Thornhold’s supply of firewood and timber was too dear to waste on such matters. Dag had been content to yield the decision to the castellan; after all, the man had ably managed the estates of an Amnian nobleman, until the discovery of his dalliance with the man’s wife had led to his discharge and disfigurement. Dag cared nothing about a man’s habits, and the castellan’s advice seemed sound enough. And if the paladins did not burn completely, what of it? Did not the ravens and wild beasts of the Sword Coast need to eat?
The celebration inside the fortress that night was raucous and long. The soldiers raided the cellars and brought casks of ale and wine up to the keep’s dining hall. Several of the slaughtered animals, along with leeks and root vegetables from the cellar, went into a huge pot for stew. The men feasted and drank and sang and boasted until the moon had set, and stayed doggedly at it until most of them were snoring at the table with their faces pillowed in their gravy-soaked trenchers.
Dag held himself apart from this, watching and waiting quietly until he was certain he would have the privacy he needed. There was one more thing he must do, the one final thing that would make the victory truly his.
When the night sky had faded from obsidian to sapphire, when dawn was not long in coming and the fortress silent but for a few drunken snores, Dag walked