There was silence for a moment. Then Egbert said, "Millicent? Millicent, dearest? Are you all right?"
"Go away," said Millicent shortly.
"We're busy right now," said Nick.
"What?" shouted Rutherford, voice quivering in rage. "I say, Millicent, this is quite out of the— Is that smoke, Egbert?"
Kraki sniffed at the air; there dad seem to be smoke. Something was burning. He couldn't see any flames, though. Well, of course he couldn't see any flames; he was blind. Rutherford had carried a lamp into the room, as well as a wand, hadn't he? Could it have set something on fire?
"Ouch!" said Nick suddenly. "What ... ?"
"Room on fire, Nickie," said Kraki. "Maybe ve leave, yah?"
"Hell of a time," complained Nick.
"Fire?" said Millicent in alarm. "Eeek!" There was the sound of rustling sheets, then the patter of feet, an annoyed "Ouch!", and the creak of a door.
"Wait!" Nick said—but the door slammed shut. Millicent had fled the room.
From the tree, Egbert and Rutherford argued about who should go to Millicent's rescue. Neither seemed particularly eager to brave licking flames and heavily muscled barbarians.
"Let's get out of here," Nick said.
"Tree or door?" asked Kraki.
"Tree," said Nick. "We've—"
"That is retreat," said Kraki with finality. "Retreat is covardice." He could hear Nick getting out of bed and moving toward the window.
"Don't be stupid, Kraki," Nick said.
"What wrong vith being stupid?" Kraki protested. "You civilized fellas too smart by half, you ask me."
Nick snorted. "Listen, Kraki. Hear that?"
From outside came howls.
"Yah," said Kraki. "So?"
"Hellhounds," said Nick.
"Yah," said Kraki, "sure."
"You're telling me it's cowardice to leap into the midst of ferocious, man-eating hellhounds, fell beasts of power able, so legend says, to spit flames at their foes? Sounds pretty damn heroic to me, actually."
"Oh!" said Kraki, in relief. "Yah. Good. Thank you, Nickie."
He ran for the windowsill and balanced briefly atop it ...
Then leaped blindly out into space, bellowing the name of his most illustrious ancestor.
A stairway led upward from the wine cellar, but Wolfe skirted it, heading instead for the back of the chamber. There another door stood, secured only by a bar on the inside. Wolfe laid aside the bar, doused her magical light, opened the door, and peered through it.
Beyond the door, a corridor led left and right; down to the left was a lamplit room. Not much of the room was visible from this vantage. Wolfe closed the door again and whispered to G, "Down the corridor. I'll be back in a minute."
G nodded in the darkness, trusting that Wolfe would see the gesture. Presently, she felt that Wolfe was gone-an absence of breathing, a sense of emptiness before her; with the door closed and the light gone, she could again see nothing.
An eternity passed. From outside the mansion came the sounds of furious barking, animal yowls, a shout or two. G began to itch; waiting in readiness was almost more tiring than action.
At last Wolfe was back. "There are only five," she said. "The rest must have gone upstairs to investigate. But they're alert and itchy."
G sighed. "Let's go," she said.
Wolfe guided her hand to the latch. G withdrew it, took her crossbow from her back, cranked it, and laid a quarrel in its groove. She tucked another quarrel under her left arm, holding the bow in her left hand. She reached out for the latch with her right hand, took hold of it, and said, "On the count of three. One, two, three."
She flung open the door and hurled herself down the corridor, grabbing the loose quarrel with her right hand. Behind her, Wolfe and Chad ran.
A helmeted man stood at the end of the corridor, half silhouetted in the light of the room. He heard running footsteps and turned toward G. "Hey," he began to say.
G brought up her crossbow. Running, one-handed, she squeezed the lever, snapping off a shot.
"Who-gluuch," said the man. The quarrel hit him square in the throat. He began to fall, hands going to the shaft.
G cranked the bow. By the time she reached the corridor entrance, she had laid the second quarrel in its groove.
Wolfe had sketched the room for G, back in the Albertine Lodge, the headquarters of the Ministry. She knew what to expect; in the northeast corner was a door, leading to stairs upward. Across the room was another open corridor, leading to the vault. One soldier stood at each, she saw. The other two sat at a table, but Wolfe had been right; they were alert. They wore chain mail, and each had a weapon within arm's reach.
Above the table was a bell. One of the seated soldiers, a woman who had unwisely removed her helmet, began to rise from her chair, reaching for the clapper.
G shot her. The quarrel struck just above the bridge of the nose. The woman tumbled over backward, knocking down a chair; G suspected the missile had failed to penetrate the nasal opening and that the woman was still alive, but she was down, at any rate, which would do for now. G dropped her bow.
Her left hand had by now drawn a throwing star. She hurled it, neither looking nor aiming, toward the soldier who guarded the opposite corridor. He was charging herwhile drawing his sword, which he had not yet brought into position; the star missed him, clanging against the stone wall, but he ducked, which threw him off stride and gave her a little more time.
Her right hand had drawn a throwing dagger by the blade. She held it by her right ear and took more than a second to brace herself and take careful aim. The second soldier at the table, a boy of scarcely sixteen, was reaching for the bell. G was impressed that so raw a lad could respond appropriately, so quickly, in a moment of mortal danger; he had potential. She therefore hurled her dagger into his gut—a painful wound that, with any luck, would put him out of action but which, if he got to a healer in time, would neither kill nor permanently cripple him.
The soldier from the corridor opposite had now reached G and was swinging his sword. She was out of position and could not respond quickly enough to block the blow; she had feared this might happen, but had felt that preventing an alarm was worth the risk. She ducked and reached up, to take the blow flat onto the ulna of her left arm—no major arteries there; it might break the bone but could not inflict life-threatening injury—while drawing a kukri with her right hand.
Wolfe dived around G and deflected the man's blow with her Epee. His saber passed over G's head, but hit Wolfe's lighter blade hard enough to snap it. Before he could regain control of his weapon, G had driven her kukri under his ribs and—the utility of a curved blade-upward through the rib cage and into his heart. She let go the kukri, letting it fall with her foe.
Crossing her hands over her abdomen, G grasped the hilts of both her swords—the one at her right in her left hand, the one at her left in her right-and drew them both with a flourish, turning toward the final soldier, the one by the door to the stair—
In time to watch the door slam behind him. Coward, she thought, instantly launching herself into a sprint toward the door.
"No, G!" shouted Wolfe.
Reluctantly, G halted and turned. "He'll give the alarm," she said.
"I'm not having you chasing him around the mansion," said Wolfe. "We'll stick together; we'll just have to work fast."
"Ook," said Chad a little sadly, surveying the gore. Was he saddened by so many deaths, G wondered, or because he'd arrived too late to join in the fun?
Wolfe hustled out of the room and down the corridor to the vault, Chad following. G checked the four bodies; the two older men were dead, the woman breathing but out. The boy was motionless, feigning unconsciousness, but by his tenseness obviously in pain and obviously alive.
G had a craftsman's sense of parsimony. She had no objection to killing in pursuit of her objectives, but had no desire to kill unnecessarily. She gave him a nicely calculated thump to the back of the skull, relieving
him of the need to maintain his charade.
Jasper was still pulling at his rings when he heard the boom of Timaeus's fireball. Instantly he realized that the others must be in trouble. The shouts, the baying hounds he had taken for the consequence of the alarm he had triggered, but the flash and boom of a fireball must mean the others had indeed followed.
It was a disaster, he realized; a disaster caused by his own impulsiveness. He felt hot with shame; he was supposed to be an old hand at this sort of thing, and here ...
Well. He gave up prying at his rings and flew toward the fireball's boom.
Timaeus and von Kremnitz, the latter carrying Sidney, walked across the lawn. From ahead, hounds still bayed;apparently, another group of the animals continued to harass someone else. Yes thought Timaeus; there they were, by that elm. He hadn't thought to maintain his spell, alas, and so began working on it once again. But just as he began, an owl swooped down and flitted around his head.
"Hoo! Hoo!" quoth the owl.
"Oh, dash it," grumbled Timaeus. "Scat, you-oh, Frer Mortise; I didn't recognize you at first. Good, that just leaves Kraki, Nick, and Jasp—"
"Hoo! Hoo!" said the owl urgently.
"And a hoo hoo to you, too," said Timaeus. "I don't suppose you've seen—"
Frer Mortise came to a landing on a branch of a nearby tree, resumed human form, and said, "The Graf von Grentz has rallied his soldiers, and is heading toward you. We—"
And there they came, at a run, the naked von Grentz in the lead. The red-robed magician lagged a little behind.
Timaeus instantly switched to a different spell, spitting the syllables of magic as fast as he was able. It was risky, spell-casting so fast; a stumble of the tongue and the spell could have unintended, possibly lethal effects. But they had little time before the soldiers closed.
Von Grentz halted below the elm where the hellhounds clustered. The red-robed woman joined him, with a gesture ordering the hellhounds to line up defensively, protecting them both. Von Grentz bawled orders; soldiers ran to encircle Timaeus and the others.
Von Grentz happened to glance upward into the branches of the elm. "Rutherford," he said in surprise. "What the devil are you doing up there?"
Rutherford? Timaeus wondered, even as he worked the spell. "Who was ... ? It hardly mattered; they were well and truly snared. There were too many soldiers, and they were too spread out; he could not get more than three with a single spell. And that other mage must have something up her sleeve. It all looked rather grim.
Frer Mortise had, discretion being the better part of valor, turned back into an owl. Sidney leaped from von Kremnitz's hands into an overhanging branch. Von Kremnitz, who had retrieved his sword after the fight with the hounds, drew it once more.
A ball of fire appeared in Timaeus's hands. He hurled it not at any of the soldiers, but directly toward von Grentz. Kill the leader and the followers would be more amenable; a reasonable theory, at any event.
A ball of flames tumbled through space, toward the elm. Von Grentz faced it expressionlessly. The soldiers threw themselves flat.
The ball of flames—
Fizzled.
Timaeus cursed; a ccunterspell. He should have anticipated that. Instead ...
The soldiers picked themselves up and closed. Timaeus and the others found themselves at the center of a ring of blades:
"You will surrender," said von Grentz, "or die."
"Surrender?" said von Kremnitz, smiling slightly. "I'm not familiar with the word, I'm afraid. You'll have to define your terms."
Von Grentz sighed. "If you give me your word that you will provide a full accounting of your actions and motives," he said, "I give you my word that I shall set you free."
"How much is your word worth?" von Kremnitz asked skeptically.
Von Grentz stiffened. He was not accustomed to having his honor questioned so directly. "Kill—" he began.
At that instant, someone above him screamed, "Gostorn Pie-Eater!"
Von Grentz looked upward.
Jasper came in sight of von Kremnitz and Timaeus. They were ringed by soldiers; a naked man and a redrobed woman, perhaps a mage, stood under an elm near the Drachehaus, beneath a window from which smoke poured. The man gave off an air of command.
As he feared. The idiots had got themselves captured.
What should he do?
Blindly, Kraki plunged through space, shouting his war cry. Well before he should have hit the ground, his left sandal hit something, sending Kraki sprawling ...
It was von Grentz. The sandal hit the nobleman full in the face, flipping him backward; his head hit a root of the elm with a crack.
Kraki hit the earth awkwardly. In an instant he was on his feet, flailing blindly about with his sword and bellowing, "Take that, foul vight!" Magistra Rottwald dodged out of range of the sword.
The blade bit into the elm. "Aha!" shouted Kraki, turning to face the tree. He began to chop at it, bellowing imprecations. Chunks of wood flew hither and yon.
Nick pulled himself more cautiously into the branches of the elm. Something twisted under his boot.
"I say," said Rutherford, "watch where you put your feet, lout."
"Sorry," Nick muttered. He tilted his head from side to side; his vision was returning, although he couldn't make out much just yet.
The soldiers stared at the body of their leader and the barbarian chipping at the tree. Von Kremnitz took advantage of their momentary confusion to slip under one man's blade and sink an épée into his stomach.
A naked woman dropped out of the elm and onto a third soldier's shoulders. As he crumpled, Sidney clouted him in the temple with her fist and grabbed his sword.
An owl raked at another soldier's eyes.
Timaeus began to chant a spell, well aware that one of these sword-wielders might gut him before he could finish. But the remaining soldiers were backing away, uncertain and confused. "The graf," one said, "he's down—"
"Feel the wrath of Kronar's son!" shouted Kraki to the elm, chopping away.
Rottwald snapped an order to her hounds. They turned and hurtled toward Timaeus and the others, snarling defiance.
This time, however, Timaeus had thought ahead. His spell would be too long delayed to do much to the soldiers surrounding him; either the others could deal with them, or they all would die. If the latter, no spell would help; if the former, the hellhounds would be the last remaining threat.
He shouted the last Words of his spell. "Bad dog!" he bellowed. "Down! Down! Sit!"
The charge of the hounds broke up in confusion. They halted, looking back and forth between Rottwald and Timaeus, whining. Rottwald was already chanting another spell, and while obviously unhappy with this turn of events, did not care to abandon it to impress her will on the hounds.
"Sit!" Timaeus shouted again, making a sitting motion with his hand. Reluctantly, the hounds complied.
Jasper saw Kraki plunge from the window and onto von Grentz; and instantly he realized what he must do. Quietly, he began the Words for a spell of his own.
The soldiers would be taken aback, a little afraid to see their leader fall; he could work on that fear.
With satisfaction, he saw von Kremnitz kill one, Sidney put another out of action. That would increase their tension. It was a trivial matter to turn tension into . . . terror.
The soldiers backed away, faced with an unexpected attack from those they had thought to be prisoners.
Jasper completed his spell.
They backed away—then turned and fled.
V
G gaped at the vault's protection.
The end of the corridor was filled by an enormous steel contraption. It had bars, wheels, levers, and gears, interlocking in a fashion that only a dwarven artificer might understand without prolonged study. The steel was highly polished, every element of thick, machined metal, the whole so evidently sturdy that it looked as if it could outlast the city. And the complexity of the mechanism was such that G doubted the cle
verest of locksmiths, the most experienced of thieves could undo it.
Moreover, the walls of the corridor bore a number of suspicious-looking depressions and vents. Wolfe stood before the mechanism, turning a wheel; G expected the vents to begin to spew poison gas, or bolts of flame, at any moment. It made G nervous; a living foe she might kill, but this thing was beyond her skills.
Wolfe gave the wheel a precise quarter turn, reached up and played a minuet on an array of levers, and turned three dials-one clockwise, two widdershins. G heard no sounds of tumblers clicking, no indication-save continued existence-that Wolfe had gotten the motions right.
One Quest, Hold the Dragons Page 29
