"Well met, Margrueth," Sylune said, eyes dancing in welcome. The old woman looked her up and down.
"Got yerself a new body, have you? Hmmph. No one offers me a new body to replace this old, aching barrel! I could get used to yours, really I could. Silver hair and all."
"You wouldn't want to go through what I have," Sylune told her softly. "Really, you wouldn't."
"Gods, girl-I know that!" Margrueth told her. "I'm old and ugly, not witless! Just envious, that's all."
"If you're a sorceress," Torm asked her curiously, "why don't you choose any looks you want?"
Margrueth glared at him sourly. "That would work for snaring a man for a night of pleasure-if, like some folk here, stolen nights of pleasure were what I wanted!"
She let the rebuke hang in the air between them, but Torm merely shrugged, so the old Harper went on. "Sooner or later, though-with my luck, sooner-the one I was with'd see the real me. I'd not hide it, mind; the real me is the one I'm proud of. Some of us value honesty over deceit."
"Some of us must be fools," Torm returned sharply, causing Rathan to chuckle as he slowed his horse to join the group of riders.
"Fool I may be," Margrueth told him, "but I could be in worse straits than this!" She gestured at her nose, and swept her hand down at her fat, shapeless body.
"How?" Torm asked, falling into the trap.
"I could have your looks," she told him sweetly, and turned away. Then she turned back again. "It did get caught in that door, didn't it?"
There was a general hoot of laughter, and Torm snarled and urged his mount forward-only to find that the stout old woman flashed through the air to block his way once more.
"I stopped you for a reason, Lord Torm," she told him severely. "Beyond this point our traps start, and the road ceases to be safe-even for thieves with clever tongues and more luck than Tymora gives anyone! Yonder is Swords Creek."
Torm looked at the little rivulet meandering its muddy way across the fields, and asked curiously, "Why Swords Creek for our stand? Is it just a place easily found among all these fields?"
"Mistledale tradition," the captain of the Riders said from behind him. She brought her horse to a halt in a wild thudding of hooves. "On these banks many battles were fought of old."
"And we Harpers've been here since yestereve, preparing it for one more," Margrueth added. "Water spells to make the ground sodden and turn wet spots into bogs to break Zhent cavalry charges, wild magic areas there and there-no, Torm, you can't see them-for the foe to halt in, and suchlike."
" 'We Harpers'?" Torm asked. "Aside from you, I can see only two men."
"Ah, that's because they're not done yet," the old woman told him. "The others're in hiding already."
"Hiding? Where?" Torm asked, looking around at apparently empty fields. "Are they all mages using invisibility?"
"No. Not one," she replied with a smile.
Torm shook his head. "There's not a man alive who could hide under my nose between here and that creek."
As the words left his lips, the thief felt a solid tap on his left boot-and his war horse reared again. Cursing, Torm wrestled to keep it from leaping forward; he was struggling to head the snorting beast around, away from the creek, when Captain Nelyssa's strong arm caught hold of the bridle. The paladin pulled and whistled, and Term's mount quieted immediately-allowing the thief to cleverly fall off.
As he bounced on his belly in the dust, Torm found himself staring eyeball to eyeball with the grinning cause of his upset: a dust-covered man buried neck-deep in the earth, who held a sword, hilt uppermost, in one hand. It must have been what had tapped his boot. In his other gauntleted hand, the man held a shield that had been so thickly covered with turf and grass that it had served to entirely conceal the hole he was crouching in.
"Ye gods!" Torm gasped.
"No, even being one god'd be a promotion, I think," the Harper replied cheerfully. "Fine morning to be out on the grass,'taint it, Lord?"
The riders all around them roared with laughter at Torm's expression-until the thief buried his nose in the grass and laughed along with them. He nodded to the Harper, rolled to a sitting position, and squinted up at Margrueth. "Right, then, I'll grant you the victory. So tell me how many more of these little holes have you scattered around Mistledale?"
Margrueth shook her head soberly. "That, I'll tell no one. Spying spells that listen to speech from afar aren't easily blocked out in the open."
Her words made them all look around-but aside from the two Harpers in the distance and Florin arriving with the Rider rearguard (one of them looking decidedly green), they could see no man or beast.
"But there's no one!" Torm said, waving a hand.
Margrueth shrugged. "There could be a small army of those mages using invisibility, young man. Think before you speak, and you'll not feel so often chastened."
Torm gave her a dark look, and then shook his head and grinned. "I begin to wish I'd had you as my mother."
"So do I, lad," Margrueth replied, "So do I. Your backside would've seen a lot more heat, and valuables belonging to others and good-looking ladies a lot less, in the years since."
"Hmmm," Torm replied with rueful eloquence, and there was more laughter.
"Oh, bloody bats! It's gone wrong again-and they're all laughing!"
"Not at ye," the older man said, watching the young man fling down the tangled trip wire in fury, his fingers trembling in agitated excitement. "Easy, lad," the gray-haired Harper ranger added. "Time for all that falling and dancing about an' all later-when ye've a sword in yer hand an' several hundred Zhents taking their turn at ye."
"How can you be so calm about it?" his younger companion protested. "We're going to die!"
Level brown eyes stared into his. "Aye, so? We all have to, lad, but there's nothing as says we have to behave like craven cattle first." The old man deftly disentangled the thread and held it out. "An' another thing," he continued, "I've been in about forty o' these little affrays before, an' them as came to kill me haven't quite managed the job yet. It might well take 'em as many tries afore they get ye, too! I've seen it all before, lad… take heart, and be easy, I say."
The young man stared into those level brown eyes, took a deep breath, and then bent and tied the trip wire-quickly and surely. Then he stepped back with a flourish, smiled tightly at the gray-haired Harper, and said, "Done. I hope you remember where our hide is."
"Here, under my boot," the older man said with a smile. "Another trick you'd do well to remember."
"Bloody bats to you, too," the younger Harper said almost affectionately, scrambling down into the pit they'd dug. The old man followed, waving to Margrueth as he reached for the turf-covered shield that would hide them from the world.
But Margrueth wasn't looking at him. She was looking up, frowning at a raven circling in the bright morning sky high above. She said something to Sylune, who lifted one shapely arm to hurl magic up into the sky-a spell that was never cast.
The raven came out of its lazy circle like an arrow, streaking south and east. But from the blue emptiness high above came another bird, a steel-gray falcon with talons outstretched. It struck like a hammer, and then flapped up and away in triumph amid a cloud of black feathers. For just a moment, the watchers below caught a glimpse of silver hair and tattered black robes, and then the slayer was a falcon once more.
Even as Torm gasped, "The Simbul!" the falcon's kill fell to earth, twisting and growing as it plummeted.
It was the broken body of a black-robed human wizard that crashed into one muddy bank of Swords Creek. The mage flopped bonelessly once, and then lay sprawled and still. One Zhentarim would never spy on Mistledale again.