They were spurring their mounts, all right. Hrast them.
Well, wondergods, what the Hells good was a password, if-oh, tluin!
Across the road right ahead, as he came around a tight bend, were a dozen or so riders, all in a clump, riding together. Liveried men-at-arms, a banner, overdressed highnose in the center of it all … a noble, with a retinue. Filling the road, and not giving way.
Mirt stood up and bellowed curses at them, waving his whip around and around above his head and making it clear he wasn’t going to swerve or slow.
Now they were yielding way, the dolts, but-
No! The lordling was pointing at the coach, and yelling in anger. Now he was shouting orders, and hrast it if they weren’t obeying like trained cavalry, swiftly forming a curve …
If Mirt veered so as not to plow into them, their configuration would squeeze him by narrowing the clear road ahead, forcing him at a gentle angle off the road into an overturning crash in the ditch … or to a stop, to face their blades and disputations.
With a sigh, Mirt hauled hard on the reins, and started making the whistlings and chirrupings that all horses in Cormyr seemed to know meant, “Stop. Now.”
Dust flew, the coach groaned and bounced and landed with a crash and bounced again, reins flew amid rearings and loud, complaining neighings … and the snorting, blowing horses finally brought the shuddering conveyance to a halt. With the traveling lord and his armsmen ranged alongside it and in front of it, just as the farruking highnose had intended.
“Get out of the road!” Mirt roared at him. “I’m on urgent Crown business!”
“In Lady Dawningdown’s coach?” the noble shouted back. “I very much doubt it, thief!”
He spurred his horse forward, to come up right beside Mirt. “Get down from there, or I’ll have my men drag you down!”
“Get out of the way!” Mirt snarled, “or the king’ll have yer guts for his next garderobe seat!”
Those words seemed to ignite the noble to screaming fury. He erupted in an inarticulate series of shrieks, that soon became a gabble of, “I care naught for the king!” and “How dare you speak thus, to your better!” and “I’ll have your tongue out by the roots for such rudeness, sirrah!” and other things Mirt didn’t wait to hear.
Right out of patience, he unhooked the unlit but full coachlamp from its bracket beside him, and emptied it down into the noble’s shouting and oh-so-handy face, wishing he had flint and steel handy, or a ready flame.
To the accompaniment of highborn retching and choking sounds, he tried to get the coach moving again, but several armsmen had firm hold of the beasts’ bridles and the harness, so with an exasperated growl Mirt swung himself down over the front of the coach, lurched along the trail and then into the saddles of his poor horses-and launched himself from standing on the foremost saddle right into the armsman holding that lead horse.
The crash was satisfactorily bone jarring, and the armsman he’d landed on swayed in his own saddle, dazed and winded. The arms-man’s horse reared.
Then everyone was shouting, and horses were plunging and rearing everywhere. Those fools of Purple Dragons had ridden headlong into the stopped coach and the noble’s men. In the heart of all the tumult and shouting, Mirt kept hold of the neck of the arms-man’s horse, kicked the man out of the saddle, fell back heavily into that vacated seat-and managed his loudest shout of the day, right into the horse’s ear.
It reared again, bucked in the air, and came down running hard, on along the open road to Suzail, thank all the gods, with Mirt clinging grimly to the saddle.
As the horse gathered speed in a lengthening gallop, he crouched low and murmured encouragement to it. Looking back, he could see some of the noble’s armsmen and a few Purple Dragons belatedly beginning to pursue him.
Well, guts and garters, this just got better and better …
It was almost too easy.
Half a dozen eyeball beholderkin, unleashed to drift around young Ondrath Everwood, snared his attention long enough for him to curse, snatch out a wand to deal with them-and mumble a few frantic unheard words into the cloth Manshoon had slipped over his face from behind, before he went limp.
The cloth was soaked with tincture of thardflower; the nigh-instant senselessness it brought on wouldn’t last long, but then, Manshoon didn’t need it to.
He calmly teleported them both back to Sraunter’s cellar, where he bound the young war wizard into a chair. The alchemist didn’t have much call for cord, but the eyestalks of his death tyrants, and the long tentacles he’d augmented some of them with, would suffice. Besides, the fearsome decaying creatures looming silently above his captive would probably have a salutary effect on Everwood’s powers of agreement. As in: to anything, hastily.
Those augmentations were going to be very useful in the near future, when he needed loyal courtiers around him. Not this rabble of double-dealing, self-interested slyjaws and malingerers that currently afflicted the palace. Yes, augmentations. Spending all that time farscrying those deluded cultists in the sewers of Waterdeep had been wearying indeed-but in the end, time not entirely wasted.
Manshoon amused himself by magically purloining a grand meal from the tables and kitchens of a club on the Promenade, complete with wine, while he waited for the young man to revive.
Ondrath Everwood was going to trace the Unseen Slayer.
And then enter Manshoon’s service, either willingly-or as Manshoon’s new host body. It was time for Sraunter to once more become Sraunter. The soon-to-be emperor of Cormyr was becoming more than a little tired of dispensing little vials of lust dust to Suzailans hungry for a night’s conquest, or wrinkled wives desperate to reclaim the affectionate attentions of their husbands.
A desolate Duth Gulkanun was on his knees in the spreading blood. The heap of sliced and diced meat in front of him was scarcely recognizable as his friend and colleague-but he’d watched Longclaws being murdered, right … hrast it … here. There in the gore, close enough to touch, some sucker-tentacle-things moved, one last time, turning … back into human fingers.
“No,” he muttered, his lips trembling. “No, Imbrult. No.”
Rune put a comforting hand on his shoulder. As if that had been a signal he’d been waiting for, the kneeling wizard burst into tears.
“El,” Arclath murmured, as they stood over him, “what do we do now?”
The dark elf’s eyes glittered with anger. She pointed at the two halves of the dead man who’d come rushing out at them. “That was a war wizard. See the ring, the robes? Which means there was at least one person-him-hiding in Irlingstar. Our Unseen Slayer might be another. It’s high time to really search this place, from top to bottom, accounting for everyone.”
“And then?”
“And then we’ll go into every last mind, until we find the killer.”
“You shall be avenged,” Gulkanun told the remains of his friend fiercely. He got up slowly, and turned to Elminster. “You were talking of a search?”
“Aye,” the drow told him. “Let it begin.”
“Let it begin,” Gulkanun echoed grimly, and they set off to scour out Irlingstar.
It had been easy, after all.
Ondrath Everwood was busily and painstakingly farscrying Irlingstar. Which meant it was time to take care of a certain loose end by the name of Malver Tulbard.
Manshoon went to his scrying spheres. The duties of Wizard of War Malver Tulbard included random inspections of certain Suzailan shops-including that of the alchemist Sraunter. Foiling him was easy enough, but an incipient emperor was apt to be very busy for the next little while, and it would be unfortunate if the man came blundering in and found Everwood, or discovered the death tyrants. So it was time to take care of thorough, diligent Malver Tulbard. Permanently.