The two serpentine plumes of smoke seem to regard each other for a long moment, as if in converse-and then, as one, they turned and raced through the doorway, to arrow up the cellar stairs together.
With a ragged roar, the surviving Zhentilar charged after them.
As the last Zhentilar warrior-there were a dozen left, no more-pounded back up the cellar stairs, Pennae rose from among the old barrels and crates, darted along the wall, and slipped through the doorway, keeping low and moving fast.
Despite knowing what she’d find, the Zhent bodies were piled and strewn in such profusion that she almost overbalanced skidding to an abrupt halt. Beyond the heaped corpses the Dragonfire treasure glowed in unaltered splendor.
Pennae gave it a wry smile. Deceptive and deadly, like so much else in Faerun.
Then she picked her way carefully past all the dead men, keeping to the walls and wending her way as quietly as possible, until she could round the far end of the treasure and see A sword, leaping at her face!
“Hold hard, there!” she hissed, springing back.
Islif gave her a level look from the other end of the sword. “Next time, warn me. We still have ears, you know.”
“Yes,” Pennae hissed, “but we’re not the only ones still alive down here, even now! That cursed ornrion from Arabel is here! Alone, I think.”
“Spew of the gods!” Florin growled. “He does love us, doesn’t he?”
Pennae nodded sourly, and then peered more closely at all of the Knights. “Will our holynoses live, d’you think?”
Islif shrugged. “If we could reach our healing potions, I’d feel a lot happier answering that.”
Pennae regarded her fellow Knight expressionlessly for a moment, and then tugged open her leathers to reveal her dethma of soft, well-worn leather. Her fingers sought something beneath the swell of her breasts, and tugged it forth: a gleaming steel vial, cork-stoppered and wax-sealed, with the shining sun symbol graven on it. One of the healing potions they’d gained from Whisper’s hoard. She held it out to Islif.
Who frowned. “Where did you…?”
“ I don’t go into battle without essentials,” Pennae murmured.
Islif regarded her for a moment in silence, and then said, “Thank you.”
Pennae shrugged. Then she looked along at the Knights again, nodded slowly, and asked, “Florin? If Jhess and Islif are enough to tend and guard the stricken, care to join me in trying to find a way up out of these cellars?”
Florin looked at Jhessail, and then at Islif, collected two slow nods, and said, “Yes.” He hefted his sword. “I take it things have quieted down out there, in the rest of the cellars?”
Pennae grinned mirthlessly. “You could say that.”
In the seemingly deserted common room of the Oldcoats Inn, Old Ghost and Horaundoon floated lazily in the shadows of the rail at the top of the cellar stairs, waiting for their next prey.
Not that they had long to tarry idle. Eleven wild-eyed Zhentilar warriors charged up the stairs, waving swords and axes and thinking of nothing more than getting away from whatever strangeness had just slain so many of their fellows-and three rather capable Zhentarim wizards to boot.
Old Ghost and Horaundoon slid into the foremost pair of Zhents as they gained the top step, made them smile at each other in grim satisfaction, and then compelled them to turn and strike at their fellows.
Amid shouts of fear and anger, battle broke out on the stairs. Zhentilar frantically hewed fellow Zhentilar, to avoid being penned into the cellars, and Old Ghost and Horaundoon darted into one warrior after another whenever anyone shouted for calm and “down swords!” Three Zhents died before the fray boiled up into the common room and across it, chairs and tables suffering greatly.
In the midst of all the shouting, screaming, and clashings of steel on steel, Ondal Maelrin and one of his maids came dashing down the stairs from the floors above, their arms full of steel vials, and raced across the common room, dodging furiously fighting Zhentilar.
“Our potions!” Pennae hissed, from her cautious vantage point partway up the cellar stair. “That thieving boar-pizzle of an innkeeper is stealing our potions!” She sprang up the stair, drawing her sword to keep company with the dagger in her other hand. Florin frowned, flourished his own sword, and charged up the steps after her.
Pennae went around and-with the aid of a handy table and a deft leap-over the black-armored Zhentilar, but Florin found himself under attack almost immediately. He struck his attacker’s blade aside, kicked an inn chair up into the man’s face, followed it with a hard punch to the cods that drove all the breath out of the man and lifted him back to a hard seat-first arrival on an inn table, and then struck the man’s neck with a deft backslash. Then he was past, outrunning another Zhentilar to follow Pennae through a doorway on the far side of the common room into a room hung with tapestries, that held the shimmering blue fire of a magical portal.
In front of which the hastening innkeeper and maid had just come to an abrupt halt because someone was stepping through it, toward them.
Someone female, wounded, and alone, whose limp was unfamiliar to the Knights, but whose face was not.
Laspeera of the war wizards looked bleakly at Maelrin and the maid, and then past them at Florin and Pennae. Her face was as white as bone.
The coach rattled through the streets of Halfhap like a whirlwind. Its white-faced, shaking coachman whipped his galloping horses to go ever faster, despite merchants and shoppers diving and stumbling back out of the way, and the shouts and screams that soon had Purple Dragon patrols bellowing and waving at the coachman to stop.
The whip came down again, the trembling coachman now weeping in fear, as the coach smashed its way along the front of a fresh greens shop, baskets splintering and produce flying-and its burly proprietor made a furious grab for the hand-bars, to swing himself aboard.
The hard-faced man riding beside the coachman snatched a wand from his belt and coolly blasted the shopkeeper’s red face to flying shards of bloody bone. Then he served two Purple Dragons, who were clawing at the bridles of the horses, the same way.
As their bodies tumbled under the racing hooves of the horses, the hard-faced man stood up, aimed carefully, and immolated the rest of the Purple Dragon patrol, one by one-as the coach raced on, heading for the Oldcoats Inn.
Inside the speeding coach, Zhentarim were being slammed from side to side, crashing into each other bruisingly.
The eldest wizard watched one of his younger fellows bite his own tongue-the third one to do so-and shook his head wearily. He had long since hooked one arm around a wall-rack to keep himself in one place, and was repeatedly using his feet to kick those about to slam into him away. As the curses and moans around him reached deafening heights, he snarled, “Oh, get down on the floor, all of you! Why the Brotherhood tolerates dolts such as you I don’t know!”
The potion had been divided carefully between Doust and Semoor, who had both promptly gone to sleep, but gained color, looking more like living men lying on their backs and less like sprawled corpses. Jhessail had stopped frowning down at them and was now studying the glowing Dragonfire treasure and murmuring tentative incantations.
Islif watched her darkly, sword drawn, and murmured only one thing: “Just don’t set those swords to striking at us.”
Now, as Jhessail sat back with a weary sigh, shaking her head, Islif caught sight of movement on the far side of the glow, and fell into a crouch, sword drawn back to strike.
There came the sound of a lantern being unhooded, and then its light, moving slowly to where they could see it, well back out of sword-reach.
The lantern was lowered until they could see the grim face of Dauntless above it.
“Truce,” he greeted the Knights. “I come in peace.”
“Well,” Islif replied warily, lowering her sword a trifle, “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”