Laspeera took two slow steps forward-and toppled like a felled tree, falling right on her face.
The innkeeper juggled vials for a moment so as to draw his dagger, hefted it flashing in his hand to turn it for stabbing, and bent down to slay this unexpected guest.
Then Ondal Maelrin made a wet, surprised sound as Pennae’s dagger opened his throat from behind. He kept right on bending, down into his own face-first meeting with the floor.
Vials bounced and rolled as the maid threw up her hands and started to scream. Florin snatched one up and forced it into Laspeera with brutal haste, rolling her over and away from the innkeeper’s spreading blood.
Pennae backhanded the maid across the face, ending her screams but sending her running wildly and clumsily to a tapestry, and through it and a banging door beyond. As the thief-Knight started scooping up potions, Laspeera started to cough and shudder under Florin’s hands-and the pulsing blue portal flared brightly as more men in leathers, with swords and daggers in their hands, stepped through it.
“Gods, guts, and garters,” Pennae cursed, “is there no end to them?”
Florin lowered Laspeera’s head gently to the floor and sprang to meet these new foes-who were already trotting forward with unpleasant grins on their faces and swords reaching for the Knights. Six-no, seven… eight of them.
Pennae kicked the empty potion vial under the boots of the foremost bullyblade, who started to slip and flail his arms-and weapons-wildly, almost striking the man right behind him, who arched back and away with a curse. So when Pennae sprang at them both and then ducked down to strike their ankles in a swift and hard roll, they both toppled helplessly, entangling a third bullyblade and causing him to fall too. The fourth and fifth onrushing men crashed right into their fellows, with loud and startled curses, as Florin stabbed downed men as swiftly as he knew how, slashing those trying to scramble away across the foreheads to try to blind them with their own blood.
A breath later he was forced to leave off killing to deal with the sixth and seventh bullyblades, who’d rushed around the tangle to come charging at him from either side. The ranger ran at the one on his left, using his longer reach in a vicious slash that struck the man’s parrying blade and spun him half-around-to where he tripped over a crawling Laspeera, and toppled helplessly into bouncing and rolling potion vials, as Florin launched himself back at the seventh man.
The man knew how to use his blades, and almost slew Florin thrice in the first few frantic instants of sword-strife. The ranger was only dimly aware of Pennae stabbing the eighth bullyblade in the stomach and then turning to slice open the throat of the only entangled man Florin hadn’t dealt with, who’d struggled half-upright from under the bodies of his fellows. Then Pennae hurled her dagger at Florin’s foe. It struck the man’s neck hilt-first and bounced away without doing damage, but startled the man into an awkward sidestep. He turned his ankle, staggered-and ended that stagger staring and spitting blood, impaled on the point of Florin’s sword.
Laspeera finished downing her second potion. Wiping her mouth, she looked up at the two Knights and murmured, “The queen chose well. You Knights are capable indeed. In a sword-brawl, at least.”
The portal flared again, and Pennae groaned, “Oh, no! ”
Laspeera lifted her hands to cast a spell-and then let them fall again as more men came crowding through the portal. More bullyblades-foes beyond counting!
Laspeera hastily started snatching up potions, and Florin sprang to join her.
“To the cellars!” he gasped, waving at the common room. “Stairs down-behind desk!”
Laspeera nodded and sprang up, moving as if completely healed and re-invigorated. She proved able to run almost as swiftly as Pennae, and so was in the lead as the three burst back out into the Oldcoats common room, with bullyblades hard on their heels, shouting for their blood and waving swords and daggers galore.
Wisps of smoke sped to meet those bullyblades, and two in the lead suddenly spun around and stabbed those just behind them. Amid screams and startled shouts, the running men stumbled over the falling bodies and crashed to the floor.
The few black-armored Zhentilar still alive in the common room turned to gape at these new foes and then moved grimly to engage them-as Laspeera and the Knights plunged down the cellar stairs.
Bullyblades roared defiance and sprang to meet the Zhentilar, who sneered and hacked at them, in a great crashing and clanging of war-steel.
A clangor that was echoed by a larger, louder crash that made the combatants blink and turn in suddenly bright, flooding daylight.
The front doors of the inn had just been blasted off their hinges and were tumbling across the room, shattering tables and then running bullyblades alike.
Outside, the astonished Zhentilar could see a wrecked coach on its side, with wheels still spinning and struggling horses shrieking.
Striding past it and up the inn steps into the room, through the huge hole where the doors had been, were nine Zhentarim mages. They were smiling cruelly, their hands already shaping spells.
Chapter 15
No mage should hesitate to use the right spell
No matter if it slay or diminisheth him.
Neither did Sarhthor, on that day
When wizards converged on Halfhap,
And a realm needed saving.
The glow of the scrying crystal cast pale shadows around the dark room, and across Ghoruld Applethorn’s watching face.
A face that was slowly acquiring a look of profound disgust.
“Just kill Laspeera,” he murmured. “Is it really all that difficult?”
“These thicknecks serve a few scheming Cormyrean nobles,” the oldest Zhentarim wizard sneered, his left hand raised so as to keep all nine mages safe from hurled weapons behind his greatshield. He waved contemptuously at the bullyblades with his other hand. “Eliminate them.”
He watched castings unfold around him, and at the right moment dropped his shielding. Spells lashed out from all eight of his fellow mages, howling across the common room in a bright, fell flood to rend men limb from limb, melt their flesh away from their spasming bones, hurl them into tables and pillars with shattering force, and cause their brains to explode bloodily out of their heads.
A few rushed desperately back toward the portal, only to stiffen and fall as they were struck by more than a dozen pursuing bright bolts each. A handful ran the other way and made it down the cellar stairs before they could be slain.
Up out of the foremost of those, arcing back up into the common room as two large, bright streamers of eerily glowing smoke, came Old Ghost and Horaundoon.
“What by the Nine Hells-?” one Zhentarim cursed, the rings on his fingers winking into life as he called up hasty wardings.
“Stop those-” the oldest wizard snapped, but that was as far as he got ere Old Ghost plunged into his chest and Horaundoon slid into the ear of the Zhent mage beside him.
Both men stiffened, rearing back-and then spun around and hurled the swiftest slaying spells they had at their fellow wizards.
Ghoruld leaned forward to peer intently into the crystal, anger and alarm flaring into warfare with each other across his face. “There it is again! What’s happening? Someone’s controlling those fools, yes, but who? And how? ”
Hanging lanterns danced and swung wildly in their chains, and chairs and tables tumbled in slow circles in midair as spells lanced and sizzled, stabbing and flickering across the common room of the Oldcoats Inn.
Zhentarim wizards hurled spells not in power-duels or wary attempts to cow foes with a minimum of destructive Art. Rather, they struck to slay. Two of them did so uncaring of their own safety.