The halfling almost declined the dwarf’s offer, but quickly changed his mind, seeing an opportunity to turn the tables on his would-be assailants. No dwarf, certainly not this smelly fellow, would volunteer to draw a bath for anyone, and especially not for such a pittance, considering the labor involved. But what better way to get a victim away from his weapons and armor than to catch him by surprise in a tub of water?
“Yes, a bath would well suit me,” Regis said, handing over some more coin. “And do throw some hot stones about the tub, good fellow, that I might ease the ache from my road-weary bones. I think I’ll take a last quick look at some of the wares about, and will return in short order to retire.”
And with that, he went off into the marketplace, resisting the urge to assume yet another identity with his hat, hard though it was.
“So ye come to pay visits and a beer for a tale!” Regis sang, and he splashed his hand around the water in the tub beside him. “Well we’ll take yer wishes, a song for an ale! And if ye’ve a burner that’s epic indeed, we’ll toss out the hops and give ye a mead!”
He couldn’t remember any more of the words, so he hummed instead, occasionally throwing out a syllable or two that sounded rather Dwarvish in inflection. And he kept splashing his hand around, trying to make it sound to anyone outside the curtain as if he were actually in the tub.
Sure enough, the curtain flew aside suddenly and a tall man with a thin mustache and long black hair rushed in, saber raised for a strike.
Regis lifted his hand crossbow and shot him in the chest. “Yobad pirate,” he said as the man fell away. In behind the stumbling fellow came Tinderkeg, leaping forward with a mighty swing of his heavy hammer.
Regis dropped his hand crossbow, drew forth his rapier, and jumped back in the same movement. He came forward almost immediately and stabbed behind the blow, scoring a hit on the dwarf’s arm. His rapier tip didn’t fully penetrate, though, for this one was heavily armored, but the dwarf did indeed yelp and fall back.
Regis drew out his dirk, though he didn’t know how much good it would do him here; certainly he wouldn’t try to block or catch that huge hammer with it!
On came Tinderkeg furiously, driving the halfling back with another wild swing. Again the dwarf came in short of his mark, but this time smashed the weapon into the side of the tub, smashing the wood, and the water rushed out.
Tinderkeg tore the hammer free, splintering more of the planks, and whipped it across again, then back the way it had come, left-to-right before the halfling.
Seeing the tall man rising behind the dwarf, Regis knew that he had to move fast. He reversed his grip on the three-bladed dirk and quick-stepped to Tinderkeg’s left-and how he quick-stepped! The prism on his ring lit up as he started the movement and he felt its magic within him suddenly, along with an imparted thought: “warp step.” Indeed, it seemed to Regis as if time or distance or perhaps both had warped to his favor in that instant, the dwarf turning far too slowly to keep up with his movement as he bolted behind Tinderkeg’s left shoulder.
Not sure of what was happening, but line-height: Idweoncertainly not about to surrender such an opportunity, Regis drove his dagger out behind him, hard into the dwarf’s back. It bit in through a seam in the armor and dived deep into the dwarf’s flesh, and Regis turned as Tinderkeg turned, the dwarf lurching and reaching behind himself in pain.
All of those hours standing in a door jamb, reading his alchemy books while practicing with his rapier, brought on the halfling’s next movement without him even thinking about it, his right arm snapping forward, the tip of his thin blade perfectly aimed.
“Ah, ye blinded me!” Tinderkeg screamed, leaping back and dropping his hammer, both his hands slapping over his one eye. He dropped his hands almost at once, blood and ichor streaming from the stabbed eye, and shook his head weirdly, as if only then understanding his understatement.
“Ye killed me,” he corrected, and he fell over dead, face first to the floor.
Regis didn’t see it, for he was fast at work against the second murderer, and this one was no novice with the blade, the halfling quickly realized. He noted the pinpoint of blood on the man’s chest, just below the collar of his shirt. Regis had scored a solid hit indeed with the hand crossbow, but as he had feared, the drow poison had apparently lost most of its efficacy in the months since he had left Delthuntle. This one’s movements showed no sign of sluggishness, Regis recognized to his horror, his rapier working frantically to deflect the flurry of saber strikes.
He could hardly keep up. Even when he got his feet properly aligned, front foot pointing, trailing left foot perpendicular, he could barely match the tall man’s movements, and certainly couldn’t match his opponent’s reach.
He mentally called to his ring again, looking for a bit of magic, but it wasn’t ready for another maneuver quite yet, he could sense.
He batted the thrusting saber to the left and rolled his rapier over it, thinking to stab for the tall man’s hand. But his opponent was ready, and disengaged almost as soon as Regis’s blade struck the flat of the saber. The riposte came hard, right for the halfling’s face.
Regis yelped and threw his left hand up and across, catching the saber between its main blade and the one catch prod.
The one catch prod?
Regis didn’t understand as he noted the dirk, with only one of its jade snake catch blades showing. As he turned the saber out, he noticed the second jade serpent, and thought for a moment that it had magically curled down around his hand to secure his grip.
He yelped again, though, and much louder and with more fear, when he realized that the second snake was detached altogether! Detached and alive on his hand!
The tall man bulled forward, throwing the halfling backward, and out of sheer desperation, Regis stabbed his dirk hand forward and flung the small snake free. The halfling tumbled backward to the floor as the serpent flew, and he and his opponent both cried out when it landed on the tall man’s blouse. Hardly slowing, the snake slithered up fast, ahead of the man’s slapping hands and up to his neck.
And there the tiny thing-no longer than Regis’s forearm-wrapped around the tall man’s throat front to back, and when the ruffian reached to grab at it, he was tugged backward suddenly, arched over as if someone were behind him, choking him with a garrote.
A cold sensation flooded through Regis then, a profound and deathly chill. of the DesaiIdweon
And he saw a face leering at him from over the tall man’s shoulder, a withered face, a dead man’s face, the face of a ghost or a lich-Ebonsoul! Wide-eyed, the halfling cracked his boots against the floor and backstepped furiously. Regis couldn’t breathe, and neither, of course, could the tall man, who dropped his blade and grabbed at the snake with both hands, struggling mightily, his eyes bulging.
And the leering dead face seemed to be laughing, puffs of cold steam coming out of its mouth.
Then, with a burst of rolling gray smoke, the specter was gone.
The tall man fell over, quite dead, the snake lying limply now across his throat.
“Collect yourself,” Regis whispered through gasps. “Compose.” He pulled himself to a kneeling position, then glanced at his dirk. The one catch blade remained, and across the hilt to where the other had been, he saw the bud of a snake’s head, just beginning to sprout.