The tall man did not back down.
"I think you'll be happy to have custody of this one." He kicked the recumbent figure before him. This is Avarilous, a so-called merchant. In fact, he's a spy. He was paid by the Bedine to come here and find out what you're up to."
The lieutenant looked at him in astonishment then burst into a bray of laughter.
"A spy! A nice job he seems to have made of it. What did the Bedine scum offer to pay him with? Camel dung? Goat meat?" His eyes narrowed as he looked at Garmansder. "Who are you, and why are you telling me this?"
"I am Garmansder of Luskan. I'm a mercenary, hired by this fool to be his guard. When I found out what he was up to, I thought I'd get a better price from the Zhentarim for his head than anything the Bedine-or he-might pay me." He shrugged. "So here he is for you to play with."
Lieutenant Thass crouched by Avarilous's head and stared thoughtfully into the merchant's eyes, which were reddened from the blowing sand of the desert.
"So the little Bedine fools are getting worried about what we're doing here," he said, as if to himself. "Good. Good. Fear will feed on itself. Especially when I send their spy back to them in a basket, or several baskets." He chuckled. "Perhaps they'll pass on their concerns to the Shadovar, who will be more willing to deal with us.
"What's that?" He bent his ear near Avarilous's cracked, bleeding lips.
"Shadovar… would never… deal with Zhentarim… crush you first." The words dropped like tears in the dust.
The lieutenant chuckled and rose to his feet. "Well see, fool."
He twisted his hand, and Avarilous's body was jerked to its feet. The rope binding the merchant flew from Garmansder's hand to that of the lieutenant.
"Drashka! Get your lazy carcass out here this instant, unless you want to wear your entrails for a necklace!"
From a shelter farther within the encampment, another guard emerged cautiously and saluted. "Yes, sir?"
"I'll take this scum to Commander Hesach's tent. The commander will want to talk to him in a few minutes, so you'd better have someone bring the instruments. I'll keep an eye on him until Hesach's ready-he's slippery as an eel. And Drashka…" He tossed the end of the rope to the lieutenant. "I've got my eye on you. You watched those two idiot guards drink on duty and did nothing to stop them. Let me catch that sort of thing again and you'll be scorpion bait!"
Garmansder cleared his throat loudly. The lieutenant glanced at him.
"Ah, yes. Your reward."
Thass fumbled inside his robe for a minute and produced a pouch, tossing it to the tall man. Garmansder looked inside it and opened his mouth to argue when he caught the lieutenant's icy eye and thought better of it.
He swept the pouch out of sight and said, "I'd like a bed for the night."
Lieutenant Thass grunted and turned to the guard. "Drashka, take this fellow and find him a place to sleep, but be sure he's on his way tomorrow at first light." He looked at Garmansder with narrowed eyes. "After all, a traitor might find the habit of betrayal hard to break. Perhaps it might be simpler to return two traitors to the Bedine."
Garmansder shook his head vigorously. "Trust me, my lord. I'm heading west and south for friendlier lands, where an honest mercenary can make a living. I've no desire to get mixed up in the affairs of wizards-whether Zhentarim or Shadovar."
The lieutenant's shout of laughter was tossed over his shoulder as he stalked toward his tent.
Left alone, Garmansder and the guard eyed one another with the cautious looks of two dogs circling before a fight. The mercenary dug into the recesses of his robe and produced a stoneware bottle that sloshed pleasantly with liquid.
"Raki, lifted from the Bedine. Know somewhere we can share it in peace?"
Avarilous, bound to a crude chair, sat facing Commander Hesach across a rough wooden table. The Zhentarim commander was stocky, running toward fat. His black robes stretched tight across his ample belly, and his face was pitted and scarred, creased with lines that the harsh candlelight of the tent emphasized. He paced about a table, in the center of which were a variety of implements. Their purpose the merchant needed no one to explain. Despite their disconcerting presence, however, his face was composed, and he spoke calmly.
"I have no objection to telling you what I was sent here to do. After all, the Bedine have no claim to my allegiance beyond what price they offered to pay."
"What price was that?" Hesach snorted.
"A thousand pieces of gold," the merchant said.
The commander snorted in disbelief. "I wouldn't have thought they had anything like that."
Avarilous shrugged. "Raiding against caravans seems to have been successful this season. In any case, I haven't seen a copper from them yet. Perhaps the Zhentarim might find more use for my services. It would hardly be the first time I've dealt with those of the Black Network."
"Perhaps. Tell me precisely what you were sent to find, and I may consider it. Then again, I may simply agree to give you a quick death and let it go at that."
Avarilous stretched against his ropes and glanced casually around the interior of the tent. It was richly furnished with rugs and tapestries. Hesach lounged near one wall on a richly carved sedan covered in the skins of desert lions.
"The Bedine seem to feel you are looking for an artifact from the Buried Realms. They seem to think you may have found it."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
The commander gave a negligent gesture, and Avarilous’s head jerked back as if he'd been slapped. He shuddered.
"They believe you're trying to build a power base here. Are you?"
"Kindly remember that I'm asking the questions. It will go better for you if you do."
Hesach bit into a pomegranate and let the juice dribble down his chin in a pink stream.
Grinning at his prisoner, he said, The desert rats are more right than they know." He rose and plunged his hand into a silver-bound chest. "What do you think of that?"
In his palm rested a tiny amulet. It seemed, to Avarilous’s weary eyes, to twinkle and glitter, almost as if a star had been imprisoned within it.
He said cautiously, "It's obviously magical. What of it?"
"What of it? What of it?" The commander laughed. "You fat idiot, do you know what this is?"
"A magical amulet." Avarilous sounded bored.
"Ha! This amulet would allow me to control the very sands of the desert, to raise them in a storm, to level them in a sheet of sand that could sweep my enemies before it. It would make me master of the desert."
"It would" observed Avarilous, "but it won't. It's chipped and cracked. In that condition, I doubt you'd get more than a handful of copper pieces at any market in Calimport.
"True, fool, but where there's one, there must be more!" Commander Hesach tossed the amulet into the chest and sank back onto his couch. "For years, we Zhentarim have searched beneath these sands for the treasures of Netheril. Now, at last, I've found them!"
"You haven't found anything more than a cracked amulet yet," said Avarilous.
His body was relaxed against the ropes, but his eyes flickered back and forth across the tent as if seeking a means of escape.
"Not yet, but soon. Soon our diggers will break through into the hoard that rests below this place. I will control it. I will rise in power. Even Fzoul Chembryl himself will speak with me, will treat with me as an equal. In time, perhaps even I shall take his place at the head of our order."
His voice had risen in volume, and he was now shouting, flecks of spittle spraying from his juice-stained lips. In full cry, he caught himself and smiled nastily at his captive.
"But you. What shall I do with you?"
Raki is a liquor not for the faint of heart or stomach. Its taste is foul, even to those used to it, and in some parts of Faerun it is used as rat poison. But it does have the virtue of getting one drunk extremely quickly.