Max rested his rapier on the floor within easy reach. He had begun to think that swords were too convenient a solution for many problems, and one that lacked finesse, but they certainly did have their uses. No regular sword would bother Oskin Yahlei, of course, but with the number of soldiers around it still might come in handy. It could be a serious enough business that Max wanted all the backup he could get.
Even with all the preparations, his luck at penetrating the city and Oskin Yahlei’s headquarters without discovery and without serious opposition, and his ability to react well and think on his feet, Max was still hoping he’d make it through the experience alive and in one piece. It wasn’t a question of whether something would go wrong. Of course something would go wrong, something always went wrong. The only question was how much of a mess it would be.
Boots tramped and armor clattered from the room below.
A heavy tread started up the circular staircase. Another lighter set of footsteps followed it, uncertain steps, falling one-two, one-two-three, as though the walker wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. The voice of a man began to separate itself out from the muffling wails. “ … mumble mumble of this ring?” Max put the blowgun to his lips and sank down behind the desk, peeking out from the side around the chair. A man’s hand appeared on the banister, the middle finger wearing a gold ring, then behind the hand a head. A black eye patch covered the left eye, and the black aura of the ring covered the flesh.
Oskin Yahlei, the man who might be Death, came up through the floor.
14. MONT SOLOS
Jurtan Mont vaulted the body of a Guardsman his father had speared as his sister, running faster, caught up with him. “Just who was that guy?” she panted, glancing back over her shoulder.
“His name’s Shaa, he says he’s a doctor.” Another strangled yelp came from the head of the column. The prisoners were straggling out into a long line, Jurtan bringing up the rear, as the less physically fit among them lost their first wind. Some of the people from the original cell had had the foresight to open other doors up and down the dungeon hall. As a result, the fleeing crowd was now quite a rabble of merchants, local royalty, government advisors and officials, various family members, priests and clerics, and representatives of the general public swept up into the hand of Kaar. The yelp from the front was followed by a thud of body hitting floor and a muted berserker battle cry. Jurtan’s mind, which had been projecting a soft traveling string motif at him, insistent in its runs of rapid notes and propulsive rhythm, gave a quick skip at the barely melodic barbarian yodel, which had sounded suspiciously like the voice of his father. He blinked, grabbed mentally at the stabilizing sound of the strings, regained his stability, and plunged ahead with only a momentary hesitation. “Where is Shaa, anyway?” he asked.
“He stayed behind. A magician showed up. It didn’t look too good.”
“He stayed to fight a magician?” Jurtan said. That didn’t make much sense; Shaa had said he wasn’t a magician himself, and if he wasn’t he couldn’t possibly last long. “I hope he’s okay.”
“You sound worried about him.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a pretty strange guy, but I’d have been really sunk if he hadn’t popped up.”
“What about you?” his sister said. “I never thought you’d show up.”
“I didn’t think I would either.” Jurtan was still scared to death, but beneath that was a low thrill of accomplishment. Whatever Dad had said, he’d been doing pretty well so far. “Dad seemed even madder than usual about it, though. Is it just him being the way he usually is, or has he got some extra problem this time?”
“Oh, you know Dad.” Another prostrate trooper rolled past beneath their feet. “They caught him in an ambush, one of them held a sword across his neck while another one pounded him over the head. He’s mad he didn’t go down fighting, take ten or twenty of them with him.”
“It looks like he’s sure trying to make up for it now.”
“Well,” Tildy said, “you know Dad.”
The corridor forked ahead and widened to the right. The line of staggering people made the turn like a single creature, perhaps a giant tunnel-traveling worm. Jurtan and Tildy followed. “You know this place better than me,” she said. “Where are we going?”
“If Dad wasn’t so mad he’d head for the armory and clean it out, hang a dozen swords and maces and stuff over his back, then hit the barracks or the docks or someplace like that. But when he gets this mad - how does he feel about Kaar right now?”
“He was talking about Kaar a lot in the cell, wanting to tear his arms off first and make him eat them, that kind of thing.”
“What I thought,” said Jurtan. “I think he’ll be going after Kaar directly, no matter who’s in the way.”
“He’s going to get to Kaar through here?” They had entered an area of storerooms, with wooden doors opening from a central sorting floor. Corridors and staircases snaked off in various directions.
“Yeah, I think I remember -” The music in Jurtan’s head abruptly shifted mode, the strings grew harsh, and a transformation to harmonic sevenths gave an air of urgent danger. “Watch out!” he yelled. “Something’s gonna - oof!” The large woman in front of him had stopped short, craning her head at something up ahead, and Mont had barreled into her going full speed. He spun back and fell to the floor.
The line of moving people ground to a halt at the renewed sound of metal on ringing metal from up at the head. New boots pounded behind them, too. Tildy whirled, Jurtan struggling back to his feet. The lead elements of a new bunch of troopers charged around the fork in the hallway, bellowed, and thundered in their direction. “Everybody scatter!” Tildy yelled, grabbing Jurtan’s arm, and yanked him toward the closest door next to them at the side of the room. The door had been almost completely shut, but not quite, since it was slightly warped in its frame, but as Tildy’s shoulder and the hurtling front of Jurtan’s reeling body plowed into it it opened quite definitively, launching them both head-first into the room beyond and into the room’s contents.
Jurtan plowed through a rack of shelves, bounced off a wall, pushed off the wall, and slammed back against the door just in time to fling it shut. He fumbled for a lock, a bar, something to block the entry; the darkness in the closet was broken only by the irregular doorframe and the rays of light that tickled through it from the room outside, along with the pandemonium of sudden cries and bashings and running footsteps. “Tildy?” he said. “Are you okay?”
“I - Jurtan, watch -”
Jurtan spun around. Through the gloom and clatter, he saw a rush of motion - a large hulking shape was rocking down toward him. He threw himself sideways. The massive shape teetered through one of the rays of errant light from the doorframe, revealing itself to be the case of shelves he had fallen into and upset. Jurtan buried his head against the wall as the giant case slid in a collapsing mess against the door.
“Tildy?”
“Jurtan?”
Whomm! The door shuddered under an impact from the other side. The shelves merely creaked and collapsed further. Jurtan was lying in a mass of crunching wood and small delicate objects, his unfortunate landing zone in his mad leap out of the way; they only cracked and snapped additionally as he struggled up. Fortunately, the mass of heavier objects falling from the shelves had mostly missed him, inflicting nothing more than glancing bruises and scratches. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
With a groan and a loud rattle, the outline of light around the door flashed again. “I don’t think getting out is going to be the problem,” Tildy said. “This mess won’t keep them out for long.”