The Tyrant smiled. “Nay, Sir Mage, I want to watch this little confrontation. After all, we starve for excitement… in this place where guards snore at their posts.”
The senior mage of the Bucklers reddened. “You may be assured, lord, that I shall make Brandor apologize to you, on bended knee and as prettily as he knows how, for that little remark.”
He turned again to the door, and in a swirling of robes and fine tunics and ornate sleeves, they hastened out together.
* * * * *
The little green door in the darkest alcove of the kitchen opened, as he’d known it would, and Shalara came out, eyes bright and cheeks flushed. Her talks with Halger (and the wine that accompanied them) always left her emboldened. Brandor loved to talk with her then, when her mood made her tongue outrun her reserve and let her swift wit shine. They’d laughed together many a time, with Halger smiling his slow smile nearby.
He’d been awaiting this moment, knowing that Shalara would stop to look in on the potato-peeling miscreant on her way back to her own rooms. With the cook striding along in her wake, the Tyrant’s daughter swept imperiously past the feasting-spits and the cutting tables to where Brandor should have been hard at his peeling—and came to an astonished halt. Her lips twisted.
The pile of potatoes stood almost untouched, very much as she remembered it. Brandor Pupil-of-Druskin was standing in front of that earth-caked mound wearing a satisfied smile, his arms folded across his chest in the manner of a conqueror.
Shalara put her hands on her slender hips, her eyes snapping on the amused edge of anger. “And what by all the good gods, Sir Prentice, have you been up to?”
Brandor flung out a proud hand toward a long row of large barrels on the roll-rails behind him. “Lady fair, the latest shipment of the oysters we all love so much has just been delivered—and in the brief time ‘twixt then and now, I’ve devised a spell to cook all of them inside the barrels.”
Despite herself, Shalara was interested. She was always interested in new ways and ideas. “Oh? How so?”
Brandor caught up Halger’s long tongs—heavy, man-length metal pincers used for raking coals and setting wood into the large hearth fires—and gestured at the stop-log that held the barrels in place. “With yon spar removed, these barrels will roll, prodded along with these tongs. My spell creates an enchanted space or field of intense heat, but no flame to scorch the wood. We wait, the oysters cook, with luck the barrels don’t burn, and—there we have it! I’m just about to try it on the first barrel now. Would you care to watch?”
The Tyrant’s daughter shrugged and smiled. “I’ve no doubt you’re going to pay dearly for this, Brandor,” she said, as Halger looked at the apprentice over her shoulder, amusement warring with interest on his weathered face, “but the fiasco should be interesting to see.”
“One barrel only, mind!” Halger growled. “Ruin an entire shipment, lad, and they’ll have me cooking you for evenfeast! And what good are barrels turned to ash? We reuse them, you idiot!”
The cook’s words rose like angry arrows to the ears of the Tyrant, the wizard Druskin, and the Buckler commander as they came out onto a balcony overlooking the mound of potatoes. The mage stiffened, but the Tyrant put a firm hand on his arm and murmured, “Hold peace and silence for now. Let us watch and learn for a bit.”
Druskin gave him a glare of mingled astonishment and embarrassment, but clamped his lips together and turned his burning gaze to the scene below.
Brandor saw that movement and glanced up. At the sight of the three most powerful men in all Mintarn looking back down at him, two faces coolly calm but his master quivering with suppressed rage, the apprentice went pale.
The Buckler commander—his commander—leaned forward and said calmly, “Pray proceed, Brandor. One last prank? Or a clever stratagem that can benefit us all? For your future, I hope ‘tis the latter. The true value of a warrior is less often bold innovation than minstrels would have us believe. More often, ‘tis in carrying out the drudge duties of potato-peeling—or, yes, of watching at our posts without snoring—than in all the glorious charges and bloodily victorious attacks that all too many bards sing about. But I’m sure your master will have more pointed words to address to you in the near future. Cast your spell, and redeem yourself if you can.”
Brandor trembled, managed a sickly smile, and stared down at his hands. What else could he do but cast the spell?
He drew in a deep breath, turned his back on them all, and worked his latest magic.
The barrel rolled with only a slight creaking when he prodded it with the long tongs, but the heat—which instantly sent the reek of swamp water throughout the kitchens—soon popped one of its ends slightly askew.
An immediate squalling arose from inside the barrel, and the endpiece was sent flying amid a stinking green torrent of water. Brandor saw a glistening wet hide, staring froglike eyes, and a curve-bladed cutlass vying with a short spear for the pleasure of enthusiastically ending a certain apprentice’s life.
“A-a bullywug?” he asked Faerun around him in utter astonishment, as he thrust desperately at it with the long tongs, trying to keep it in the spell-field where it would be cooked alive.
He was almost shoved off his feet by the bully wug’s writhing and head-down charging. As he clenched his teeth and fought back, Brandor became suddenly and acutely aware that the only thing keeping the swamp monster from leaping around the kitchen to slay at will were his own hands on the long tongs and whatever skills he might acquire in its use in, say, his next five panting breaths or so.
The hearthgirls chose that moment to scream. The
kitchen promptly erupted into a loud chaos of surprise and alarm that almost drowned out the hisses of the bully wug and the bright songs of alarm gongs being struck all at once by Halger and the men on the balcony.
It seemed an eternity of sweaty, desperate struggling before the Tyrant, Commander Maerlin, and a small, hurrying army of men-at-arms arrived at Brandor’s side. By then, the bullywug was on the floor, clawing feebly at the air and darkening rapidly, as steam gouted from its gaping mouth. The smell made Brandor gag.
The armsmen swarmed up around the barrels, rolling them into Brandor’s field under barked orders and breaking them open with axes. Squalling bullwugs were pierced with spears and pinned in place to cook with brutal speed and efficiency. Brandor rolled barrels into the heat with the heavy, unwieldy long tongs like a madman until someone— the Tyrant of Mintarn himself—took him by the shoulder and shouted at him to stop and stand easy.
When he let the long tongs fall, Brandor found that he was shaking with weariness. He looked across a kitchen that stank with carnage, where Shalara, Druskin, and the other two Buckler mages were on their knees, white-faced and retching, and grim armsmen were clambering about knee-deep in wet, bloody bullywugs. Oh, he was going to catch it now…
Commander Maerlin was wading grimly through the remains toward him. Brandor closed his eyes and waited for the cold words that would end his Buckler career and direct him to a cell.
The hand that came down on his shoulder gripped warmly, and out of a dizzy fog Brandor heard Oldivar Maerlin say, “Well and bravely done, lad. Thanks.”
From his other side came the sound of Druskin clearing his throat. The wizard sounded a little breathless as he said, “You’ll teach us all that spell, I hope. I’ll exchange four of comparable force for it, of course.”
“Moreover, you’ve saved Mintarn,” the Tyrant said from nearby, his voice rolling out to carry to every corner of the lofty room, “and Mintarn is in your debt. I see no reason that Mintarn cannot reward you fittingly in the days ahead.”
Brandor lifted his head, then, to stare at the ruler of Mintarn in astonishment, but somehow his gaze was caught and held by the shining eyes of Shalara. They stared at each other for a long, wordless time, until Brandor became aware that the movement he’d been noticing out of the corner of his eye was a broad and knowing smile growing across the Tyrant’s face.