The pain in Beldar's head ebbed, and he stared in revulsion at his dying foe. No one and nothing should die like this! He swung his blade across the beastman's throat and turned away as the gurgling scream faded.
Something stirred in his throbbing head: the faint echo of someone else's surprise.
So his watcher hadn't expected that mercy-slaying. Good. Then he knew that Beldar Roaringhorn was not yet a helpless puppet. His choices were still his own.
And by the gods, he would choose well!
Taeros coughed smoke and staggered to his feet. The foulness was billowing from burning corpses. Nearby, Starragar clung to his dead love, still sobbing. Roldo's tunic hung in slashed rags, but he stood wincing as Faendra worked to staunch the blood running from the gashes across his chest. Naoni knelt over Korvaun, who lay sprawled on the floor. Lark stood guard between her mistresses, eyes alert and dagger ready. Her gaze touched his, and Taeros blinked at the realization that she stood ready to leap to his defense, too.
A soft murmur came from the floor, and Taeros looked again at Naoni and Korvaun.
A good pair of Helmfast breeches had been slit away, revealing a row of round, red welts on his thigh. Naoni was lying beside Korvaun now, her head on his chest and her face deathly pale. Korvaun held her with one arm, but his other twitched, often and sharply.
Fear swept through Taeros in an icy tide. "Up, man," he said gruffly. "We're far from done yet."
Korvaun's smile was faint. "True enough… for you."
Taeros glared at the welts. "Venom," he said grimly. "That snake thing that took us down must have been-oh, blast it all, it matters not!"
He drew his dagger and dropped to his knees beside Korvaun. "This'll hurt, but lacking magic or the right poison-quell… I'll have to cut open each of those and suck the venom out."
"Too late," Korvaun said. "Look at my arm: 'Tis in my blood." He smiled faintly. "If you were a flock of stirges you might drain me dry, but that'd hardly be an improvement."
They stared into each other's eyes until Taeros shook his head angrily and snapped, "Faen, Lark: help me! Let's get Korvaun into yonder cellar-end."
"And what?" Roldo demanded. "Just leave him there?"
"Lark can stand guard. We'll go get a healer, and return as fast as we can."
Roldo looked to Korvaun.
"Listen to Taeros, my friend," the youngest Lord Helmfast said, his eyelids drooping. "He knows what must be done."
His eyes drifted shut. "Advising sage," he murmured. "The role you seek… suits you well. Take it up again when you can. For now, you must lead."
Taeros found himself choking back tears, for he knew no healer could come in time. "I'll take it up in Torm's halls," he said roughly, "when again I find myself at Korvaun Helmfast's side."
Korvaun smiled faintly. "I'll keep your seat warm and your ale cool. Go now, and see this through!"
A man with serpents as long as spears sprouting from his forearms dodged out of a sewer-tunnel behind one of Elaith's hurrying jackcoats.
The man whirled, sword flashing, but by then three or four snakeheads had sunk their fangs into him, and a fifth made short and savage work of his face.
Taeros Hawkwinter crouched grimly watching, one hand raised in an imperious "all keep silent" signal, his sword ready in the other.
Roldo whispered, "Are we just going to watch? Why aren't we-"
The beastman left the writhing, foaming jackcoat to die and ran on, calling some sort of wordless signal. Side-passages erupted with streams of monster-men, running up into the winecellars of the Purple Silks.
"That's why," Taeros muttered, eyes fierce and face hard. "If we throw our lives away trying to be glorious heroes, Waterdeep won't get warned in time, and all of those will be out in the streets, lurking and awaiting every nightfall, to slay at will!"
A tunnel rang with a sudden clash of steel, and a beastman staggered out of it, body transfixed by the blades of half a dozen of Elaith's jackcoats. Groaning, the man-monster fell on his face. The jackcoats jerked forth bloody blades and ran on-back up into the winecellars.
"It seems the Purple Silks is filling up again," Taeros observed caustically. "Ready for more festivities, everyone?"
More jackcoats and a few beastmen darted out of various tunnels to ascend into the wine cellars. The sewers were growing quieter-and darker, too, with almost all the lanterns and torches gone out. Soon there'd be none left but the dead… and whatever might come along to feed on them.
"Everyone's ready," Roldo announced grimly.
The Hawkwinter nodded curtly. "You step out that way, facing down into the sewers, and I'll face that way, toward the cellars. Everyone else come out between us. We form a ring of steel and go up, everyone looking to the sides as we go. Roldo, keep watch behind, and shout the moment you see any movement, even if it's something very small coming at you."
Roldo stared at his hitherto easy-going friend. "You sound like a veteran warcaptain of Hawkwinter Hall!"
For once, Taeros wasted neither time nor wit on a sharp response. If he fell short of a warcaptain's wisdom this night, there were graves waiting for them all.
Lord Ulb Jardeth staggered wearily into the feasting hall, face blood-streaked and leaning on a notched and blunted sword. He blinked in surprise at all the bright light.
There was a little cry of relief, and a familiar, long-gowned woman burst through its archway and came running to him, arms spread.
"Allys," he growled, throwing his free arm around her as she embraced him fiercely, sobbing. "I'm-I'm all right. Steady, pet, steady. What by the Harbor Deep has befallen up here, while we were all killing each other down below?"
Lady Allys Jardeth pointed with the hand that held her little jeweled belt-dagger. "Men who look like monsters have been coming up-just a few of them-and when they saw us all looking, they went through those doors there, and there-and there!"
"The big bedchambers," Lord Jardeth said grimly, not caring if he was revealing his familiarity with the festhall to his wife. "Well, they can only get out of there through a stair up onto the galleries or a tunnel back down to the sewers… or right back out yon doors to face us again, so they'll keep for now. Gods, lass, 'twas butchery down there-who else has come up?"
Allys Jardeth stiffened in her husband's arms. This time words failed her, so she contented herself with screaming.
Lord Jardeth swung them both around-in time to see an army of monster-men running across the shattered forehall toward him. "Oh, blast," he growled, "I'm getting too old for this! Allys, get out of here!"
Shoving his wife behind him, he hefted his sword and planted his feet to await the doom charging so swiftly down upon him.
Screams burst from the watching women in the feasting hall as the beastmen raced toward them.
"For the Amalgamation!" a huge, caterpillarlike monster-man thundered, rearing up amid the running throng as tall as two men.
"For Waterdeep!" someone shouted from behind the running beastmen, as Lord Jardeth swung his sword and prepared to die.
Then a bolt of lightning crackled between two drawn blades, searing the hands of the astonished jackcoats who wielded them and dealing death to a score of beastmen caught between.
"We're under attack!" a stag-headed man snarled, whirling around, and the loping, wolf like creature who was about to pounce on Lord Jardeth turned as swiftly as most of his fellows.