Death Masks (Forgotten Realms) by Ed Greenwood

Author:Ed Greenwood [Greenwood, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780786966066
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2016-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

• • •

“HOLD, IN THE name of the Watch!”

Mirt swallowed a sigh, and reached an arm around Ravva to clamp down on Drella’s nearest shoulder just in time. She’d have probably made it, fleeing from the Watch even here in Castle Ward, but that would have meant long hours in custody for the rest of them, giving answers that wouldn’t have been believed to questions he’d rather not listen to in the first place.

The nearest of this full strength and alert-looking Watch patrol looked to be veterans, and as they came forward, spreading out and keeping hands on hilts, they wore the confident half-smiles of men and women who’d seen it all and trusted that they could deal—rather wearily—with just about anything, bolstered by the aid of their duty mage.

“Holding,” Mirt replied pleasantly. “And how goes the patrol, this fair night?”

“Passable, citizen, so far,” came the reply. “So, now … three young ladies and one man of formidable build, hastening from a direction in which there’s been recent trouble, in the direction of Dock Ward. One might even say, Saer, that you were hurrying these ladies along.”

The lantern was being brought up, soon to be unhooded full in Mirt’s face, and he could feel Drella trembling under his fingertips. Ravva was already playing to her strength, by reaching for the lacings of what she was wearing. And if he knew Waratra as well as he thought he did, she’d be very stealthily getting something sharp and pointed to where she could throw it …

He’d managed to collect his three lasses and get well clear of the milling melee in the plaza, after anyone who looked like a Lord had made it inside more or less unscathed, but now it seemed he was going to be encumbered for most of the rest of the night, unless—

“Lords of Waterdeep,” he replied grandly, “often find it necessary to hurry other citizens along. Even Watch guards, swordcaptain.”

The Watch guards froze, just for a moment, but then the swordcaptain asked Mirt in tones heavy with disbelief, “Do they, now, Saer? Do they now?”

“I certainly do,” Mirt replied, lifting his chin and sounding as confident as he knew how, “and—”

Then it was his turn to stiffen. “ ’Ware!” he barked sharply, and pointed. The swordcaptain sneered—it was, after all, a ploy old enough to have achieved lichdom centuries before either he or Mirt were born—but some of the Watch guards looked up at where Mirt was pointing, and exclaimed aloud. Perhaps because they’d thought it a tired ploy, too, and were genuinely astonished.

Two men—well, man-shaped figures, though both were lithe and graceful, and the more he watched, the more womanly one of them seemed—had just leaped from one nearby tallhouse roof to another. The better to loop a drop-line around its handy chimney, so they could drop down over the edge of the roof, as they were busily doing right now, to reach an upper window.

The Watch guards started to move, heading for that house in a rush.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.