Ed Greenwood - The Wizard's Mask

"Ready bows outside," she reported tersely. The Masked merely nodded. He had already plucked a burning log from the central fire, shielding it from eyes outside the door with his body, and started back into the rear chambers.

"Seeking a back door?" Tantaerra hissed.

"After I look for more healing, of the sort you gave me. That old man was more than a back-village priest, by his robe. He was once a high temple healer. So he should have some vials hidden away back here somewhere …ah!"

He'd been feeling his way along the side lip of a thick-topped table, and something had just shifted under his fingers. Tarram felt for a catch, failed to find it, and in exasperation drew his dagger and slammed its pommel against the wood. Twice, thrice-and the fourth time a carving broke off and fell away, allowing his fingers into a hidden recess hollowed out of the edge of the tabletop. A deep groove, really. He used his dagger point to move three vials out into Tantaerra's waiting hands before the hiding place was empty.

"He probably won't have much more than that-not that we could find without spending the rest of the night in here. And as I see no sign of food …"

"Let's be going," Tantaerra agreed. Then she spotted something dark in a corner of the next room. "Bring your brand over here."

What she'd seen proved to be a wet-weather overrobe with a cowl. A trifle short for Tarram, but quite different from what he'd been seen wearing around Halidon up until now, so he donned it, and they went looking for a back door.

It proved to be right where they'd expected it to be, which meant it would open out onto a close-up view of the still-blazing warehouses.

"Ready to get a bit warm?" Tarram asked.

"Being as the other way is straight into bowfire," Tantaerra replied, "yes. But let me borrow some boots first."

"They'll be far too large-"

"And I'll kick them off the moment we're not walking through flames and coals," she snapped. "If I stumble, catch me. You do want the other five silver weights, don't you?"

The Masked nodded, then carefully opened the door, keeping behind it.

Onto a view of crackling, dying flames wreathing blackened spars that were starting to lean perilously-but no shouts or hurled spears.

He stayed where he was until Tantaerra came back to him with a pair of oversized boots in her hands, and murmured, "When I was moving around well back, yonder, I could see that way, out the door. There're four or five soldiers over thereabouts, far left where we can't see them from here. They're watching the shrine, but it doesn't look like they've seen us. Yet."

"What d'you think of the fire, right ahead? Think we can make it through what's left of this nearest warehouse?"

Tantaerra looked up at him. "We'll have to, won't we?"

The Masked's blank visage somehow seemed to be smiling. "Ready?"

When she nodded, he put out one arm to bar her way and said, " Don't run. We stroll as if we've every right to be out walking, until they start shouting. Then you can start stumbling in those boots."

"And who are you to be giving orders, faceless man?" she asked him softly.

He stiffened, let his arm drop, and said gruffly, "The one you hired to help you escape, little Lady Daggertongue."

Tantaerra took a step away from him-and promptly stumbled in her loose boots.

They stared at each other for a long moment, as flames crackled outside and soldiers shouted far away down the south end of the village.

Then they both, more or less in unison, blurted out apologies. Tarram waved at the door with a courtier's grand flourish.

So Tantaerra lifted her chin, plucked up a dead soldier's short sword she'd decided to use as a walking stick, and set out on a stroll into the waiting flames.

∗ ∗ ∗

Eight slow strides, his thigh aching a little but seemingly as strong as if he'd never been wounded, nine …had the bloodcoats gone blind? Eleven, twelve, and still no-

" Hoy! Hayyah! You! Over in the burning! Halt! I said halt !"

Striding through fallen beams and embers, Tarram raised his arm, half-turned toward the bellowing soldier, and made the flat-hand-waving-at-the-ground Molthuni military sign for "Be stealthy."

It wasn't a ruse likely to work, but if it bought them even a few moments more before some hoghead fired his crossbow …

There were barrels ahead. Blackened and smoldering, yet a barrier against anyone aiming crossbows at them, even if they'd become brittle charcoal. And if they held liquid, they just might still be a lot sturdier than that.

Tarram tried to quicken his pace. Beside him, Tantaerra almost fell for the third time, hissed a curse, and kicked off one of her boots.

Only to promptly step on an ember and hiss a much louder curse. Words that came wreathed in a sharp, unpleasant reek of burning hair. Tarram wrinkled his nose. He'd heard the old saying many times, that roasting humans smelled like roast boar. But he lacked the words for what burnt halfling hair smelled like.

"Who are you?"

The shouting soldier again. Well, that signal had bought them more time than he'd thought it would …

Tarram shouted something incoherent back, making his voice sound irritated and clipped, like a high-ranking officer making a reply he didn't think he should need to give. Like the Lord Investigator.

And kept right on walking, in behind the barrels now. He didn't have to look to know that Tantaerra was right beside him. She'd found it impossible to walk in just one oversized boot, had abandoned it, and was now cursing constantly under her breath. As the smell of scorched halfling grew steadily stronger.

There were real flames right ahead, leaping up like a huge campfire, over a heap of ashes that marked the corner of the warehouse. Two steps to the right to go around it, and two more to get past it, and they were through it and into a cooler area beyond, the street between this burned warehouse and the next one.

"Come on!" he hissed.

"You, too!" the halfling hissed back at him, from somewhere beneath his right elbow. "Down this street back into Halidon, yes?"

"Yes!"

They sprinted, and with every step the night grew darker. There were still lanterns, of course, but if luck stayed with them …

It did. A lantern guttered out ahead, to the accompaniment of curses, and they were plunged into pitch darkness.

They shuffled forward, gently passing their swords back and forth in front of themselves to avoid running onto the points of any unseen spears.

The voice, when it spoke, was startlingly close. "That you, Thrykon?"

" No , soldier!" Tarram snapped, without hesitation, trying to remember the exact pitch and tone of the Lord Investigator but settling for sounding as rudely imperious as he remembered the man being. "I am Lord Investigator Osturr, and I have had about enough of the shoddy, shocking lack of discipline here in Halidon! Are you soldiers of Molthune or not? Who assigned you here? Right here, I mean! You should be over there , where the lanterns are! Can no one follow simple orders around here?"

"I-sorry, sir. I'll-sorry!" They heard the chastened bloodcoat hurry off.

" I can follow simple orders," a new and nasal voice spoke up, "and mine were to stay right here and stop anyone passing me, until Morthus himself relieved me. And being as he hasn't, and as he gave me those orders himself, I'm staying right here."

"And what, soldier, might your name be?" Tarram inquired icily, edging forward but keeping well to the left of that voice. He felt Tantaerra's hand touch his knee and stay there, so she could move with him.

And then, just as suddenly as it had vanished, the moon came sailing serenely out from behind the clouds, bathing all Halidon in its pale glow. Stars twinkled around it in a largely empty silver sky.