Ed Greenwood: The Wizard's Mask

Finding the right floorboard, and its spring-dart trap-my, but Tarlmond had been a nasty, suspicious man, and Halidon was better off without him-took but a moment. The coffer thus gained was smaller and lighter than most, which was even better. Into the padded underarm sack it went.

The Masked shot a last, careful look around the room, and found nothing that could be linked to a tall masked visitor. Closing the door softly behind him, he strolled out and down the stairs, not hurrying.

The first faint wafts of burning flesh preceded him. It smelled like boar, reminding The Masked he was hungry-but the reek of Tarlmond's perfumed hair oil, rising to overtake it, was just horrible.

Yes, Halidon was much better off without him.

∗ ∗ ∗

Tantaerra Loroeva Klazra had run out of curses days ago. The abominable creaking of the ill-maintained wagon had long since half-deafened her and brought on a ringing headache that felt as if someone had put a metal bowl over her head and started tapping it with a hammer.

She could tell by the color of the road-mud passing slowly and lurchingly beneath her that the caravan was far west of Canorate now, up out of the low river-vale farms and close to the Backar Forest. The roadside was littered with twigs and withered leaves fallen from carts that would soon have been snatched up for hearth-kindling, back where she'd come from.

Come from? Hah! Escaped from.

She'd come from Nirmathas, too long ago. Canorate had only been where she'd lived-existed-as a slave.

A small, puny, but useful slave.

If she hadn't been short and gaunt, even for a halfling, she could never have fit between the rotten wagon floorboards and the ramp-boards slung under the decaying conveyance on open frames-recently repaired frames that were probably the stoutest, best-built part of this damnable, never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed wagon.

A turnip wagon, no less, its old sides and bottom too full of cracks to haul grain any more. Which at least made it unlikely anyone would soon be needing to haul forth the ramp-boards that were serving Tantaerra as a floor. Turnips got forked out of wagons, or clawed into sacks and the sacks tossed down.

She hated turnips.

Still, being wedged here like an opportunistic rat won out over being a Molthuni slave. Just about any situation would-and Tantaerra had been one of the luckier slaves. Her master, back in Canorate, had been a maker and seller of knives, specializing in throwing knives. She'd been his sharpener, errand-runner, and demonstrator of the art of hurling and catching razor-sharp knives. Which had made some Molthuni wary of kicking or throwing handy objects at a scuttling, skinny, two-and-a-half-foot-tall halfling.

Not that she'd spent most days doing much more than running the grinding wheel or scampering along the highest shelves, fetching down blades to save Hroalund the puffing work of moving his stockroom ladder. And happily eating the apples and wedges of cheese he literally tossed her way.

That had all ended, very suddenly and not long ago, the day someone had killed old Hroalund in a dispute over prices.

Tantaerra had taken his smallest, most exquisite throwing knives-the little adorned ones he sold to women of wealth, to wear hidden under their garments as sharp little surprises for those who offered unwanted attentions-strapped them all over herself, and gotten out, far and fast, seeking the caravan yards. Slaves were blamed for murders all too often, and she'd no desire for that painful a death.

So she'd left the grandest city in Molthune the way most vermin did, hiding under a turnip wagon and living like a rat, foraging by night when the wagon stopped. Whatever she could find-ground-grubs one night, and handfuls of grass too often. Sometimes she stole from the caravan as well-anything but turnips. Halfling slaves were always hungry, but she wanted food, not turnips .

Well, the sun was lowering; it would soon be foraging time again. The puddles passing under her were starting to stink of more than ox-dung and horse heaps, too, and her wagon was starting to rattle over larger rocks, the broken and half-buried remnants of flagstones. They were coming to some sort of settlement.

That meant more danger for her than the open road, yet it might be a good thing in the longer run. The wagon's groans were deepening, which meant she might soon have to find a different home-if something right beside her didn't break with sudden violence and maim her in an instant.

Oh, life was such an endless parade of amusements…

"Ho, Yarlin! Get that banner up! Halidon's garrisoned, and I'd rather not be wearing half a dozen bolts before nightfall!"

That gruff shout came from almost beside Tantaerra, as the head of the caravan guards rode past.

Halidon. She'd heard it mentioned once or twice during her years in Canorate. A small place-logging village, most likely, as it stood at the edge of the Backar Forest. A usual waystop because it was near mid-journey, when taking the most direct roads between Braganza and Canorate.

So they were that close to Halidon. Good. This gods-cursed wagon just might make it.

KeeEEERAKKh .

Or not.

The wheel that was thankfully farthest from Tantaerra rode up over a particularly sharp stone and then thumped down its far side-and the axle that had been spitting grease all over her for days shivered and split, from the hub of the wheel halfway to where a certain small and uncomfortably cramped halfling was grimly watching it from.

The wagon-and the caravan it was part of-lurched right on. No one had heard, of course. No surprise there. This lot saw and heard nothing that didn't jump up and dance for coin under their very noses.

The constant groaning of the wagon was different now, as the dying axle added its own protest to the general din. A sort of rising, wobbling, wandering shriek that-oh, how could they not hear it?

When someone stuck his head in and under for a look, a certain non-paying passenger would be discovered. Though there were halflings in Molthune who weren't slaves, Tantaerra had never known any personally-and stowaways of any height were rarely greeted with much kindness. Moreover, to a certain breed of merchant, a female slave-even a two-and-a-half-foot-tall halfling, well out of girlhood and approaching middle age-would be something to cage and make use of.

Neither the wagon in front of this one nor the one behind had ramp boards or anything else slung underneath. The wagon three back trailed a broken-off length of rusty chain and the dangling remains of a ramp-board frame, but she doubted they'd carry much more than the weight of a few spiders or flies before tearing free and falling to the road.

The light was failing, the sun sinking low, and by the rattling of slowing iron-shod wagon wheels and the clip-clop of hooves rising ahead of her now, there was less mud and more stone underfoot. Voices, too, and some excited shouts. Children.

The caravan had entered Halidon proper. Which meant, the gods being the gods, that it was just about time for this axle to-

SheeEEE EEREEAKH!

Tantaerra dropped and rolled even before the far wheel came off the separating axle and the wagon lurched and then sank down into a nightmare of splinters, amid a chorus of surprised and angry shouts.

She had a glimpse of the wheel wobbling away on its own, bouncing and swaying like a drunkard leaving a tavern late. Then her own hasty escape snatched her view of it away. Out and back, to scuttle like a crab under the next wagon and hope its oxen weren't fast enough when stamping at her to-

"Hoy! You! Crannor, what's that? It just went under your wagon! Like a halfling, but smaller!"

Like a halfling, but smaller .