Ed Greenwood: The Wizard's Mask

"Blessed coin," she called, pitching her voice as low and loud as she could, "lend me some of your luck now!"

Still running hard, she flung it past the heads of the staring women. It rang off the side of a wagon just beyond them, at about the time the meaning of her words sank home. Then in almost perfect unison they turned, in a swirling of skirts, and went after the coin.

In their wake, Tantaerra swerved out, straight away from the line of wagons, and sprinted down a handy street ahead. Past a few hanging signs and their shops, away from the caravan, away from the great forest. If she couldn't reach the trees now, she'd have to wait for deep night to try for them, and in the meantime she needed somewhere high enough that she could climb out of the reach of spears, somewhere that was hopefully also large enough for her to hope to hide in, on, or atop.

Which meant the watchtower she could see ahead, standing like a stubby lance against the setting sun, and the Molthuni military barracks attached to it.

As the old Nirmathi saying put it: When hunted by wolves, the best place to hide is among them.

Come to think of it, the "wolves" those words referred to were Molthuni soldiers like these. Fair enough. Like a wolf, then, she would be.

The street was full of older villagers strolling to see what was going on at the caravan. She got more than a few curious looks, but no hindrance or pursuit. And thankfully no dogs.

Which might well mean there was something in the forest that prowled Halidon by night, hunting such barking beasts.

Something to mull over later, when there weren't Molthuni soldiers pelting along after her, still far behind but waving their spears and yelling at her to stop.

Did that ever work? Did they really think someone running from them would be foolish enough to stop and give up? Or that common folk who increasingly resented the ever-increasing laws and little rules, and the heavy-booted zeal of the crimson-coated soldiers who enforced them, would leap to catch or hinder a fleeing fugitive?

No one was leaping in Halidon, that was for sure.

She ran past staring villager after staring villager, her hip really starting to ache, now. Ahead, the street ended in a muddy open space in front of a long row of empty paddocks, with the barracks looming up on her left. No palisade or gatehouse, and no door guards, just a tall, ugly stone building with a shake-shingled roof, various sections of it having different pitches, as the building had been expanded over the years by builders with their own ideas of what a barracks roof should look like. No gables, nor anything as fancy as a spire or a turret, except the lone, square watchtower, which was wrapped around with rotting wooden gutters sloping down from the surrounding roofs and jutting well out into the street. Evidently it rained hard in Halidon.

Good. If those gutters weren't too rotten, they'd be her climbing aids and help to hide her, once she was up and-

Light flared, at the far end of the barracks. Panting for breath, Tantaerra slowed to peer. A soldier on a ladder, his back to her, was swinging shut the shutter of a massive, rusty hanging metal lantern …and starting back down to the ground.

He'd be heading this way to light the next one, and the next. Stout bars jutted out up there beside each lantern, the ladder hooking over them for stability. She had to get up onto the roof, and hide in the angle where it descended to meet the watchtower, before he-

No. Impossible.

She'd have to do this the other way.

She raced to the streetside wall of the barracks and flattened herself against it, just before he reached the base of the ladder.

Then she waited, shuddering to catch her breath and trying to ignore the pursuing soldiers getting nearer. It was dark enough now for not every idle glance to notice her, if she kept still.

This should have been about long enough …

She went to the ground, crawled to the corner, and peered around it, chin almost in the dirt. The lamplighter was just settling the ladder into position by the next lantern. She waited, in case he was one of those sightseers who liked to take a look around every so often, but his attention was entirely on the tinderbox slung on a loose baldric at his hip, and positioning it to avoid banging it against himself as he climbed. He started up.

Like a small and silent wind, Tantaerra raced to the ladder and went up it behind him, moving only when he did, stretching with great care for silence, and keeping over on the left side, because the tinderbox was hanging down the soldier's right side.

She waited until he was right at the top and had swung the lantern-shutter open before climbing up on its far side, to hang right beside his head. He was intent on striking a striker, inside the box on a short-chain, against the box's row of flints so as to catch sparks on a taper-a fiddly task that really needed more hands than he had, and was consuming all of his attention save enough to mutter tunelessly, "She was only a shopgirl from Canorate, but she was a jewel to me …"

Wrapping her legs around the bar that the ladder was hooked over, Tantaerra let herself dangle head-down beside his left shoulder and pushed against the lantern until she could murmur a provocative purr right into his ear.

"All the way from Canorate I've come, dreaming of your manly strength, and now at last , lover-"

The lamplighter stopped humming and stiffened.

Tantaerra licked her lips, then planted a wet kiss on his earlobe.

The resulting startled shriek and fumbling clatter were gratifying. The soldier's head snapped around to look, and slammed into the open lantern-shutter, setting the lantern to swinging and the startled man to falling back-

With a sudden, arm-flailing shout, the lamplighter was gone, and the abandoned ladder was swaying …

The crash, below, was impressive.

Delicately, Tantaerra gave the top of the ladder the little push necessary to send it toppling slowly over and down, then swarmed along the bar onto the roof and clawed her way up it as hastily as she could, ending on the roof side of the watchtower. The gutter there was in deep gloom, and sturdily wedged between the wall just under the roof and the rising side of the watchtower. She made herself as small and slender as she could, and snuggled down into it, prepared to become a motionless part of the building until full night came.

The sausage was more than a little battered, but tasted delicious.

The squeal sounded like someone low-voiced and very surprised being torn apart. Very close by.

Tantaerra was awake in an instant, trying to grab for the hilts of her knives and knowing a moment of panic as she felt her arms pinioned by the-oh. The gutter.

She was lying in the roof-gutter she'd snuggled herself into, a little stiff and more than a little cold. With determined speed she heaved herself up enough to turn over, clapping hands to reassuring hilts, and blinked up at-the stars.

She was wedged between the barracks roof and its watchtower, on a clear and rather chilly night, with nary a cloud to be seen, nor anything moving. No rats, no perching birds …so what had that sound been, so loud and so near?

"Kisses of the banshee, Rolph, do you ever oil these windows?"

That voice was coming from right above her.

Whoever it was spat onto the roof, then leaned out-Tantaerra froze, staring up in silence-and fastened back the noisy shutters by thrusting dangling hooks into loops set ready for them in the watchtower wall. The man had to stare right down at her to do that, and he did. Yet didn't seem to see her, ere he withdrew.

"Why would I?" a deeper voice asked sourly, from farther back in the room beyond that window. "This isn't Canorate. They give us scarce enough oil for our blades and armor; we don't waste it on hinges opened once a year-if that. Get that screen up, or we'll be plagued by moths and stingers before I can get this flagon filled."