Ed Greenwood - The Wizard's Mask

"That's a hell of a way to begin negotiations," his tiny awakener croaked.

The Masked found himself grinning. "Always begin from a position of strength," he said.

So …a halfling woman, probably in her late thirties, and with the lined face of someone who'd known hunger often enough, despite the fact that she still had plenty of chest and hip on an otherwise scrawny frame. From Nirmathas originally, judging by her accent, but likely gone for several years now, as the accent was only faint. Running from the local Molthuni soldiery, but who wouldn't?

He let silence stretch to see what she'd fill it with. Shouts of bloodcoats calling to each other from the warehouse beneath them punctuated that waiting. Shouts that were getting closer.

"Let me go," she said at last, preceding and following those words with swallowing that had to be painful.

"And have you gut me with that knife you've been trying to reach? Or its cousin, hidden somewhere else about you? Not likely."

"My quarrel is not with you, sir. I'm …being pursued."

"I am aware of that," The Masked said dryly. "I'm also aware that you've led your pursuers here, to me-and awakened me from a rather pleasant slumber that I'm in sore need of. It might be wise to be more persuasive."

"It might be wise to let me go. Those men are out here in the night with their spears and lanterns not because of me, but because of you . You've not been subtle enough in your dealings, whatever they may be. There's a Lord Investigator come from Canorate to hunt you-because these dolts of Halidon have grown suspicious of you."

The Masked tightened his grip a little, to remind the halfling that she was in no position to afford scorn. Nor to try for her knife again.

"Keep your hand well away from your hilt- any of your hilts," he warned softly. "And just how is it that you know this?"

"I listen at windows," she hissed, eyes flashing fury. "They were speaking of your dealings with Escolarr Tarlmond."

"Have they found him, then?"

"Was he lost? They said nothing of seeking him, only you. Tonight. And I warn you, that investigator is both smart and a winterstone-cold bastard ."

"So," The Masked told her flatly, "am I." When that drew no reaction, he asked, "I take it the warehouse below us is surrounded and being searched?"

"You take it correctly," the halfling hissed. "They'll probably be out on this roof after us very soon now."

"So my easiest play would be to open that hatch you came up through and toss you down to them."

She tried to struggle, jerking and arching suddenly, seeking to slip out of his grasp with her small size, but The Masked had been expecting that, and tightened his grip cruelly. "Stop trying to get yourself killed, and give me a good reason to do otherwise," he snapped, and relaxed his grip enough to let her breathe again.

The halfling panted for air, managing to gasp swiftly, "I'll pay you to hide me, to get me away from the bloodcoats!"

"Oh? How much?"

"Ten silver weights," she spat.

They locked gazes for a long time, as the shouts grew louder.

Then The Masked nodded. "A paltry price for a paltry deed. I accept. With one condition."

The roof-hatch squealed open.

"What?" Tantaerra hissed.

"Draw steel on me or threaten me-just once-and my fee rises tenfold," The Masked told her.

She nodded. "I accept."

"Good. Keep low."

∗ ∗ ∗

The masked man let go of Tantaerra and rolled to pluck up something from the roof on his far side.

It was a stone block the size of her head. He hefted it, waited, and as a soldier's head appeared under the raised hatch, threw it. Hard.

Tantaerra winced at the dull thud of the helm crumpling, followed by a brief rattling that might have been teeth. The Masked was already clambering over her in deft haste to grab hold of his lolling-headed victim. He hauled on that head, dragging limp arms and shoulders up through the hatch far enough to let him hook the man's sword-baldric through the hatch handle.

Then he shoved hatch and Molthuni back down, jamming the corpse in the narrow hole, and clambered back past her. "Come."

Rubbing her throat, Tantaerra followed him. To the other end of the warehouse roof, where a ventilator thrust up into the night sky. There was a long spar tied to it, hanging down off the roof.

"Where did this-?"

"I put it here," The Masked interrupted her. "If you're in the habit of spewing questions, kindly hold them for a better time."

Behind them, there were dull boomings from the hatch, then a louder, sharper one as someone slammed the butt-end of a spear against the roof from the loft below. Then a lot more of those louder, sharper booms.

Tantaerra wrestled her attention back from them to the man she'd just hired. Rather than moving the spar to serve as a bridge to the roof of the next warehouse, he had hooked an arm around the ventilator and clawed a flint striker from his belt.

Tantaerra saw an end of twine hanging out of the ventilator, swallowed the question she'd been about to ask, and joined him, holding her dagger against the twine so he could use the striker against it.

With a nod of thanks, he set to work. Three tries produced sparks, and they almost banged heads together blowing into flame. And then the twine was well and truly alight.

" Now we hurry," The Masked told his client, swinging the spar.

"I'll go first," she told him. "I'm a lot lighter. I can tie its other end to the ventilator on yon roof."

"With what?"

She slapped at her belt. The Masked peered, and saw that its buckle was a clip, and the belt itself was dark cord wrapped around and around a trim halfling waist until its wearer looked a lot fatter than she truly was.

"Go first," he agreed, "O Princess of Thieves."

"I'm not-bah!" She waved away the rest of her protest and set off across the spar, hugging it with her arms and hiking her behind into the air so she could run along it. A shout and a hurled spear told them they'd been seen, but the spear came nowhere near the halfling, and its ascent didn't make her falter; she was across in the time it took The Masked, holding the spar steady, to look behind him once. Spear tips were bursting up through the roof back by the hatch, but the unseen soldiers below seemed to lack time and space enough to shift crates so as to let them thrust up hard anywhere else along the roof slope. Which was rather fortunate. The first wisps of smoke were drifting up out of the ventilator now, and the shouts from beneath the roof shifted into startlement and fear …

∗ ∗ ∗

The halfling was up by the next building's ventilator, unwinding cord from around herself with the grace of a dancer. The Masked set about untying the knot at his end of the spar, so they could haul it along with them to the next roof.

More spears sailed up out of the night, to clang and clatter on the roofs well below them both and fall back into the night. It took practice to throw a spear up high with any accuracy, and it seemed this backcountry garrison hadn't done much high-hurling.

Then his new client was beckoning him with a wave, and flattening herself down on the spar to steady it as he'd done for her.

Not that she weighed much more than a sturdy dog, mind you. The Masked threw a last look at the loop of untied rope around his ventilator, shrugged, and started across, crawling and trying not to kick or do anything that might set the spar to sliding down the roof. This was no hero-ballad; he'd not be walking away from a fall from this height.

More shouts, and more spears-but flames were leaping up behind him, now, and the shouting inside that warehouse was turning to screams.

Down below, more soldiers were running. There'd be crossbows, soon.