“Not now, gnome!”
“Yes, master,” grumbled the dwarf. Then: “I still think the place is weird—why would you want to sleep on leather sheets? And, boy, this guy Inkman must crap a lot, there’s gotta be eight or nine chamber pots lying around. One of them’s on his pillow! Pretty vain, too, this guy, there’s mirrors everywhere. And what are those funny long wooden things? Look like bananas except bananas don’t—”
“Silence!” hissed the wizard. “I command you, wretch!”
Shelyid grimaced, but obeyed. And, in any event, even the dim-witted gnome must have realized that the time for questions and answers was over. For even at that moment Greyboar was standing before a door on the far wall, preparing to sally forth. Voices could be heard in the room beyond, raised in the coarse and uncouth jests of idle soldiery.
“How many, Ignace?” asked the strangler.
His agent listened intently, his ear flat to the door, then stepped back with a smile.
“Seven, maybe eight.”
Greyboar grunted, seized the doorframe in both hands.
“Are you ready, Ignace?” The agent shrugged. The great muscles in Greyboar’s shoulders began to move, like breaking surf.
“A moment!” hissed Zulkeh. “Perhaps some shrewd stratagem—the disparity in numbers—’twould seem wise—”
He got no further. Greyboar wrenched the door off its hinges and charged into the room. Three startled guards stood immediately before him, uttering cries of surprise. Greyboar swung the door high and brought it down directly upon them. The door splintered into a hundred pieces. So did they.
Five soldiers remained. These had been seated at another table in a corner of the room some steps distant. They were now on their feet, their faces pale with shock, but sharp swords in their hands. Trained and experienced warriors, ’twas plain to see.
Greyboar advanced upon them, flexing his hands.
Meanwhile, Ignace leaned casually against the wall, placidly observing the scene. Shelyid nudged him fiercely.
“We gotta go help Greyboar!” he cried. “He’s way outnumbered! And they got swords and he’s got nothing!”
Ignace laughed. “Are you nuts, kid? For Greyboar, this kinda thing’s a light workout. Knights in armor on horseback, now, he’d of maybe done some warm-up exercises first.”
“Yes, Shelyid,” concurred Zulkeh sagely, ” ’tis always wise to let professionals handle matters involving their trade. Best we stay out of the way,” he added, matching deed to the word, “lest—”
But Shelyid would have none of it. Exhibiting yet again that cretinous mentality which the gentle reader has, by now, no doubt found excessively tiresome, the pathetic gnome launched himself into the center of the room, clenching his puny fists.
“You guys better watch it!” he cried. “He’s not alone, you know!”
“I’ll handle this one!” shouted five soldiers in unison, each pointing at Shelyid. “The rest of you take the big guy!”
And so saying, the five stalwarts hurled themselves as one man upon the dwarf.
Two factors alone kept the apprentice from becoming chopped homunculus. The first, ironically enough, was his diminutive stature. For Shelyid, seeing doom advancing in the form of five descending sword blades, immediately threw himself through the legs of the soldier directly before him. This unexpected maneuver caused the soldier to stumble backward and fall upon the dwarf. Shelyid’s small arm appeared from below and locked itself around the soldier’s neck. His four comrades stood around the interlocked bodies of the duo writhing on the floor, momentarily stymied by the fact that their target was covered by their fellow guard.
This slight hesitation was enough to bring the second factor into play, which was, of course, Greyboar.
As your narrator, let me take the occasion here to state for the record, that whatever slight skepticism I might have heretofore possessed concerning the reputation of the strangler, ended once and for all time within the next four seconds.
Professional fingerwork, indeed.
In the first second, Greyboar removed the spinal column from one soldier, as neatly as an angler filleting a trout. In the next second, he utilized this spinal column as a garrote to decapitate another. Then, in the third second, he deftly snared the falling head and used it upon the skull of a third soldier much in the manner of a gorilla using a stone to shatter a coconut, with much the same result. Finally, in the fourth second, he reverted to more classic form, seizing the last standing soldier by the throat with both hands, stretching his gullet to a truly preposterous length, and neatly finishing the job by tying the now-suitably-elongated weasand into a double bowline.