What the great scholar said—indeed, the identity of the scholar himself—will forever remain a mystery. For at that very moment did the dwarf Shelyid charge into the chamber, directly at the raging snarl, his little hands raised before him!
“Go back, go back!” he called out to the snarl. “Just go over to the side, out of the way, and you’ll be okay. Greyboar doesn’t really want to hurt you, we just want to get into that door over there and what do you care anyway, I mean, it’s that Mr. Inkman what put you in th—”
He got no further. With one monstrous swipe of its talon-tipped paw, the snarl smashed Shelyid’s body to the floor, like a giant swatting a fly.
“Oh horror!” cried Zulkeh. Greyboar and Ignace looked away, grimacing.
“Oh horror!” cried Zulkeh. “The diminutive cretin’s at it again!” Greyboar and Ignace looked back, astonishment upon their faces.
And indeed, the now-certifiably-moronic dwarf had risen to his feet, somewhat shakily, and advanced again upon the snarl. This time, however, his hands were not raised high in appeal, but clenched in pigmy petulance.
“That hurt!” shrilled Shelyid. The monster’s head plunged down, jaws gaping wide.
Shelyid punched its snout.
The snarl pulled back its head abruptly. Its jaws snapped shut. For a moment—insane moment!—monster and dwarf gazed at each other, their eyeballs not more than two feet apart. Shelyid was glaring, if such a fierce description can be applied to the gnome’s ridiculous little face. The snarl’s expression was impossible to describe at all. Uncertainty, puzzlement, surprise, confusion—perhaps a bit of all of these. But perhaps not—’tis difficult to ascertain the mental state of a beast which is, after all, mindless.
The impasse was broken by Greyboar.
“Don’t move, Shelyid!” he shouted, advancing rapidly toward the pair, his great hands outstretched in a wrestler’s pose. “I’ll take care of it!”
The snarl’s head turned. Seeing Greyboar approach, the monster’s hackles rose, a great snarl issued from its maw—and they don’t call the beasts “snarls” for nothing, let me assure you!
“Stay away!” shrilled Shelyid. But Greyboar’s attention was wholly fixed on the snarl, which was even that moment matching wrestler’s stance with predator’s stalk.
“Stay away!” cried Shelyid again. Rushing at the strangler, the dwarf stretched out his hands and thrust them into Greyboar’s belly—if such a word as “belly” can be used to describe a stomach like the plastron of a giant weight-lifting tortoise.
Greyboar landed on his rump. “Utter shock” best describes the expression on his face.
“You knocked me down!” he bellowed.
Shelyid grimaced. He started to speak, then spotted the head of the snarl, which was even then pushing past him, jaws wide, flaming eyes fixed on the form of the strangler.
“And you stop it too!” shrilled the dwarf. He smacked the snarl’s snout. Then smacked it again. The enormous beast backed up a pace, stared at Shelyid. Whined. Sat back on its haunches—for all the world like a dog brought to heel!
“You knocked me down!” bellowed Greyboar.
Shelyid turned back to the strangler. Grimaced again. Shrugged apologetically.
“You knocked me down!” bellowed Greyboar.
Shelyid wrung his hands—and well he should! He began to apologize: “Well, gee, Mr. Greyboar, I didn’t mean to but—”
Greyboar, still seated, looked over at Ignace. “Did you see that, Ignace?” He pointed an accusing finger at the dwarf. “He knocked me down!”
Ignace nodded, his face pale. “Yeah, I saw it.” The agent whistled tunelessly. “Word of this gets out, our fee’ll be cut in half. If we’re lucky.”
Zulkeh tugged urgently at the agent’s sleeve. “Mr. Ignace,” he spoke, “I must urge you to exercise whatever ability you possess to restrain your client! I apologize for my apprentice’s unseemly behavior, but I am quite certain the miscreant gnome” (here he gazed fiercely at Shelyid, shook his finger, and admonished his apprentice: “Apologize at once to Mr. Greyboar, unworthy wretch!” “I’m trying to,” complained Shelyid, “if people’ll just let me fin—”) “did not intend any actual bodily harm or discomfort to the esteemed chokester—nay, fie on such witless notions! And I can assure you and your client that I shall certainly chastise the insolent youth in a most—”