The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint

We crept up to the bedroom door. The noises beyond the door seemed to be reaching that stage which genteel society likes to call a “climax.” Silly word, really, like you were struggling up a mountain, huffing and puffing and gasping for breath, instead of whooping like a kid while you slide down—well, let’s keep it couth.

Greyboar reached for the doorframe, his huge shoulder muscles starting to move like a tidal bore. His normal approach to opening doors, don’t you know? But before he got halfway into it he dropped his arms and stared down at the doorknob. I looked around him and saw what he was staring at. The door wasn’t even closed, much less locked!

For a moment, Greyboar and I looked at each other, almost as if we were helpless. I mean, what a ridiculous situation! The greatest strangler in the world—he was, too, don’t ever doubt it—and he’d been hired to do a job a ten-year-old could have handled, at least so far.

I made a face and a couple of gestures, which more or less expressed the idea: what the hell, maybe the guy inside is built like a bull. He must be, judging from the noise coming through the door.

Greyboar took a deep breath, shook his head, and charged through the door into the bedroom, his hands ahead of him ready to deal death and doom and destruction.

* * *

Well, the next few minutes were touch and go. I do believe the wings of the Angel of Death brushed me more than once. I do, I do, I do.

Never did a mouse staring up an eagle’s beak talk faster than I did. Trying to convince the big bird to forego lunch.

Funny thing was, it was probably the girls who saved my weasand from undergoing the Really Big Squeeze. I talked just fast enough and long enough that they stopped screaming and started listening to what I was saying and eventually they started talking too and what they said backed up my story. Not a moment too soon, either. First time I’d ever seen Greyboar’s eyes red with rage, actually. Not a sight I recommend for tourists.

Eventually, the red started fading into a kind of pink-orange, and I knew I’d make it to another sunrise. Still had to keep talking, of course. It’s nice to live, but not all that nice when you’ve managed to get yourself into Greyboar’s Black Book, page one, line one. I grant you, it was a small black book, Greyboar’s—he wasn’t the type to nurse grudges, don’t you know? But, oh, it was a very very very very black little book.

“He told me `his rival,’ ” I said, for maybe the tenth time in the last few minutes. “I told him `no girls’ and he nodded,” I said, for maybe the twentieth time in the last few minutes. “How was I supposed to know?” I said, for maybe the thirtieth time in the last few minutes. “It’s not my fault!” I said, for maybe the hundredth time in the last few minutes.

The girls were still scared to death, clutching each other, trembling, pale as ghosts down to the soles of their feet. Oh yeah, you could see the soles of their feet, all right. Not surprising, they were both naked as the day they were born. Under other circumstances, it would have been distracting, as young and good-looking as they were. But at the moment, my thoughts were entirely focused on the survival of me rather than the species.

Plucky girls, though, I’ll say it now. As terrified as they were, they managed to think quick and talk almost as quick as me.

Greyboar and I, as it turned out, had definitely accomplished the first part of the job—tracking down the Baron’s ex-girlfriend and “the rival.” Caught them, in fact, in the very act of “alienating his affections.” Marooning his affections on the moon, more like. What the upper crust calls in flagrante delicto, don’t you know? What we crude plebes call humping like rabbits. Having a grand good time of it, too, like teenagers usually do.

The ex-girlfriend’s name was Angela. She was the one on the left. Cute as a button, which wasn’t surprising given that she was all of seventeen years old. She was a short girl, with one of those lush figures that looks so striking on a small woman. Her complexion was dark. Not as dark as Greyboar or Gwendolyn, who look like desert nomads, but at least as dark as an Ozarine. “Olive-skinned,” they call it. Her eyes were big, colored one of those rich dark brown hues. Almost the same color as her hair, which was on the short side but so curly that it framed her head like a halo.