“Meaning you?” Danny interjected.
Malkin spread her hands, smiled slightly and shrugged.
“Shiara does say she is as good as she herself was in her prime,” Bal-Simba put in.
“Shiara’s not giving her enough credit,” Wiz said sourly, remembering Malkin’s escapades as his “assistant” in the Dragon Marches.
“So you need me. I’m coming.” Then her face softened and her eyes sparkled. “Besides, it should be a tremendous adventure.”
And if it’s not at first, you’ll make sure it is. His previous experience had left him all too familiar with Malkin’s taste for excitement. He looked over at Danny for support but June was beside him, clutching her husband’s arm.
“I’m in this too,” he said.
June paled and bit her lip. Then she took Danny’s arm. “And me,” she said simply.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Why don’t we just take every wizard in the North?”
“You cannot do it alone, Sparrow,” Bal-Simba said mildly.
“This is supposed to be a surgical operation. The bigger the team the harder to hide.”
Malkin and June just looked at him.
“Okay,” Wiz sighed. “We’re four.”
“Five, I think,” said Bal-Simba, looking over Wiz’s shoulder.
Wiz looked hard at the big wizard “You too?”
“No,” came a voice from behind him, “me.”
FIVE – A QUESTION OF COMPANY
There was a dwarf in the doorway. A rather young dwarf with a large and very gaudy sword slung over his shoulder.
Wiz wasn’t good at telling dwarves apart, but in all the World there was only one sword decorated in such hideously bad taste.
“Glandurg?”
“I told you once, Wizard, the day would come when you would need doughty fighters. I promised you then-that on that day I would stand with you.”
“Uh, thanks,” Wiz muttered. He and Glandurg had never been formally introduced. That had something to do with the fact that Glandurg had spent most of their acquaintance trying to kill him. This had been the result of some kind of deal between Glandurg’s uncle, a very minor dwarf king, and a gang of trolls. That had been patched over, but to say that Wiz wasn’t thrilled to see the dwarf again was to put it mildly.
Glandurg reached over his shoulder and patted the gem-encrusted hilt of his weapon. ‘The sword Blind Fury has dispatched one of your enemies. Now it shall sing in battle against your new foes.”
That was the other thing. Blind Fury was not only decorated in eye-searingly gaudy style, it was enchanted and no one could withstand its blows. But like its present wielder the spell was seriously lacking in ept. The sword had indeed slain an enemy programmer-magician by slicing through a suit of heavy power armor like it was soggy toilet paper. However, the blow had been aimed at Wiz, and Craig, the programmer, had the misfortune to be standing next to him.
Wiz cast a look of mute appeal at Bal-Simba. The big wizard simply spread his hands. “If you will excuse me, Sparrow, I have other matters to attend to.” With that he rose and left.
“Now then,” Malkin said, striding toward the center of the room, flipping her dagger into the air and catching it by the point, “we need to get this expedition organized.”
Wiz sighed. This was going to be a long quest.
Two hours later Wiz met Bal-Simba at the turning of the corridor. The big wizard looked at Wiz as he fell in beside him and raised an eyebrow in unspoken question.
“I think,” Wiz said brightly, “that I may scream. In fact I’m on my way up to the battlements to do just that.”
“I am not unfamiliar with the feeling.”
“Want to join me?”
“I have never found it a particularly productive exercise.”
Wiz made a face. “Has it ever occurred to you that trying to exercise leadership around this place is like herding cats?”
“Quite recently,” his companion said dryly. “Sparrow, you already know what I think of this enterprise.”
“Almost, I’m coming to share your view. Almost.”
“Concerned about your companions?”
“Wouldn’t you be?” He ticked them off on his fingers. “June’s crazy, Malkin’s a kleptomaniac adrenaline junkie, Danny’s still kind of wild and Glandurg is just plain dangerous.”