Few people saw the large shape in the sky and no one saw where it came from. It swooped down from the clouds and hovered silently over Mirage for a moment. There was a brilliant streak of light like lightning, a thin clap of thunder, and the shape was gone as suddenly as it appeared. None of the Tarmaks who saw it could identify it because of the clouds and fog, but a few guessed it was a blue dragon from the burst of lightning. Others doubted they had seen it at all. It was probably just an errant storm cloud. What they couldn’t doubt was the sound of warning bells. Smoke was rising from a warehouse in Mirage. Within moments the smoke became billows and the flames licked high through the roof. A massive explosion rocked the building and sent flaming debris flying in all directions. Smaller fires ignited on the roofs of nearby buildings and on a storage shed filled with fodder. Alarms bells rang throughout the city.
The Tarmak dekegul in charge of the city’s forces collected his men and marched out of the old city to the harbor district to fight the fires. He took several dozen slaves with him to help, but he left the slaves in the large pen by the guild houses under guard, deciding they would be more trouble than it would be worth to take them along. They had a bad habit of trying to escape.
The prisoners were sheltered in a series of pens and stables that had once been a livestock market. Seeing the glow on the rooftops, they came out of their stalls to observe what was happening and were startled to see two women brazenly approach the pair of guards at the main gate. Both women were cloaked, and one carried a pie. One of the prisoners, a thin, haggard young man dressed in rags, nearly choked himself on a cry of recognition.
The taller woman said something in Tarmakian that caused the guards to laugh. She walked forward, arguing in a loud voice and gesturing with the pie as if she wanted to give it to someone. Just as the guards reached for the pie, she heaved it into the face of the nearest guard. The two women acted at the same time. The smaller one pulled out a crossbow from under her cloak and shot the second guard while the tall one pulled two throwing knives out of her belt and killed the guard with pie in his face and a third guard that came running.
Suddenly there was a swarm of movement all around the slave pen. Dark clad men slipped in to kill the remaining Tarmak guards quietly and quickly, and before the slaves really knew what was happening their rescuers threw open the gates and urged them to come out.
Linsha dashed into the pens. “Sir Hugh!” she called softly. “Are you here?”
Laughing and crying at once, the thin man in the rags came forward to hug her. “Gods, Linsha, I thought you were dead!” he cried. “And Callista! You are a sight for tired eyes. And… who are you?” he asked when a tall, blond man came to stand by Linsha.
“Lord Hogan Bight, this is Sir Hugh Bronan, Knight of Solamnia. Sir Hugh, this is the Lord Governor of Sanction. But you might know him better as Crucible.”
The knight blinked. He knew he was tired and sick and not at his best and brightest, but surely she didn’t mean what she said.
“It’s a long story,” she said dryly. “But now we need your help-all of you. We are stealing some brass dragon eggs that the Tarmaks took from Iyesta. If you help us, we will do our best to help you get out of town and join Falaius’s army that is headed this way.”
The slaves, made up mostly of prisoners of war, cheered raggedly. A few melted silently away into the darkness to make their own way out of the city, but the majority-nearly twenty men and centaurs-stayed. They quickly stripped the dead guards of all their weapons and dragged the bodies into the stalls. They also liberated a few horses housed in the stable. With a little luck the Tarmaks would be too busy to notice the pens were empty of slaves until it was too late.
Four male elves approached Linsha and Lord Bight and bowed low. “We will go with you,” the eldest said, “for no dragon eggs should be held by these Brutes. But once we are out of the city, we would like to go on to Silvanesti.”
Recognizing them as Qualinesti elves, Linsha returned their bow. “You may stay with us as long you wish. But you should know that the Knights of Neraka hold your kinsmen’s Forest.”
“Yes.” The speaker sighed. “We learned that the hard way. We were trying to escape from the Dark Knights when the Brutes caught us just outside Mem-Ban.”
Mem-Ban was another village located on the border between Iyesta’s realm and the Silvanesti Forest, not far from the King’s Road.
The elves, Linsha noted, were all young and had the look of warriors about them. She guessed they were stragglers from the main body of elves that had crossed the desert some time ago. Perhaps they had stayed behind in Qualinesti as part of a rear guard and only recently reached the Forest. What a welcome they had received, she thought.
Gathering together the freed slaves and the Legion men, Linsha led her small band toward the stone building that once housed the Treasurer’s Guild. The building was constructed from the image of the original two-story edifice that had stood in the old elven city of Gal Tra’Kalas. It was an elegant design with large windows, columns on the front portico, and spacious rooms for the guild members to meet and socialize. Beneath the guildhouse was a large vault, waterproof and strong, built specifically to hold the steel and coins of the city treasury and the personal funds of the members of the guild. The treasury had been stripped, Linsha knew, and much of the steel, gold, and silver had been sent to Ithin’carthia or spent by the Tarmaks on weapons, ships, and mercenaries. The only things of value in the vault now were the eggs. Or so Linsha hoped. She had not seen the eggs since the very brief viewing Lanther had allowed her before they sailed. But their placement looked permanent, and Mae had said the Keena were still using the place. Surely the eggs were still there.
In the deep shadows of an adjacent workshop across the street, Linsha and her company found Mae and the other two Legionnaires waiting for her. Looking pleased with themselves, they opened the wide doors of the shop and revealed a wagon hitched to two horses. Mae pulled back the canvas and revealed bows, which the elves and the centaurs happily took, and some swords and axes for the others. They also had a large bundle wrapped with canvas resting in the back of the wagon.
Linsha outlined their plan to the released slaves and watched in satisfaction as they spread out to obey her orders. Mae and Callista climbed into the wagon and took the reins to wait for the signal. For a few minutes, Linsha, Sir Hugh, and Lord Bight waited in the darkness for the attackers to take their position.
In that quiet moment before the attack, Linsha listened to every sound and she heard something she had not noticed before. Sir Hugh was having difficulty breathing. His lungs wheezed with every breath, and he was trying very hard to stifle a cough.
She moved close and said softly, “You are not well. Stay in the wagon with Callista. I will not lose you now.”
His teeth shone pale against his bearded face as he smiled. “I have a cold. That is all. You will not deprive me of a little revenge for these past wretched days. Besides, seeing you has given me strength. You must tell me what has happened, and why you say that man is Crucible.”
“Fair enough,” she agreed. She pulled up her hood. “Ready? Stay behind me, both of you.”
Tilting her chin up to its most arrogant angle, she stifled the nervousness in her stomach and marched out of the shop and into the street. The fire had been a distraction for the warriors in the city, but Linsha and the two men were to be the distraction for the priests and guards at the guildhouse. She walked boldly up the middle of the street where the Tarmaks could plainly see her. She behaved as if she had every right to be there and knew exactly what she wanted. It had worked before.