Chapter 6

We delivered the two pelts to Master Agorp at his shop. He said, “By the gods, you are giving me more work than I usually see in a year. I will have to store these pelts in a pouch to preserve them until I can get to them.”

“That’s okay. We’ll discuss the details when Eglos and I are ready to leave Londorhome.” That was agreeable to him, and we went to lunch at the inn.

That afternoon was kind of slack, and the only good we accomplished was to drive a herd of buftons away from the highway and farther into the forest where they were unlikely to hurt anybody.

Other than that, we wandered around giving Eglos more of a chance to examine the countryside with her far-seeing skill. She didn’t find any monsters that we needed to kill, but she did comment that the neighborhood was certainly pleasant, and she wished that we could permanently clear the demons and monsters away from Londorhome.

That evening, a small troop of men rode into Londorhome and descended upon the tavern portion of the inn. Uh-oh, I could see trouble headed for the innkeeper. This had to be a gang of marauders who were looking for something worth their effort to steal. They just had that air of tough bullies about them.

All of the regular customers could see the same kind of thing that Eglos and I saw, and they left the inn shortly after the gang showed up. We had no place else to go, and we sympathized with the innkeeper, so we waited around just in case he needed our help. That happened very quickly as the innkeeper demanded, in a polite sort of way, that he be paid for the watered wine that the men had already drunk.

To nobody’s surprise, the ruffians refused to pay. Furthermore, they demanded that stronger liquor be served to them. That would have been okay, except that it was obvious that they had no intention of paying for the fresh liquor. The conversation with the innkeeper was loud enough for us to easily hear what was being said, so we had no trouble hearing Master Hardrith refuse to supply the liquor. He also again demanded payment for the watered wine that the thugs had already consumed.

The man who looked by his slightly better clothes like he must be the leader of the gang reached out with his left hand and grabbed Master Hardrith’s shirt near the collar and pulled him close. He pulled his knife with his right hand as if he planned to attack Hardrith with it. He threatened to attack immediately if the innkeeper did not produce the demanded bottle of hard liquor.

Okay, that was enough for me. I stood up beside our table and demanded that the bully release Master Hardrith immediately, or he would have to face me. Naturally, the only weapon that I had was my common hunting knife, while the gang leader had a sword as well as his fighting knife.

The man looked at me and sneered, “Mind your own business, bumpkin, before I am forced to show you more trouble than you can handle.”

I answered in a calm, but threatening voice, “Back off, or you will be the one in trouble.” I expected to have to fight, but I wanted it to be obvious that it was the bully who started the fight.

“Chase, Jelt, take care of that upstart for me, and don’t be too tender about it. We’ll relax later with his lady friend. Emter, make sure that she does not escape.”

It was also obvious that the only weapon that Eglos had with her was her fighting knife, and I had no doubt that she was competent enough with it to defend herself when threatened by only one man. Therefore, I did not worry about her, especially since she was wearing her Ring of Teleportation. I figured that she could kill every enemy in the room before they could react if it came to that.

I shifted a part of my attention to Chase and Jelt, but I paid most of my attention to the gang leader and what he might do to Master Hardrith. I reacted as soon as the two thugs got close to me by moving as fast as I could in my magic boots. I dashed toward them and struck each one on the breast bone. I was trying not to make a big mess with a lot of blood. Both bullies died immediately, despite the fact that I made a point of pulling my punches so that I would not penetrate their skin.

I never slowed down as I approached the gang leader. I could see by the way he started to move his arm that he intended to slit the innkeeper’s throat. I reached the two men in what was to me long before the gang leader was in position for his dastardly deed.

I had no trouble in grabbing his right forearm with my left hand and squeezing. This was when I slowed down enough so that the man would realize what had happened to his forearm and have a few moments for the pain to register. I then hit him in the throat just hard enough to crush his windpipe. I wanted him to know that he was about to suffocate and to struggle to try to prevent that from happening. Of course, he couldn’t prevent it.

Meanwhile, Eglos was dealing with Emter. She let him get close enough to try to grab her. Her solution was to raise him to the ceiling and throw him down on his head onto the floor. Naturally, he never moved from that moment on.

I turned to Master Hardrith and asked if he was all right. He answered, “Oh, yes, I am totally unhurt thanks to you. I must say that I have never before seen anyone move as fast as you did. The whole experience was worth it just to see that.”

I grinned and said, “I am always ready to show off my abilities in a good cause. I guess that I should get busy and remove these bodies. Where can I put them?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll have my swamper arrange the bodies neatly against the back wall so that I will have something to show my customers tomorrow. The swamper can dispose of them later on tomorrow. It’s not hot enough for them to be a problem for a couple of days, and this well give me something new to talk about.”

Okay, it was now Hardrith’s problem, and I didn’t worry about it.

***

Finally it happened; Master Agorp announced that he was through tanning my Lummocks hide, and I could pick it up at my convenience.

Dammit, a terrible rain and wind storm hit the neighborhood, and we were not going anywhere until it let up. The local weather witch predicted that the storm was going to last at least four days. Eglos and I speculated that Londorhome would be blown away by that damned wind at the hint of a taste of bad luck.

Obviously, we were not going anywhere until the storm let up, so I had Eglos to teleport us to the tanner to discuss with him what to do with the untanned hides that belonged to us. We agreed on a price, and Master Hardrith agreed to finish up on the grondal and the smaller of the two lummocks hides which he had already started to work on. They would be ready for pickup about the time the storm abated, so we would hang around to pick them up before leaving Londorhome. Hardrith was an honest man by all repute, so we discussed a price for all of the tanning we had brought to him, including the unfinished lummocks hide. That he would put into storage in one of the storage pouches until we could return to pick it up. I paid him all of the money I owed him for the tanning and prepared to leave to continue our journey south to Mt. Kesci.

Eglos had been occupying herself by pushing her far-seeing as hard as possible and had seen the road to within about 100 miles of Mt. Kesci. Of course, that was not our final destination, but it would save us weeks of walking if she could teleport us that far, and all in one jump! If she could do that, it would be a trivial problem to teleport us to a town near the mountain.

Once there, we would work our way as close as possible to the “X” spot marked on the map.

Well, Eglos was up to the task, and she teleported us to the town of Mountainnorth in the two jumps we expected. She felt that the only reason that she could not get us to the town in one jump was that it was too far away for her far-seeing to be reliable enough. There was always the danger in putting us down in the wrong place and killing us with the explosion that happened whenever two solids tried to occupy the same place at the same time.

Mountainnorth was named for the obvious reason that it was on the north side of Mt. Kesci. The town was very similar to Londorhome, except that it was shrinking, rather than expanding with new residents. There were some empty houses, so we moved into one and set up the magic tent inside. That way, we could have all of the comforts that we were used to and were left alone by the regular residents of the town.

The other thing about the difference between the two towns was that there was no wall around Mountainhome. I was somewhat surprised by the lack of a wall, but I could not get a satisfactory answer as to the reason from any of the normal residents. I guessed that I would find out eventually.

We spent the first day getting settled in and the second day trying to get to know some of the regulars, such as the innkeeper. He was very standoffish, and he was the person who suggested that we move into one of the empty houses, rather than rent a room from him. Okay, we really preferred to do that. We simply had not thought of it while we were in Londorhome, or we would have tried that before taking a room at the inn. Oh, well, things worked out fine there, and we hoped that the same would come about here.

We had no idea how long we would stay in Mountainnorth, but we were not planning to remain beyond the amount of time it would take to find whatever it was secreted at the “X” spot. After that, we would probably return to Eglos’ quest. Wandering around and killing bad guys, monsters, and demons were actually a lot of fun.

It was only our second day in Mountainnorth when we got our first taste of excitement there. We were doing something rather unusual for us—we were lolling around in bed after our morning quickie when we heard a major disturbance going on outside. Eglos used her far-seeing ability to try to tell what was going on.

She got that kind of detached look on her face as she usually did while concentrating on her magic. She suddenly almost shouted to me, though I was right beside her. “Linc, Mountainnorth appears to be under attack by a large pack of demons! What should we do?”

“We had better get dressed and see what we can do to put a stop to the attack.”

We jerked on our clothes without waiting to clean ourselves up, and we were ready to do what we could to defend the town in only a few minutes. I don’t think that either one of us had ever gotten dressed so quickly.