Chapter 138
Arun glanced over at Hodge, who shrugged. “We’d better keep an eye on her,” the paladin said. “I don’t like the looks of this, though.”
“Mobs ‘ave a way o’ turnin’ ugly,” the other dwarf replied. “Tho’ this lot ‘as the look o’ a bunch o’ merchies.”
Indeed the dwarf’s assessment seemed true; most of those gathered had the look of merchants or craftsmen, with a smattering of those less well-off scattered into the mix. Overall a rather genteel crowd, but that didn’t reassure Arun as he made his way toward the speaker’s platform. Members of the crowd took one look at him, resplendent in his silvery mithral plate armor, and gave way for him.
The speaker was a well-dressed human male in his forties, with a neatly trimmed beard and piercing brown eyes that held the crowd in their grasp as he spoke. “Friends! Can you not see what is happening here? Our coffers are drained, and our hard-earned bread is going to a ragged band of outlander half-orcs!”
Arun managed not to start as Mole materialized next to him. “His name’s Maavu Arlintal,” she told him.
“Why does that name seem familiar?”
“It was his warehouse that was destroyed by that rampaging umber hulk, that we killed.”
Arun nodded, giving the man a more intensive scrutiny. He seemed to be a skilled speaker, his tone growing more strident as he spoke, and punctuating his words with emotive gestures.
“And I tell you, friends, that the administration of this city is corrupt! Why, I will tell you true, that Alec Tercival, a righteous and holy servant of Helm, has offered a challenge at arms to that dog Tereson Skellerang. Why has this challenge not been publicized? Where is the response of the city leaders to these charges? I think we know where our hard-earned money is going, friends!”
While the crowd roared its approval, Mole glanced up at the dwarves. “Tercival... didn’t Jenya mention him... isn’t he one of their paladins?”
Arun directed her attention back toward the crowd. “Looks like this Maavu character’s provoked a reaction with his words.”
Mole jumped into the air to try and get a look at what the dwarf had seen. A knot of armed guardsmen had issued from the main gate of the town hall, led by a bearded man of middle age in a half-helm and hauberk of heavy chain links reinforced by plate greaves. Behind him were a half-dozen half-orcs, each standing nearly a head taller than most of the people in the crowd. The crowd greeted the latter with a chorus of boos and hisses, but drew back as the guards bullied their way through the gathered townsfolk to the base of the platform.
“Maavu Arlintal, by the authority of Tereson Skellerang, I must place you under arrest!” the guard leader said, his voice determined despite the hostility directed at him by the crowd.
A youth pressed his way forward through the crowd. “Let’s teach these bastards a lesson!” he cried, steel gleaming in his hand as he suddenly drew a knife and thrust at one of the guardsmen from the side.
A roar rose up from the crowd, as the youth’s precipitous action unleashed the gathered fury of the crowd. The sea of protesters surged against the suddenly hard-pressed warriors, who were quickly forced back into a circle. Several were bleeding from wounds sustained in the initial rush; although few of the gathered protestors had weapons, they were quick to hurl small stones, foodstuffs, or whatever else was at hand. The warriors used the butts of their halberds to keep the mob away from them, and a number of protestors were quickly laid out on the cobblestones, stunned and bruised. One stepped into the sweep of a blade as its half-orc user thrust the haft of the weapon into the face of a young man in the tailored jacket of a scribe; both men went down, the scribe’s jaw broken, the other clutching a gash that stretched across his shoulder and cut down to the bone.
The leader of the guardsmen drew out a potion and tried to drink it, only to suffer from a fierce assault from a ring of townsmen that pressed in against him from all sides. One struck the bottle with a brass-weighted cane, shattering it. Several punches struck his body, doing little damage through the armor he wore, but someone managed to strike a glancing blow to the side of his head with a length of wood. Though his helm protected him from a fractured skull, it was clear that the ferocity of the assault had staggered him, and he fought for balance as angry hands clawed at him.
He did not, however, reach for the sword at his hip.
“We best clear out o’ ‘ere,” Hodge began, but as he turned he saw that Arun had already dove forward into the crowd, moving people easily with powerful thrusts of his shield and his weapon-hand. The dwarf sighed and followed. A man waving an improvised club fashioned from a fence-post stepped into his view, and for some reason he identified the dwarf as an enemy, swinging his weapon wildly at him. Hodge caught the blow easily on his shield, and countered with a solid punch from a mailed fist that knocked the attacker into two others nearby, swaying a moment before he slumped to the cobblestones, unconscious.
“Watch who yer jostlin’,” the dwarf said, trying to make out Arun in the chaotic melee. The paladin, of course, had made for the thick of the riot, heading directly for the embattled guards.
Maavu, atop the podium, tried to restore order with shouted admonitions to the crowd, but it was clear that the situation was rapidly growing out of hand. The youth with the knife, along with a few others who had drawn weapons and attacked in the initial surge, had vanished from view, slipping away in the first moments of chaos. The merchant, who was more than he appeared at first glance, realized that he’d been set up; that the situation had been manipulated to his disadvantage. Drawing back, he drew out a scroll from the pouch at his waist, opening the tight parchment roll to reveal the neat lines of runic text within. Without hesitation, the merchant began to read the words of magic scribed upon the scroll.
He could not see the individual who stood behind a narrow window within the slender tower that rose above the Town Hall, who watched the scene with great intensity. Nor could he sense the magic that was worked there, or the brief wrenching of the border between worlds that took place in a tiny room behind the slit, unobserved by anyone.
Except for one person in the crowd, who took note of an odd feeling, glancing up across the square before the roiling of the crowd around her drew her attention back to the immediate scene.
Arun’s voice boomed through the mob as the dwarf reached the edge of the melee between the protestors and the guardsmen. Maddened people drew back from the dwarf, whose magical armor seemed to glow despite the clouds that blocked the afternoon sun in the sky above. Clad head to toe in mithral plate, with a large shield of polished steel and his massive hammer at his waist, the dwarf was clearly not someone to be trifled with. He swept his shield and drove back two men who did not take the hint, continuing their attack on the guards leader, knocking one roughly to the ground and driving the second back far enough for the dwarf to steady the battered guardsman.
“Get your men back!” the dwarf roared, all but carrying the man into the ring of half-orcs. The six had formed a ring of open space, the commoners in the crowd having learned that entering the reach of those halberds was foolish. All six were battered and smeared with hurled foodstuffs and assorted filth, but at least twice as many protesters had taken wounds ranging from minor to serious from hafts and blades, and two men lay on the stones, bleeding and unconscious.
“There’s too many!” shouted one of the guards, and in fact it looked as though a sea of humanity separated them from the security of the Town Hall, sixty paces across the square. A paving stone hurtled out from the crowd, glancing off of a half-orc skull, staggering the unlucky mercenary.
“Back then!” Arun yelled, gesturing toward the end of a row of shops that jutted out into the square along Obsidian Avenue, the nearest wall only twenty paces distant. The guard lieutenant quickly took the hint and directed his men in that direction, driving back the scattered protestors with desultory thrusts of their halberds. One of the mercenaries took up his injured comrade and followed, while Arun warded their rear, blocking the progress of the crowd with his mere presence.
“Why do you aid them?” yelled one of the protestors, a man in his mid-fifties. “They take our coin, and now our blood as well!” The cry was echoed by a dozen others, but they wisely did not move to challenge the dwarf.
“Blood given for blood is never a fair trade,” Arun said simply. He came forward, and the foremost among the crowd drew back slightly in alarm. One of the protestors was pushed roughly aside as Hodge belatedly arrived, and the second dwarf joined his friend.
“Yer crazy, yer know that,” Hodge said.
Arun did not reply, instead bending to touch one of the bleeding men lying on the cobbles. A healing glow issued from his fingertips into the wounded man, who stirred, clutching his head as he groaned.
“Go,” the paladin said. “Go from here, all of you,” he said, louder, to the men and women who watched him in amazement. “There is nothing for you here, now.”
A few of the gathered crowd obeyed, filtering away toward the edges of the swirling mob. The guardsmen had pushed through to the relative shelter of the nearest shop, although objects were still being hurled at them from the crowd, and there were still at least a hundred and fifty people in the square before the Town Hall, hurling invectives as well as objects at the guards warding the main entrance to that structure.
“Yer canna stop all o’ them,” Hodge said.
Arun opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by a cry from the direction of the speaker’s platform behind him.
“Arun! We need you, now!”