Quag Keep by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online Page B

the door without looking back. His mighty shoulders, with the boar helm riding above, expressed more than his words. Naile Fangtooth was plainly beset by such a temper as made his kind deadly enemies.

4

Out of Greyhawk
    PARTS OF GREYHAWK NEVER SLEPT. THE GREAT MARKET OF THE merchants, edging both the Thieves’ Quarter and the foreign section of the free city, was bright with the flares of torches and oil lanterns. People moved about the stalls, a steady din of voices arose. You could bargain here for a bundle of noisome rags, or for a jewel that once topped some forgotten king’s crown of state. To Greyhawk came the adventurers of the world. The successful brought things that they showed only behind the dropped curtains of certain booths. The prospective buyers could be human, elvish, dwarf—even orc or other followers of Chaos as well as of Law. In a free city the balance stood straight-lined between Dark and Light.
    There were guards who threaded among the narrow lanes of the stalls. But quarrels were settled steel to steel. In those they did not meddle, save to make sure riot did not spring full born from some scuffle. A wayfarer here depended upon his own weapons and wits, not upon any aid from those guardians of the city.
    Naile muttered to himself in such a low whisper that the words did not reach Milo through the subdued night roar of the market. Perhaps the swordsman would not have understood them even if he had heard, for to a berserker the tongues of beasts were as open as the communication of humankind. They had gone but a short way into the garish, well-lighted lines of booths, when Fangtooth stopped, waiting for the other two, swordsman and elf, to come up with him.
    The pseudo-dragon still lay, perhaps sleeping, curled about the massive lift of his throat. Under his ornately crowned helmet his own face was flushed, and Milo could sense the heat of anger still building in the other. As yet that emotion was under iron control. Should it burst the dam, Naile might well embroil them all in quick battle, picking some quarrel with a stranger to vent his rage against the wizard.
    â€œDo you smell it?” The berserker’s voice sounded thick, as if his words must fight hard to win through that strangling anger. Under the rim of his helmet, his eyes swept back and forth, not to touch upon either of his companions, but rather as if in that crowd he sought to pick out some one his axe could bring down.
    There were smells in plenty here, mainly strong, and more than half-bordering on the foul. Ingrge’s head was up, his nostrils expanded. The elf did not look about him. Rather he tested the steamy air as if he might separate one odor from all the rest, identify it, lay it aside, and try again.
    To Milo the slight warning came last. Perhaps because he had been too caught up in the constant flow of the scene about them. His sense for such was, of course, far less acute than that of either of his companions. But now he felt the same uneasiness that had ridden him in the inn, as well as along the way thewizard’s guide had taken them. Somewhere in this crowd there existed interest in—them!
    â€œChaos,” Ingrge said, and then qualified that identification. “With something else. It is clouded.”
    Naile snorted. “It is of the Dark and it watches,” he returned. “While we walk under a geas! I wish I had that damn wizard’s throat between my two hands, to alter the shape of it—for good! It would be an act of impiety to foul my good skull-splitter”—he touched his axe where it hung at his belt—“with his thin and treacherous blood!”
    â€œWe are watched.” Milo did not address that as a question to either elf or berserker. “But will it come to more than watching?” He surveyed the crowd, now not seeking the identity of the foe (for unless the enemy made an overt move he knew his skills could not detect the source of danger)