21 #4
“These things happen,” Astarion said. Privately, he thought forty skeletons was an excellent sign of the need for a strategic retreat, but it was clear that he and den Suriel had very different approaches to life. “Let’s go, then. Try to stay quiet until we reach the last hallway.”
Half a minute later, Astarion was forced to admit that the paladin was following his instructions exactly.
He was indeed trying. He was trying very hard.
It was just that most of his wardrobe was made of metal, and his boots were made for kicking evil in the soft bits, not for padding stealthily through enemy territory.
Whenever he took a step, he sounded like a symphony scored for chain mail and kettle drums.
Clank.
Clink.
Jingle, jingle, jingle…
Stomp.
Perhaps I am dead, Astarion thought, and in Hell.
Clank.
Astarion stayed behind him, both to cover his lack of shadow and to use the man as a shield when the enemy inevitably heard them.
Den Suriel reached the halfway point of the hallway and suddenly broke into a run.
Clank-clink-jingle-jingle-stomp-stomp-stomp!
The paladin hit the half-open door like a charging bull. The hinges did indeed squeal, but this was nothing compared to the slam as the door hit the wall. The skeleton guards spun around so quickly that one’s arm bones got caught on the other’s broken ribs.
Astarion, standing in the middle of the hallway without weapons, cover, or a plan, lifted a hand and said, “So sorry to be a bother, but I’m afraid the maid hasn’t turned my cell yet. Do be a dear and send her along?”
The skeletons took a step forward together. One had a sword, and the other had a truncheon. Neither seemed to have a sense of humor.
“What in the Nine Hells is going on down there?” called the jailor. The scrape of a chair indicated that the mummy was getting up.
“Nothing!” Astarion called. It probably wouldn’t work, but you never knew unless you tried.
The mummy appeared in the doorway, slablike features pulling into a frown. It lifted its strangely cut fingers and uttered something arcane.
Something green and glowing appeared in front of Astarion, just as den Suriel erupted into the hall.
“For Lathander!” he roared in a voice like thunder, smashing his shield into the skeleton guards. “For Ilmater! For the Badger!”
“For fuck’s sake…” Astarion might have said more, but the green glowing thing resolved into a sword hanging in midair, which promptly tried to decapitate him.
The skeletons went down in a pile of bones. Astarion hit the ground, rolled, saw the sword stabbing down at him, and kept rolling. Briefly, upside down, he watched the paladin jam his shield into the mummy’s face and force it back through the doorway.
While Astarion had no real desire to be in the same room as an enraged mummy and the sort of person who would shout “For the Badger!” with such enthusiasm, it seemed like a better prospect than being hacked apart by a spectral weapon. He dove through the door and fetched up under the table.
Den Suriel drove his sword through the mummy. The mummy looked down at the blade protruding from its chest and broke into that unsettling cold-water laugh. Then it punched den Suriel in the head.
“Things going well, I see,” Astarion said as the paladin hit the floor in front of him. Den Suriel got his shield up just in time as the mummy rained blows onto it.
“If only I had my holy symbol!”
“If only I had a dozen flasks of alchemist’s fire. While we’re wishing, I would also like untold riches, sexual inexhaustibility, and perhaps a pony.”
“See, I wouldn’t want that,” den Suriel said, kicking the mummy in the knee. Corpse wax splattered under his boot, and the monster roared.
“Oh?” Astarion was briefly distracted by the spectral weapon, which had finally located him. He grabbed the jailor’s chair and yanked it in front of him. The sword chopped futilely at its wooden back.
“I’d just give the riches to the temple, I’m too tall for a pony, and…”
He managed to grab the hilt of the sword protruding from the mummy’s chest and yank it free, taking a large chunk of the mummy with it.
The backhanded slash took the monster’s head off and sent it bouncing across the floor.
More wax splattered with every bounce. Den Suriel reached down and offered Astarion a hand up. “I’m already sexually inexhaustible.”
That caught Astarion by surprise. Gods above and below, he is flirting with me. “I see the gods don’t mind bragging,” he said, a trifle breathlessly.
The aasimar grinned at him. “What can I say? They require us to speak the truth.”
Damnation, the man really was attractive. Astarion had used sex as a weapon for so long that actually being attracted to someone was both delightful and mildly annoying. Like having a favorite outfit and seeing someone else wearing it. And making it look good, too.
The last time he’d been genuinely attracted to someone had been…
gods, who had it been? Oh yes, that lovely little assassin from Phlan.
Body of an acrobat and morals of a rutting barracuda.
Was that before or after that charming blacksmith I climbed like a tree?
No, had to be after. The one before the blacksmith was that diplomatic functionary from Cormyr.
He’d actually convinced Cazador that kidnapping the woman would cause a political crisis and had handed over information about a number of upcoming trade deals instead.
The blacksmith hadn’t been so lucky. The assassin he’d actually had to put down himself.
Some people’s ideas of proper postcoital activity were exceedingly uncivilized.
Then there had been Sebastian, that first decade after he’d been turned, and that…
Was under totally different circumstances. No need to dwell on it. And anyway, he was an innocent. Den Suriel is quite obnoxiously wholesome, but nobody who grins like that is an innocent.
Well, two could play at that game. Astarion let his fingertips trail down den Suriel’s wrist as he released the aasimar’s arm, and was rewarded with a sharp inhalation. Or perhaps he was only out of breath from having just decapitated a mummy.
“Right,” the paladin said, with a little more gravel in his voice than before. “It won’t stay dead for more than a day. Let’s see if we can find my holy symbol.”
Astarion was very glad to discover that the jailor’s bedroom no longer felt like a private dwelling. Apparently, the cult’s leader did not particularly care about it, so now that the mummy was temporarily dead, it was merely a room.
He slid his daggers back into their hidden sheaths and examined the rest of the furniture.
The trunk he’d noticed before contained bedding.
It was strange to think of a mummy wanting blankets, but after looking at the cold cement box that dominated the room, Astarion could understand it.
It had none of the molded charm of a true sarcophagus.
He’d have put down a layer of blankets, too.
The only other object of interest was a narrow wooden chest against one wall. It was locked, at least technically.
“Precision instruments indeed,” den Suriel said as Astarion cracked it open as easily as flipping a latch.
Astarion let a slow smile spread across his face. “I’m flattered you noticed. Still, I must admit that locks like these are only to keep honest people out. Or honest mummies, I suppose.”
“It would have kept me out.”
“I believe that is what I just said.” Astarion swept out the contents, which included his lockpicks, his coin purse, a handful of loose change, a leather sack, and what appeared to be a set of erotic woodcuts featuring bipedal elephants. “Are these yours?”
“The bag is. The woodcuts definitely aren’t.” Den Suriel’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know what’s more disturbing: a mummy keeping loxo erotica or the thought of someone storming a cultist stronghold armed with loxo erotica.”
“It’s not even good loxo erotica. You can tell that the artist didn’t know how to draw a prehensile—”
“Oh look, my holy symbol!” Den Suriel picked up the bag and unwrapped a leather thong coiled around the mouth, then hung it on his neck.
Astarion caught a glimpse of a small silver pendant in the shape of a badger crowned with the sun.
“That’s better. I was afraid they might have chucked it into a pit or something.”
No, Astarion thought, I wouldn’t be that lucky.
Den Suriel riffled through his bag, pulling out small objects as if to reassure himself they were still there. Astarion noted several scrolls, a small ivory carving, and a set of crudely printed pamphlets titled Is the Order of the Badger Right for You?
“Ready?” he asked before the paladin could try to inflict a pamphlet on him.
“Half a moment…there!” Den Suriel pulled on a pair of gauntlets, then removed a large mace from the bag, cementing Astarion’s impression that it was a bag of holding. “Let’s go smash some tanks.”
“Tanks? I was thinking of skeletons.”
“And let them keep raising those mummies under the city?”
Astarion, who had stopped thinking about the tanks as soon as they were out of sight, shrugged. “This is Baldur’s Gate. As long as they bribe the right people, they’ll be accepted as valuable members of the workforce.”
“Undead are never valuable members of the workforce.”
That stung a little, even though Astarion preferred to think of himself as a gentleman of leisure in temporary straits rather than a member of the workforce. “What about archliches?”
The aasimar grunted. “I suppose they’re fine. They give me the creeps.”
“One of my maternal relatives became an archlich.”
“I’m sure they’re lovely, but they’d still give me the creeps. Sorry.”
Astarion shook his head. “Regardless, may I suggest that we make our escape and leave the soggy mummies to the professionals?”
“I am the professionals.”
“Then you can bring back others later. I don’t know how much time we have until this inquisitor wants to talk to us, but I doubt it’s very long.”
Den Suriel heaved a mournful sigh that seemed to travel up his entire six-foot-plus frame. “I suppose.”
“Think like a fox, not a hedgehog.”
“Arf, arf. Wait, do foxes go arf?”