She growled again, reminding Ilbei of a feral cat.
“Well, it don’t hurt to try,” he said, shrugging. “But I expect that solves it fer whether we cut her down straight off. Jasper, ya go on about it, and we’ll set her loose once she’s on the mend. Be quick about it, though. We’ll have them other fellers knockin soon.”
“I still don’t think we should be using army scrolls for this,” Jasper complained. “When they entrusted me with these,” he held up the scroll and shook it as if Ilbei somehow hadn’t seen, “they expected I would use them responsibly. I tried to explain how costly these are, but—”
“Just cast the spell, Jasper,” Ilbei said. “Let me know when you’re done.” With that, he went out to rejoin Meggins and Kaige. They’d pulled Meggins’ leather armor off, and Kaige was winding a strip of cloth around a burn on Meggins’ shoulder where the lightning had split the leather pauldron and, to a lesser degree, the flesh.
Ilbei studied the work in progress and shook his head. “Wait up a few, and Jasper will get ya with one of them healin spells. Her Majesty spendin all that money on em, might as well use some of em on her men, eh? Besides, readin it will keep him quiet fer a while.”
“I’m okay, Sarge,” Meggins replied. “We’ll be fine.”
Ilbei glanced down at Meggins’ hands, wrapped up after he’d slid down the rope so fast. “I know ya will, son, but ya look like one of them mummified fellers the ancients made, ya know, the ones what they dig out of the desert sometimes. Wrap ya up much more, and you’ll have half the priests on Kurr chasin ya around wantin to set ya on fire and send yer demon soul back where it come from.”
Meggins laughed. Kaige looked confused, and Ilbei went to regard his captives again. Cavendis was still incoherent and in pain. Ilbei would take his time issuing the order for Jasper to read a scroll on that one. As far as the wizard went, he’d just as soon cut his throat and push him into the hole. He might have done it if there weren’t witnesses. There were some people the world was better off without, and that mage was one of them. He didn’t do it, though, and he also resisted the temptation to kick the man again.
He turned around and studied the room. It took him a few moments to appreciate the monstrous wealth around them. Besides the four long tables they’d seen before rushing in, there were two more to the left of the door, beyond which Jasper and Mags were helping the harpy with her wounds. Those tables, like the others, were heaped with baskets and with gold, piles upon piles of gold, in every conceivable size, from dust to nuggets to chunks that he thought might be too big for even Kaige to lift, and there were more baskets stacked and stuffed underneath.
Upon one of the tables was a set of scales like those he’d seen often enough in big city banks. He’d turned in enough of his own dust and dug-up nuggets in his youth—not to mention the occasional score during his leaves over the years—to recognize the type. In addition to that one, and the very large scales that the cross arms of the whims represented, there was another scale, something of an in-between, near the wall to the right of the table holding the standard one. Three sets of scales, all in the same room: small, medium and large. That struck him as being odd.
He went to the tables and started looking them over more closely, contemplating the huge quantities of gold that lay upon each and guessing at the total worth. He pulled off the baskets to count what was beneath and behind, and he relied on his experienced eye to get it at least nearly right. He valued the first table at some fifty thousand crowns. He thought the second might have twice that, and the third maybe a quarter more still. The fourth table was another eighty thousand at least, and even the table with the scales upon it had some ten to fifteen thousand heaped there.
Beneath that one, hidden behind baskets that were stuffed under it, he found several crates stacked three high, each of them roughly three hands square. They were just like the ones he’d seen back in the ettin cave. He reached under to slide one of them out and found he couldn’t budge it. He pushed the rest of the baskets out from under the table to give him room, revealing a few more stacks of the same type of crates and one large chest made of heavy oak, bound in steel bands and locked with a heavy steel padlock.
With room and better leverage, he tried again to slide a crate off the top of one stack, but still he could not. He broke the leather-strap handle instead, the release of which sent him rolling backward so suddenly, he nearly fell right down through the hole. He came to a rest with his head and neck projecting over the edge. He turned and looked down into it, grimacing. Wide eyed, he lifted his gaze and saw Kaige and Meggins staring at him, both with expressions transforming from an instant’s horror to the recognition that it was now appropriate to be amused.
“That wasn’t quite agile, Sarge,” Meggins said with a crooked grin. “I thought we’d lost you for a second.”
“I thought I’d lost me too,” Ilbei agreed, rolling to his stomach and sliding away from the edge. He got onto his knees and settled back on his heels, letting his heartbeat return to normal speed. “A fine way to end this escapade, me flat as a stepped-in prairie pile down there, a load of harpies trampin on me like a rug.”
Meggins and Kaige laughed, their relief as evident as Ilbei’s was.
“Kaige, come on over here and help me with this,” Ilbei said. “I can’t even drag one of em out.”
Kaige tied off the wrapping on Meggins’ shoulder and left the nimble warrior to pull his armor back on alone. They knelt together at the table under which Ilbei had found the crates and considered the task.
“If’n I make my guess, they’re all full of gold in there,” Ilbei said. “But I’d like to peek. So get hold of the top one there on yer side. Reach around back and get yer fingers in, like this.” He showed him what he meant. “I’ll yank it on my side, and we’ll just tip it all down.”
“But it might break open if there’s gold in there,” Kaige said. “Won’t it?”
“Aye, lad, it might. But I don’t see no other way without unloadin this whole damn table and movin it. We ain’t got time, and I’d like to know fer my report. Come on, now. Give a pull.”
They each took a side, and on the count of three, both powerful men gave a mighty yank. Just as Kaige had predicted, the boxes, after reluctantly giving way, crashed to the floor, and the top one broke open, spilling out gold coins in a glimmering splash. They bounced and spun everywhere, several rolling across the room and dropping out of sight through the hole, others traveling to the walls, the scales, the whims and the door. One of them even made it all the way across the room to Meggins.
He’d just gotten his armor over his head when it rolled up and tapped against his boot. He stooped, picked it up, studied it for a moment, then sent it spinning into the air. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, smiling as he savored the hushed metallic ring it made as it spun. He caught it and dropped it into a small pouch on his belt.
“That ain’t yers,” Ilbei said, “and we ain’t looters. We start with that, and there won’t be no difference between us and them.”
“I can live with that,” Meggins said to himself as Ilbei turned back to study the coins that had spilled all around his boots.
“Kaige, ya reckon them big fellers could lift a box full of these? They was somethin bigger even than you.”
Kaige shook his head immediately. “Not easy, they couldn’t. That was at least forty stone.”
Ilbei agreed. “So what’s a man gonna do with crates of coins too heavy to lift? And where’s he gettin em?” His gaze went to the locked chest he’d uncovered as he twisted up his lips and began chewing on the ends of a few unruly and overlong mustache hairs. “Especially a big one like that?”
He stooped and reached under the table and gave the lock a tug, mainly intent on seeing if the chest was as heavy as he expected it would be. It was not. It came away so easily, he almost tipped it over.
He slid it out and studied the shiny steel lock, then drew his pickaxe and gripped it in both hands. With a wink at Kaige, he raised it on high and then brought it down with a neat and perfectly placed swing. The lock banged heavily against the chest, but did not break.
“By the gods, that’s a good one,” Ilbei said, looking a little embarrassed as he glanced back at Kaige. “But I had a bad angle on it.” He moved to get a more convenient angle and raised his pickaxe again, just as Jasper came out.
The young mage saw the lock, and the chest, and said, quite calmly, “That’s a terrible idea.”
Ilbei paused, his pick still on high, and swiveled his head. “And why’s that?”
“Well, I’m assuming that noise I just heard was you striking that lock a moment ago.” He pointed to the steel padlock. “And yet there it is.”
“Yeah, I struck it all right. And yer point?”
“My point is that padlock is a Fist of Duador. It’s made from West Daggerspine steel by the locksmiths Goorier and Morst of Sansafrax, brothers who learned the secret from their father’s father, who learned it on Duador in the last years before the dwarven demise. I read a book about them, but I can tell by the way you are glaring at me right now that you aren’t interested in the important details, so I’ll just tell you that a Fist of Duador costs fourteen crowns and, depending on who sold it, some portion of silver too.”
Ilbei’s face wrinkled all the more. He knew that somewhere in all of that, Jasper had some kind of point, despite his being incapable of getting to it, but Ilbei didn’t have time or patience to try to shake it out. “Well, as ya can see, these folks aren’t short on funds, so I reckon it’s no surprise they got themselves a fancy lock.” Then he swelled with breath and once more prepared to hit it.
“The only people who spend that kind of money on locks are banks, nobles and magicians with something to hide,” Jasper said. Apparently having not been made to “stop his gob” or “quit his yammerin” constituted encouragement for him to carry on. “Being that we aren’t in a bank, that leaves nobles and magicians. A magician would trap that lock, and anyone opening it without first canceling the spell would be either killed or somehow subdued. A noble, whether magician or not, would pay to have it enchanted if they’d gone to the expense of buying one as well.”
Ilbei paused once again, the angles of his arms flattening at the elbows some, causing the pickaxe blades to tip toward the floor. “Magic lock trap, ya say?”
“Yes. I do say. And I would suppose it would be something lethal for the purposes of efficacy, as anything less makes little sense. A lock like that is a commitment. I can’t prove it, however, and I suppose there is some tiny likelihood that it might only be D- or E-class lightning of the variety you’ve already experienced. So if you insist on hammering at it, just let me get out of the way.” He backed into the doorway leading into the room where Mags and the harpy were, stopping just inside and leaning out far enough to peek, one eye peering around the doorframe.
Ilbei stepped away from the chest, glaring at it as if it were a rabid wolverine. “Fine. So how far off do ya expect I should be?”
“At least halfway across the room,” Jasper said. “All the way would be safer. Although, if it’s a blast-wave type of fire spell, it could pick up these gold coins and send them flying everywhere, which could be just as deadly as the magic in the end, if less spectacular.”
Ilbei took another step back. He’d already seen enough gold being thrown around for one day. “So how do ya suppose we open it? Ya got a scroll in there fer that?” He pointed with his chin at Jasper’s satchel, which swung from the magician’s neck as he peered around the doorway. “Speaking of which, how’d that harpy turn out?”
“She’ll be all right given time. It’s not a proper healing spell, as you know. But we did get the wing straightened and the burns closed. Some of them will leave scars if she doesn’t get a better spell soon, and I’m not too sure about that hole in her wing. It didn’t close up much at all.”
“Well, is she done sufferin?”
“She is. Or at least, her pain is gone as far as I can tell. But, as I continue to try to explain to you, I am not a healer, so I really can’t be called upon for that kind of expertise. I simply happen to be able to read—”
“So, the lock, how about the lock?”
“You know, that’s very rude,” Jasper said. “You really ought to let me finish at least one idea before you go on to—”
“Ya see these here?” Ilbei said, pointing to the crimson stripes on his tabard. “These say I got Her Majesty’s permission to be as rude as I want, at least to the likes of you. So ya don’t need to fret my manners none.” Meggins snorted but fell silent when Ilbei swung a ferocious glare at him. Back to Jasper, Ilbei said, “Now, the lock. Fer the love of sweet Mercy, how do we get through that infernal lock?”
“Well, I should think you’d try the key,” Jasper said. He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. And because it was, Meggins snorted again, this time at Ilbei’s expense. It was even funnier a moment later as Ilbei spun, preparing to unleash a full barrage of profanity at the man whose chuckling went on too long, and discovered Meggins fishing through Ivan Gangue’s tunic pockets. Right after, Meggins drew out a small steel key, which he dangled toward Ilbei, grinning. The chuckling was barely contained laughter at that point, and Ilbei scowled for a moment, but then realized it was pretty well justified. It came upon him slowly, like wine filling up a large glass, and before long, all of them were laughing. All but, alas, poor Jasper, who just never seemed to get the best jokes, even when they were by his own design.