Assassination

After dinner at The Green Dragon, the group heads to the Hexagon for a night of sport that has been organized as part of the wedding festivities. Thrysp has already agreed to enter the ring in a demonstration match. Gilthain and Eabha think they might join her.

From the outside, the Hexagon is an average-looking, smallish arena of perhaps three stories. The sign out front announces that students from the local Grammar School will be taking on any challengers.

Once inside, they realize that the building is obviously subject to some form of powerful old magic. The interior is huge, easily twice the size it appeared from the outside, with tiered seating for at least two thousand. Wooden boxes have been built to accommodate the gentry and to separate them from where the commoners sit on rough benches.

A'mal and his companions are shown to one of these boxes and notice that the gnome merchant Snefire and Grammar are seated in a box directly across the ring from them.

One of the organizers approaches and looks hopefully at them. There will be a variety of demonstrations, he reports. Is anyone other than the able Monk interested in signing up?

Gilthain enters a competition for two-handed weapons--with blunted blades, of course--and Eabha decides to try her luck throwing axes against a local champion reputed to be very good.

The evening begins with a quick but vicious match between eight mastiff hounds and a grizzly bear. Eabha and Morihana look away as the snarling hounds surround the bear and bring it down. The crowd cheers.

"That's not sport," Morihana mutters under her breath.

Even Ashling, sitting at his master's feet, seems distraught by the needless slaughter.

Gilthain is up next and his friends rush to place bets on him before the match begins. But when they see his opponent--a large, muscular fellow--they begin to wonder about this Grammar School. They are then told that Grammar runs the local gladiator training academy, and Gilthain's opponent is their undefeated champion.

A'mal smells a set-up and glares at a grinning Snefire and Grammar across the ring.

The match starts well for Gil as his opponent makes a misstep and stumbles, falling to the ground and losing hold of his broadsword.

The crowd roars with laughter.

But Gilthain is not able to take advantage of this error. Instead, he slips as he moves forward and falls as well, also losing his grip on his weapon. His opponent is first to his feet and declared winner in the oddest fight any have seen in a long while.

Gilthain's friends wince, embarrassed for him, and the crowd continues to laugh.

Eabha enters the ring next, feeling somewhat less confident than she had earlier in the evening. Her opponent, known as Slinger, is not only as good as she had heard, but much better. However, the Ranger prevails. Her final axe is a near bull's-eye and she wins the match, much to the delight of the crowd.

Still, the competition was greater than expected and when Thrysp steps into the ring next to fight two hobbits, A'mal is incensed. The nimble Monk is no match for the halfling twins, Briar and Thorn Tree.

Thrysp gets in a few good hits, but the twins consistently flank her and evade her attempts to trip them. She tumbles away but they follow, repeatedly slamming her with rock-hard fists.

Thirty seconds into this one-sided bout, all eyes in the Hexagon are on Thrysp when A'mal stiffens in pain and slumps in his seat. Alarmed, Morihana checks the Sorcerer and sees a gaping wound on his left side. He is not breathing. Twitch, confused and afraid, leaves his comfortable pocket and scurries up into the front of Morihana's shirt to hide.

"He's dead," she says after a moment. She looks at the others, incredulously. "Who did this?"

At that moment, the crowd erupts with both cheers and boos as Thrysp is taken down by the hobbits. Unconscious, she is immediately attended to in the ring as Briar and Thorn congratulate each other and Snefire and Grammar trade looks of satisfaction.

Eabha and Wassup rush to try to revive A'mal, but they work in vain.

"He's been poisoned," Wassup tells her after a quick examination of the wound. "There's nothing I can do."

Gilthain and Morihana stand in the box, looking for the invisible assassin as the others in the arena gradually realize something terrible has happened.

Gilthain spots a nearby spectator reeling as if from a violent push and deduces that the invisible attacker is headed for the exit.

"This way!" he shouts above the crowd, and Morihana, Eabha and Ashling follow down the steps, through the hall and out into the darkening street, their weapons drawn.

Across the street, Gilthain sees the bushes between two buildings whip back into place as if someone has just passed through them. He charges down the alley alone.

Still inside, Wassup grabs the limp body of A'mal and promptly vanishes with it, leaving the stunned spectators to murmur about what might have happened. He reappears out front. Eabha stops near her dead friend with Ashling to try to pick up the scent of the assassin and to make sure no further harm is done to the body.

Thrysp, who came to just in time to see the Healer and A'mal disappear, is the last of the companions to make it out of the Hexagon. She stares at the Sorcerer's body lying where Wassup has put it, on the steps of the old slave hall adjacent to the Hexagon, and realizes what has just occurred.

In the alley, Gilthain is thwarted is his efforts when the invisible foe pushes a cart between the buildings to block his way. His attempt to push the cart back fails and moments later he has something more to worry about.

A small, winged beast appears in the air next to him. He manages to evade the creature's claws but is immediately hit by two daggers that come flying out of the dark courtyard beyond the cart. He staggers backwards and feels the wounds burning.

"Poison," he gasps at the others out in the street. It is painful, but he manages to shrug it off.

Eabha, who is watching Ashling as he roots about near A'mal's body for a scent to follow, reaches into her belt for a vial of antitoxin and drinks it down to protect herself against similar attacks.

Then Morihana, the second one into the alley, sees it too, the foot-tall creature hovering in the alley, with its bat-like wings and horns. She also sees Gilthain try to swing at it, miss badly, and fall to the ground. His sword sails away from him and lands under the cart. He struggles to get up and Morihana realizes that he has sprained his ankle.

In an attempt to shield them from more attacks, the Druid mutters a few words and a dense fog begins to form, filling the far end of the alley and hiding them from the enemy there. She then tends to Gilthain's ankle, repairing the damage magically. He then reaches under the cart to retrieve his broadsword.

Thrysp and Wassup join Morihana and the still-prone Gilthain in the alley where they continue to try to push the cart out of the way and duck the claws of the flying creature, which soon vanishes as suddenly as it had appeared.

Then an attack comes from another direction, out in the street. A blast of freezing air rushes past Thrysp and Morihana, hitting Wassup in the back and leaving him reeling.

They turn to see the source of the spell: a woman, some distance off, down Main Road.

"There!" they shout, pointing. And Eabha, still standing guard near A'mal's body, takes cover behind the corner of the building and fires several arrows in the spellcaster’s direction, but to very little effect.

Ashling begins to yelp and point. He has found a trail off around the other side of the slave hall, possibly another way to enter the courtyard. She casts a glance at A'mal, then follows the wolf.

Thrysp realizes that A'mal's body is unguarded, and fearing a beheading, rushes back to the steps. There, she sees four Hexagon guards run out into the street, looking around, and calls for them.

"What's going on?" one asks. Their eyes are all on the fallen Sorcerer.

"Go after her, that woman down the street," Thrysp orders two of them, not wanting to stop to explain. "And you two, stay here. Do not let anything happen to his body."

Thrysp joins the others as they finally get past the cart and burst into the now-empty courtyard. Eabha and Ashling also arrive and the wolf leads them all down another alley back onto Forest Road. They follow him up Forest to Right Street, where he stops at a manhole cover in the middle of the road.

They stand around the entrance to the sewer, breathing hard. They recall that Flo's body was probably taken away through the sewers and think it likely that this is how their enemies are getting around town.

Thrysp pries up the cover and the stench of the sewer reaches their noses.

"Do we go after them now?" asks Gilthain. "Or deal with A'mal?"

There is no sign of the woman, the guards who went after her, or the flying creature. Their attempt to capture the people responsible for the assassination has failed utterly and each of them feels it.

Reluctantly, the group decides to take A'mal's body to the doctor and pursue their enemy later. The body, meanwhile, still watched over by Hexagon guards, has attracted a small crowd of shocked onlookers who are muttering about the death of their hero. And the night before the big royal wedding, too.