Guns of Alkenstar

by Ed Greenwood

Chapter Five: Death, Mystery, and an Ironmaster

"Rather a lot of people seem to want us dead," Gelgur growled, as they plunged down yet another dark Gunworks stairway, the cracks and whines of gunfire finally fading behind them.

"We're outgunned, all right," Kordroun grunted, short of breath from hastening down flight after flight of stairs. "We'll have to go through the cellars—the slower way—if gunfire's going to welcome us at every door and balcony."

"The cellars," Gelgur echoed thoughtfully, as they rushed through another door in a rattle of the high shieldmarshal's keys, into utter darkness. Kordroun flung out his arms to stop his two companions, who heard him, as he panted, feeling around high up to their left.

"Why not," Gelgur suggested slowly, "abandon trying to get to the streets for now? Go down deep, instead, and take the Long Tunnels?"

A hand-lantern flared, and in its light Kordroun stared at Bors. "To talk to the Ironmaster," he said flatly, his face going grim.

Gelgur nodded. After a long moment, the high shieldmarshal nodded too.

Then they both turned to face Ralice.

Who was pale, and busily swallowing hard. "The Ironmaster," she said at last. "Well, why not? Days I spent, asking and watching, pondering and prying—and ever since the three of us have been together, it's been all running and being shot at and more running."

Gelgur gave her a mirthless grin. "We're gunmarshals, lass, not gunhunters. We shoot and confront more than we watch and think."

Ralice tried to smile, and failed. "You said it," she agreed darkly.

"Come," Kordroun commanded, aiming his lantern down a long, low-ceilinged passage. Handing them another lit lantern each, he beckoned them to follow. "It's a good long plod to Ironmaster's local chambers."

Two descending stairs and a lot of walking later, they stopped at a metal wall-box.

"Privy," the high shieldmarshal said, pointing, as he busied himself at the box, keys jingling.

Ralice frowned. "I don't—"

"Privy," Kordroun repeated sternly, giving her a glare.

Gelgur stepped between them, advancing on the gunhunter until she was forced to give way. As he backed her a good six steps, he murmured, "Whether you need a warmseat or not—and wise gunhunters never miss a chance—Kordroun needs you where you can't watch what he does at that box. He needs to extract a key to get us through a door ahead."

Ralice nodded a little wearily, and obediently went through the door Kordroun had indicated.

"Are we ever going to get to the bottom of this?" she asked, when she reappeared.

Stepping past her to take his turn, Gelgur shrugged. "I don't think we'll have to, if we plod along slowly enough. Those involved are killing each other with such enthusiasm and rapidity that they'll soon be down to a few wounded survivors."

"That's when we'll move in," the high shieldmarshal said dryly. "This way."

He unlocked a counterweighted metal-bound door with double frame-latches. The short passage beyond ended in a metal door so wide and heavy that it took all three of them to budge it—after he'd unlocked it, using two keys in unison.

It opened to reveal lanternlight, bobbing in the distance. Kordroun shuttered his lamp and hissed at Gelgur and Ralice to do the same, then hustled them a few steps toward the lanterns and down a side-passage. Unlocking a door in haste, he ushered them through it, then turned to hold it just ajar in the darkness, murmuring, "Ground your lanterns and keep hold of them. Be very quiet."

They waited for what seemed a long time before the lanterns drew near, amid the sounds of many booted feet and low mutters of conversation.

Then light swelled and a dozen-some men strode past, looking neither right nor left. Six lanterns, everyone in uniform—heavily-armed Parliamentary guards—except the richly-garbed, bearded man who strode in their midst. He never looked in their direction, but the three watchers all knew him: Drael Kammantur, High Chamberlain to the Grand Duchess of Alkenstar.

One guard turned to look back as the great door swung closed behind the party, but Kordroun had gently pushed their own door almost closed by then. He remained unmoving for seven breaths that weren't as slow as they should have been before cautiously easing it open again—onto utter darkness.

Unhooding his lantern, he rose and muttered, "Come on."

"The High Chamberlain, here in the cellars of the Gunworks? What's he doing here?" Ralice hissed, as she unhooded hers.

"Coming back from doing what we're trying to do, most likely," Gelgur told her grimly.

She looked from him to Kordroun.

And saw on two tight-lipped faces the same war between fury and despair.

∗ ∗ ∗

Kordroun opened another door—and stopped dead.

	"The Ironmaster is as beautiful as she is deadly."

There was no place to hide this time, not from all the lanterns in the room ahead, and the armed bodyguards holding them. No uniforms beyond identical dark leather jacks—and the person in their midst was the Ironmaster of Alkenstar.

She was standing over a body sprawled on the floor, that trailed fresh ribbons of blood across the smooth-worn stone underfoot.

Many guns flashed as they were drawn, as Kordroun raised his lantern so its light fell on his face, and said briskly, "High Shieldmarshal Kordroun, with two sworn agents. Ironmaster, we were coming to confer with you."

The cold-eyed, beautiful woman who wore half a dozen holstered revolvers on cross-belts down the front of her black bodice gave him the faintest of smiles, ignoring Gelgur and Ralice. "Kordroun, I may have more work for you."

She waved at the body. Kordroun advanced to look at it, pretending not to notice all the guns now trained on him.

It was Parliamentary Minister Prostor Blaklar. By the looks of him, he'd been riddled with bullets. Very recently. His face was a mask of blood, bullet holes, and frozen staring horror, his hands raised in claws to try to fend off death. Vainly.

"I fear any confidential discussion you may have hoped to have must wait," the Ironmaster added. "Show me your weapons. Slowly, of course."

Wordlessly Kordroun set down his lantern and drew out his guns, holding them between thumb and forefingers, and keeping them pointed at the floor. Watching him, Ralice followed suit. Gelgurs spread empty hands.

That earned him a prompt, ungentle search from five of Vryle Summairtar's bodyguards, as more of their fellows strode to take and present the proffered guns to the Ironmaster.

Who waved them back to their owners.

"Obviously the wrong sorts of weapons to have slain the Minister, here," she said coolly. "Leave this place, and return whence you came. I'll send for you when I've time for discussions."

"Vryle," Bors Gelgur asked then, keeping his voice as cool as hers, "can you tell us why Daerold Loroan might be entering the Gunworks at this time of night?"

The Ironmaster crooked an eyebrow, allowing mild surprise to appear on her serene face. "Trademaster Loroan? That's very curious. Did you see him enter the Gunworks?"

"We did, Ironmaster," Kordroun said stolidly. "It was the Trademaster, without a doubt. We all saw him."

"Ah," she replied lightly, sounding almost bored. "I did not."

And with that, the Seneschal of Security for the Grand Duchy of Alkenstar turned away, black-hued armor gleaming momentarily—almost mockingly—from one shapely shoulder.

"I trust you'll get to the bottom of this smuggling problem soon," she added over her shoulder. "And that when you do, you'll report promptly to me. And only to me."

Without waiting for a reply she departed through a far door, her agents clustering around her with guns still drawn, six of them watchfully facing the high shieldmarshal and his two companions as they backed away.

The door closed, leaving them alone with Blaklar's body.

Ralice looked down at it, then back up at the door the Ironmaster had vanished through. "What—?"

That was as far as she got before Kordroun clapped a hand across her mouth and Gelgur plucked at her arm to start leading her back the way they'd come.

"Hurry," was all the high shieldmarshal said, once they'd closed the door on the dead minister and started back along the passage.

Three doors and two rooms later, he asked, "This one?"

Gelgur shook his head. "The next one on was better. We can strike from both sides."

Ralice gave them both a frown, but held silent.

Then they came to the cellar room where Gelgur pointed to an alcove and then stepped into another across from it, dragging Ralice with him.

"Keep very quiet," he whispered in her ear, closing a painfully tight hand on her shoulder to reinforce his order.

"Is this because of the Ironmaster?" she dared to whisper back.

"She was as purringly calm as always," Gelgur muttered in reply, not seeing—or pretending not to see—Ralice's shiver. He drew forth one of the icewine flasks, then his knife, and held them ready. Then he and Kordroun pinched out all the lanterns.

Darkness fell like an abyss around them.

To Ralice, her own breathing seemed like a loud, panting storm, but she couldn't hear her two companions at all.

Unmeasured time passed.

Something dripped once, far off, throwing out the faintest of emphatic echoes.

Then she heard something closer. A moment of grating. The door at the far end of the room.

Another soft, brief sound—movement, but just what, Ralice couldn't identify—and then there was a sudden flurry in the darkness, a scuffle and a grunt and three heavy thuds, Gelgur vanishing from beside her.

Then silence again, that was ended by the skritch of a flint striker.

Kordroun's lantern flared, and she saw a man sprawled on the floor, face down and senseless, between Kordroun and Gelgur, who were both kneeling.

"Bring the lanterns," the old gunmarshal hissed at her.

Ralice obeyed, peering. She was sure she'd never seen the man before.

"Dead?" she asked.

"Not yet," Gelgur said grimly. "Come." He handed her back her lantern, lit again, and they hurried on, back through the Gunworks cellars.

When they reached the wall-box again, Kordroun halted them. "Well?"

"She's in on it," Gelgur replied. "That was Pelkur. One of her personal agents; a Bloodsworn."

The high shieldmarshal stared back, pale-faced. "Yes, but is she with Loroan? Or against him?"

"What I don't understand," Ralice asked, trying not to sound as small and frightened as she felt, "is if the Ironmaster is mixed up in this, why'd she gather us together to investigate? Why not forbid us—and every last gunmarshal—to pry here or ask there?"

Gelgur gave her a tired smile. "She wants scapegoats. I suspect all Alkenstar is going to learn that we three dastards are responsible for something dark. Soon."

Kordroun nodded, let out a gusty sigh, and growled, "This way. We hurry again, of course."

"Of course," Gelgur agreed sardonically.

They hurried.

∗ ∗ ∗

"These... shouldn't be here," Kordroun said grimly, crouching to avoid scraping his back on the low, arched stone ceiling of the tunnel. Seven sturdy and all-too-familiar gun crates, clearly branded with the Gunworks mark, were ranged on trundle-sledges down the greased center of the tunnel, hooked together with cables and ready to be dragged out. "Smuggling work, I think."

Ralice gave him a dubious look. "Why would they leave anything here, where someone is bound to find it?"

Gelgur looked back the way they'd come. "Trap or warning—or they just don't care who sees, because they're all in on it. Shouldn't we just get gone, and leave the back-patting and jaw-scratching for later? There are marshals everywhere—and I need a drink!"

Kordroun's presence had got them past five challenges so far, but if the Ironmaster was caught up in this somehow, a high shieldmarshal's presence wouldn't grant free passage forever.

Ralice gave Gelgur one of her glares. "Just a moment. Or two. Surely your thirst can last that much longer."

"They could be trapped," he muttered.

She sighed. "So they could. However, I'm a gunhunter. I investigate things. Dangerous or not." And she undid the latches of the nearest lid.

They all hunkered down as she slowly and gingerly, with the barrel of her revolver and listening for the clicks of springs or triggers, lifted the lid.

Nothing happened.

After a moment or two more of tense silence, Ralice rose cautiously until she could peer in.

Her face changed, and she sank down again.

"Either of you care to identify who it is?" she asked tonelessly, swallowing. "The... the head's got turned around."

Gelgur stood. The corpse in the gun-case had been dismembered—somewhere else, because the case wasn't full of blood, and long enough ago that the gore had dried—and its severed head was lying sideways-up. "Eldel," he said flatly, after one look.

"Anything underneath him?" Kordroun asked.

Gelgur looked again. "No."

The high shieldmarshal nodded and undid the latches of the next case. When he levered the lid up—using the butt of his revolver, and raising it on the side facing away from him—a faint ticking began.

Hurriedly but gently he lowered it again and sprinted after Gelgur and Ralice, who had hastily scrambled back out of the tunnel, back into the Gunworks cellar they'd entered it from.

"This way," Kordroun said grimly, rushing across it. "We'll take the other way out. Up a level, then three cellars that way—they're all linked—and out down by Oldcogs."

Nodding, Gelgur and Ralice ran with him.

∗ ∗ ∗

"They must've grown too bold and successful to care overmuch if they're discovered," Kordroun muttered, as they panted in near-darkness in front of a closed door, trying to get their breath back after a seeming eternity of running. "Where we found Eldel—that's a tunnel duty marshals check often. If I were a smuggler, I'd steer clear of it, and use this way we're taking now. No patrol would find me or what I was smuggling down here."

"Eldel was meant to be found," Gelgur reminded him. "That was a trap."

Kordroun nodded. "Yes, but if a blast damages that tunnel, shipments up to Cloudreaver will have to use this way, unless they're planning to put them on mules and take them in the open! It makes no sense to—"

Finding the right key on his ring, he unlocked the door, swung it open to reveal utter darkness, and reached confidently into the unknown.

"There's a catch, just here, to unlatch the portcullis and give us light, too, and—ah! There!"

There was a klack. Triumphantly, the high shieldmarshal stepped back.

And kept on backing, dancing involuntarily, as a harsh, clattering hail of gunfire spat out of the darkness into his face.

Coming Next Week: Revelations and decisions in the final chapter of Ed Greenwood's "Guns of Alkenstar."

As the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood is one of the most famous RPG designers of all time. In addition to his game work, with such notable setting products as the Volo's Guides, Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, and City of Splendors, he's also written more than twenty Forgotten Realms novels (many dealing with his signature character, Elminster) and ten independent novels, the most recent of which is Falconfar.

Art by Colby Stevenson.