Enchanter's End Game

lifted his chin to drink.
    There was a solid-sounding thud, and the feathered shaft of an arrow was quite suddenly protruding from his throat, just at the top of his red tunic. The wine gushed from the skin to pour down over his astonished face. His companions gaped at him, then reached for their weapons with cries of alarm, but it was too late. Most of them tumbled from their saddles in the sudden storm of arrows that struck them from the concealment of the ferns. One, however, wheeled his mount to flee, clutching at the shaft buried deep in his side. The horse took no more than two leaps before three arrows sank into the Mallorean's back. He stiffened, then toppled over limply, his foot hanging up in his stirrup as he fell, and his frightened horse bolted, dragging him, bouncing and flopping, back down the trail.
    "I can't seem to locate that document," Yarblek declared, walking back with a wicked grin on his face. He turned the Mallorean he had been speaking to over with his foot. "You didn't really want to see it anyway, did you?" he asked the dead man.
    The Mallorean with the arrow in his throat stared blankly up at the sky, his mouth agape and a trickle of blood running out of his nose. "I didn't think so." Yarblek laughed coarsely. He drew back his foot and kicked the dead man back over onto his face. Then he turned to smirk at Silk as his archers came out of the dark green ferns. "You certainly get around, Silk," he said. "I thought Taur Urgas had finished you back there in stinking Cthol Murgos."
    "He miscalculated," Silk replied casually.
    "How did you manage to get yourself conscripted into the Mallorean army?" Yarblek asked curiously, all traces of his feigned drunkenness gone now.
    Silk shrugged. "I got careless."
    "I've been following you for the last three days."
    "I'm touched by your concern." Silk lifted his fettered ankle and jingled the chain. "Would it be too much trouble for you to unlock this?"
    "You're not going to do anything foolish, are you?"
    "Of course not."
    "Find the key," Yarblek told one of his archers.
    "What are you going to do with us?" Besher asked nervously, eyeing the dead guards with a certain apprehension.
    Yarblek laughed. "What you do once that chain's off is up to you," he answered indifferently. "I wouldn't recommend staying in the vicinity of so many dead Malloreans, though. Somebody might come along and start asking questions."
    "You're just going to let us go?" Besher demanded incredulously.
    "I'm certainly not going to feed you," Yarblek told him.
    The archers went down the chain, unlocking the shackles, and each Nadrak bolted into the bushes as soon as he was free.
    "Well, then," Yarblek said, rubbing his palms together, "now that that's been taken care of, why don't we have a drink?"
    "That guard spilled all your wine when he fell off his horse," Silk pointed out.
    "That wasn't my wine," Yarblek snorted. "I stole it this morning. You should know I wouldn't offer my own drink to somebody I planned to kill."
    "I wondered about that." Silk grinned at him. "I thought that maybe your manners had started to slip."
    Yarblek's coarse face took on a faintly injured expression.
    "Sorry," Silk apologized quickly. "I misjudged you."
    "No harm done." Yarblek shrugged. "A lot of people misunderstand me." He sighed. "It's a burden I have to bear." He opened a pack on his lead mule and hefted out a small keg of ale. He set it on the ground and broached it with a practiced skill, bashing in its top with his fist. "Let's get drunk," he suggested.
    "We'd really like to," Silk declined politely, "but we've got some rather urgent business to take care of."
    "You have no idea how sorry I am about that," Yarblek replied, fishing several cups out of the pack.
    "I knew you'd understand."
    "Oh, I understand, all right, Silk." Yarblek bent and dipped two cups into the ale keg. "And I'm as sorry as I can be that your business is going to have to wait. Here." He gave Silk one cup and Garion the other. Then he turned and dipped out a cup for himself.
    Silk looked at him with one raised eyebrow.
    Yarblek sprawled on the ground beside the ale keg, comfortably resting his feet on the body of one of the dead Malloreans. "You see, Silk," he explained, "the whole point of all this is that Drosta wants you very badly. He's offering a reward for you that's just too attractive to pass up. Friendship is one thing, but business is business, after all. Now, why don't you and your young friend make yourselves