Read Murder in Cormyr for Free Online

though old Dad had his sights set a mite higher for his daughter.
    Rolf was a fairly touchy lad to start with, and when he saw Dovo, the local married lecher, seated across from his beloved, he started shaking as though he wanted to leap on Dovo and rend him limb from limb. But instead he went up behind the smith and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.
    Dovo slowly looked at the hand, then up at the face of its owner. “Well well,” he said. “Look who ‘tis—Mister Out-In-The-Sun-So-His-Brains-Fry. Go away, little boy. I nearly got this lass talked into a little love walk, and you’re liable to queer my play.”
    That was all it took. With a groan of fury, Rolf yanked his rival backward, tipping his chair over so that it fell with a crash. Dovo’s foot caught the table and pulled that on top of him as well, and Rolf followed with a heedless dive into the whole mess.
    Bread, cheese, ale, dishes, mugs, and flesh merged together on the floor as the two men, locked in a ferocious
    struggle, rolled back and forth, knocking the legs out from under Shortshanks’s patrons, and tumbling many to the ground. The dwarf came from behind the bar with his twenty-pound oak mallet, a toy with which he had settled many a tavern altercation. But just as he raised it to strike whichever of the two brawlers first came into range, the roar of a single voice froze everyone, including the horizontal combatants.
    “STOP!” the voice cried, and when I looked away from the battlers, I saw that Barthelm, who had fathomed everything at a glance, had returned. His was a voice that commanded attention, and Rolf and Dovo looked up for all the world like two mischievous acolytes caught squabbling by their priest. Neither one had a bloody face, though both were coated with ale and bits of cheese and bread.
    “Mayella!” Barthelm growled. “Come with me, girl!” She scooted to her father’s side, holding the terrified dog under one arm. He took his daughter’s hand and led her outside, sharply pulling the door shut behind him as if to seal in the scum.
    In the silence, all of us scum bits looked at each other uncomfortably until Shortshanks broke the silence. “Who started it, then? Come on, who was it?” he said, brandishing his mallet.
    An angry dwarf with a mallet is a power not to be ignored, and more than a few patrons who had seen it all were soon mumbling, “… uh, Rolf… Rolf started it… yeh, Rolf did it….” and other such comments.
    With his free hand Shortshanks grasped Rolf by the ear and pulled on it until the roofer was standing up, though bent over at the waist, for the dwarf still held his ear. “Out with you,” Shortshanks said, and with no more explanation than that he led Rolf to the door, yanked it open, and twisted
    Rolf’s ear like he was cracking a whip, so that the lad was flung outside.
    Shortshanks slammed the door shut and swung round, glowering at his clientele. “No more trouble tonight,” he said, “from anybody.” His words were not loud, but we all decided to follow the command implicitly.
    The first to speak was Dovo, who was brushing himself off. “I thank you for your wise justice, brother Shortshanks, and to show my appreciation, I should like to buy a drink for all here!” Shortshanks’s eyebrows went up, as close to a smile as he got. Then Dovo added, “Although I don’t know how so many people are going to get more than a few drops of a single drink….” and started laughing. Shortshanks frowned again, and he curtly ordered Sunfirth to clean up the mess and charge it to Rolf’s account.
    The girl did as she was told, and recorded the damages in the large account book kept just behind the bar. I felt sorry for her, having to clean up after idiots every night. And speaking of idiots, Dovo remained on the scene, wiping the mess off himself with a bar towel, assuming, no doubt, that his wife would get his clothes clean.
    I sat for another half hour, chatting and listening to the drivel