A crossbow bolt, said one part of his mind.

You've fallen to your knees, said another part.

Someone is talking to you, said a third; you'd best pay attention.

"Hobgoblin," said the hooded priest, dropping the spent crossbow and pulling a sword, "I hereby arrest you in the name of Lord Gildentongue and Holy Hopsloth the Water Prophet, blessed be their names. You are charged with insurrection, heresy, blasphemy, and"-the human smiled at this-"imitating the First Minion, the departed Lord Toede. You are guilty of all these crimes. The sentence is death."

Toede heard Groag say, in a voice that seemed to be at the far end of a tunnel, "Of all the times for someone to listen to you."

In which Our Protagonist is set upon by an agent of his opposition without benefit of a proper introduction, and decides to bring the war home to his enemy.

A blackness rose within Toede and threatened to overwhelm him. But something else rose as well, a feeling of rage, a bright red blossom against that black. He had not come so far just to die in some pigsty of a bar, like a common, a common… commoner.

Toede forced open his eyes and saw the human "priest." Part of his mind made the mental correction-everyone knows priests don't as a rule use swords-so he must be an assassin or warrior or whatever. Some agent of Gilden-tongue's. Stars danced and glittered around the approaching figure.

The other figures in the bar had evaporated. The barbarian was still asleep on his bench, but as for the rest, they vanished within moments of the crossbow bolt striking flesh.

Toede's mind was working faster than his body. He's going to kill you, noted one part. Find a weapon, said another. Run, said a third. Do something, reiterated the first.

Toede's left arm had stopped sending panic signals, or at least Toede had become immune to them, for the limb now hung like a dead weight. He dropped his right hand back to his side, his knuckles grazing something metallic that rolled slightly as he jostled it: his empty ale mug.

As he fumbled for the mug, his fingers felt like they were wrapped in bandages. The human figure now towering over him raised an arm. Laughing, said one part of Toede's mind. The swing of the blade will pass right through my neck, said the second. I think we all agree that I should do something, said the third, and relatively quickly at that.

Have to find time to collect my wits, responded Toede (or at least one part of Toede's brain). His fingers closed at last over the mug's handle, and all the disparate parts of his mind united to shout, "Swing it!"

Toede brought the mug around, hard as he could. His aim was bad, and if he had been standing toe-to-toe with his assailant, he would have smashed it against the front of the other's calves, square in the protective armor shin guards.

However, Toede was not toe-to-toe with his opponent. He was kneeling on a tabletop, so the wild swing connected with the human a short distance below his belt line, which is a position not protected by buckle, armor, or anything else beyond normal cloth.

The human attacker howled. Toede could not gloat from his well-placed strike, however; he was carried by the force of his own blow off the table. His wounded shoulder screamed with pain as he hit the flagstone floor. Colors never seen in nature swam and danced before his eyes.

Toede tried to rise, but had to settle for a three-limbed crawl to put some distance between him and the howling human. At ten feet (or ten miles, he was unsure about the exact distance), he ventured a look backward.

Groag (Groag! shouted his mind) was fighting with their human assailant. Well, not so much fighting as dancing, trying to keep a large serving platter between himself and the assassin.

But to Toede's pain-overloaded mind, Groag did have the grace of a dancer, nimbly parrying an overhand blow with the platter, jabbing the platter's edge at his assailant, then stepping aside sprightly as a side-arm slash went wide and carved a new divot in the plaster.

To a more objective (and less damaged) observer, Groag was little more than a flurry of motion, trying everything at once to keep the assailant at bay, while scurrying for cover between the tables and benches. The small hobgoblin's face was sheet-white, but he seemed as yet unmarked.

The human's face was knotted in pain and flushed red with anger, but otherwise their assailant was none the worse for wear.

The various parts of Toede's mind held a quick confab. Run, said one part of his brain. No, the human would finish Groag off in a matter of moments, then Toede would ^ be on his own. Then fight, said another part. No, Toede was in no shape to do anything more than bite his attacker in the shins. Get help, said that third part. The sleeping barbarian.

Toede smiled painfully and started to pull himself slowly toward the inert form still reclining on a bench, an empty mason jar overturned nearby.

Barbarians were easy targets, thought Toede, especially if drunk or sleepy. Or breathing. A quick story about how an evil spirit had transformed itself to look like the queen's brother, and one of these shaggy-headed warriors would charge any old castle, leaving destruction in his or her path. One such as this, bare-chested, animal-skinned, bedecked with daggers and sleeping atop a scabbard with a great sword, would be a perfect rescuer. The fact that Toede was already bleeding and helpless would just further underscore his peril.

Toede reached the sleeping form and realized that Gildentongue's agent had apparently had the same thought-but much earlier. A second smile bloomed underneath the barbarian's chin, and the blood was starting to drip onto the floor in heavy clots.

Panic now seized Toede, and he looked back in time to see Groag's impromptu shield being batted from his hands and sent clanging against the far wall. Half a minute tops, thought Toede, and I will lose my army of one. And then, it will be my turn.

The barbarian was lying on his scabbard, so Toede grabbed one of the daggers hanging from the dead man's belt. He held it by the blade, as he always did for throwing.

The knives that Toede had practiced with, a lifetime ago, were weighted such that an expert toss would cause the weapon to spin in a half-circle, end-over-end, so that the business end of the blade would bury itself in the target upon impact. It was a stylish way of driving one's point home in any semantic argument, but required a dagger specially intended for such use-lean and thin, finely balanced, with just enough weight to punch through a leather jerkin.

This was a barbarian's blade, and as such crafted more for close infighting than stylish tossing. A thick hunk of ragged metal chipped to something close to an edge, then jammed into a makeshift hilt made of horn and wrapped with leather strips.

The mason jar would likely be easier to throw, but at the moment Toede did not have time to shop around. He muttered a short curse to any dark gods that may have been listening and flung the knife in the general direction of the human. Perhaps it would at least distract the human long enough for Groag to gain some new cover.

The blade left Toede's hand and flew with all the grace and delicate deadliness of a brick. It spun, as he'd hoped it would, but when it straightened it traveled with the hilt first and blade trailing. Oops.

But it was enough. The human assassin turned toward it, either with an instinct for its approach or just looking around for Toede. The heavy hilt struck him just above the right temple like the aforementioned brick. The human's head snapped suddenly away from the impact, and the blade bonked to the ground.

The human swayed for a moment, his eyes trying to focus on Toede. Then he slowly collapsed, as if all the air had been let out of him.