Mona and the Pigeon
“Get away from them sheets, you gods cursed pigeons!” shouted Mona as she ran out the kitchen door of the Black Dragon Inn and into the back yard. A flurry of wings and spotted sheets showed that the source of her irritation had flown off, but not before soiling her clean, white laundry.
Furiously surveying the damage, she realized that most of the morning’s laundry would have to be rewashed. With a hateful glare at the sky where the flock of pigeons circled overhead, she started yanking down dirty sheets. “If I ever get my hands on any of you feather brains,” she muttered under her breath, “I’m gonna….”
Just at that moment Grimbold, the innkeeper of the Black Dragon, and his friend Trendar, the local braumeister, came sauntering outside to enjoy the warm, spring morning, tankards of the Barons’ Special Ale in their hands. Most folk would think it a bit early in the day to be drinking, but Trendar had just delivered a new barrel of his famous dark, stout brew for the celebrations that night and wanted to “field-test” it with his old adventuring companion, Grimbold.
They stopped abruptly as they caught sight of the inn’s cook yanking down wet sheets. That she was in a terrible mood was obvious. And that meant they had better tread lightly with her.
“Uh, what’s amiss, Mona?” Grimbold asked cautiously. She whirled around and glared at him with a look that would have curdled fresh milk.
“I spent all morning washing so guests could sleep on clean sheets tonight, and them damned pigeons of Stobert’s ruins ‘em in five minutes!” She stormed over to him, her steps heavy in her rage. “I’m telling ya, if you don’t do something about them,” she hissed, shaking her clenched fist under his nose, “there’s gonna be three kinds of hell to pay!”
Grimbold slowly backed away from the threatening fist, thankful that there wasn’t a kitchen knife in it. He had witnessed how those same knuckles had forced an overbearing, arrogant Zhent mage and his orc guards to wipe their feet before entering her kitchen.
“Okay! Okay!” he said quickly, coming to an abrupt stop. His back was pressed against the bottom half of the Dutch door leading into the kitchen. “I’ll rig up a scarecrow or something to keep them away.”
“No, I want ‘em dead,” she said evenly her hands now on her hips. “This ain’t the first time I’ve had to rewash laundry ‘cause of them. I want ‘em gone for good!”
She glared at him, daring him to say anything. Grimbold merely nodded, caught Trendar’s eye, and together the two old friends hastened to the sanctity of the tavern. Around her kitchen, Mona reigned supreme.
* * *
On the outskirts of the village, Stobert watched as his flock of homing pigeons circled the coop and landed. He slowly shuffled over and peered inside. Brighty wasn’t among his pigeons which told him that an important message was coming from The Boss. Stobert didn’t know who The Boss was since they only communicated via his pigeons. But whenever his favorite pigeon didn’t return with the rest of the flock, Stobert knew to expect something special.
Peering closely into the coop he noted that one of the pigeons had a band around its leg. Reaching in, he gently grabbed the bird and pulled it out. The band was a thin gold ring that Stobert carefully removed. He glanced around quickly to see if anyone had witnessed his actions and then pocketed the ring. Returning the bird to the coop, he hurried inside his house as fast as his stooped back and crippled leg would allow, then closed and locked the door. Swiftly he drew the thick curtains but not before taking one quick glance outside to make sure no one was in sight.
Once safely hidden from prying eyes, he pulled the ring from his pocket and examined it closely. It wasn’t his, but the sketch of an open eye etched on the inside told him that he was meant to get it. Stobert was the leader of the Secret Eye, a clandestine group who spied on the two barons of Semberdale for The Boss and passed on information by way of his pigeons. He also received instructions from time to time via the same method.
Speaking the words that would unbind the magic of the ring, he watched it become a full sized sheet of paper. On it were his orders. In the dim light of the heavily curtained room he read the paper and nodded his head. After he finished reading it a second time, he sat down in his chair by the fireplace, deep in thought. Many minutes later, he carefully put the paper on the embers of last night’s fire. By tomorrow, the entire village of Semberdale would be in an uproar, and the glow of the burning paper lit up his smiling face.
* * *
“There, that oughta take care of them blasted pigeons!” said Mona to herself as she stepped back and admired her handiwork. It wasn’t pretty, but then, it wasn’t meant to be. Looking like a small birdhouse, the contraption was designed to chop off a bird’s head when it poked its neck through a small hole in the front. As the bird pecked at food inside the fake birdhouse, a heavy knife blade, honed to razor sharpness, would fall on its neck, slicing the head off. Or so Mona hoped.
The idea had come to her from witnessing a public execution in Sembia last year. Called a guillotine, the machine was supposed to be a very humane way of killing. Mona wasn’t worried so much about it being humane; she just wanted it to be deadly. Her little “beheading box” as she called it, looked lethal enough to insure clean sheets for the inn’s guests.
She filled the inside of the birdhouse with sunflower seeds, put it on a post in the back yard, sprinkled a few more sunflower seeds on its “front porch,” and turned to go back in the kitchen. As she reached the Dutch door, she heard the whirl of bird wings behind her. She turned around and saw a brightly colored pigeon on the front stoop of her guillotine finishing off the last seed. As she watched smiling, the bird stuck its head into the box and began pecking at the seeds inside. Suddenly, there was a slicing hiss and the squawking of a bird as the heavy blade descended and its head was cleanly severed from its body. The headless torso fell clumsily to the ground and flopped around for a couple of moments, its lifeblood spilling out onto the ground.
Mona walked over to the dead bird and carefully picked it up. “This will make a great addition to tomorrow’s stew,” she thought to herself. A venison roast was cooking for tonight’s festivities, and Mona planned to make a stew from any leftovers. Some freshly killed pigeon would be a welcome addition. As she held the bird up by its feet, she noticed a small band of folded paper around one of its legs. Carefully she pulled the paper off and unfolded it.
Inside was a brown powder like the rare cinnamon she had purchased in distant Sembia last year. She put a tiny sample on her tongue, but it didn’t taste the same as the brown powder she kept hidden in her kitchen for special occasions. Instead, what she tasted had a tartness to it that reminded her of wild elfberries. “Just the right thing to go with tonight’s venison,” she thought to herself.
As she headed back to her kitchen, her mind awhirl with thoughts of tonight’s menu, she suddenly remembered the detached head still inside the birdhouse. That bloody mess would certainly jeopardize her drying laundry by deterring other pigeons from taking their turn at the “beheading box”. Returning to the birdhouse, she removed the severed head from inside and tossed it next to the kitchen door where she knew her cat would find it. Then she carefully reset the trap. It was too bad, she reflected, that a beautiful bird with such colorful feathers had to meet such a foul fate, but Stobert’s loss would be her customers’ gain.
* * *
Stobert hobbled back and forth beside his pigeon coop. Brighty still hadn’t returned, and on her leg was an important packet containing the magic he had been instructed to use to set into motion the deadly plans of The Boss. Stobert’s favorite pigeon usually flew with the flock, and the fact that she was late indicated that she had been slowed down by a heavy burden. He knew that she would be hungry from her delayed flight home, so he had a handful of her favorite food, sunflower seeds, to entice her to land in his hand rather than going directly into the pigeon coop. He was very anxious to get her cargo.
The gold-band-turned-note had stated that the pigeon was carrying a magical brown powder, a powerful spell component that put anyone who consumed it into a catatonic state, destroying all will power of their own. The victim became completely pliable to the suggestions of others, even to the point of allowing someone to kill them without resisting. Stobert’s job was to slip this powder into the drinks of the two barons and their adventuring companions, Grimbold and Trendar. Then an assassin sent by The Boss would slay one of the barons and lay the blame on the other three Heroes of Semberdale as the quartet was known. The assassin would then escape through the use of a magical amulet. That much Stobert knew from the message. Of the other details of the plan, he was completely ignorant, kept in the dark by The Boss.
He glanced anxiously up at the sky looking for Brighty, but she wasn’t in sight. Then he shrugged his shoulders in a cavalier fashion. It was still early in the afternoon and the barons wouldn’t arrive at the celebrations in the Black Dragon Inn until much later that evening. He still had plenty of time for Brighty to show up with the powder and for him to get to the festivities.
But first he needed to think of some way to get the magical ingredient into their drinks. Perhaps he should volunteer to help Grimbold tonight behind the bar since it was sure to be a packed house.
It was the village’s annual festival celebrating the victory of the barons and their two companions over a Zhentarim army some fifteen years ago this very night. The yearly holiday always brought the village folk to the inn for a night of eating, drinking and celebrating with the four Heroes of Semberdale. Stobert smiled to himself, catching the irony of the timing for tonight’s assassination. He may not know the identity of The Boss, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that he was a Zhent.
Giving up on Brighty, Stobert shuffled his way down the dusty road of the village to the Black Dragon to volunteer his services. As he entered the courtyard in front of the inn, he spied Mona’s orange tabby cat carrying something in its mouth as it headed for the barn.
Stobert hated that cat because it often chased his pigeons. He couldn’t understand why such a plump animal would want to kill his precious birds, especially since its protruding belly showed that the cook fed it a lot of kitchen scraps. “Probably because it’s around Mona all the time,” thought Stobert to himself as he slyly reached down and picked up a smooth stone. “Any cat would get mean being around that old hag,” and with that thought he let fly with the stone. It hit the tabby in its ribs, causing it to yelp in pain and drop whatever it had been carrying in its mouth.
Going over to what was dropped, Stobert saw that it was the head of a pigeon, one of his. Its brightly colored feathers told him that Brighty would not be flying with his flock ever again. Tears welled up in his eyes as he gently picked up the head of his favorite pet.
Suddenly he remembered the bird’s cargo. He looked over toward the rear of the inn where the cat had come from and slowly approached the back yard. There in the middle of the yard he saw a small birdhouse on a pole, which he dismissed; the entry hole was too tiny for a pigeon. But what caught his attention was a small puddle of blood at the base of the pole.
He carefully came over to the pool of blood and stooped to examine it. In it were some of Brighty’s feathers and the footprints of a cat. So, Mona’s pet had killed the pigeon bringing him the magic powder from the Boss, but where had it carried the body?
He looked closer at the bird’s head still in his hand and now noticed that the neck had been cleanly cut as if by a knife and not chewed to pieces, as a cat would have done. He stared at the kitchen door for several moments trying to fathom who or what could have killed Brighty, and then a look of suspicion crossed his face. His opinion was that Mona was meaner than a snake and twice as ugly, and it wouldn’t surprise Stobert if she hadn’t sliced off the pigeon’s head just to test the sharpness of one of her knives. If her blades were half as sharp as her tongue, Mona could have chopped off the bird’s head with one swipe.
But what had happened to the packet being sent to him by way of Brighty? Was it still on the pigeon’s leg, wherever that might be, or had Mona removed it and put it somewhere in her kitchen? He blanched at the thought of what she might do with it.
* * *
Mona popped a slice of venison dipped in sauce into her mouth and smiled at the taste. “Hmm, delicious,” she thought to herself. Whatever it had been, the brown powder had given the sauce a pleasing hint of the wild forest. Taking another morsel of venison, she ran it through the sauce, her mouth watering in anticipation of a second taste. But before the tidbit reached her mouth, she noticed Stobert through the open top half of the Dutch door staring at the kitchen with his usual hateful look in his eyes. She set down her second taste of sauce and looked around for some kind of weapon. Here was the source of her having to rewash a cauldron full of sheets this morning, and she was going to exact a little revenge. Spying the meat cleaver she had used on the venison roast, she picked it up and headed out the door.
“If you don’t get yourself and them thrice cursed pigeons outta my back yard,” she yelled at him, “I’m gonna….” But she never got a chance to finish her sentence. Stobert took one look at her with that deadly blade in her hand and staggered as fast as his crippled leg would allow for the corner of the building while screaming Grimbold’s name. Stepping outside, Mona threw the cleaver at Stobert’s retreating back. She missed.
Just at that moment Grimbold, hearing his name being yelled, rushed round the corner of the building and ran smack into Stobert. Grimbold didn’t budge as Stobert’s slight frame bounced off his large body, but a look of terror lit the innkeeper’s face as Mona’s meat cleaver lodged itself in the back wall of the inn a mere hand’s width from his head.
“Calm yourself, Mona!” he shrieked, his face pale. “You’re going to kill somebody with those cleavers one of these days!”
“If I hadda wanted to kill someone,” she shouted back, “there’d be more than piss a-runnin’ down your pants legs!”
Grimbold hurriedly looked down at himself to see if he had indeed wetted himself in his fright. He couldn’t tell since his apron covered the area of possible embarrassment.
He looked up again as he heard Mona storm over to the cleaver and yank it out of the wall. Then she turned, bent over the prone Stobert, and waved the large blade under his nose.
“If I catch you or your dung-pooping birds anywhere ‘round here again,” she said in a deadly even, cold voice, “they’ll be feeding you pigeon stew with a spoon ‘cause both your birds and your fingers will be missing! Understand?!”
Stobert nodded his ashen face a fraction of an inch. Anything more would have sliced off his nose.
Straightening up, Mona cast a frigid glance at Grimbold and stomped back to her kitchen. Grimbold checked behind his apron before helping a shaking Stobert to his feet.
* * *
Inside the inn, a quaking Stobert finished off a second tankard of the Barons’ Special Ale, trying desperately to calm his shaking nerves. Already his mind was racing furiously as he tried to think of some way to get into the kitchen and look for the packet that Brighty had been carrying. But the thought of confronting Mona in her own domain made him weak in his knees. “Perhaps I could get Grimbold to…” he muttered to himself, but no, that would require too much explaining. And he let that thought trail off into another pull on his ale.
He turned as loud voices suddenly filled the tavern. A group of dwarves had just entered and were loudly calling for drink. A party of elves sitting at a nearby table mumbled something about “dwarves not being allowed out in public until they were housebroken...” At this point, Stobert expected blades to be drawn, but Grimbold hurried over and ushered the dwarves toward the rear of the tavern and to a vacant table away from the elves. Stobert grinned to himself; tonight might turn out to be fun after all. One never knew what would happen when dwarves got “all liquored up” as Grimbold would say.
But he mentally kicked himself for getting sidetracked; he still had a tricky problem to solve. How was he going to search the kitchen for the powder to put in the drinks? If he didn’t succeed in drugging the wine of the four responsible for the defeat of the Zhent army, the killer would probably fail in his assassination. And he knew how that would be reported to The Boss. He reached for his ale to keep his mind from going down that path.
* * *
Soon, dinner was served in the Black Dragon Inn. The smell of roast venison wafted through the tavern, and as it did, the customers realized just how hungry they were. In an instant, Grimbold was busy bringing out platters of meat, bowls of gravy and pan-fried potatoes, and thick loaves of hot, brown bread. All this time more and more customers demanded their turn at being served. Before long, Grimbold yelled for Mona to come help him with the clientele.
This was just the chance Stobert had been waiting for. While Grimbold and Mona were busy in the main room of the tavern, Stobert snuck behind the bar and into the kitchen. There he found the two scullery maids busy peeling and chopping potatoes. They glanced up at him as he slipped in.
“Mona wants the brown powder that just arrived today,” he said in a very demanding voice. “Do you know where it is?” The two women just looked at him blankly and continued their work.
Stobert snorted his frustration then began his search of the kitchen. He didn’t know what it looked like, other than it was a brown powder. And he figured that it had to be a small amount since a pigeon had carried it.
Looking in drawers and cabinets, he didn’t find anything containing brown powder. Then he spied a pile of dirty rags in a corner, but rooting through them didn’t turn up any containers of powder either. A keg of beer held his attention for a moment, but examining it, he saw no indication that it had been tapped.
Then he peered behind a stack of wooden bowls on a shelf and spied a small, brass ewer with a lid. Carefully, he took down the container and opened it. Inside, he saw a dark brown dust. “This must be it,” he thought to himself. Quickly, he emptied it into four silver goblets and replaced the empty ewer back on the shelf. Then he arranged the goblets on a silver tray and hobbled back toward the door leading into the tavern.
“What in the nine hells are you doing in here?!!” he heard Mona bellow as he felt her hand clamp down on the back of his neck.
“Ah, nothing,” he stammered, thinking quickly. “Just getting some wine ready for the guests of honor when they get here. I seen how you and Grimbold was awful busy with serving supper and just thought to help out.” He turned to face her, which was difficult, since she had him by the scruff of the neck. He shifted the tray so she could see the four goblets without seeing what they contained. He grinned sheepishly at her, hoping he looked suitably intimidated. She let him go, and he fled for the safety of the rowdy bar. He had seen her reaching for a kitchen knife.
Once back in the tavern, he heaved a sigh of relief. The two barons, who jointly shared the responsibility and burden of ruling over Semberdale, had just entered and were making their way toward a beckoning Grimbold standing at a table close by the fire. Trendar was already sitting there, drinking ale. Even though it was springtime, the nights still had a bite to them, and a fire was needed. Grimbold also kept a fire blazing to pull the thick, cloying tobacco haze up the chimney from the tavern, which was filling up with pipe-smoking villagers.
Stobert quickly looked around, spotted a bottle of wine behind the bar and filled the four goblets from it, stirring in the brown powder. Timidly he headed toward the heroes’ table with the four goblets on the tray, but Grimbold intercepted him halfway there, a questioning look on his face. Stobert handed the tray to Grimbold and said, “Mona fixed this wine specially for you and their lordships. I was just bringing it to you.” Grimbold took the tray and peered curiously at the goblets.
“The grand toast isn’t suppose to be until later, after we’ve supped,” he said.
“Uhh,” Stobert stammered, trying to think of an answer that wouldn’t make Grimbold suspicious, “I think she meant these to go with the food. She’s got something else specially planned for the toasting.” Grimbold just shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the table, handing Trendar and the barons their wine.
“What a stroke of luck!” Stobert thought to himself as he hurried back to his place behind the bar. “They’ll never suspect their old friend Grimbold of giving them something harmful to drink.” Then he cringed as he watched Mona bring out their venison supper. In the pocket of her apron hung a meat cleaver.
* * *
The evening hours dragged on and Stobert grew more and more impatient. Nothing was happening. Oh, there was a lot of eating and drinking and carousing by everyone, especially the barons. But nothing was happening according to plan.
Stobert wasn’t exactly sure what a catatonic trance was suppose to look like, but the four Heroes of Semberdale never went into any kind of trance, dog or catatonic. Indeed, they were a lively bunch. After finishing a huge supper, they sat at table laughing, drinking, and retelling tales from their adventuring days. The handsome Baron Connor even planted a big, wet kiss on Mona, full on her lips, telling her that her venison and sauce could make him give up his bachelorhood and marry her. And the old witch actually blushed like a young maiden!
Stobert kept his eyes on the four and their goblets to make sure they drank their concoctions. They did. Several times in the course of the evening, the barons up-ended their mugs, calling for “more of this wonderful nectar of the gods.” Stobert obliged them by bringing the bottle and refilling their goblets personally. And the barons obliged him by draining their cups time and time again.
The barons weren’t the only disappointment for Stobert. The elves and dwarves never did start fighting. They each presented the four heroes of the Zhent war with presents to mark their long-standing friendship. The elves gave them matching belts of thick leather made from the almost impenetrable hide of a black dragon, inlaid with silver and a large red ruby. The dwarves presented them with silver beer steins etched with scenes of the battle against the Zhentarim, which Grimbold and Trendar immediately christened by filling with Barons’ Special Ale. And after the presentations, the elves and dwarves, two normally hostile groups, sat together at a large table, treating each other like lost brothers-in-arms. Long after the obligatory toasts to the barons’ health and death to the Zhentarim, the elves and dwarves continued toasting undying loyalty to each other, each other’s kings, each other’s families, and even each other’s pets. Stobert couldn’t believe his eyes were seeing!
Nor could another pair of eyes in the tavern. Standing unseen next to the fire within touching distance of the boisterous Sir Connor and his friends, the stranger watched and waited. He wore a magical ring that made him invisible in the low light of the tavern’s lanterns. He was waiting for Connor and his companions to start drooling from their mouths and clumsily dropping items. He knew that the magically induced trance often resembled a drunken stupor to the unsuspecting eye.
But other than becoming very loud and boisterous, the stranger could see nothing out of the ordinary happening to any of the retired adventurers he had been sent to kill. They ate and drank with gusto, and Sir Connor seemed to be on a first name basis with everyone in the tavern, especially the serving wenches. The assassin noted that Stobert kept filling the four adventurers’ goblets personally and assumed that the magic powder was in the wine bottle he kept with him at all times, since never was it offered to anyone else. So the invisible stranger patiently stood by the fire and waited for his intended victim to pass out.
As the evening wore on and it became more and more obvious that Stobert had failed in his assignment, the stranger began to get nervous. The plan had been for him to steal the dagger of one of the barons, which he had done with ease earlier in the evening, and use it to stab the other baron who would be helpless under the influence of the magic. The assassin would then casually walk away, still invisible, leaving the village to wonder why one of its lords had murdered the other one.
However, the magic of the ring ebbed as time went by, and the killer felt the tingling begin to dwindle on the finger with the ring. This told him that the spell was wearing off and that he would soon become visible. The stranger mentally went over his options should this happen.
He had no poison on him, so putting a toxin in Connor’s drink was out of the question.
Perhaps he could use magic to complete his murderous assignment. But the only magic he had, other than the ring that was fast losing its spell, was the medallion that would transform him once outside the tavern into a bird and allow him to fly home, foiling any chance of pursuit. So, unless he planned to beat the baron to death with his wings, magic was also out.
No, his only choice was to stab Connor here in the packed tavern even if the baron wasn’t under the magic powder’s effect yet. The assassin would have only one chance, but if he could reach a vital organ with his blade, one chance would be all he needed.
But that still left the problem of how to make good his escape. The room was too crowded to make his way to the door, at least at floor level. However, what if he used the rafters? One look up at the ceiling showed that that route was no good; he’d have to be a squirrel to travel it.
Or a bird… Hmm, if only the door were open, he could kill one of the barons and then fly out the door. “Yes,” mused the stranger, “that would work just fine.”
Just at that moment, Tymora, the goddess of chance and luck, smiled on him. Mona came into the tavern from the kitchen carrying a tray of clean mugs. The room was thick with the smoke of dozens of pipes, and she went over to the front door and propped it open with a spittoon to let in some fresh air.
And then the goddess planted a big, wet kiss on the stranger: Sir Connor passed out, planting his head face-first on the table with a loud thump.
Grasping the sharp, stolen dagger in one hand, the assassin stepped up behind Connar and shoved the deadly blade into the kidney area of the intoxicated hero while saying the magic words that changed him into a bird.
Immediately, pandemonium broke out in the tavern. The stranger dropped the dagger to the floor where it could be found later as he himself grew smaller, his body wracked with pain while it contorted into its new shape. The stabbed baron jerked spasmodically, overturning his full goblet. Trendar jumped up with a curse, slapping spilled wine out of his crotch. Mona doubled up her fist and slugged an elderly man who had placed his hand on an indecorous part of her body.
After the pain eased, the assassin stretched his newfound wings and flew up to the rafters. Below him he saw the tavern in an uproar. Trendar was trying to wipe spilled wine from his lap. Grimbold was bent over his unconscious friend, slapping his face to revive him. Mona stood over a collapsed table, her hands on her hips.
“Good,” thought the feathered killer, “they don’t even realize the Baron has been stabbed. They think he’s just passed out.” And with that thought he took wing and headed, still invisible, for the open door and freedom.
* * *
Mona’s ire knew no bounds. Ever since Sir Connor had kissed her for making such a wonderful meal, men had been grabbing at her. “Not that I minded the handsome Baron planting a big smooch on me mouth,” she thought with a grin, “but did every Tom, Dick and Harry think me a tavern trollop up for grabs? No siree! But the coin that broke the dragon’s back was when old Bobo Fitch, the village idiot, grabbed me on my… Well, never you mind where he grabbed me. I’ll not stand for it, I tell you!” And with these thoughts she reached down, grabbed the sprawling Bobo by the shirtfront, yanked him to his feet, spun him around, planted her foot in the seat of his pants, and sent him hurtling toward the open door.
Only the door wasn’t open any longer when he got there. When Mona had slugged poor Bobo, she had set off a chain reaction. Bobo landed in the middle of a nearby table, collapsing it and sending celebrating villagers flying in all directions. One knocked over the spittoon, spilling the combined labors of a dozen tobacco-chewing jaws. Another, leaning back in his chair next to the open door to enjoy the cool night air coming in, was knocked backwards. He tried to catch his balance, but he was sent clattering behind the open door, closing it with a crash. Poor Bobo arrived at the door just at that moment and never made it through the door.
And neither did the winged assassin. Flying as hard and fast as he could, he watched in horror as the door slammed shut right in front of his beak. He crashed into it and slid down in a dazed heap on top of Bobo’s head.
Mona reacted with fury. She grabbed the meat cleaver from her apron pocket and waded through a sea of sprawled revelers. They took one look at her with a deadly blade in her hand and began to flee for their lives. There was a mad rush to get out of the way, and Mona suddenly found in front of her an open path to a dazed Bobo leaning against the door with a pigeon crumpled on his head.
The plumed killer slowly focused his eyes and saw Mona glaring at him as he felt Bobo stir underneath him.
“I’m gonna hack you into a thousand pieces,” Mona screamed, pulling the cleaver from her apron pocket. Both the bird’s and Bobo’s eyes opened wide in panic.
Giving a strong kick with its legs, the now visible pigeon flapped its wings wildly and raced for the safety of the rafters. Bobo let out a loud shriek and covered his face with his arms. And a dozen of the good, stouthearted men of Semberdale who had braved a Zhent army dived for safety under tables and chairs. Mona drew back her arm and let fly her deadly blade.
Tables and chairs tumbled as men cowered and hid from her fury. Bobo, his back against the closed door, whimpered and felt a warm wetness spread in his crotch as his bladder emptied itself. The cleaver whirled end over end, landing deep in wood with a loud “thunk”.
“Gotcha!” said Mona wearing a big, smug grin. “Bet you won’t poop on any more of my clean laundry!” And she went over to the dead pigeon, split in two by the flying blade now quivering in the wall.
* * *
Gradually, the tavern came back to normal. Grimbold helped Trendar carry the inebriated and comatose Baron Connor upstairs where he was undressed and put to bed in Grimbold’s private apartment. They noticed, as they did so, that he had a shallow cut in his new dragon-leather belt. He would not be able to explain the next morning how the gash had gotten there when he tottered painfully downstairs to breakfast.
Bobo left the tavern as soon as he was able to regain control of his shaking legs. His lap was wet, which he sniveled was from spilled beer, and there were bird droppings in his hair, which he whined was from Mona’s scaring the crap out of the pigeon.
Most of the village men also left the celebration earlier than planned, especially those who had been sitting closest to the open door. Their nerves were thoroughly shaken by all the turmoil, and many felt that tempting fate or Mona’s anger more than once an evening was a bad idea.
Mona recovered the two halves of the pigeon and took them back to the kitchen to be included in tomorrow’s stew. She checked its legs to see if she could find any more of the mysterious brown powder to add to the stew; if she had some more than maybe adding it would make the handsome Sir Connor kiss her again.
No one saw Stobert when he left the inn. Nor did anyone notice that for the next month he didn’t allow any of his pigeons out of their coop. No one, that is, except Mona, who had no more problems with pigeons soiling her clean laundry.
But the elves and the dwarves stayed at the Black Dragon Inn that night, toasting each other’s health until dawn pinked the eastern sky. They ate the remaining roast venison and sopped up all the sauce with what was left of the bread. And to this day, the elves and dwarves of the dale have celebrated their mutual friendship with Barons’ Special Ale, roast venison and gravy. But never has the food tasted quite as good nor the camaraderie been quite as merry as that evening when Mad Mona killed a pigeon with one hurl of her blade, and unbeknownst to anyone, became the heroine of Semberdale.
Furiously surveying the damage, she realized that most of the morning’s laundry would have to be rewashed. With a hateful glare at the sky where the flock of pigeons circled overhead, she started yanking down dirty sheets. “If I ever get my hands on any of you feather brains,” she muttered under her breath, “I’m gonna….”
Just at that moment Grimbold, the innkeeper of the Black Dragon, and his friend Trendar, the local braumeister, came sauntering outside to enjoy the warm, spring morning, tankards of the Barons’ Special Ale in their hands. Most folk would think it a bit early in the day to be drinking, but Trendar had just delivered a new barrel of his famous dark, stout brew for the celebrations that night and wanted to “field-test” it with his old adventuring companion, Grimbold.
They stopped abruptly as they caught sight of the inn’s cook yanking down wet sheets. That she was in a terrible mood was obvious. And that meant they had better tread lightly with her.
“Uh, what’s amiss, Mona?” Grimbold asked cautiously. She whirled around and glared at him with a look that would have curdled fresh milk.
“I spent all morning washing so guests could sleep on clean sheets tonight, and them damned pigeons of Stobert’s ruins ‘em in five minutes!” She stormed over to him, her steps heavy in her rage. “I’m telling ya, if you don’t do something about them,” she hissed, shaking her clenched fist under his nose, “there’s gonna be three kinds of hell to pay!”
Grimbold slowly backed away from the threatening fist, thankful that there wasn’t a kitchen knife in it. He had witnessed how those same knuckles had forced an overbearing, arrogant Zhent mage and his orc guards to wipe their feet before entering her kitchen.
“Okay! Okay!” he said quickly, coming to an abrupt stop. His back was pressed against the bottom half of the Dutch door leading into the kitchen. “I’ll rig up a scarecrow or something to keep them away.”
“No, I want ‘em dead,” she said evenly her hands now on her hips. “This ain’t the first time I’ve had to rewash laundry ‘cause of them. I want ‘em gone for good!”
She glared at him, daring him to say anything. Grimbold merely nodded, caught Trendar’s eye, and together the two old friends hastened to the sanctity of the tavern. Around her kitchen, Mona reigned supreme.
* * *
On the outskirts of the village, Stobert watched as his flock of homing pigeons circled the coop and landed. He slowly shuffled over and peered inside. Brighty wasn’t among his pigeons which told him that an important message was coming from The Boss. Stobert didn’t know who The Boss was since they only communicated via his pigeons. But whenever his favorite pigeon didn’t return with the rest of the flock, Stobert knew to expect something special.
Peering closely into the coop he noted that one of the pigeons had a band around its leg. Reaching in, he gently grabbed the bird and pulled it out. The band was a thin gold ring that Stobert carefully removed. He glanced around quickly to see if anyone had witnessed his actions and then pocketed the ring. Returning the bird to the coop, he hurried inside his house as fast as his stooped back and crippled leg would allow, then closed and locked the door. Swiftly he drew the thick curtains but not before taking one quick glance outside to make sure no one was in sight.
Once safely hidden from prying eyes, he pulled the ring from his pocket and examined it closely. It wasn’t his, but the sketch of an open eye etched on the inside told him that he was meant to get it. Stobert was the leader of the Secret Eye, a clandestine group who spied on the two barons of Semberdale for The Boss and passed on information by way of his pigeons. He also received instructions from time to time via the same method.
Speaking the words that would unbind the magic of the ring, he watched it become a full sized sheet of paper. On it were his orders. In the dim light of the heavily curtained room he read the paper and nodded his head. After he finished reading it a second time, he sat down in his chair by the fireplace, deep in thought. Many minutes later, he carefully put the paper on the embers of last night’s fire. By tomorrow, the entire village of Semberdale would be in an uproar, and the glow of the burning paper lit up his smiling face.
* * *
“There, that oughta take care of them blasted pigeons!” said Mona to herself as she stepped back and admired her handiwork. It wasn’t pretty, but then, it wasn’t meant to be. Looking like a small birdhouse, the contraption was designed to chop off a bird’s head when it poked its neck through a small hole in the front. As the bird pecked at food inside the fake birdhouse, a heavy knife blade, honed to razor sharpness, would fall on its neck, slicing the head off. Or so Mona hoped.
The idea had come to her from witnessing a public execution in Sembia last year. Called a guillotine, the machine was supposed to be a very humane way of killing. Mona wasn’t worried so much about it being humane; she just wanted it to be deadly. Her little “beheading box” as she called it, looked lethal enough to insure clean sheets for the inn’s guests.
She filled the inside of the birdhouse with sunflower seeds, put it on a post in the back yard, sprinkled a few more sunflower seeds on its “front porch,” and turned to go back in the kitchen. As she reached the Dutch door, she heard the whirl of bird wings behind her. She turned around and saw a brightly colored pigeon on the front stoop of her guillotine finishing off the last seed. As she watched smiling, the bird stuck its head into the box and began pecking at the seeds inside. Suddenly, there was a slicing hiss and the squawking of a bird as the heavy blade descended and its head was cleanly severed from its body. The headless torso fell clumsily to the ground and flopped around for a couple of moments, its lifeblood spilling out onto the ground.
Mona walked over to the dead bird and carefully picked it up. “This will make a great addition to tomorrow’s stew,” she thought to herself. A venison roast was cooking for tonight’s festivities, and Mona planned to make a stew from any leftovers. Some freshly killed pigeon would be a welcome addition. As she held the bird up by its feet, she noticed a small band of folded paper around one of its legs. Carefully she pulled the paper off and unfolded it.
Inside was a brown powder like the rare cinnamon she had purchased in distant Sembia last year. She put a tiny sample on her tongue, but it didn’t taste the same as the brown powder she kept hidden in her kitchen for special occasions. Instead, what she tasted had a tartness to it that reminded her of wild elfberries. “Just the right thing to go with tonight’s venison,” she thought to herself.
As she headed back to her kitchen, her mind awhirl with thoughts of tonight’s menu, she suddenly remembered the detached head still inside the birdhouse. That bloody mess would certainly jeopardize her drying laundry by deterring other pigeons from taking their turn at the “beheading box”. Returning to the birdhouse, she removed the severed head from inside and tossed it next to the kitchen door where she knew her cat would find it. Then she carefully reset the trap. It was too bad, she reflected, that a beautiful bird with such colorful feathers had to meet such a foul fate, but Stobert’s loss would be her customers’ gain.
* * *
Stobert hobbled back and forth beside his pigeon coop. Brighty still hadn’t returned, and on her leg was an important packet containing the magic he had been instructed to use to set into motion the deadly plans of The Boss. Stobert’s favorite pigeon usually flew with the flock, and the fact that she was late indicated that she had been slowed down by a heavy burden. He knew that she would be hungry from her delayed flight home, so he had a handful of her favorite food, sunflower seeds, to entice her to land in his hand rather than going directly into the pigeon coop. He was very anxious to get her cargo.
The gold-band-turned-note had stated that the pigeon was carrying a magical brown powder, a powerful spell component that put anyone who consumed it into a catatonic state, destroying all will power of their own. The victim became completely pliable to the suggestions of others, even to the point of allowing someone to kill them without resisting. Stobert’s job was to slip this powder into the drinks of the two barons and their adventuring companions, Grimbold and Trendar. Then an assassin sent by The Boss would slay one of the barons and lay the blame on the other three Heroes of Semberdale as the quartet was known. The assassin would then escape through the use of a magical amulet. That much Stobert knew from the message. Of the other details of the plan, he was completely ignorant, kept in the dark by The Boss.
He glanced anxiously up at the sky looking for Brighty, but she wasn’t in sight. Then he shrugged his shoulders in a cavalier fashion. It was still early in the afternoon and the barons wouldn’t arrive at the celebrations in the Black Dragon Inn until much later that evening. He still had plenty of time for Brighty to show up with the powder and for him to get to the festivities.
But first he needed to think of some way to get the magical ingredient into their drinks. Perhaps he should volunteer to help Grimbold tonight behind the bar since it was sure to be a packed house.
It was the village’s annual festival celebrating the victory of the barons and their two companions over a Zhentarim army some fifteen years ago this very night. The yearly holiday always brought the village folk to the inn for a night of eating, drinking and celebrating with the four Heroes of Semberdale. Stobert smiled to himself, catching the irony of the timing for tonight’s assassination. He may not know the identity of The Boss, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that he was a Zhent.
Giving up on Brighty, Stobert shuffled his way down the dusty road of the village to the Black Dragon to volunteer his services. As he entered the courtyard in front of the inn, he spied Mona’s orange tabby cat carrying something in its mouth as it headed for the barn.
Stobert hated that cat because it often chased his pigeons. He couldn’t understand why such a plump animal would want to kill his precious birds, especially since its protruding belly showed that the cook fed it a lot of kitchen scraps. “Probably because it’s around Mona all the time,” thought Stobert to himself as he slyly reached down and picked up a smooth stone. “Any cat would get mean being around that old hag,” and with that thought he let fly with the stone. It hit the tabby in its ribs, causing it to yelp in pain and drop whatever it had been carrying in its mouth.
Going over to what was dropped, Stobert saw that it was the head of a pigeon, one of his. Its brightly colored feathers told him that Brighty would not be flying with his flock ever again. Tears welled up in his eyes as he gently picked up the head of his favorite pet.
Suddenly he remembered the bird’s cargo. He looked over toward the rear of the inn where the cat had come from and slowly approached the back yard. There in the middle of the yard he saw a small birdhouse on a pole, which he dismissed; the entry hole was too tiny for a pigeon. But what caught his attention was a small puddle of blood at the base of the pole.
He carefully came over to the pool of blood and stooped to examine it. In it were some of Brighty’s feathers and the footprints of a cat. So, Mona’s pet had killed the pigeon bringing him the magic powder from the Boss, but where had it carried the body?
He looked closer at the bird’s head still in his hand and now noticed that the neck had been cleanly cut as if by a knife and not chewed to pieces, as a cat would have done. He stared at the kitchen door for several moments trying to fathom who or what could have killed Brighty, and then a look of suspicion crossed his face. His opinion was that Mona was meaner than a snake and twice as ugly, and it wouldn’t surprise Stobert if she hadn’t sliced off the pigeon’s head just to test the sharpness of one of her knives. If her blades were half as sharp as her tongue, Mona could have chopped off the bird’s head with one swipe.
But what had happened to the packet being sent to him by way of Brighty? Was it still on the pigeon’s leg, wherever that might be, or had Mona removed it and put it somewhere in her kitchen? He blanched at the thought of what she might do with it.
* * *
Mona popped a slice of venison dipped in sauce into her mouth and smiled at the taste. “Hmm, delicious,” she thought to herself. Whatever it had been, the brown powder had given the sauce a pleasing hint of the wild forest. Taking another morsel of venison, she ran it through the sauce, her mouth watering in anticipation of a second taste. But before the tidbit reached her mouth, she noticed Stobert through the open top half of the Dutch door staring at the kitchen with his usual hateful look in his eyes. She set down her second taste of sauce and looked around for some kind of weapon. Here was the source of her having to rewash a cauldron full of sheets this morning, and she was going to exact a little revenge. Spying the meat cleaver she had used on the venison roast, she picked it up and headed out the door.
“If you don’t get yourself and them thrice cursed pigeons outta my back yard,” she yelled at him, “I’m gonna….” But she never got a chance to finish her sentence. Stobert took one look at her with that deadly blade in her hand and staggered as fast as his crippled leg would allow for the corner of the building while screaming Grimbold’s name. Stepping outside, Mona threw the cleaver at Stobert’s retreating back. She missed.
Just at that moment Grimbold, hearing his name being yelled, rushed round the corner of the building and ran smack into Stobert. Grimbold didn’t budge as Stobert’s slight frame bounced off his large body, but a look of terror lit the innkeeper’s face as Mona’s meat cleaver lodged itself in the back wall of the inn a mere hand’s width from his head.
“Calm yourself, Mona!” he shrieked, his face pale. “You’re going to kill somebody with those cleavers one of these days!”
“If I hadda wanted to kill someone,” she shouted back, “there’d be more than piss a-runnin’ down your pants legs!”
Grimbold hurriedly looked down at himself to see if he had indeed wetted himself in his fright. He couldn’t tell since his apron covered the area of possible embarrassment.
He looked up again as he heard Mona storm over to the cleaver and yank it out of the wall. Then she turned, bent over the prone Stobert, and waved the large blade under his nose.
“If I catch you or your dung-pooping birds anywhere ‘round here again,” she said in a deadly even, cold voice, “they’ll be feeding you pigeon stew with a spoon ‘cause both your birds and your fingers will be missing! Understand?!”
Stobert nodded his ashen face a fraction of an inch. Anything more would have sliced off his nose.
Straightening up, Mona cast a frigid glance at Grimbold and stomped back to her kitchen. Grimbold checked behind his apron before helping a shaking Stobert to his feet.
* * *
Inside the inn, a quaking Stobert finished off a second tankard of the Barons’ Special Ale, trying desperately to calm his shaking nerves. Already his mind was racing furiously as he tried to think of some way to get into the kitchen and look for the packet that Brighty had been carrying. But the thought of confronting Mona in her own domain made him weak in his knees. “Perhaps I could get Grimbold to…” he muttered to himself, but no, that would require too much explaining. And he let that thought trail off into another pull on his ale.
He turned as loud voices suddenly filled the tavern. A group of dwarves had just entered and were loudly calling for drink. A party of elves sitting at a nearby table mumbled something about “dwarves not being allowed out in public until they were housebroken...” At this point, Stobert expected blades to be drawn, but Grimbold hurried over and ushered the dwarves toward the rear of the tavern and to a vacant table away from the elves. Stobert grinned to himself; tonight might turn out to be fun after all. One never knew what would happen when dwarves got “all liquored up” as Grimbold would say.
But he mentally kicked himself for getting sidetracked; he still had a tricky problem to solve. How was he going to search the kitchen for the powder to put in the drinks? If he didn’t succeed in drugging the wine of the four responsible for the defeat of the Zhent army, the killer would probably fail in his assassination. And he knew how that would be reported to The Boss. He reached for his ale to keep his mind from going down that path.
* * *
Soon, dinner was served in the Black Dragon Inn. The smell of roast venison wafted through the tavern, and as it did, the customers realized just how hungry they were. In an instant, Grimbold was busy bringing out platters of meat, bowls of gravy and pan-fried potatoes, and thick loaves of hot, brown bread. All this time more and more customers demanded their turn at being served. Before long, Grimbold yelled for Mona to come help him with the clientele.
This was just the chance Stobert had been waiting for. While Grimbold and Mona were busy in the main room of the tavern, Stobert snuck behind the bar and into the kitchen. There he found the two scullery maids busy peeling and chopping potatoes. They glanced up at him as he slipped in.
“Mona wants the brown powder that just arrived today,” he said in a very demanding voice. “Do you know where it is?” The two women just looked at him blankly and continued their work.
Stobert snorted his frustration then began his search of the kitchen. He didn’t know what it looked like, other than it was a brown powder. And he figured that it had to be a small amount since a pigeon had carried it.
Looking in drawers and cabinets, he didn’t find anything containing brown powder. Then he spied a pile of dirty rags in a corner, but rooting through them didn’t turn up any containers of powder either. A keg of beer held his attention for a moment, but examining it, he saw no indication that it had been tapped.
Then he peered behind a stack of wooden bowls on a shelf and spied a small, brass ewer with a lid. Carefully, he took down the container and opened it. Inside, he saw a dark brown dust. “This must be it,” he thought to himself. Quickly, he emptied it into four silver goblets and replaced the empty ewer back on the shelf. Then he arranged the goblets on a silver tray and hobbled back toward the door leading into the tavern.
“What in the nine hells are you doing in here?!!” he heard Mona bellow as he felt her hand clamp down on the back of his neck.
“Ah, nothing,” he stammered, thinking quickly. “Just getting some wine ready for the guests of honor when they get here. I seen how you and Grimbold was awful busy with serving supper and just thought to help out.” He turned to face her, which was difficult, since she had him by the scruff of the neck. He shifted the tray so she could see the four goblets without seeing what they contained. He grinned sheepishly at her, hoping he looked suitably intimidated. She let him go, and he fled for the safety of the rowdy bar. He had seen her reaching for a kitchen knife.
Once back in the tavern, he heaved a sigh of relief. The two barons, who jointly shared the responsibility and burden of ruling over Semberdale, had just entered and were making their way toward a beckoning Grimbold standing at a table close by the fire. Trendar was already sitting there, drinking ale. Even though it was springtime, the nights still had a bite to them, and a fire was needed. Grimbold also kept a fire blazing to pull the thick, cloying tobacco haze up the chimney from the tavern, which was filling up with pipe-smoking villagers.
Stobert quickly looked around, spotted a bottle of wine behind the bar and filled the four goblets from it, stirring in the brown powder. Timidly he headed toward the heroes’ table with the four goblets on the tray, but Grimbold intercepted him halfway there, a questioning look on his face. Stobert handed the tray to Grimbold and said, “Mona fixed this wine specially for you and their lordships. I was just bringing it to you.” Grimbold took the tray and peered curiously at the goblets.
“The grand toast isn’t suppose to be until later, after we’ve supped,” he said.
“Uhh,” Stobert stammered, trying to think of an answer that wouldn’t make Grimbold suspicious, “I think she meant these to go with the food. She’s got something else specially planned for the toasting.” Grimbold just shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the table, handing Trendar and the barons their wine.
“What a stroke of luck!” Stobert thought to himself as he hurried back to his place behind the bar. “They’ll never suspect their old friend Grimbold of giving them something harmful to drink.” Then he cringed as he watched Mona bring out their venison supper. In the pocket of her apron hung a meat cleaver.
* * *
The evening hours dragged on and Stobert grew more and more impatient. Nothing was happening. Oh, there was a lot of eating and drinking and carousing by everyone, especially the barons. But nothing was happening according to plan.
Stobert wasn’t exactly sure what a catatonic trance was suppose to look like, but the four Heroes of Semberdale never went into any kind of trance, dog or catatonic. Indeed, they were a lively bunch. After finishing a huge supper, they sat at table laughing, drinking, and retelling tales from their adventuring days. The handsome Baron Connor even planted a big, wet kiss on Mona, full on her lips, telling her that her venison and sauce could make him give up his bachelorhood and marry her. And the old witch actually blushed like a young maiden!
Stobert kept his eyes on the four and their goblets to make sure they drank their concoctions. They did. Several times in the course of the evening, the barons up-ended their mugs, calling for “more of this wonderful nectar of the gods.” Stobert obliged them by bringing the bottle and refilling their goblets personally. And the barons obliged him by draining their cups time and time again.
The barons weren’t the only disappointment for Stobert. The elves and dwarves never did start fighting. They each presented the four heroes of the Zhent war with presents to mark their long-standing friendship. The elves gave them matching belts of thick leather made from the almost impenetrable hide of a black dragon, inlaid with silver and a large red ruby. The dwarves presented them with silver beer steins etched with scenes of the battle against the Zhentarim, which Grimbold and Trendar immediately christened by filling with Barons’ Special Ale. And after the presentations, the elves and dwarves, two normally hostile groups, sat together at a large table, treating each other like lost brothers-in-arms. Long after the obligatory toasts to the barons’ health and death to the Zhentarim, the elves and dwarves continued toasting undying loyalty to each other, each other’s kings, each other’s families, and even each other’s pets. Stobert couldn’t believe his eyes were seeing!
Nor could another pair of eyes in the tavern. Standing unseen next to the fire within touching distance of the boisterous Sir Connor and his friends, the stranger watched and waited. He wore a magical ring that made him invisible in the low light of the tavern’s lanterns. He was waiting for Connor and his companions to start drooling from their mouths and clumsily dropping items. He knew that the magically induced trance often resembled a drunken stupor to the unsuspecting eye.
But other than becoming very loud and boisterous, the stranger could see nothing out of the ordinary happening to any of the retired adventurers he had been sent to kill. They ate and drank with gusto, and Sir Connor seemed to be on a first name basis with everyone in the tavern, especially the serving wenches. The assassin noted that Stobert kept filling the four adventurers’ goblets personally and assumed that the magic powder was in the wine bottle he kept with him at all times, since never was it offered to anyone else. So the invisible stranger patiently stood by the fire and waited for his intended victim to pass out.
As the evening wore on and it became more and more obvious that Stobert had failed in his assignment, the stranger began to get nervous. The plan had been for him to steal the dagger of one of the barons, which he had done with ease earlier in the evening, and use it to stab the other baron who would be helpless under the influence of the magic. The assassin would then casually walk away, still invisible, leaving the village to wonder why one of its lords had murdered the other one.
However, the magic of the ring ebbed as time went by, and the killer felt the tingling begin to dwindle on the finger with the ring. This told him that the spell was wearing off and that he would soon become visible. The stranger mentally went over his options should this happen.
He had no poison on him, so putting a toxin in Connor’s drink was out of the question.
Perhaps he could use magic to complete his murderous assignment. But the only magic he had, other than the ring that was fast losing its spell, was the medallion that would transform him once outside the tavern into a bird and allow him to fly home, foiling any chance of pursuit. So, unless he planned to beat the baron to death with his wings, magic was also out.
No, his only choice was to stab Connor here in the packed tavern even if the baron wasn’t under the magic powder’s effect yet. The assassin would have only one chance, but if he could reach a vital organ with his blade, one chance would be all he needed.
But that still left the problem of how to make good his escape. The room was too crowded to make his way to the door, at least at floor level. However, what if he used the rafters? One look up at the ceiling showed that that route was no good; he’d have to be a squirrel to travel it.
Or a bird… Hmm, if only the door were open, he could kill one of the barons and then fly out the door. “Yes,” mused the stranger, “that would work just fine.”
Just at that moment, Tymora, the goddess of chance and luck, smiled on him. Mona came into the tavern from the kitchen carrying a tray of clean mugs. The room was thick with the smoke of dozens of pipes, and she went over to the front door and propped it open with a spittoon to let in some fresh air.
And then the goddess planted a big, wet kiss on the stranger: Sir Connor passed out, planting his head face-first on the table with a loud thump.
Grasping the sharp, stolen dagger in one hand, the assassin stepped up behind Connar and shoved the deadly blade into the kidney area of the intoxicated hero while saying the magic words that changed him into a bird.
Immediately, pandemonium broke out in the tavern. The stranger dropped the dagger to the floor where it could be found later as he himself grew smaller, his body wracked with pain while it contorted into its new shape. The stabbed baron jerked spasmodically, overturning his full goblet. Trendar jumped up with a curse, slapping spilled wine out of his crotch. Mona doubled up her fist and slugged an elderly man who had placed his hand on an indecorous part of her body.
After the pain eased, the assassin stretched his newfound wings and flew up to the rafters. Below him he saw the tavern in an uproar. Trendar was trying to wipe spilled wine from his lap. Grimbold was bent over his unconscious friend, slapping his face to revive him. Mona stood over a collapsed table, her hands on her hips.
“Good,” thought the feathered killer, “they don’t even realize the Baron has been stabbed. They think he’s just passed out.” And with that thought he took wing and headed, still invisible, for the open door and freedom.
* * *
Mona’s ire knew no bounds. Ever since Sir Connor had kissed her for making such a wonderful meal, men had been grabbing at her. “Not that I minded the handsome Baron planting a big smooch on me mouth,” she thought with a grin, “but did every Tom, Dick and Harry think me a tavern trollop up for grabs? No siree! But the coin that broke the dragon’s back was when old Bobo Fitch, the village idiot, grabbed me on my… Well, never you mind where he grabbed me. I’ll not stand for it, I tell you!” And with these thoughts she reached down, grabbed the sprawling Bobo by the shirtfront, yanked him to his feet, spun him around, planted her foot in the seat of his pants, and sent him hurtling toward the open door.
Only the door wasn’t open any longer when he got there. When Mona had slugged poor Bobo, she had set off a chain reaction. Bobo landed in the middle of a nearby table, collapsing it and sending celebrating villagers flying in all directions. One knocked over the spittoon, spilling the combined labors of a dozen tobacco-chewing jaws. Another, leaning back in his chair next to the open door to enjoy the cool night air coming in, was knocked backwards. He tried to catch his balance, but he was sent clattering behind the open door, closing it with a crash. Poor Bobo arrived at the door just at that moment and never made it through the door.
And neither did the winged assassin. Flying as hard and fast as he could, he watched in horror as the door slammed shut right in front of his beak. He crashed into it and slid down in a dazed heap on top of Bobo’s head.
Mona reacted with fury. She grabbed the meat cleaver from her apron pocket and waded through a sea of sprawled revelers. They took one look at her with a deadly blade in her hand and began to flee for their lives. There was a mad rush to get out of the way, and Mona suddenly found in front of her an open path to a dazed Bobo leaning against the door with a pigeon crumpled on his head.
The plumed killer slowly focused his eyes and saw Mona glaring at him as he felt Bobo stir underneath him.
“I’m gonna hack you into a thousand pieces,” Mona screamed, pulling the cleaver from her apron pocket. Both the bird’s and Bobo’s eyes opened wide in panic.
Giving a strong kick with its legs, the now visible pigeon flapped its wings wildly and raced for the safety of the rafters. Bobo let out a loud shriek and covered his face with his arms. And a dozen of the good, stouthearted men of Semberdale who had braved a Zhent army dived for safety under tables and chairs. Mona drew back her arm and let fly her deadly blade.
Tables and chairs tumbled as men cowered and hid from her fury. Bobo, his back against the closed door, whimpered and felt a warm wetness spread in his crotch as his bladder emptied itself. The cleaver whirled end over end, landing deep in wood with a loud “thunk”.
“Gotcha!” said Mona wearing a big, smug grin. “Bet you won’t poop on any more of my clean laundry!” And she went over to the dead pigeon, split in two by the flying blade now quivering in the wall.
* * *
Gradually, the tavern came back to normal. Grimbold helped Trendar carry the inebriated and comatose Baron Connor upstairs where he was undressed and put to bed in Grimbold’s private apartment. They noticed, as they did so, that he had a shallow cut in his new dragon-leather belt. He would not be able to explain the next morning how the gash had gotten there when he tottered painfully downstairs to breakfast.
Bobo left the tavern as soon as he was able to regain control of his shaking legs. His lap was wet, which he sniveled was from spilled beer, and there were bird droppings in his hair, which he whined was from Mona’s scaring the crap out of the pigeon.
Most of the village men also left the celebration earlier than planned, especially those who had been sitting closest to the open door. Their nerves were thoroughly shaken by all the turmoil, and many felt that tempting fate or Mona’s anger more than once an evening was a bad idea.
Mona recovered the two halves of the pigeon and took them back to the kitchen to be included in tomorrow’s stew. She checked its legs to see if she could find any more of the mysterious brown powder to add to the stew; if she had some more than maybe adding it would make the handsome Sir Connor kiss her again.
No one saw Stobert when he left the inn. Nor did anyone notice that for the next month he didn’t allow any of his pigeons out of their coop. No one, that is, except Mona, who had no more problems with pigeons soiling her clean laundry.
But the elves and the dwarves stayed at the Black Dragon Inn that night, toasting each other’s health until dawn pinked the eastern sky. They ate the remaining roast venison and sopped up all the sauce with what was left of the bread. And to this day, the elves and dwarves of the dale have celebrated their mutual friendship with Barons’ Special Ale, roast venison and gravy. But never has the food tasted quite as good nor the camaraderie been quite as merry as that evening when Mad Mona killed a pigeon with one hurl of her blade, and unbeknownst to anyone, became the heroine of Semberdale.