“There are at least a score of them out there,” Malcador reported as he stepped back into the room, he shed the cloak he had taken from the tap room below. “Averlanders by the look of those ridiculous mustaches. They have the place surrounded.”
Emmaline was rubbing one of the golden coins along the band of her ring while she gazed at the chest of gold, still guarded by a suspicious Humper. The metal seemed to chime softly at the contact.

“They have a wizard too,” Malcador added. 

“How do you know?” Emmaline asked. Malcador stared at her incredulously.

“Because I paid attention in class?” he responded, aghast that Emmaline had apparently skipped so basic a lesson. Her education was shockingly spotty, surprisingly deep in places but with corresponding holes where she had never bothered with, or never been taught, the basics.

“Blackwoods,” Clodfoot growled.

“Who?” Emmaline asked, tearing her gaze from the chest with obvious effort.

“They are a family of wizards in Averland, more power hungry and greedy than most humans,” Clodfoot supplied. Emmaline shrugged her shoulders, not recognising the name, but Malcador arched an eyebrow.

“Blackwood was the name of that wizard wasn’t it, when you dressed me up as a knight?” Malcador asked Emmaline.

“Dressed you up as a knight?” Humper asked, “is that a sex thing?”

“No,” Malcador told him.

“Yes,” Emmaline replied in the same breath. The halfling glared at them.

“Why would a wizard want you dead?” Emmaline asked.

“If I die it will mean a power struggle between Averland and the Moot,” Clodfoot said, climbing out of the bed he had been resting in to recover a bottle of brandy from a pack. He pulled the cork from the bottle and took a long drink, which was doubtless a sin against good liquor.

“Why would the Blackwoods want that?” Emmaline asked. Clodfoot made an equivocal gesture with the bottle.

“The Blackwoods spend most of their time fighting among themselves, praise be to Taal,” Clodfoot explained. “The family is lousy with wizards, some of whom are a little too close to Sylvania if you take my meaning.”

Emmaline did. The Amethyst College was ever at pains to point out how much it hated necromancy and the undead but there was always a suspicion that they were too close to the same mysteries. 

"Trouble in the Moot would let them snap up more land and influence, both of which they are hungrier for than an Ogre in a sausage shop."

“So what is the gold for?” Malcador asked. Clodfoot peered at the young wizard then sighed.

“Political chicannery that will frustrate attempts to claim lands on the borders of the Moot, it is more complicated than it is interesting,” he explained.

“Say less,” Emmaline agreed emphatically, her interest in political manuvering evidently exhausted. She glanced out the window at the afternoon sun then back towards the gold, her emotions clearly split between the precious metal and the possible entertainment she was missing on the second day of Pie Week.

“Can’t we just go and get the guard or something?” she suggested.

“They have to have paid off the guard or they would already be here,” Humper snapped, “besides they probably saw you warn us, I doubt they will let you just walk out of here.”

“I doubt they are going to let any of us just walk out of here,” Clodfoot said, his mustaches drooping, “I think they would have stormed the place already if you hadn’t thrown them off balance with your little stunt. In a few minutes they will find their balls and we will be in real trouble.” The Halfling noble's voice was tinged with despair. 

“We could…” further discussion was interrupted by shouts from below and the pounding of feet on the stairs. Clodfoot’s eyes widened in panic.

“Block the door!” he shouted, and his two bodyguards leaped to the heavy wooden door, throwing their shoulders against it a moment before someone tried to pull it open. A shoulder slammed against it and the door shook. Malcador grabbed the edge of a bed and began to heave. Clodfoot, realising what the wizard was about, grabbed the other end, and they shoved the bed against the door, baring it for the time being.

“Now what do we do?” Emmaline demanded.

“I suppose we could…” the window shattered as a lantern sailed through it, striking the wall and exploding in a shower of oil. Emmaline screamed and scampered away as the flames began to lick at the wood paneling. Malcador and the halflings stared at the fire in horror, unable to leave the door as the attackers outside continued to pound on it. They were caught between the fire and the blades of the assassins waiting outside.

“We are doomed!” Thumper cried, his eyes wide with panic. By now the wall was fully ablaze and the flames were licking upwards towards the ceiling joists. Emmaline ran over to the chest of gold and threw open the lid. She gripped the bottom edge and tried to lift it but it was too heavy for her.

“What are you doing you crazy trollop?!” Clodfoot demanded but Malcador had already abandoned his place at the door. He grabbed the chest and heaved and it tipped over spilling an avalanche of coins across the floor.

“Do you actually have a plan or did  you just want to roll around in gold before it was too late?” he asked. Emmaline threw herself down onto the carpet of gold and began to roll, pressing her cheek to the precious metal. The blows on the door grew more intense as the Halflings were slowly forced backwards.

“Mmmm?” she murmered dreamily, “oh.. right, the plan.”


The second story window exploded outward in a spray of glass and smoke. Revelers in the street below looked up in shock as a cloud of gold coins burst from the tavern like leaves caught in an autumn gale. The glittering swarm formed a thin carpet beneath four halflings and two humans, all clinging desperately to their insubstantial salvation. Emmaline gripped the golden ring on her finger as it pulsed with wild magical energy. Beneath them the coins shifted and chimed, each one too weak to bear their weight alone yet somehow keeping them aloft through a communal effort. They shot down the alley at the speed of a galloping horse. The halflings screamed continuously while Malcador grimly maintained his side of the spell. They burst out onto the Street of a Thousand Taverns and soared over the crowd. Hundreds of upturned faces stared in disbelief as a flying carpet of gold streaked overhead, trailing screams and expletives in it’s wake.

“Left!” Malcador shouted.

Emmaline yanked on glowing threads of Charmon only she could see. The construct lurched violently into the merchant district, swaying so violently that Humper nearly slipped free. The halfling grabbed a handful of coins that buzzed irritatedly in his hands but prevented him from falling to the street below.

“Where are you taking us?!” Clodfoot cried, his mustache pushed back against his head by the breakneck speed of the run away bribe.

“I don’t know!” Emmaline yelled back, her blue eyes huge with fear, excitement and gold lust.

"Aren't you the one driving?" he demanded in white knuckled terror.

Ahead loomed the ornate facade of a merchant prince’s palace. Its steepled roof of slate tiles and overabundance of leaded glass windows promising an immediate and messy end.

“LEFT! LEFT!” Malcador screamed, he gestured furiously with his left hand, even though by doing so he imperiled his grip on their sorcerous steed.  

Emmaline hauled upwards at the last second. They missed the building by inches and suddenly soared high above the city. For one dizzying moment all Altdorf spread beneath them in torchlight and gathering dusk. The upper spires still burned gold in the light of the setting sun while the mighty ribbon of the Reik gleamed silver below, crowded with the lantern lights of countless river craft. Temple domes, crowded tenements, noble villas and crooked alleys stretched away in all directions.

“We are far too hi…"

Something exploded nearby in a blinding burst of light and concussive noise. Emmaline flinched and the carpet rolled violently sideways. Everyone screamed as fireworks burst across the sky around them, great blooms of red and gold exploding over the city as the second night of Pie Week reached full celebration. The smell of gunpowder filled the air and their skin prickled with burning grains of powders and flaming parchment cases. The noise was incredible and even with her eyes closed Emmaline could see the flashes of pyrotechnic light.

“Down!” Malcador shouted. “DOWN!”

Emmaline shoved the construct into a wild dive. They plunged over Cheapside so low that laundry lines snapped beneath them and pedestrians hurled themselves into gutters to avoid being decapitated by the storm of flying gold coins. Malcador pulled a linen shirt from his face and hurled it aside into the whipping slipstream, ducking his head to avoid a tavern sign paintd with a drunken goat.

“The river!” Malcador warned.

The Reik rushed toward them, fringed with a network of docks and warehouses that sustained the hundreds of fishing smacks, river barges, and larger vessels. Emmaline pulled back frantically whipping drunkenly between several gantrys before skimming out over the water so low that they threw up a great roster tail of spray behind them. 

“Marginally better!” Malcador yelled.

An Imperial galleon loomed ahead. Sailors stared upward in drunken astonishment, freezing in their labors at this bizarre wonder that had interrupted their normally stayed routines. Its vast wooden flank loomed up ahead of them like a castle wall, its painted gunports draped with festival silk.

“UP!”

They shot over the bulwarks, flashed across the deck, and tore beneath the rigging so closely that sailors ducked for cover. Several lines parted with snaps like nearby gunshots and the main course came crashing to the deck, like a theatre curtain clumsily dropped on a trope of comic actors. Then they were across the river and hurtling toward the great towers of the Grand Temple of Sigmar.

“You’re heading for the temple district!” Malcador cried.

“How do I stop?!” Emmaline shouted back, yanking this way and that on the tethers of magical energy that she had created but only marginally controlled.  Golden filaments twisted through her fingers like tangled reins they writhed in her fingers like living things, with definite opinions on where they should go. This spell was far beyond her, without the ring she and Malcador had created it would have been impossible but even with that powerful magical focus it was too complex for her limited abillities. Steering the construct was like trying to ride a drunken horse during an earthquake. Every correction introduced fresh disasters in pitch, yaw, and spin that whipped them around like children's toys.

“Not into the towers!”

Hundreds of pigeons exploded upward around them in a storm of feathers and indignant squawking as Emmaline banked sharply to avoid splattering them against a cathedral spire. They curved around a vaulted dome an then whipped past a bell tower so closely that Emmaline caught sight of a pale-faced Canon staring at them in disbelief throug an arched window, his book of hours falling to the floor.

Then they were diving again, streaking over manicured gardens and marble estates toward the looming bulk of the Imperial Palace. Soldiers in the livery of Karl Franz gaped openly as the screaming collection of wizards, halflings, and gold coins hurtled over the moat.

“Pull up!” Malcador shouted. “Pull up now!”

But the spell was failing. The golden threads frayed apart beneath Emmaline’s hands. The carpet bucked violently. With one final desperate effort she hauled them over the outer curtain wall before the magic gave out altogether. Emmaline tumbled through the air and crashed into a cherry tree at the center of a small ornamental garden. She grabbed one branch, slipped from it immediately, and landed heavily on her backside. A moment later Malcador fell from above and crashed down beside her with enough force to knock the breath from both of them. Thousands of coins rained from the sky around them in a musical cascade.

For several long seconds nobody moved.

“That went well,” Emmaline declared brightly.