The Balintol Cycle I

Chapter seventeen-1

Chapter seventeenAll the same — by Krun! you had to laugh!

One crazed barrel was spinning on its axis like a Whirling Dervish. A fellow from the tavern loosed at it and the bolt caromed from the revolving staves and steamed off into the night. The uproar bellowed splendidly in the back yard of The Brass Lily.

Uproariously amusing though this imbroglio was, time was dropping inexorably away, grain by grain, drop by drop. Where in a Herrelldrin Hell was that Djan-forsaken sword?

The men from the tavern were in no doubt that some rival gang had chosen this very night to stage a surprise attack on The Brass Lily. They stormed into the yard shooting at anything that moved. Bolts and arrows feathered into barrels or caromed away under the stars. Yells of order and counter-order spurted as the