Adventure of Bennigan 1

The banquet hall of Brinute is a wreck of oak and iron, tables overturned, benches kicked aside, guests pressed pale against the tapestries. Bennigan steps in under the torch smoke as two armored knights slam blades together on the stone floor.

One knight drives hard toward the chancery pillar. There, the Scribe hunches over a ledger, one arm wrapped tight around it as if he can hide the pages inside his ribs.

The clash turns ugly, steel ringing, boots skidding. The knights are too locked on each other to notice the scribe, or the book, or Bennigan standing in the doorway.

The ledger is the only thing in the room they care about more than the fight.

One knight stumbles, then surges again, driving the other back toward the pillar in a shower of sparks. The scribe flinches, pinned between stone and steel, clutching the pages tighter.

Bennigan bursts from the doorway in a hard silver blur, crossing the hall in three pounding strides. He catches the scribe by the shoulder and drags him out from the pillar’s edge just as the nearest blade whistles through the space he occupied.

The scribe stumbles with him, the ledger still clamped to his chest. His heel catches on a broken trencher, and he goes down in a heap beside an overturned bench, but clear of the knights’ line.

Knight One’s strike hammers into the pillar with a crack of stone. Chips fly across the floor, and the shout of alarm from the guests rises behind the tapestries.

Bennigan’s shoulder takes the edge of the pillar in the rush, leaving him with a sharp bruise and a scraped gauntlet, but the scribe is out of the killing lane.

Both knights turn toward Bennigan and the fallen scribe at once, blades lifting again as the chamber tightens around the next choice.