Act One, Part One
The two agents looked around as the guards armed with lances closed in on them. The pair shared a brief, almost telepathic glance. An exchange of nods followed, then Jim pelted off in one direction and Artie in another.
Four of the guards followed Artie; the rest swarmed after Jim as he sprinted toward the main door. Abruptly he pivoted and took in the positions of all his opponents in a swift glance.
The closest lancer charged at him. Jim sidestepped and brought one arm up and the other down in a scissor motion, snapping the man's lance in two. The startled guard stumbled onward propelled by his own momentum, only to have Jim slip right past him. He hammered the guard solidly on the back, sending him to the floor.
Two more guards came at Jim. He caught the first man's lance and used it to pull its wielder off balance, then slung him sideways into the next man.
Three down. The rest of the jolly lancers eyed Jim cautiously as they continued to press forward.
Meanwhile, Artie had raced for the side door through which Dr Rodin had disappeared. One of the guards outpaced him, cutting him off. With that man ahead of him and the other three behind, Artie sprang instead toward the wall. He snatched down a portrait and held it before him, turning it into a shield.
"That's my great-grandfather King Kazimirko!" cried the king, stamping a royal foot.
"Yeah, well, unless you think he'd look better as a pincushion, I suggest you call off your guards!" Artie hollered back.
The king hesitated, looking first at Artie with the painting, then at Jim with — oh, with all but three of the guards on his side of the room now lying scattered on the floor all around him. Unfortunately for Jim, two of those remaining guards had grabbed him and were holding his arms firmly, while the third man, after wiping a trail of blood from his chin with the back of his hand, hefted a lance and grinned at Jim. He leveled the heavy spear at Jim's heart, then glanced at his sovereign.
"Well," the king chuckled, "we seem to have a stand-off."
"Do we?" Jim replied.
At the same moment, almost as if they had rehearsed it, Jim and Artie sprang into further action. Jim used the two men holding his arms as supports as he kicked up and over into a somersault, breaking their grip. And Artie plucked a small white orb from his pocket and flung it to the floor.
The orb shattered, spilling forth a cloud of vermilion smoke, blinding the four guards nearest to Artie. At the same moment, Jim grabbed the guard who had been holding him by his left arm and whirled him toward the one who had been holding him by his right. Crash!
As that pair of guards fell like tenpins, one of Artie's group of four, all of them sweeping their arms before them as they groped their way through the murky cloud, found the portrait. "Aha!" that man cried and tossed the painting aside to seize what the canvas concealed behind it.
Which was a plinth. "What?"
Jim plowed into the final upright guard of his group and they fell to the floor, rolling and punching.
From an inside pocket of a fine black jacket, a hand plucked out yet another orb, this one larger than the first and with a string dangling from it. His other hand yanked out the string, then Artie launched the orb into a soaring arc.
A high-pitched screech filled the air as the orb sailed toward the main door. It hit, and a new cloud of smoke churned forth, this one saffron and accompanied by a fusillade of loud, sparkling explosions as if from a Roman candle.
"Jim!" a voice hissed. The voice seemed to emanate from every point in the cloud-filled room at once. Knowing that Artie had mastered the art of ventriloquism, Jim didn't bother with figuring out from whence the voice had come. He just slugged his man, then charged toward Artie's original destination from back when they'd both started running.
Meanwhile, the final four guards continued stumbling about through the indoor fog as they tried to rush to protect their king. Jim met up with a couple of them on his way across the room, and the guards then met up with the floor.
Jim raced on toward the small side door and shortly found his partner kneeling before it.
"It's locked, Jim."
"It won't be for long." Jim pulled out his lock pick. After a few moment's work, the latch clicked open. The two men slipped through and closed the door behind them. Jim used the pick to lock it back again, then Artie jammed a pencil stub into the keyhole to block it up.
"That ought to keep them busy for a while," Artie remarked. He glanced both ways along the corridor. "Ah… which way?"
"This one," said Jim. He took off to the left and Artie followed.