Jhessail shuddered and collapsed silently onto her husband, the stone falling from her mouth.
“Is she—?” Belkram and Itharr said together, leaning anxiously down. Merith cradled her as he reached out, plucked up the stone that was Syluné, and held it up to Belkram.
“Drained, not dead,” the elf said softly. “A mass teleport is something far beyond her Art. Though Syluné gave direction, my Jhess worked the spell.”
“We must still make haste,” Nelyssa reminded.
Illistyl frowned. “Florin! Come back here!”
The ranger, who was halfway to the bridge, acknowledged the relieved greetings of the dalesmen before he turned questioningly.
“I haven’t Art to equal Jhess’s,” the younger sorceress said, “but I can manage something you should use now.”
Florin was already hurrying his war horse back to her. Firefoam had paced restlessly back and forth behind the lines of the battle yesterday, and was eager to get into a proper fray; he snorted and tossed his head as they approached Illistyl, fearing he would be relegated to stand and watch, again. The diminutive sorceress stood looking up at him as his great muzzle lowered to her nose.
“How would you like to fly?” she asked softly.
Firefoam’s bugle awoke echoes from the trees around and made many of the other horses stamp and whinny.
“Fly ahead,” Illistyl said, looking up at Florin, “and see where we’re needed. Rally folk, and return if you need us anywhere in particular—otherwise, we’ll just charge on up the road and kill Zhents!”
“A shrewd grasp of tactics,” Captain Nelyssa said dryly.
Illistyl cast her spell with deft speed.
Florin scooped the limp form of Jhessail from Merith’s arms and settled her against his own chest.
“Done! Get you gone!” Illistyl cried, waving her hands; Florin smiled his thanks and saluted as Firefoam bounded aloft—and was gone across the sky, heading for the distant Tower of Ashaba.
As they hurried across, Jhessail asked the first old farmer on the bridge, “How goes the battle?”
“Not well,” he rasped. “Too many Zhents!”
“A problem we’re familiar with,” Torm agreed grandly, urging his horse off the bridge.
An instant later, the ground rocked and thundered. Riders fought to control snorting mounts and stay in their saddles as they gaped at a huge ball of flame that rose up, up into the sky over Shadowdale.
“The tower?” Illistyl gasped, white to the lips. “Florin?”
“Not the tower,” Jhessail said, shaking her head. “But close by, west and south.”
“The temple of Lathander,” Rathan grunted, “or I’m an idiot.”
“You are an idiot,” Torm pointed out.
Rathan’s reply was a certain wordless gesture with his mace as he hauled on the reins, taking his horse to one side of the cart road and gaining room to gallop. Torm cast a quick look back to see all the Riders doing so, and pulled his mount to the left, catching a glare from Kuthe for his tardiness.
“Ready, all?” Captain Nelyssa asked crisply. “Forward!”
At her yell, they nudged their mounts into a gallop and swept north into the heart of Shadowdale.
The smoke lay like a haze in the air here, drifting out of the trees to the east, and the fields around them were green and deserted. Up ahead, they could hear the swelling sound of shouts and screams and the clangor of steel on steel. Here and there a blade flashed as it caught the sunlight through the smoke and swirling dust.
The crossroads in front of the Old Skull Inn was heaped with dead. The twisted mounds were so high the Zhentilar, advancing in a great horde from the east, had to scramble and climb. The grisly, slippery wall was being held against them by desperate dalesmen wielding axes and blades.
Among the dusty defenders were Storm Silverhand and her sister, Dove, both clad in battered and scorched plate armor but bareheaded, their silver tresses swirling as they fought. Storm leapt into the air and smashed aside a foe’s blade, her other hand snaking in to take him by the throat. Muscles rippled in her arm as they crashed back down to earth together. The Zhent blackhelm struggled for a moment in her iron grip—then fell limp, his neck broken. Two of his fellows scrambled up the mound of dead, waving blades to get their chance at the Bard of Shadowdale.
Dove Falconhand took that chance away, rushing along the line of defenders to thrust one Zhent desperately aside into the other armsman. Off-balance, the blackhelms stumbled among the corpses. Storm dumped the man she’d just slain atop one, and kicked the other in the face with her boot. He fell down the heap, head rolling limply, and was smashed aside by more Zhentilar rushing up to challenge Storm in their turn.
“That’s the problem with Zhents,” Rathan growled as they turned their horses toward the black-armored host crowded up against the wall of dead. “There’re always too many of them.”
“Lances down!” Nelyssa cried, and led the charge.
Through the thunder of pounding hooves they heard someone of Shadowdale cry, “The Riders! The Riders of Mistledale!”
“And the mighty Torm, too!” the thief shouted back, just before they crashed into the Zhent lines.
Men reeled like broken dolls under the impact of hooves and lances and thundering war horses, and when the press of bodies slowed their progress, the Riders let go their lances and laid about themselves with swords and maces.
“Shadowdale!” Dove Falconhand snarled, leading a charge from the ridge of slain.
There were screams of agony and frustration from the Zhents, packed too tightly together to raise weapons or move from the blades.
A desperately wielded spear sought Torm’s thigh; he sprang from his saddle and vaulted into the fray, drawn sword extended between his boots. He came down atop a Zhentilar and rode the man to the ground, stabbing viciously with the dagger in his free hand. The man convulsed and lay still; by then Torm was two kills away, his slim blade and dagger sliding in and out before the close-packed Zhents could react.
With a wall of corpses around him like a shield, he struck out from between their bodies, swift and sure, thrusting, dancing away from blades … until the crash of a felled Rider and his horse cleared some space, and the dead began to topple and slump all around.
Into the opened space leapt Storm, clapping a gasping Torm on his shoulder. “Bravely done!”
“Ah—all for … you … Lady,” Torm huffed, trying to essay a courtly bow—and slipping in gore so that he lurched to one knee. The fall saved his life; a whirling axe meant for his head flashed harmlessly through empty air.
Storm hauled him upright. “The battle’s this way,” she said helpfully, pointing with a sword that was red to the hilt.
He gave her a fierce smile in answer. Then his jaw dropped. “By the gods, look!” he bellowed, pointing. Storm turned in time to see Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr advance another pace through the ranks of Zhentilar. Fighting in unison, standing close together in a human arrowhead, they were dealing death with furious speed.
“The Rangers Three,” Storm said, watching her pupils in admiration.
The hesitant gangliness she’d seen all too often the day she’d fought Belkram and Itharr at the farmhouse was gone. Now they moved like dancers, deft and quick. Sharantyr was the key. Her smooth style had drawn the two Harpers into a team. Storm began to believe their survival in the castle of the Malaugrym was more than good fortune bolstered by the aid of Mystra and Elminster. She shook her head in pleased admiration and threw herself into the battle once more, coming up alongside the Rangers Three in their bloody foray into the Zhent ranks.
The Rider charge had cleared space enough to fight, and the easy killing was done. Fresh Zhents were pressing forward for their first chance to fight, and there seemed no end to them.
They’d struck at Shadowdale from the west, and from the north. Some fell magic had wrought a great explosion and fire westward, hard by the Twisted Tower. There was fighting all over the d
ale, and the day might still be lost—but this welcome, unexpected aid had come from Mistledale, from whence she’d expected only more blackhelms.
“Azuth be with us,” she breathed, feeling fresh sorrow at the thought that Mystra was no more.
Storm swept her notched long sword up to strike aside a reaching halberd. Catching hold of it as the man rushed helplessly forward, she pulled, sprawling him to the turf in front of her. A dalesman stabbed the Zhent in the face before he could rise, and from somewhere near at hand Storm heard the deep laughter of Bronn Selgard, the smith. Dove must be rallying the last folk from the inn to join this push, to drive the Zhents back into the trees.
There was a ringing sound as the great iron-headed hammer Bronn wielded crashed down on some unfortunate Zhent’s helm. The winded Rangers Three began to fall back. A spell hurled bodies in all directions, tearing a breach in the wall of corpses behind her.
Storm turned, frowning—creating a breach for the Zhents to pour through? What simpleton had birthed such a plan?—and then laughed aloud in delight.
“For Shadowdale!” came the roar from beyond the wall. Warriors in full plate armor rode through the breach, lances gleaming. At their head, three figures rode abreast: Florin; Mourngrym, lord of Shadowdale; and Shaerl, his lady.
“ ‘Ware!” Storm yelled to the Rangers Three, waving them aside.
Dove sprang acrobatically across the path of the charging horses, somersaulted in a clanking of protesting armor, and fetched up beside Storm. Just then, the lances of the charging dalefolk came down, crashing into the massed Zhentilar in a great screaming of men and horses and tortured metal.
As first, the horses were slowed by the sheer weight of blackhelms standing against them. The mounted armsmen of the tower spurred out and around them, striking at the foe on either side. When the last horseman had charged, the Zhent lines had fallen back a good twenty paces—a distance marked by a carpet of black-armored fallen.
The dale riders pulled back to spare their horses from Zhent blades, and a cheer went up from the weary farmers and merchants who’d held the wall of dead so long against the forefront of the Zhent army.
A little space opened up between the defenders and the army of Zhentil Keep; Dove stared across it and hissed, “Oh, for some arrows …”
“All gone, hours ago,” Storm told her, and they embraced wearily, eyes on the foe. Both sides had paused to catch breath, it seemed, staring at each other across the fallen, but making no move to attack.
“Gods, look how many there are,” Shaerl murmured. “Can we hold them until sunset?”
“We must,” Mourngrym replied shortly, looking around at the dead. “And dark’ll bring the wolves and wild dogs out to feed, too.”
“Well fought, you three,” Storm called to Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr, who’d sat down together on some dead Zhentilar, rubbing at aching shoulders and bruised forearms.
“Of course,” Itharr replied. “After all, you taught us.”
Storm chuckled. “To dance with your blade, aye, a little—but fighting as one is your own doing.”
“They’re coming again,” Dove said, striding forward. “ ‘Ware, all!”
She swung her sword in wide, wild arcs to loosen stiffening muscles, and set herself to meet the Zhentilar attack; a cautious affair this time, with two or three blackhelms moving against each defender.
“This could be bad,” Belkram murmured.
Sharantyr sighed. “Just try to stay alive … I need you both.”
“You do?” Itharr asked, adopting Torm’s manner of mock astonishment.
“I do,” Sharantyr growled back at him. “We’ve got those Malaugrym to catch, remember?”
“Gods,” Belkram cursed as he caught a hard-swung Zhent blade on his own and was driven a pace back. “Do Elminster’s little tasks never end?”
“Where is Elminster, anyway?” Itharr panted, slashing a staggering Zhent across the face and bringing his blade up into the throat of the blackhelm fencing with Sharantyr.
“Off saving some other corner of the Realms, no doubt,” Belkram said, driving his foe back with a few solid swings.
“I don’t care about other corners of the Realms,” Torm called to them, “only the one I’m in.”
“An essentially selfish philosophy,” Dove scolded him.
“But one that all lesser mortals must needs cling to, if they want to cling to life,” Torm returned archly. He threw the blade in his hand into one eye of a snarling Zhent, who was charging in beside the one he was fighting. The man crashed down, and the thief leapt high to avoid being knocked over. His Zhent opponent wasn’t so nimble, and toppled sideways, whereupon Hammerhand Bucko, the wagonmaker of the dale, calmly crushed the man’s head with a sledgehammer.
“Thank you,” Torm told him politely.
After gaping at him for a moment in amazement, Hammerhand grinned.
A trumpet rang out, the Zhents pressed forward, and the defenders of Shadowdale became all too busy to talk.
A tortured scream topped the fray as Nelyssa’s mount reared up, three blades in its belly, and went down. The paladin threw herself clear at the last moment. Only some desperate bladework by Storm and Dove, sparks dancing from their furiously plied blades, kept the captain of the Riders alive until she could find her feet and fight on.
Kuthe grunted in pain and went down, a spear through him, and a moment later the Rider beside him fell, transfixed by three Zhent blades.
“Too many of them!” Merith snarled in frustration, swinging two swords in deadly, whirling unison. “What price sundown now?”
“There’s too many! We can’t hold them!” Illistyl shouted, swinging a sword awkwardly.
“We must hold them!” Mourngrym snarled back at her from the heart of a knot of Zhents.
“Where in the name of the Seven Dancing Gods is the Old Mage?” Storm raged as she carved her way to the lord of Shadowdale. “Especially now that we need him—for once.”
“The temple,” a wounded priest of Lathander gasped from behind her. “He stood alone there—or with a woman, some said—against Bane himself!”
Storm turned and stared at the rising column of black smoke that marked the distant temple. “No,” she whispered. “Oh, no.” She leapt clear of the fray, scant inches ahead of a Zhent blade, and sprinted away across the heaped dead.
Sharantyr turned, hacked through a Zhent blackhelm twice her size, and saw Storm spring into the saddle of a dale war horse. It leapt into a full gallop like an arrow shot from a bow, heading west.
Though Shar whirled back to face another foe, she still saw Storm’s anguished face in her mind. No one should look like that. Nothing should ever happen in Faerûn to make the Bard of Shadowdale look like that.
She parried the Zhentilar blade and spun away to run after Storm’s racing dapple gray, heedless of the heaped dead.
Uncertainly, Belkram turned to follow, but Itharr shouted in alarm.
“Look you!” He pointed the other way, east beyond Krag Pool, where new plumes of smoke were rising through the green leaves of the trees.
“Gods,” Shaerl gasped, her face white, as she stared east into the blazing forest. “The Zhents have fired the wood! The dale may become our pyre yet!”
The defenders of Shadowdale, too few and too weary to fight a blaze, stared at the quickening flames in horror.
“Now,” Dove said firmly, “ ‘tis time!” She held up the blade she bore and called, “Eanamorrath!”
Lighting leapt from its suddenly blazing length, crackling along the line of blackhelms to strike the blade Lord Florin wielded. His sword flashed. Florin hissed at the shock of the bolt surging through the weapon, and then the lightning leapt back, sinking back into Dove’s blade as if it were an errant phantom returning home.
In its wake lay a blackened path of dead Zhentilar, sprawled wherever the bolt had danced, and the air was sharp with the smell of the strike that had felled them. The surviving Zhent warriors drew back in disarr
ay, leaving the defenders alone with the dead.
“Florin!” Itharr shouted. “Lord Florin!”
The Shield of Shadowdale turned his head.
Itharr called, “We must pray to Mielikki for a downpour!”
“But if all the gods are cast down and powerless …” a Rider leaning on his sword nearby said.
“No! He’s right!” Illistyl snapped. “Mielikki and Eldath dwell in Faerûn; their power is sourced here. Shaerl! Is your maid, Jenna, anywhere about?”
“I—I sent her to help Jhaele tend the wounded at the Old Skull,” Shaerl said doubtfully, wiping sweat and tangled hair out of her eyes. “Why?”
“She worships Eldath,” Illistyl snarled. “Come!”
“And what of the Zhents?” Mourngrym bellowed. He waved an arm to indicate the hundreds of Zhentilar still facing them, though the blackhelms seemed to be retreating to the trees at the edge of the dale.
“Fall back,” Illistyl told him. “Back to this ridge of bodies. You can see the inn from there, and Florin and the Rangers Three can join Jenna in prayer. If the woods burn, we are all lost, whether we fight for Shadowdale or Zhentil Keep!”
They all stared at her a moment, then scrambled to take up new positions among the mounds of fallen. Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr found themselves trotting toward the inn, panting, while Florin ran on ahead, feet racing as if he were rested and fresh. Shaerl and Mourngrym ran along behind them as rearguard, and the stout priest Rathan puffed after the hurrying band.
“Gods,” Belkram said, stumbling as his throbbing feet sent fresh lances of pain upward. “I don’t think the gods meant me to be a hero! Being one of those sleeping temple guards seems more within my grasp!”
“Here, now!” Rathan Thentraver said in offended tones. “Dost thou slander the holy?”
“All too often,” Itharr told him as they picked their way among the wounded laid on blankets, restless in their pain. Someone was wailing in grief, and blood-soaked bandages—and flies—were everywhere. “What does this Jenna look like?”
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