by Ed Greenwood
* * *
“Wait here, Anharu,” said the Golden Griffon, handing the hulking armaragor his sword—belt, scabbard, and all.
“This is not wise, Lord,” Hawkril murmured, as he received the baron’s blade. His eyes were on the priestesses, down in the hollow.
“Meeting unarmed with servants of the gods is never wise, loyal sword,” the Baron Blackgult said, his piercing black eyes flashing. “But then, wisdom is something I rarely have time for, these days. So—’tis time to be bold again. Wait here.”
And the man Hawkril loved and admired more than any other strode away, weaponless, a toothless lion gone down to parley with priestesses armed for war. The high-horned helms on their heads crackled with magic, the black and creaking leather armor on their bodies bristled with weapons, and all six of them bore naked swords in their hands.
The mighty armaragor watched him go, shaking his head. “Something is not right,” he murmured, though he knew very well what it was. For a summer and more the Priestesses of Sharaden had made verbal war on the baron, demanding larger temple lands, more powers to tithe, and recognition of the Horned Huntress as the supreme god in Blackgult.
The baron had told them he would readily agree to their first demand, grudgingly meet them in some wise on their second—and reject their third absolutely and forever. The Three ruled over Darsar, not “One.” Even Dark Olym had his place—claws, tentacles, and all, and no mortal demand could change that or should try to.
The priestesses had cried that they, and they alone, knew the personal desires of the Lady, and that the baron must acquiesce—or be cast out, a godless man whom no man could serve or fight for, and receive any blessing of the gods.
The baron had replied that the words of priests were not the words of gods, and no less than a dozen priests, of both other faiths, stood with him in Blackgult in repudiation of the demands made by the priestesses. Their response had been to request this parley in Telgil’s Hollow, with the baron attending alone and unarmed.
The baron had boldly accepted, stunning his sword-masters and cortahars … and surprising even the clergy of the Lady, who’d obviously expected him to refuse such an obvious danger, so that they could cry his defiance of the Holy Horned Huntress, and call down war upon him.
And so it was that one bold lion of a man strode now down into the obvious danger, leaving Hawkril Anharu standing in tense unease. No man of Blackgult had been allowed to enter the hollow for six days now. The armaragor had risked much, some days before that, in making secretive preparations, but once he’d begun, others in the court of Blackgult had aided him willingly. None of it might be necessary, but somehow …
The limb of a nearby tree dipped once, deliberately, and Hawkril nodded his thanks for the signal. The wizards were at work, as well as one priest of the Forefather. No magic could have its birth in that hollow, or enter it, for the next little while, to aid or to harm. Which left the baron still alone and unarmed against six priestesses with drawn swords in their hands.
Hawkril saw him stop, and stand speaking. Horned heads moved, bodies shifted with insolent grace. Arms rose in florid gestures, as they sidled nearer, drifting to encircle the Golden Griffon.
The baron laughed, then, and said something, turning his head in time to see the blade thrusting at him from behind. He slapped it away, found another seeking his blood, and twisted it out of the hand of she who bore it.
All at once, the other raised their hands to smite him with spells, chanted in angry unison, and hurled—nothing.
Their looks of amazement were comical, and two of them even tried again. The baron said something stern—and in response one of the priestesses cried aloud for aid.
All over the hollow, brown-robed priestesses rose out of the bushes and ferns with long knives in their hands. Their horned superiors fell back swiftly, gesturing with their blades—and all of the lesser clergy surged forward, to slay, in a swiftly closing ring around one man with a sword in his hand.
Hawkril’s horn was already to his lips, and his feet were already racing. He blew loud and long as he pounded down into the hollow, sprinting as hard as he’d ever run in his life, and on all sides of the hollow other armaragors in Blackgult armor were descending—into a crowd of fully armored priests erupting from trees and brush piles. By the Three, the clergy of Sharaden mustered eighty or more!
Hawkril threw his horn into the face of the first to stand in his way, cut down the second with a vicious chop, ran right over the third, trampling hard, and slashed open the face of a fourth. Then he was through the armored faithful, with others converging on him from all sides, and his Lord still a good sixty or seventy paces distant, in the heart of a surging mob of eager slayers.
Hawkril started to snatch and hurl the line of knives scabbarded across his chest, and across the hollow he could see other armaragors doing the same. Someone with a bow was seeking out horned helms and the ladies beneath them, with deadly accuracy; Hawkril cursed at that disobedience of orders, and vaulted over a priest who must have learned to lunge in some elegant school of arms somewhere. “Later!” he roared over his shoulder, as he sprinted on, waving his fists wide to strike aside blades, knife-wielding priestesses, and anyone else foolish enough to dispute the way.
A breath later, and he’d reached the tightening ring around the baron. He plied his sword like a madman, throwing knives at any face that turned his way, screaming and spitting and seeking any way he could to turn their attention from the man sinking down in the center of the ring with blood glistening all over him, and two blades at least protruding from his body.
He was still cutting his way forward, too, seeking to stand over the baron if he could. Blood was everywhere, and a dozen armaragors, or more, were cutting their way slowly—too slowly—toward the ring, from other directions. The next few breaths would be crucial. Hawkril cut open a snarling holy face, booted a holy crotch as hard as he could, and the way was clear for a desperate, twisting leap. He landed, swept his blade around in a great circle that struck a few swords aside, and hit at least one more solid obstacle, then slapped at the vial at his breast, to make sure it was still there.
The eyes that stared up at him were darkening, but the bloody lips beneath them framed a rueful smile. “You … right, Hawk … but too late …
Hawkril shook himself, as if to drive off a chill, and stared around, on a creaking boat on the dark Silverflow once more, not in the midst of bloody butchery and dying priestesses. Some memories never stopped burning.
But then, what was a man’s life but a bonfire of blazing memories?
Beside him, Craer Delnbone smiled and shrugged. “We have the most powerful and cruel man in all Coiling Vale trying to catch and slay us, and using three evil and formidable mages to do it—of course something isn’t right. I don’t need a bard or an old sage to tell me that.”
“Something isn’t right,” the armaragor insisted. “Silvertree has some sort of trap waiting for us.…”
“You hardly think the Cold Baron would risk even one of his Dark Three in Adeln just now,” Craer replied, “with everyone whispering ‘war,’ do you? Baron Adeln has archers enough to overwhelm any lone wizard … and he’d almost have to attack if Silvertree sent mages in to act openly in the very heart of his barony, or he’d be proving himself a weakling in the eyes of all.”
“No, just sensible, to keep out of the way of a wizard,” Hawkril grunted, “but I take your point: any Aglirtan ruler who doesn’t react hard and swift to meddlings or invasions invites more such unwelcome intrusions. So Silvertree will strike once we’re out of Adeln.”
“Cheerful to be around, aren’t you?” Craer replied, stretching. “Well, ther—”
Then the world exploded in thunder—thunder that came down out of the sky to crash on the foredeck.
The procurer and the armaragor stared openmouthed at the tumult of bouncing stones, splashing oil, and flying shards of crockery just long enough to realize that the sky itself wasn’t
raining stones—they were tumbling down onto the boat from the cliff overhanging the river, in a cloud of crushing destruction that was coming swiftly closer to two adventurers lounging on the afterdeck.
“Sargh!” Craer gasped, diving for the aft hatch.
“Graul, sargh, and be bolt!” Hawkril cursed, almost crushing the smaller man in his leap down the hatchway. Amid the dense rattle of stones bouncing on the cabin roof, they heard many shrill smashing sounds as long jugs perished and the smell of oil rose strongly in the air—cooking oil.
The hatch was locked … and, as the armaragor’s first snarling pull on its handles proved, barred from within. Hawkril growled, set his shoulders, and pulled until the veins stood out along his arms and the wood literally bulged under the force of the armaragor’s hauling.
Bulged, but did not break. Stone crashed crazily around the two adventurers, numbing the burly warrior’s hands and shoulder enough to break his grip on the door. Hawkril fell back, hard, against the hatchway steps, and groaned at the pain of that landing, as the rain of stones fell away aft.
Craer risked his neck to peer up at the edge of the cliff above, where he saw nothing, and then along the length of the boat. Its decks were awash in glistening oil, with the shards of shattered long jugs everywhere, outnumbered only by the heaped stones.
“About a cartload,” Hawkril grunted, gaining the decks with a gasp and putting a hand to his back with a wince. Craer was skidding and trotting down the unsteady boards to the forehatch; an instant later, he tore it open and bellowed into the boatmaster’s angry and astonished face: “Up on deck while you’ve still got one! Someone’s emptied a cart of stones all over the oil jugs, and they’ve probably got friends waiting to hurl torches at us at the next bend! You may not have a boat much longer!”
No crew beyond the dumbfounded boatmaster himself had made it up the steps by the time the boat came to the second bend—and received its first flaming visitations.
Hawkril, Craer, and the boatmaster cursed and crouched and burrowed under ropes and tarpaulins in unison as the arrows came humming. A fiery volley of fire shafts zipped hungrily into the decks all around, and oil caught light with a roar, flaring up into man-high flames in an instant.
Even before the blazing ship slid out of the bend and the last arrows fell harmlessly into the river, astern, Craer was down the hatchway and hauling a surly sailor up from a table strewn with cards and coins by the throat of his greasy smock. In the lantern light from a candle cage dancing on its ceiling-beam peg, five startled faces stared at him, brows drawing down in anger.
“Up above,” the procurer snarled into the face of the man he held, “and hurl the jugs overboard, or this whole boat’ll flare up like a torch, and us with it!”
“You’re going to tell us what to do, little man?” another of the sailors sneered. “I think not.”
“You can get up on decks and work—or snap and snarl at me down here and die in the flames,” Craer told them hotly, “and right now I don’t much care which. It’s hero time, and this boat’s sailing straight into a short, hot future as a pyre!”
He let the astonished man in his grip fall back into his seat with a crash, vaulted the table to pound on the door of the cabin where Embra and Sarasper were sleeping—and he and Hawk should have been snoring, too, if they’d had any sense—and roared, “Fire! Get out!” the moment he heard a snarl of reply, and then spun around and pounded back up on deck.
He was running into a sheet of roaring flame. Above the dancing shimmer of heat that made him choke, Craer saw Hawkril and the boatmaster plying boathooks like madmen, sweeping or kicking blazing crockery overboard as arrows hissed out of the brightness to thud into the deck or send fresh and glistening showers of shards into the air. Flames burst into being in midair around some of those shards, spinning up into the dark air in a beautiful—and deadly—cloud.
Craer cursed, emptied the nearest dipper of drinking water over his head to make his hair wet and slower to catch afire, and sprinted to the cabin roof, where he bent to snatch long jugs up from their smoldering ropes and hurl them overboard.
Crewmen were racing up on deck, now, and gaping in astonishment at the flames. A few made straight for the rail, to dive into the river, but Craer noticed that arrows came hissing in pairs and volleys to strike at anyone seeking to leave the ship.
Sailors spun around and fell, decorated with shafts, or staggered back amidships; not a one, so far as he could see, managed to strike the water unscathed.
All the while, arrows kept whistling out of the trees, in a deadly rain that made the sailors shout in fear as they danced amid the flames with water buckets or sawed with their knives at the net of ropes that held the oil jugs in place.
Hawkril took an arrow in the shoulder and staggered back, driven against the mast by the force of the striking shaft. He roared out his pain as Embra came hurrying up the hatch steps with Sarasper close behind.
Gaping, they saw flaming ropes dangling and swaying in the trembling air, Hawkril reeling—and atop the cabins, Craer, his brows singed away and the hair on his forearms crisped to ash, flopping about like some sort of fish, kicking and shoving away blazing cargo while arrows thudded home on all sides.
Embra cried out and rushed across the pitching deck. More arrows struck, long jugs bursting apart all around her. A jagged shard spun the Lady’s way as she ran—and skipped across her scalp.
Blood fountained in all directions through long and tangled hair. The Lady Silvertree staggered blindly forward through a swelling inferno, mewing in startled pain, straight into a solid collision with the mast.
Sarasper stared at her, and at the blaze and whistling arrows, in openmouthed horror. Then he dashed toward the crumpling sorceress, only to lose all sight of her in bright conflagration, as the ship exploded in front of him with a mighty roar!
The tapestry fell back into place behind Maershee, and several of the bards leaned forward to resume the talk they’d let trail away as the wine matron served them. One took a long, slim clay pipe out of a mouth framed by amber-hued whiskers and said, “Well, it’s my firm belief that no matter how they died, Silvertree had a hand in it. He hates all bards.”
“And anyone else who’s not cowering under his gauntlet,” a young but white-haired bard agreed bitterly. “I had to run from his armaragors once. He told them to whip me—to give me, he said, good reason for the high, shrill noise I was making!”
There were grunts of anger and disgust … and a few sounds that might have been suppressed chuckles. Flaeros sat very still, still hardly daring to believe he’d been accepted as a fellow bard and allowed to sit in this private room with half a dozen veterans of minstrelry. Outside its hushed and richly paneled privacy, the Gargoyle was crowded and noisy this night, but here, around a dying hearthfire, the men who made music all over Darsar were talking grimly of two dead colleagues.
“Helgrym taught me the thrumpipe,” one of them said suddenly, “and introduced me to old Teshaera.”
“By the Lady, but she could make strings!” another bard said sadly. “Gathered in and gone, like all the rest.”
There were murmurs of sorrowful agreement, and nods, before someone asked, “I wonder what’ll happen to all of Delvin’s harps now?”
“Burned for firewood already, is my guess. His houselady hated having his room sit idle while he traveled. I heard she went up there and broke one, just for spite, whenever he went away.”
“He never found an enchanted one, did he?” Heads turned, and the speaker added almost delightedly, in the lowered, excited tones of one who dispenses a juicy secret, “That’s what he was hot for, all his days: to find a magical harp.”
“There’s not an endless supply of such things,” the pipe-smoking bard said sourly. “He’d have been better off never to have known magic existed.”
“Seeing as how magic slew him, that’s a safe enough declaration,” another bard agreed, “but who among us can honestly claim not to know magic exis
ts? Simpletons and madmen, that’s who; and simpletons and madmen can’t make good music.”
“I know,” one of the older bards grunted. “I’ve heard you sing.”
There were chuckles and whistles of apprehension at that, and not a few rude gestures back and forth, before someone asked, “How exactly did they die?”
“Torn apart by something like a horse-sized dragon,” a bard who’d been silent until now put in. “Something spellborn, sent out to slay by the Dark Three.”
“Just how would they create something like that?” Flaeros heard himself asking. “Are wizards born knowing how to shape the winds and the forces of growing things, or …”
Heads turned to look at him, and Flaeros suddenly felt like an outsider again. He sat trying to look unconcerned while something cringed and died inside him. The silence lengthened until someone muttered, “What do they teach young bardlings today? Which end of a hunting horn to blow?”
“Easy, easy,” an older voice said. “We all had to start learning somewhere—why shouldn’t he learn here? Lad, hearken: mages work spells by draining things. Sometimes, if they want to curse someone more than they want to go on living, it’s themselves. More often it’s a foe, or slaves, or beasts … and sometimes it’s things that already have magic cast on them.”
“And it’s not so mighty nor as reliable as the great mages would have you think,” another voice put in. “You can be sure Baron Silvertree wouldn’t be offering one hundred trade wagons full of gold for anything if magic could find him his daughter.”
“Yet he has three of the mightiest mages Aglirta’s yet seen to work it,” an older bard said sourly. “Magic works best for things that can also be done by trickery—and I wonder why that is?”
“Hear that: he speaks of magic and wants answers. Now there’s a simpleton and fool!”