by Ed Greenwood
* * *
As he fought his way to stand over his baron at last, the Golden Griffon stared up at him with darkening, failing eyes. There was blood on Ezendor Blackgult’s rueful lips.
“You … right, Hawk,” the man he loved more than all the world struggled to say, “ … but too late …”
Hawkril ruined the baron’s agonized speech by blowing the second, brighter horn from his belt, as hard as he could, as he swung his blade in another great circle.
A priest tried to tackle his knees, and the armaragor clubbed the man’s nose into oblivion with the horn before tossing it into another holy face; its job was done.
The singing in the air that marked the collapse of the spell shield across the entire hollow came an instant later—and Hawkril had the healing vial out and to his lord’s lips in the instant after that. Then he tore away his codpiece, snatched out the second vial, slapped it into the baron’s hand, and turned to stand astride the Golden Griffon and keep him alive for the next few frantic minutes until the other armaragors arrived.
Or until the spells of the furious priestesses of the Huntress claimed the lives of everyone in the hollow. There was a flash and a roar, and limp holy bodies were hurled in all directions. Hawkril cursed loud and long; he’d given orders that were very blunt and even more clear that the horn-helmed women were to be cut down the moment the spell shield was raised—but someone had failed to get far enough, or been distracted by leather-clad beauty, or—
A second flash spattered the hulking armaragor with blood and dirt and ploughed a huge trench in the soil that stabbed at the moaning baron—but just failed to reach him.
These priestesses obviously didn’t care how many fellow holy exalted clergy of the Lady they slew. Hawkril saw one of them caught in a ring of armaragors, glaring at him from afar—and then there was a different sort of flash, and the world became a place of white mist, sparks, and muffled sound, where Hawkril stood over his fallen master, and the priestess hovered above them both, with no one else to be seen. From somewhere outside, a sword stabbed into the mists and melted away into smoke as it came, until a bladeless hilt was drawn back.
The priestess had a sword, however, and she swooped down at Hawkril and stabbed at his face. Hawkril saw what she was about, and instead of ducking away he caught her blade with his own, forced them both past his nose, and brought his parry far to the left, overbalancing, so that she tumbled helplessly past the baron instead of getting a clear thrust at him.
The meeting of their blades gave birth to swarms of swirling sparks, and Hawkril surged through them to meet her next dive with a parry that bound their blades together. Nose to nose they struggled, and the furious priestess snarled, “You risk being damned by the Lady, warrior! I have only to name you before the Lady! Stand aside—you were forbidden to enter the hollow!”
“How so?” Hawkril roared back. “My Lord the baron agreed to attend a parley alone and unarmed! I attended a battle, as I am trained to do—aiding one man, who stood alone against the treachery of eighty! Who are you to forbid or to damn?”
“I have but to say the words,” the priestess purred as they spun around each other, blades locked together, muscles straining against magic, “and your life will no longer be worth living.”
“Loyalty makes life worth living, priestess,” Hawkril blazed back. “And keeping one’s word, and standing by comrades. Priests and gods may fail to help, or be revealed in deceit and corruption, but swordbrothers dare not cross each other. We prefer to die rather than fail each other!”
He was shouting now, as her surging magic forced him back. “Gods fail,” he bellowed at her, “but honest men prevail!”
“A pretty speech,” the priestess sneered, as Hawkril’s blade exploded in a shower of sparks, and her own sword darted at him, “but none can withstand a true servant of the Huntress!”
An armored hand took her by the throat, then, and tightened.
“I think it’s been some time,” Baron Blackgult remarked cheerfully, “since you’ve been a true servant of the Huntress.” His fingers closed, the priestess sobbed forth blood and fell on her face on the trampled ground, and the mists and sparks melted away together.
The dying priestess thrashed briefly and lay still. Hawkril snatched up her blade to defend his baron—and then they stood together in silence, Blackgult and Anharu, and looked across a field of butchery. There was no one left to fight.
Here and there men of Blackgult raised bloody swords in salute. The hollow was awash in the blood of Sharaden worshipers.
The Golden Griffon put his arm around the shoulders of his armaragor—he had to reach up to do it—and said thickly, “Most loyal Anharu, I live because of you. If ever you stand in similar need, I’ll return the favor, or submit myself willingly to the damnation of the Lady these unholy ones were so swift to invoke. I bind myself in this!”
His voice dropped, he gasped for air, and he added, “And now, Hawkril, let’s find something copious to drink!”
“Lord,” Hawkril murmured, as they staggered across the fallen together, feeling the smart of their wounds in earnest now, “you always boldly snatch at wisdom. Behold your latest great idea.”
On a battlefield bereft of priestesses but holding no less blood and desperation, Craer leaped high into the air to kick an enemy face, and then shoved the staggering man back into the reach of Sarasper’s whirling spell-blades. He saw two foresters desperately parrying the darting swords—but the man he’d introduced to them had no blade up and ready to fend off steel. A leaping spellblade made short and bloody work of the man’s face; as he gurgled and fell, the conjured sword that had slain him started to fade away.
By then, the procurer had grown tired of trading slashing parries with a false forester who was taller, stronger—and angrier. The man seemed to like launching huge backhand slashes, so Craer lured the man into one with a feigned stagger that became a somersault forward under the forester’s sweeping blade.
He landed hip to hip with the man, but another foe—the man Hawkril had hurled aside—was temptingly close, staggering and facing away from Craer. The procurer leaped, thrust his dagger into the man’s throat, and dragged it back and to the right, tearing open the man’s neck and turning him into the path of the man who liked to slash so enthusiastically. Halting or turning aside slashes, it was immediately and bloodily apparent, was something the tall false forester needed rather more practice at.
Craer was already spinning away, his dagger trailing a bright arc of blood, to confront two more foes—a pair of foresters who were advancing on him in careful, menacing unison.
Somewhere to his right, Hawkril had trotted carefully around the dancing spellblades to reach the two foresters struggling against the flying fangs, and was now slashing enthusiastically at their faces, seeking to distract them from their parries. One of them was a little too slow in frantically batting away one of the swooping swords—and the armaragor’s blade slid into his throat.
He choked, gagged, and spewed forth a rush of blood, and was still staggering vainly toward Hawkril, eyes darkening, when his brother forester moaned in fear and fled … straight at Craer.
Hawkril cried a warning, and the procurer obligingly faded out of the way, allowing the terrified man to blunder right into the heart of the careful attack being launched by his two fellows.
The spellblades raced after the man as Sarasper rose to his feet, letting Embra sag against his shins, to direct his spell at the last few foresters.
Hawkril felled the dying forester with a backhand slash as he broke into a lumbering run after the spellblades. The other foresters were backing away in the face of this magical menace, and Hawkril had little stomach for long, gasping chases through the trees—into who-but-the-Three knew what ambushes or encampments. So he hurled his blade, sidearm, at forester ankles. It found only one pair—but that man obligingly crashed to the ground, and the whirling spellblades settled on him in a bloody storm.
The fle
eing forester never slowed to stand with his fellows but plunged on into the trees now, and Craer saw the danger an escaped foe could bring down on them.
“Take care of this!” he shouted to Hawkril, and bounded after the man, the crashings of his running feet in the leaves fading swiftly into the distance.
The last forester was backing away, swinging his blade in a defensive wall to keep Hawkril and the last spellblade at bay. Patiently the hulking armaragor and the flying sword pressed the man, driving him in retreat around trees and up slopes, deadwood, and stumps.
As the spellblade moved out of sight, Sarasper grew increasingly pale and clutched at his temples with fingers that soon became steely claws. The healer trembled, blundered to his knees, and then collapsed with a gasp, sweating profusely; somewhere in the forest his awareness sank into a yellow fog of bedazement as his last spellblade dissolved. He’d sent it voyaging farther than many a worker of spells, but there were no prizes for such things, and he had one more task to do, to cling to life.…
On hands and knees, almost overwhelmed by weakness and waves of utter exhaustion, Sarasper crawled back to where Embra lay.
“Lady,” he murmured, when he got there. “Lady Silvertree! Lady Embra, hear me!” Falling on his face beside her with a groan, the aging healer reached out and slapped her cheeks gently, calling out her name over and over with what little energy he had left. He must revive her before fainting himself, lest the other war band from the lakeshore should come upon them, and find two senseless, helpless victims, suitable slaying for but a single careless dagger thrust each. …
On a hillock between two gigantic gnarled trees, the looping, thrusting spellblade shimmered and was gone. The forester barked out a single guffaw of triumph—in the instant before Hawkril smashed their blades together, used his grander size and weight to force both locked weapons upward, and charged forward until their bodies met and the armaragor could bear them both to the ground.
They landed hard, and the breath whooshed out of the grunting, writhing forester, but this was to the death, and two strong sets of hands grappled each other and snatched at sheathed daggers with equal enthusiasm. Hawkril had chosen his ground well: two moss-covered stones small enough to use lay near at hand, where he’d espied them before making his takedown. He plucked one up as they twisted and strained against each other and brought it down with vicious force. The first blow mashed the dagger-holding fingers of his foe, and the forester’s nose broke under the second. Armaragors won no victories with gallantry—and to true fighting men, with no courtiers’ ransoms to claim, victory meant life, and so was everything.
The forester flinched, blinded by his own blood, and Hawkril backhanded the gurgling man across the face, wrested away the man’s sword, and snatched up his own blade to bring its pommel crashing down on the forester’s temple. His foe sagged back, senseless.
The armaragor retrieved all the weapons he could see, hoisted his foe onto his shoulder, and brought him, dangling, back to Sarasper and Embra.
He found them both sprawled unconscious on the ground and dropped his burden none too gently in his haste to make sure neither the healer nor the sorceress lacked breath or sported wounds that he could see. He was relieved to find that they both seemed peacefully asleep.
“Fine guardian you are,” he grumbled to the gently snoring Sarasper, and set about making his foe helpless. An indecently thorough search for weapons yielded a needle knife from the forester’s boot and another that had been hidden down the back of his sword scabbard. These were foresters’ weapons?
Shaking his head, Hawkril removed the man’s boots and belt, wrapped the belt around one hairy ankle, and then used it, by way of a tree limb and the other ankle, to hang the man upside down. Something fell out of the man’s clothing to sway and dangle below his head on a thong.
Hawkril made a face. If that was the man’s purse, he didn’t work for a generous master. He plucked it away from around the man’s ears, laid it on the ground, and stripped away the thong to tie the man’s thumbs and smallest fingers together, at full stretch over the forester’s head.
All of these false foresters, it seemed, were wearing—under cloaks and tunics that had probably come from true foresters they’d slain—leather coats pierced with many rings that held odd plates of salvaged armor to them. Hawkril yanked his captive’s tunic and armor coat down over the man’s head. He looked at the dangling man for a moment, then nodded and emptied the purse out onto a rock.
“Hardly worth it,” Craer commented, as he reappeared through the trees, wearing a satisfied look. “A few copper blestrans, one silverstar, and—hmm: a badge of Cardassa. Well, that saves us the time of questioning this fellow—this lot must be Baron Cardassa’s attempt to seize the Stone … or part of it; I suspect a wizard or two lurking about somewhere.”
Hawkril looked at his dangling captive again, and then at Embra and Sarasper. “And now?” he asked, gesturing at them, himself, and the procurer.
Craer shrugged. “Indraevyn must lie that way, if the war band we saw yonder was heading for it. The best thing we can do is get away from here—off that way—and fast, in case they come around the end of the lake and decide to just butcher us. From there, we can strike out thus, and hopefully circle around to come at the ruins from another way.”
“All too good a way to get lost,” Hawkril said slowly.
“Preferable to walking into an attack by armed folk expecting us?” Craer returned. “I think not.”
“And if we miss the ruins entirely, and blunder around in this forest? It stretches for miles; ‘endless,’ they call it,” Hawkril growled.
The procurer shrugged again. “If we go not overfar,” he said in a low voice, “and keep quiet before dusk, the fires and sounds made by these others will at least tell us where they are—and some of them must be in or at the ruins by now. After we’ve gone a little way, we’ll try to wake Embra. Now—when I signal by waving this sword, bring Embra and then Sarasper to me, as quietly as you can.”
Craer took up the sword Hawkril had seized from his captive and moved off through the trees, heading away from the lake. When he and the armaragor could only just see each other through green gloom and tangled trunks, he made sweeping circles with the blade.
Hawkril obediently scooped up Embra, carried her to Craer, and returned for Sarasper. The bound captive still dangled unconscious, but the man’s handful of coins had vanished from the rock where he’d dumped them out. The armaragor’s mouth quirked onto a smile; Craer, no doubt.
The procurer had laid the sword on the ground pointing in the direction the war band they’d seen earlier had been heading, and was now at work trying to gently awaken Embra. Craer was whispering her name, touching the cold metal coins he’d acquired from the rock to her cheek, forehead, and the back of her hand, and stroking her wrists and chin gently but repeatedly. Frowning, Hawkril leaned near, watching—as, at last, the eyes of the sorceress flickered open. She was white to the lips, and looked dazed as she stared around, not seeming to recognize her companions.
“Can you walk?” Craer asked gently.
The Lady of Jewels frowned—a puzzled frown that suddenly deepened into irritation. “Of course I can walk, procurer,” she snapped. “I’m weary, not addled or crippled!”
She brushed aside his hands, stood up—and promptly fell over.
“Is this some sort of high style practiced in the court of Silvertree?” Craer teased, as his swift arms caught the sorceress and kept her standing. “Some intricate courtesy above mere commoners?”
“Craer,” Embra and Hawkril said in heartfelt unison, “closebelt thy tongue.” Their eyes met in shared startlement at having inadvertently felt the same sentiment at the same time. Hawkril grunted, shuffled his feet, and looked away.
Embra impatiently pulled free of the procurer’s grasp, took a few strides to have room enough to twirl about with hands on hips, and snapped, “Of course I can walk, Craer—what’s the point of all these game
s?”
Craer held up his hand in a gesture that at once both warded wrath and requested patience and used his other arm to point through the trees. “If where we left the lake lies yon, Lady, how judge you lies ruined Indraevyn from it?”
The sorceress frowned and then pointed. “About a mile in that direction.”
The procurer quickly crouched and turned the sword on the ground to point exactly as Embra was. Then he looked up from it and told her, “You and I walk as far as we can and still remain where Hawkril can see us. He gestures to us to move this way, or that, until we’re in line with the sword. Then I lay my blade down to point at where he’s walking from, and we stay still as he carries Sarasper and the sword to us. When he reaches us, we do it all over again; I take the sword he brings in place of my own, and so on. Thus we walk more or less in the direction we intend. We’ve moved far enough from the water that we should go past the ruin, so as to come up to it on the far side.”
“Where foes may be fewer, though we’d still best beware guards,” Embra agreed, nodding in admiration of the forester’s trick he’d described. “I fear half the mages in Aglirta, and more besides, are hurrying here to snatch the stone, if they can.”
Craer nodded. “Have you any idea what’s harming you when you use magic?”
Embra lifted her slender shoulders in a shrug. “A curse, perhaps. The work of Father’s mages, almost certainly.”
“Will killing them end the curse?” Hawkril rumbled.
They both turned to look at him in surprise for a moment before Embra nodded slowly. “It would, yes, I believe it would—if all who had a hand in its casting were slain.”
He gave her a slow and silent nod in return, before turning to Craer and gesturing to him to begin moving where the swords pointed. As the procurer and the sorceress moved off through the forest together, all three conscious members of the Four wore thoughtful looks.
They spent the afternoon proceeding as Craer had directed. It was some time before Sarasper regained wakefulness, though his face was creased with a head pain, and he stumbled weakly instead of striding. Once they heard a brief commotion of battle—cries, the clash of steel, and an echoing spell blast—but during all that quiet journey they saw no living thing larger than a slinking tree cat.