Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  “Lady,” he agreed from beside her feet, “so do I!”

  Blue radiance whirled and flashed around her. Sharantyr calmly crouched, and stepped forward with blade raised and ready, all in one smooth motion.

  Then the blue light was gone, and the paler light of normal day was around her. The woman in leathers whom Torm was pleased to call “our lady ranger” was standing in wild, trampled grass on an unfamiliar hilltop.

  A height crowded with tall, dark standing stones. She swiftly drew close to one and froze to listen and peer intently, letting a long time pass as she made sure of her surroundings.

  Then Sharantyr glided softly forward to where she could look around her sheltering stone, and froze again, only her eyes moving. This shadow, and that … no. Nothing.

  Thankfully—unless someone or something was managing to keep very quiet and still amid this faintest ghost of a breeze—the hilltop seemed free of lurking folk or beasts. Save for one, of course: one Knight of Myth Drannor, her blade in her hand and a tiny carved skull still clutched in her fingertips.

  Sharantyr stowed the carving in a belt-pouch, but kept her war-steel ready as she looked about, studying the ground now, for tracks. This might be Tsarn Tombs, if she was nigh Scornubel … or then again, it might be some place she’d never heard of, north of that lawless caravan city.

  Probably Tsarn, though; it seemed right. On all sides rose wilderland hills beyond number, those to the north—she always knew when she was looking north—crowned by trees. Mountains rose in the far distance, most to the northeast but a few peaks even farther off to the northwest. A wagon road ran close by her hilltop, on the west, running slightly west of north to east of south. A river, probably the Chionthar, glimmered back sunlight in the distant northwest, beyond the road.

  Small rocks and pebbles underfoot had been scuffed by boots recently. There was much trampling in the grass around the larger stones, some of it fresh, and … she peered about at old, broken tombs that lay open in the tall grass, and smiled thinly at the painted message borne by one tall, leaning marker stone: “Beware: The Dead Walk.”

  They do, indeed, all too often … ah!

  She’d found what she’d been seeking: the trail of two humans afoot, walking side by side and passing this way recently. They’d departed the hilltop northward, down into a little valley carved by a brook … and unless her land-reading had quite departed her, that brook probably found its way down to the road.

  If anything was hunting lone lady rangers in these backlands, it’d probably seen her on the heights for more than long enough to decide how best to stalk her. Sharantyr kept her blade out and her other hand hovering above the little pouch of spell-gems Lhaeo had given her as she went.

  The Scribe of Shadowdale had given her something else, too. He’d evidently spent his time well over tea with Tessaril, during her rare visits to acquaint Shaerl and Mourngrym of Cormyrean news and policies. His instructions on whom to speak with in Scornubel and how to contact them had been quite specific.

  His warnings about the dangers of the City on the Chionthar had been just as blunt and exhaustive—and far, far more numerous. Sharantyr was almost looking forward to viewing a city-sized den of energetic thieves and trying to figure out why they hadn’t erupted with knives in alleys some night and all slain each other, years ago—

  Up from behind a boulder ahead of her a figure rose. A crossbow cracked, and the figure ducked down again—just as a second man sprouted from behind another rock, farther off, and did the same thing. Sharantyr let fall her blade and put her finger through the slit in the outside of Lhaeo’s little pouch to awaken the lone gem that rode in the outer compartment there.

  She was just in time. The first hasty bolt burned past her upper arm, ripping away leather as it went, but the second whistled straight into her throat—and harmlessly on through it, as if she’d been made of smoke. Sharantyr unwound the cord from around her midriff and shook it out into a loose coil, letting one stone-weighted end hang from her hand. A deadly little obsidian knife rode in a gorget-sheath down the back of her neck, under her hair, but this little throwing-maiden seemed more useful now. Almost as useful as a personal ironguard enchantment.

  Sharantyr strode on toward the first boulder without breaking stride, hoping there weren’t too many brigands—and that their ranks didn’t sport anyone who could work magic. Not that it was likely that a mage of power would be starving over travel-scraps out in the wilderlands when cities were full of folk who’d pay well for castings of minor magics, but …

  She was perhaps three long strides away from the rock when the brigand rose up again and hurled a dagger into her face. There was a momentary, feathering blur as it sliced deep into her eye—or rather, whirled through her head as if she weren’t there, after its point found no eye nor socket. Her ears rang with his curses as he hastily drew a rather rusty curved sword and commenced hacking at her.

  Sharantyr dropped her stonemaiden to the ground, letting only a small length of it trail from one hand held out as far as she could behind her—with his blade passing freely through her body, he could sever the cord all too easily, and then she’d be reduced to punching, kicking, gouging, and hair-pulling.

  That curved blade sliced through her breast—forth and back, forth and back, veering up to cleave her nose and jaw on the third swing, and taking out her throat on the fourth. Sharantyr smiled sweetly and kept coming.

  “A ghost!” her assailant wailed, going pale. “A haunt!” He whirled to flee—and Sharantyr swung the stonemaiden as hard as she could, almost throwing it. Along the cord she felt the solid jar of the blow—and the sickening yielding of his head that followed, ere he toppled silently to the grass, and bounced. Her stonemaiden sent a spattering of blood and brains on toward the second rock, and the ranger followed them, still smiling.

  “Helve, you idiot!” the brigand there was roaring, as he rose and his crossbow cracked again. “Never turn your back in a fray—not even on a lone wench!”

  He was a good shot. The bolt blinded her momentarily as it flashed through her right eye—and kept on going.

  “Mask preserve me, Tymora save me—Shar defend me!” the second brigand swore, forced to believe what he’d been able to dismiss as clumsiness on the part of his fellow outlaw up until now. He gaped at Sharantyr as her smile widened and she sauntered toward him, hiding her trailing stonemaiden once more.

  True to his own advice, this brigand backed away, never turning his eyes from her for an instant as he snatched his sword and dagger out—and tripped over some loose stones behind him, to fall headlong with a ragged cry. Sharantyr was over his rock in a bound, stonemaiden up in both hands to strike in either direction, depending on who else might be lurking.

  There was a third brigand, and a fourth, but they were far enough away that she managed to strike the frantically rolling and kicking second brigand senseless before they reached her. A blade she didn’t feel tore through her, but the fists holding its hilt drove up under her ribs as hard as the thrust itself. If she hadn’t leaped into the air to rob their impact of its smashing force, some of those ribs might well have broken.

  From the height of her leap Sharantyr dashed the maiden’s stones across the man’s snarling face, and he ceased to be a concern—at about the same time as the fourth brigand reached her, slicing the air like a madman as he came with a sword almost as long as her legs. Snarling and sweating he hacked at her—back and forth and back, his slaying steel a blur.

  Sharantyr was forced to drop her maiden to avoid having its cords severed a dozen times over. Then she sat down and kicked out, seeking to drive his own legs from under him and send him crashing down—but he was too large and strong to do more than hop awkwardly aside and regain his balance, still hacking furiously.

  Sharantyr sighed as she watched sharp steel blaze its way back and forth through her leather-clad breast—after all, this magic wouldn’t last forever, and … ah, well. The old ways were old because they so often
worked.

  Buckles could hold leather very well, but the enchantment made her fingers pass through them. Though she couldn’t undo them, she could unlace leathern thongs, enough to lay bare most of the curving flesh—

  The brigand’s eyes widened, his sword-swings slowed—and Sharantyr bent, snatched up her maiden, and struck him hard across the face with its trailing stone. With a roar of pain, he staggered away, and this time, the whirling cords took his ankles from under him with brutal speed. There were rocks jutting from the ground beneath his head where he bounced, and it was a loosely lolling, groaning brigand from whom she retrieved her weapon, ere she glanced all around and decided there were no more foes to fell.

  Sharantyr shook her head. Brigands, these days …

  She recovered her fallen sword by looping the cords of her maiden around it until she could carry it as a trussed-up bundle and strolled on her way.

  Her partially unlaced state won her a seat on a heavily guarded wagon crammed with gigantic “sow-bottles” (so named for their hoglike girth) each stoutly girded in its own wooden cage. The bottles all contained mordants, which would be used to etch armor in Waterdeep—if the deadly acids ever reached the City of Splendors.

  Mordants had a way of disappearing in Scornubel, and her charms notwithstanding, Sharantyr was firmly urged to wait for the next ferry when the wagon reached the Chionthar. She caused some alarm when the small forest of swordpoints so urging her passed harmlessly through one of her hands—and she underscored that surprise by calmly walking through them, so that it was with close to a dozen blades apparently plunged deep into her breast that the Knight of Myth Drannor waved a cheerful farewell and waited for that next ferry.

  When he returned, the boatman—who had seen all of this—was very respectful, and Sharantyr floated up to the Scornubel docks lounging against him and humming a merry tune.

  She was looking forward to seeing this lawless den of thieves and, following Lhaeo’s directions, to meeting one of its law-breaking inhabitants in particular: Belgon Bradraskor. Master of the Shadows, indeed.

  “Mystra and Tymora preserve me!” Shandril snarled, clawing at the nearest rail desperately as the ready-wagon struck a particularly large pothole so violently that she was sure the racing wheels not so far beneath her would either shatter or fly off.

  They did not, though the entire wagon bounced with deafening clatters of landing cargo and several sickening moments of plunging through air, as one wheel after another crashed into the unyielding earth, spitting stones in all directions like angry crossbow bolts, and made its own shrieking, rebounding leap. Shandril’s untidy collection of old armor plates clanged and clashed in her face for the six-hundredth-and-something time, leaving her with yet another cut on her jaw, then fell bruisingly back again—only to rise up once more even before they all had time to swing down. She swung her head to one side with a softly but deliberately snapped curse, scrunching one eye closed, and let them batter her cheek and neck.

  Even Thorst was snarling oaths and groaning in pain as the wagon raced along. The shadows were growing ever longer around them, as the sun sank no more slowly for all their haste, but Voldovan was like a bellowing madman, storming up and down the hurtling line of wagons with his whip cracking like a never-sleeping thunderbolt.

  They had to make Face Crag by nightfall, camp in the defensible, stream-split cleft in its eastern face, and get their torches lit in the outer ring of braziers—massive tripods of blackened iron erected there decades ago by a coster now gone yet still praised almost daily—so brigands and beasts alike would be left trying to stare at the unknown strength of the camped caravan past a wall of flickering flames.

  Any brigands who hadn’t already thrown a rope or a few tree trunks across the road as a barrier, that is. If the racing wagons struck any real obstacle now, the carnage of splintered wood and crashings and screaming beasts would be—

  “The crag!” a big, ragged-bearded lout, Duramagar, shouted from ahead, standing in his stirrups exultantly and waving a war-axe dangerously in one hand. “The crag!”

  Shandril’s wagon rumbled up over a rise and swept around a bend with its wheels shrieking and a snapped rein slashing across her face like a burning brand. In front of her, what could only be Face Crag loomed up out of the gathering dusk like a castle wall.

  “In there!” Shandril heard Orthil Voldovan roaring, from somewhere in the dust and racing wagons up ahead. “Get in there!”

  From the fore, there were screams, wails, and crashings—the very things she’d been expecting since this ride had become a wild rout.

  Someone had hit something, a wheel had collapsed, an axle had shattered—or a beast had simply stumbled and fallen, dragging its wagon over or down … but no! Crossbow bolts were humming out of the dust in an angry storm, and unfamiliar riders with thrusting lances and stabbing blades were wheeling and darting in the chaos ahead, too. They were under attack by foes who’d been waiting in the cleft!

  “Thorst!” Shandril shouted, bending low over the drover. “Shall I—?”

  “No!” he roared, thrusting an unloaded but still eloquent bowgun up at her face, his eyes wild. “No! I’ll yell to ye, if—”

  A wagon sideswiped their own in a sickening squealing of rending wood, as its wheels spun their way to torn and clawing oblivion along the ready-wagon’s old and battered sides, shedding daggerlike splinters in all directions, and fell away behind, lurching over onto its side. A horse reared, hooves lashing the air. Another wagon smashed into it with a thud that made Shandril’s jaw rattle, spraying the air with reins, tumbling men, and more splinters.

  Their foes were racing past—those who weren’t skewered or swept from their saddles by flying splinters—and a hostile lance missed Shandril but tore open Thorst’s shoulder, spinning him around with a snarl of pain and sending their own reins up in a wild cloud.

  Shandril snatched at them, grabbing her rail again just in time to avoid being plucked from her perch by the one rein she had managed to snag—then realized it was futile. The horses were screaming and plunging in terror, and she’d have to be stronger and heavier than they to haul back their heads and be noticed at all. They were on a wild ride that wouldn’t end until they smashed into something, tipped over, or the horses calmed, fell, or faltered in exhaustion.

  “Shandril!” Thorst shouted. “Help me!”

  Ruined shoulder, jouncing ride, and all, the guard was still trying to get his bowgun loaded and aimed at something—and something else was banging against his knee: a full-sized crossbow that he’d unstrapped from its stowage but now lacked the strength to do anything with. Its windlass was clinking wildly in his lap as he struggled with his bowgun, teeth clenched in pain.

  Shandril bent to help him and nearly pitched facefirst onto the churning hooves of the horses. Clawing at the perch and the rails and Thorst for support, she sat down hastily beside the drover.

  There were shoulder-straps, she saw now—and not surprisingly, Thorst, like every other drover Shandril could remember seeing, disdained their use. Getting one arm through a strap, she threw her other around Thorst’s shoulders and cradled him, steadying him as he gasped and whimpered and fought with the bow. Sweat was running down his pale face in streams, and his eyes stared around at the world wildly, barely seeing her.

  A lancetip bit into wood right beside Thorst’s head, and Shandril glimpsed the rider who’d put it there reeling in his saddle, letting go of his weapon to avoid being dragged from his mount as the snorting horse plunged past, tossing its head in fear.

  Somewhere behind them, a man and a horse screamed in unison, raw and loud, as if each was trying to drown out the other.

  “This is madness!” Shandril shouted to the wounded guard. “We’ve got to get the horses stopped, before we—”

  Fire burst into being off to the left—Narm’s doing?—and by its light the ready-wagon’s horses saw the rugged stone wall of the cleft rising up in front of them, very near and growing nearer
as each plunging hoof came down. They swerved away from the fire, almost spilling Thorst and Shandril from the perch and dragging a raw roar of pain from the drover that rose almost into a shriek as the wagon tipped alarmingly … then crashed back to earth with bone-numbing force.

  Along the widening cleft and out into the gathering night the horses ran, the wagon rumbling more slowly and heavily now. It felt as if something had half-fallen from it and was being dragged. Perhaps that, or perhaps simply training and long habit, made the horses turn again to stay on the road rather than running across it to plunge into the trees.

  They were past the cleft, and—as the horses swerved around a smashed and splintered wagon that had overturned, then been dragged until its harness broke and its beasts had fled—out beyond the fray, into the deepening night.

  Crossbow bolts came humming out of the trees at them. Thorst gasped as one smashed his fingers and drove his bowgun right out of his hand. Others slammed into the boards around him with loud thocking sounds.

  Shandril crouched low and brought one hand up under her breasts to drive her collection of rusting armor plates up in front of her nose like a wall. She ducked her head just as a bolt shattered against the boards and showered her with its tumbling splinters.

  Another glanced off the perch beside her boots and numbed her arm from fingertips to shoulder, and she heard one of the horses scream.

  They were going to die here, shot down like cart-targets paraded slowly before archers, unless—unless she—

  Shandril Shessair sprang to her feet and slashed out into the night with spellfire, scorching trees on one side of the road, then the other. A bolt speeding toward her exploded in flames, came snarling on—and fell away into ashes in the air right in front of her as she frantically poured flame at it.

  Panting, she sent spellfire streaking the way it had come, wondering just when Toril would run out of men trying to slay her … and knowing the answer was: never.

  Well, at least she could thin their ranks a bit. Flames kindling in her eyes, Shandril leaned low over the perch as the wagon slowed still more, and fed spellfire into the night.