by Ed Greenwood
Some of their fellows were too slow witted to avoid walking beneath the shouting spell victims and were gawking up at their fellows aloft when the Zhentilar plunged back to earth. They crashed down like so much spilled kindling to smash into bloody ruin on the earth and raised blades below.
The Zhent advance faltered. In the sudden lull, a man in old and shiny black Rider armor pushed past Shar and strode into the Zhent ranks, a shimmering arrowhead of force preceding him, cleaving men who stood in his way.
"Here me, Tempus, Lord of Battles!" the man roared as he went, hands raised and empty. "Let the old warriors rise, if it pleases ye! Raise a ring of skulls, I entreat ye! Oh, Tempus!"
It was the old Rider, Baergil. A Zhent, drawn sword in hand, ducked around behind the old priest's magic and raced in. As he jerked back the white-horse helm and drew his sword viciously across the exposed throat, there came one last, bubbling cry of "Tempusss!"
The spell was complete. Baergil's body blazed with sudden blue fire. His slayer fell back in awe. The dead priest hung upright in the streaming flames, hands uplifted to the sky, and men murmured at the sight.
Cries of awe and fear came as the trampled turf under the Zhents erupted. Staring things of mottled green and brown bones burst up out of the soil… rising through the horrified armsmen to form into a silent, floating ring of skulls just overhead. Many battles had been fought by the banks of Swords Creek, and countless warriors had fallen here, to lie under the earth until called up by so mighty a magic.
The eyes of the skulls flared into sudden fire, the same cold, eerie blue flame that blazed around Baergil. Zhentilar cried out in alarm and began to run-but nothing could flee fast enough to escape the rays of chill light that lanced from the skulls through the Zhent host.
Where those blue rays touched the running or striding armsmen of the Sword of the South, flesh melted away, leaving only bones. Skeletal warriors rushed on for a pace or two, and then collapsed.
The Zhents on the far side of the creek and the defenders of Mistledaie alike stared in horror as thousands of armsmen died.
When no man was left standing between Baergil's corpse and the creek, the skulls turned until the rays that streamed from their glowing sockets met in the heart of the field of bones. Blue light pulsed and built to almost blinding fury, and gauntlets were raised to shield eyes all over the battlefield. An armored form strode along in the heart of the radiance.
It had been striding forever, it seemed, fearless and patient, a figure twelve feet tall and clad in a full suit of gleaming plate armor, visor down. As the rays began to fade and the skulls sank back to the earth in silent unison, the armored figure was suddenly among them, treading on Zhentilar bones without a sound, walking toward Baergil.
"The War God," someone whispered. The defenders of Mistledale fell back at the armored giant's approach.
In eerie silence, two flaming blue gauntlets reached out and took up the priest's body, cradling it against the massive chest. The Knights of Myth Drannor parted in respectful silence. The helm turned slowly from side to side to survey them, and for just a moment Shar felt the scorching weight of eyes that blazed like two red flames.
In silence, Tempus strode on, west toward distant Ashabenford, bearing Baergil's body in his arms. To those who watched, it seemed the body began to burn, blazing its own miniature pyre.
The implacable avatar vanished over the hill… and left the handful of weary men and women to defend Mistledale against several thousand shaken Zhentilar soldiers.
What was left of the Sword of the South stood along the east bank of Swords Creek, still more than enough armsmen to crush the few who resisted them. Their hireswords and booty brothers were among the fallen; those who remained were veteran Zhent blackhelms. In fearful, sullen silence, they eyed the field of death before them, but orders were shouted, and officers ran about brandishing maces… and reluctantly, the soldiers of Zhentit Keep began to advance.
"It must be now," Sharantyr heard Sylune say quietly.
In the distance, there came a sudden burst of radiance as the Witch of Shadowdale appeared in the heart of the Zhents… in the small space between Swordlord Amglar and Spellmaster Nentor Thuldoum. The men broke off their arguing to gape in unison at the beautiful woman who stood between them, the glow of her magic fading around her.
"Well met indeed, gentlesirs," Sylune told them softly, raising her lithe arms in glee.
The magic missiles that streamed out of her riddled both men, even before the fireballs and bolts of lightning leapt forth in their wake.
Amglar and Nentor of the Zhentarim died screaming.
Sylune sang a terrible, wordless song of rage and sorrow for the body she was losing, and her slim-hipped form blazed white with the fury of the magic coursing through her.
Zhentilar stared at the dancing, burning figure in their midst, and then perished in the whirlwind of unleashed spells that sprayed death in all directions from the woman.
Florin swallowed what might have been a sob as he watched bright flames gout from Sylune's eyes and mouth, streaming across scorched turf to immolate shouting Zhentilar, whose vainly hurled spears vanished in that inferno.
There came a quickening of the spell fury, and Sylune's head was gone, blown away with the awesome energies pouring from her. The headless body turned as if it could see, and raised its hands to burn fleeing Zhent horsemen from their distant saddles. Flames streamed from her neck and hands… and before she turned away, her hands were gone, and spells were now leaping from the stumps of her arms.
Someone was rallying the Zhentilar as the stream of spells flickered, and then ceased… and men in ebon armor charged across the smoking ground, blades raised to slay the swaying, disintegrating Witch of Shadowdale.
"No!" Belkram roared, waving his own blade in sudden fury. "For Mistledale! For Sylune!" He rushed across the strewn bones, his sword held high. Itharr and Florin raced to catch up to him. Sharantyr was moving before she thought about it, following her companions into a band of scattered, dazed-looking Zhent blackhelms still several hundred strong.
Beside her, Shar saw flashing legs and a bouncing bosom, and turned to see Jhessail sprinting along, weaponless, with Illistyl running at her heels and Merith moving with fluid grace and drawn sword.
"Wait!" Rathan puffed, behind them. "Save some Zhents for me!"
They were almost at the stream and the grim-faced foremost Zhents who stood there when what was left of the Witch of Shadowdale vanished in a burst of snarling flames that threw men headlong or sent them fleeing wildly back toward the trees.
Then Belkram, Itharr, and Florin splashed across the stream, roaring out their grief together. They fell upon the Zhents like three maddened reapers mowing wheat. It was the last such harvest that their foes needed to see: the shattered Sword of the South broke and fled, an army no more.
Belkram ran on toward the dying flames that had been Sylune, and Itharr and Florin paced him, swording the few blackhelms foolish enough to get in their way. Sharantyr tried to catch up, but her lungs were burning; she'd never seen men run so fast before.
By the time she reached the spot where Belkram knelt, the Harper was on his knees amid the smoldering ashes, weeping.
The stone cradled so gently in his gauntlets had cracked in the heat. "Lady," Belkram sobbed despairingly, "leave us not!"
But there came no reply but the creak of cooling stone. The Harper raised a face that streamed tears and cried to Florin, "Do something!"
The Knight smiled down at him and undid the last buckle of his chest armor. As it fell open, he drew forth something he wore on a chain. A lump of stone. All of the gathered adventurers saw a streak of ghostly radiance arc from the shattered stone to the good one.
The stone winked once with its stored fire, reassuringly. Florin took off the chain and handed it to Belkram. "Yours, I think," the Shield of Shadowdale said quietly. "I think she's grown tired of Torm's tricks."
Belkram's eyes shone. He was s
till struggling to speak when the Riders of Mistledale swept past with lowered lances, ruthlessly riding down fleeing Zhents. "For Baergil!" they bellowed as they went. "For Baergil!"
Kuthe was in the foremost saddle, swaying and pale, blood all down his front from a deep wound in his shoulder. "Kuthe!" Jhessail called as he spurred his mount past. "Have done! They're beaten!"
He rode in a wide circle back to her, face set, and said, "The field may be ours, Lady, but Mistledale is my home. Every Zhent who can still walk by sunset is a sword that can strike from darkness when we sleep! I'll not rest until they're all dead and done!"
Fflarast Blackriver and the old Harper who'd seen the sky rain wizards for the first time yesterday lay side by side under the very hooves of Kuthe's mount as he snarled those words, but they did not hear him. Dust lay on their staring eyes and still faces, and the darkening blood spilled under them both was the same hue: one could not tell which was the Harper's, and which belonged to the Zhentilar.
The leader of the Riders spurred away, the weary hooves of his mount trampling both bodies. Florin watched him go. "Where is the captain of the Riders?" he asked quietly.
"Who?" Rathan asked. "That lady paladin?"
"Aye," Florin replied, "I've known her a long time."
"Oho," Torm spoke up, "an old lady friend, eh? May-"
His crowing words ended in a sharp gasp as Illistyl thrust a sharp hand into his gut. "Someday, clever tongue," she warned him, "you'll say just one word too many…"
"Uhhh," Torm agreed, doubled over.
"Indubitably," Rathan translated, looking at the breathless thief with interest.
Florin, ignoring them all, was striding across the field and looking for Captain Nelyssa.
He caught sight of her at last, hard by the trees on the southern edge of the dale, well behind the last standard the defenders of the dale had rallied around. A mound of Zhentilar lay heaped about her and the sprawled bulk of her horse. A band of blackhelms had tried to outflank the fray-and paid for their cunning with their lives. There'd been over thirty of them, though, and it seemed the veteran Zhentilar armsmen were the measure of one paladin of Chauntea.
In a small lake of blood at the heart of the heaped dead lay the hacked and twisted form of Nelyssa, captain of the Riders of Mistledale, her armor torn open down the bloody mess of her front, and her notched and broken blade still clutched in her hand. Even as Florin broke into a run and shouted, lifting the heads of Harpers and farmers who knelt by the still form, he knew he was too late.
Nelyssa's face was unmarked, but bone-white; she looked very like the young lass Florin had known so long ago… but her eyes were dark and sightless. The ranger stared into them as he sank down beside her and let out a long, shuddering sigh of grief. Was this madness of strife going to claim all the best hearts and minds before it was done?
"I need your sword, noble Falconhand," said a voice as rough and sharp as the skin of its owner. Margrueth of the Harpers laid her hand on Florin's own. The ranger looked up at her, finding it suddenly hard to drag his eyes away from Nelyssa's frozen face.
When he did, he was shocked at what he saw. The fire of life had gone out of the Harper sorceress, too. She was gray to the lips, and her skin was sunken and shriveled so that it seemed a skull thinly draped with flesh. Only the eyes told him the feisty Margrueth still lived, eyes dancing like two lively dark flames. "You will aid me in this, Knight. I must have your oath on it."
"My oath?" Weary and sad as he was, Florin still found that he could be startled. He looked around at the wondering farmers and the grim-faced Harpers, leaving him alone with the living woman and the dead one. They looked back at him. His oath. Whatever for?
And then, because she was old Margrueth and she was a Harper-and because he was Florin Falconhand-he turned to meet those wise old eyes. Holding her gaze, he lifted his voice to say clearly, "In Mielikki's name and mine own, I, Florin Falconhand, born of Cormyr, Lord of Shadowdale and Knight of Myth Drannor, promise on my honor to aid you, Margrueth, on this day and on this field, as you would command me."
"Nicely done," Margrueth said with a smile. "Now this is what I'll have you do-and swiftly, for the spells I wove today burned much life from me… I'd not live to see sunset whatever befell. Know for your own comfort that I act freely in this, and my wits are mine own."
She laid herself down, wheezing a little, atop Nelyssa's body, face to face, "Count four breaths, noble Florin, and plunge your blade into my back. Mind that it goes right through me, and into the lass beneath-and that you hold it thus for a breath, no more. Do this." And with that order, she put her lips to the paladin's mouth.
Florin stared down at her, swallowed, and then said hurriedly, in the two breaths left to him, "You shall be remembered with honor, Margrueth!"
As he'd been bid, he brought his blade down in a clean thrust, right through the old sorceress, and into Nelyssa beneath, where her armor was all riven away down her front. Margrueth jerked once under his steel, and blue-white light, like many tiny lightnings, crackled and danced around the joined lips of the two women.
Florin drew his blade out carefully. For a moment, the same radiance clung to its suddenly shining length. It looked as bright and sharp as it was when new, the scrapes and nicks of battle gone from it.
Yet more wondrous far was what befell where it had been. Margrueth's body was twisting and contracting into a thing of curling smoke, to the accompaniment of one last, dry chuckle.
That sound faded, and Nelyssa's revealed body stirred, color returned to her face, and a light came into her dark eyes. She slowly sat up.
"Florin?" she asked softly as the Harpers and farmers around cried out in wonder, gasped, or wept, "Have I slept? Is the day won-or lost?"
And Florin Falconhand cast aside his blade and knelt to take her in his arms. "Won for some, Captain… won for Mistledale. And yet lost for others, lost forever. Margrueth traded her life for yours."
The captain of the Riders turned pale. "No!"
"Aye, Nelyssa," Florin said gently, "you must know this, and hear the truth. She chose freely, and worked a magic I did not know, binding me under oath. Mine was the blade that took her life, and gave it to you. She was at the end of her life, drained by this battle… and brought you back to us."
The paladin of Chauntea flung her arms around him and wept.
"Hmmph," Torm said to Rathan as they trudged across the field, taking up the best weapons and tossing them on a farmer's sledge to bear back to Ashabenford, "women never do that to me. My arms await-see? Here they are, two of them, and fairly well matched to each other, too-and do ladies sob their sorrows away into my breast? No! Is it the cut of his chin, d'you think? The wave in his hair? His strong, manly bearing? Those gleaming teeth?"
"All of those," his friend agreed. "Now give me a hand with this halberd-three dead ones draped over it, look ye; three-and take comfort in the fact that ye've probably been in almost as many strange beds as he has… an' that ye're better far at stealing things."
"Umm," Torm agreed, looking again at the woman in Florin's arms. His eyes fell to the dark, sticky puddle of blood they shared, and he swallowed. So much blood…
"When we get back to the Six Shields," he told Rathan fiercely, "I'm going to get very drunk!"
"Oh? Don't forget that ye lost the bet with Sylune! We won the battle, so ye have to wear the scanties ye were putting on her, an' go sit in the window!"
"But she's… dead. You won't hold me to-"
"Oh, but I will," Rathan said softly. "In memory of her, ye will sit in that window this night, if I have to break thy limbs to get the fripperies onto ye."
Torm tore a gorget free of a Zhentilar who'd not be needing it anymore, and flung it with a clatter onto the sledge. "I'm going to get very very drunk!" he said fiercely, "first."
"Hmm," Rathan said, lifting a body into the air with one hand to pluck daggers free with the other, "that'll make the dressing an amusing affair. May I watch?"
&
nbsp; "He'll be too drunk to stop anyone from watching," one buzzard commented to the other, shifting a little on a low, bare branch as a nearby farmer gave them a dirty look, bent to pick up a fallen bow, and then shrugged and turned away, knowing he couldn't hit the tree, let alone two watchful carrion birds.
"Faerun certainly affords more entertainment than Shadowhome," Bralatar said, remembering the battle as he looked out over the ravaged field.
"And because the peril to and consequences for us are the less, one can really enjoy it," Lorgyn replied, watching Merith and Jhessail embrace, and Illistyl, after a moment, turn and look around the battlefield for Torm.
"I cannot understand the thinking of Yinthrim, to throw life and all the unfolding chances of this world away just to try to avenge kin who may well have plotted his own death, had they lived."
"Atari, yes," Lorgyn agreed, "would always plunge into battle, given the slightest of excuses, but such folly is unusual for Yinthrim." He looked at the site of the tent where the two Malaugrym had perished the night before-now a trampled sward strewn with sprawled bodies. He shrugged. "I guess battle hunger overtook them."
"Battle hunger? Attacking three sleeping humans is something done out of 'battle hunger'?" Bralatar had a fine, showy grasp of sarcastic incredulity when something aroused him to it. He shifted on the branch, fluttering his feathers in irritation. "Admit they liked to slay folk, and fatally misjudged the fervor of these mortals, and have done with it. Two fewer fools to breed will make our house that much the stronger."
"A phrase fit for a speech of any Shadowmaster High," Lorgyn acknowledged, bowing his head. "So when, in your judgment, would it be best that we make our strike against the three who dared to intrude into Shadowhome, and slay so many Malaugrym?''
"When those three rangers are much older, and we've seen far more of this world-or at least, not now," Bralatar replied with his usual sharp humor. "Those two maids over there-Jhessail and Illistyl, if I heard aright-still have spells left. And who knows how many of those Harpers are mages? I'm not descending into the midst of a battlefield where one old man called down a god not long ago!"