by Ed Greenwood
"Come on," she gasped at Rod, "or we'll be standing right here all day and night while they come at us. We've got to get to that well!"
"Do you know where it is?" he asked, as they started running again.
"Certainly," Taeauna replied, and pointed at the floor. "That way."
"Thanks!" he responded sarcastically, as they trotted down the passage into steadily deeper gloom, and found the first descending stone staircase. The first flight was bare and empty, but as they turned at the landing, about a dozen Dark Helms came trotting up the steps toward them.
"Don't let any of them get around behind me," Taeauna panted. "Just swing those laedlen!"
So Rod did, timing his first buffeting blow to catch a lunge headed for the Aumrarr. The warrior was strong; Rod's attack just moved his arm and blade aside a foot or so, but it was enough. Taeauna's sword was like a flickering flame among the black blades, and Dark Helms were reeling, clutching at slit throats, and tumbling back down the stairs, driving down the warriors behind them into a stumbling, fighting-for-balance chaos. Rod waded into that with his swinging sacks, making sure off-balance men fell back onto those below. The Aumrarr punched aside swords, destroying them halfway down to the hilts at a touch.
"There are only two!" someone snarled from several steps down. "Stand and fight! Just charge, and hurl them back, and swarm them! Come on!"
Taeauna waded down the steps in the direction of that voice, punching and slapping, then driving her blade home wherever armor vanished. A voice cursed aloud as its owner turned and fled back down the stairs.
That started a rout; suddenly everyone was running, leaving only the wounded and dying behind on the steps. Ruthlessly Taeauna descended from body to body, turning the former into the latter.
Rod did not want to see that bloody work too closely. He hung back, settling the laedlen properly over his shoulder and gingerly wiping the blade of his sword clean on a body clad in leathers that had been under now-vanished armor, that thankfully had its head turned away.
"Come!" Taeauna called at last. "The well, remember?"
Rod sighed and hastened down the steps to join her, carefully skirting the slumped bodies.
The Aumrarr stared up at him consideringly. "You're fine in a fray, but hate the blood the moment you've time to think about it, don't you?"
Rod nodded. "I'm a writer, not a-"
A Dark Helm came running up the stairs, and Taeauna coolly turned, parried the man's blade with her gauntlet, and drove her sword under the edge of his visor and into his throat.
"And I'm an Aumrarr," she said a little sadly. "Perhaps the last one. Killing Dark Helms is what I do, now." Then she shrugged, and added, "Well, 'tis more purpose than some folk have in their lives. Let's find that well."
"And fill it up with blood," Rod murmured to himself. He took care to speak so quietly that she couldn't possibly hear him.
Warsword Lhauntur looked up at the fat trader's cheerful hail. He recognized the man: Reskrul, who came over the mountains from Scarlorn once a year, his mules heavy-laden with tools and buttons and fastenings that the folk of Hollowtree bought eagerly.
"Be welcome in Hollowtree," he said cheerfully, "and have a tankard. We're just about to ride out on the night patrols. What news?"
"Hah! Big news. Recall a wingless Aumrarr who came through here some days back?"
"I do, indeed."
"Well, seems she laid waste to Arbridge, and went on down into Galath swording barons and besieging castles right and left."
Lhauntur raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "All by herself? That'd be a feat worthy of a god."
"Ah, but she wasn't alone. There's a man traveling with her."
That brought forth snorts of amusement around the warriors' table, and one jesting comment. "He's deadly with a pitchfork, that one!"
"Oh?" Reskrul said happily, pulling himself a tankard. "Well, the traders I met outside Arvale said she slaughtered hundreds forcing her way into Wrathgard, and enslaved poor Tindror!"
He peered around. "Looks like she didn't do all that much damage here."
"We're better fighters than the Galathans," Lhauntur said dryly. "We enslaved her."
Taeauna strode right up to the Dark Helm at the doorway. When his sword came up, she backhanded it aside and thrust her own blade unceremoniously into his throat.
He sagged to the floor, spewing blood, and she stepped inside the room with Rod on her heels.
"The well," she said with some satisfaction, indicating a circle of stone blocks overhung by a stout timber frame sporting two cranks and sets of descending ropes. Six Dark Helms looked up from what looked like a game of dice, rose hastily, drew their swords, and came over to her.
Taeauna stepped around the first one, touched the blade the second one was raising uncertainly to menace her, spun swiftly to slap aside the first warrior's sword that was on its way to plunge into her back, and then fed that warrior her own sword, right through his throat.
She ran around him in a swift circle as she did so, swinging his choking, staggering body between herself and the rest of the Dark Helms. Their charge parted to come around the flailing man and at her from both sides. Taeauna calmly tripped one warrior as she shouted, "Lord!" and then lunged in the other direction, parrying a blade and then melting it to nothingness with a slap of the gauntlet.
Rod swallowed as he ran forward. He was supposed to slit the sprawling warrior's throat, he knew, but winced at the very thought. The Dark Helm still had hold of his sword, and swung it viciously at Rod's ankles, so he hopped over it and brought the laedlen together down on the man's head, hard.
The man shuddered and fell still. By then Taeauna had slain two more, the. one she'd disarmed was sprinting around them all in a wide half-circle, seeking to escape the room, and the last Dark Helm was shouting in fear as Taeauna advanced on him. "Lord!" she called. "Don't let that one get away!"
Rod obediently trotted over to where he'd be in the running warrior's way; the Dark Helm greeted him with a sneer and a wild roundhouse slash that would have severed Rod's head from his body if it had connected. Rod ducked, stumbled, let go of the sacks right against the running man's ankles, and tried to step aside to ready his own sword.
The Dark Helm tripped over the sacks, staggered, and ran into the wall. Bouncing off it, he reeled right into Rod's desperate, teeth-clenched slash that sliced deeply into his neck and left him wobbling unsteadily to the floor, groaning.
Rod tried to be sick again, but there was nothing left in his stomach. He was still heaving when Taeauna strode past to slit the throats of the Dark Helms Rod had fought, giving him a disgusted look as she did so.
"You're going to have to learn to kill without becoming ill," she told him. "Now help me drag this dead meat over to the door. We'll heap them up there to win us time to be ready for the next Dark Helms to show up, and believe me, there will be more."
Rod believed her, even before sudden sounds nigh the doors heralded the arrival of forty-no, something nearer sixty Dark Helms that were crowding into the room before he and Taeauna could shift a single body.
"Get around behind the well," Taeauna ordered, shifting her sword to her free hand so she could flex the fingers of the gauntlet.
"We're going to die here, aren't we?" Rod asked, as he hastened to obey.
"'Tis quite likely," the Aumrarr replied. "Unless you can picture your bedchamber again, very vividly."
"I…" Rod couldn't see anything but the cruel grins of Dark Helms who were moving into the room, walking slowly and carefully, forming a wide arc of armored men as they drew their swords and lowered their visors. So this was it. He was going to die in Falconfar.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I will try to use the gauntlet," Taeauna murmured, "and shield you. But you must have the will to use your dagger on your own hand- deeply, slicing the palm, not your fingers-and thrust it around to my mouth, so I can drink lots of your blood. If I am sore-wounded, and collapse, hold tightly to me and try t
o vividly remember your bedroom."
Rod shook his head. "We're going to die here," he muttered, watching more than seventy Dark Helms closing in. The menacing black-armored warriors were crowded together, filling that entire end of the well-chamber. Step by careful step, they were moving forward, forming a curving wall like giant living pincers closing in around the Aumrarr and her mysterious companion.
Taeauna looked straight into Rod's eyes and said softly, "Very likely, lord. Know that it has been an honor."
She stepped forward and tenderly, then passionately kissed him, her tongue darting in to thrillingly caress his.
Sudden passion flared in Rod, a tingling excitement he hadn't felt since his first kiss. Taeauna's mouth was sweet, and hot, and hungry…
She pulled back just enough to whisper, "Your feelings are strong enough, I think, that if you could think of your bedroom, hold its image in your mind, and wound me without letting that image waver…"
Then the air tingled, suddenly as cold as ice. Taeauna stiffened and Rod winced, feeling a searing chill despite her body standing as a shield to his; what must she be feeling?
They staggered apart as Taeauna whirled to see the cause of the cold and stiffened again.
A short, slender, darkly handsome young man in flowing robes was standing not an arm's length away. He was facing away from them, aiming a wand at the Dark Helms who were suddenly sprinting forward, swords raised and faces tight with fear, starting to shout.
The wizard snapped a word that struck all ears like a blow, and echoed weirdly around the room, and from the wand erupted a wide fan of racing flames.
Dark Helms screamed, writhed, and died, flames blazing briefly and hungrily along their limbs as the wizard calmly turned to make sure he fried all of them. Leather under-armor blazed up as the metal armor atop it twisted, buckled, and melted, the men beneath both shrieking and sizzling loudly as they died. A horrific stink of burnt leather and cooked men-akin to roast boar, but rank with sweat and urine-arose before all the Dark Helms, their reaching swords falling just short of their slayer, were slumped dead on the floor.
The man in robes turned to Taeauna and Rod as smoothly as a tavern dancer, smiled a coldly commanding smile, and said, "I am Malraun, and with my wizardry, we can-"
That was as far as he got before the gauntlet on Taeauna's sword hand came alive, rising and reaching out, and dragging her unwilling arm with it, as she trembled in a vain struggle against it.
As its metal fingers spread, an unseen force snatched the wand from Malraun's hand and plucked it whirling through the air into the grasp of the gauntlet, which closed around it.
Fighting to wrench her hand free of the gage or maintain some control over her fingers, Taeauna sobbed aloud in her exertions, arching her back and heavily muscled shoulders to twist and pull.
The wand blossomed into a flaring glow, and from that glow streaked a bright and sudden bolt of racing flame, no longer a wide cone now, but a lance aimed to pierce Malraun the Matchless.
The flames flashed, struck, and were gone, leaving Malraun wet with sweat and staggering in their wake, smokes swirling from him in a dozen places and his hair an ashen ruin. He gasped for air through a slack mouth, bent over in pain… and then was gone, in an eye-blink, as if he'd never been there at all.
"Teleported," Rod said tersely in the instant before the gauntlet turned, still towing the unwilling Taeauna, and touched him with the end of the wand.
Rod set his teeth against pain that didn't come, wincing away from… no attack at all. No flames, nothing.
Nothing but a strong and vivid image flooding into his mind, as bright and detailed as his clearest memories.
Yet he knew it was a place he'd never seen before.
A castle that looked old and sinister, a tall black needle soaring up into a milky, cloud-filled sky in front of hundreds of trees. It was a castle of unique and striking appearance; a slender, soaring hall of obsidian hue that sprouted a spire offset to one corner.
Then the vision was gone, as abruptly as it had come, and Rod was blinking at the same thing Taeauna was.
The wand and gauntlet had both vanished, in a winking instant, leaving Taeauna's sword hand bare, empty, and unmarred.
Rod stared at her, and she stared back at him. "Are you… all right?" they asked each other, in perfect unison.
Then they both shrugged. "I saw things inside my head," Taeauna blurted, while Rod was still struggling to find the right words.
"Yes!" was what he settled for. "I saw a dark castle; some fortress I've never seen before. What did you see?"
Taeauna shrugged again. "I…"
More warriors came running out of the darkness, lots of them, the thunder of boots almost deafening. The Aumrarr gave Rod a weary look and turned to face the doorway again, hefting her sword.
The warriors flooded into the room. They wore motley armor, not black with identical visored helms, and Velduke Deldragon strode at their head, flaxen mustache bright and ice-blue eyes peering everywhere.
He stopped, very suddenly, when he beheld Rod and Taeauna standing guard before the well, and dead Dark Helms piled up in a great arc around them.
"How by the Falcon Aflame did you get down here?" Deldragon asked, his voice slow and deep with amazement.
"Darendarr," Taeauna snapped, "first tell me: is there a place down here in your cellars where three passages meet like this," she gestured swiftly, "and then a fourth comes in a little way along, about up here?"
Deldragon frowned, and then nodded. "Yes."
"Send a score or more of your knights there, to the room in this angle of the three-way moot. It holds a tantlar-fire; that's where these Dark Helms are coming from!"
Deldragon spun around and started snapping orders.
"That," Taeauna murmured to Rod, pointing to her own head, "is what I just saw."
The velduke's orders were sending most of the knights who'd come with him racing off again. When he was done barking instructions, Deldragon turned back to them with a smile. "My thanks. So, tell me now: how come you to be here, instead of in the rather better appointed guest chambers I provided for you?"
"I thought it most unlikely that Dark Helms would be welcome in Bowrock," the Aumrarr told him. "So when I saw them rushing past in such numbers, it was clear this keep was beset. Either they would prevail, and we'd all be too dead to care, or you would beat them back, whereupon defending your well during their withdrawal would be crucial. So we sought it."
She went closer to the velduke, and added in a voice that was little more than a whisper, "I learned of that tantlar in a vision, just now. Darendarr, have you ever seen a gauntlet appear magically on someone's hand, here in your keep?"
Deldragon shook his head, and answered in a similarly guarded voice, "It seems we three have some matters to discuss. Later. Right now, we of Bowrock are preparing for a siege. Several nearby Lords of Galath have been seen mustering all the armsmen they can. I strongly suspect they intend to come here, and that the rest of the surviving lords of the land will be joining them, and bringing their own armies along, too. I gave you my protection, but I must now lay a choice before you. Some of my best knights will be escorting certain persons here in Bowrock south out of Galath just as fast as they can ride; would you two like to be among them?"
"No," Taeauna replied firmly. "Deldragon, we will stand here with you."
"We are well provisioned, have other wells, and are well-trained for war, but if all the armies of Galath come to our gates, the siege may not end well," the velduke said quietly.
"If that befalls, so be it," the Aumrarr murmured, looking at Rod.
He shrugged and told her, "I stand with you, Tay. If you are staying here, so am I."
Deldragon bowed. "I am honored. Come with me, please." He gave some swift orders that made most.of his remaining knights take up positions around the well to guard it, and told two of them to '"Fetch the Waterboys, and tell them the way is clear to come down again and start dip
ping."
That pair of knights hastened away, and the velduke led Rod and Taeauna out the door and in another direction, through doors and up short flights of stairs and along passages to more stairs.
They climbed many flights of stairs and traversed many passages before the velduke shouldered through a door that opened into a small, bare chamber, nodded at Taeauna to close it, leaned back against the wall, and asked, "Lady of the Aumrarr, tell me more of this gauntlet you spoke of. Please."
Taeauna shrugged, and held up her sword hand.
"It just appeared, out of nowhere, here on this hand, and I could not get it off. A large, heavy war-gage. Well made, in good repair, and magical. The air glowed around my hand, and… well, sang. Like high harp strings that call on and on, without sounding like they're being plucked or strummed."
As the words left her lips, the air promptly started to glow and sing, just as it had before. This time, however, the glow enshrouded an alarmed Rod Everlar.
Taeauna and Deldragon turned to stare at him in time to see something small, dark, and horsehead-shaped appear in the air above the quiet man's hand and fall into it.
Rod juggled the thing for a moment, as if he might drop it. Then he held it up in his right hand to peer at it.
He seemed to be holding a model or statuette of a horse's head, cast and then worked in some dark olive-hued metal to bring forth fine details. It was surprisingly heavy.
Then he wasn't seeing the thing in his palm at all, but the black, odd-spired castle once more, suddenly and so vividly that he might have been standing in front of it, with a cool breeze rising around his shoulders.