by Keith Strohm
“Ah,” Islif said, “just as we unwashed prefer to call that ‘the toe of my boot, put right where it will do a pompous holynose the most good.’ Clumsum, d’you think your healing spell worked?”
“Shrug,” Doust said aloud, and there were several chuckles above Pennae.
“Purple Dragons stand all around us, Pennae,” Florin said, his voice drawing nearer. Pennae blinked through what seemed to be tears, and could make out that he’d hunkered down on his haunches to lean over her. “They want to know what befell you. So do we.”
“Martess,” Pennae gasped. “Murdered. By Agannor and Bey. Chased me here. Other men with crossbows … also chasing. Beware someone—wizard?—attacking you, inside your head. Made me … fall over.”
“Blood of Alathan!” Doust gasped at about the same time as Islif snarled a curse.
Then Florin said softly, “Swordcaptain, I must ask you to turn a blind eye to what we may do next. I am enraged, and am like to do my own murdering in your streets.”
“Man,” a gruff and unfamiliar voice replied, “three good men are down with bolts through them. An’ that’s just my Dragons; I hear there’re shopkeepers dead, an’ a little lad who was out playing in the wrong alley, too. Go do your murders!”
Departing boots thundered, and a surprised voice—Doust’s—asked, “Jhessail?”
“Let her go,” Semoor murmured. “As if you or I or anyone could stop her.”
“Help—help me up,” Pennae gasped. “I’m going, too.”
“You, lass, are staying right here,” the swordcaptain growled. “There’s blood all over you, your leathers’re sliced half off, an’—”
“And my task stands unfinished,” Pennae hissed, clawing her way up the man’s arm until she could stand. “My task. I’m a Sword of Eveningstar, Swordcaptain. Mayhap you’ve heard of us.”
“Trumpet fanfare,” Doust announced helpfully. There was a moment of tense silence before Purple Dragons started to guffaw, all around them. When the Swordcaptain she was clinging to started to shake with laughter, Pennae almost fell over again.
“There!” Florin shouted, pointing ahead with his sword as they pounded along a back alley made slippery underfoot by rotting cabbage leaves. A crossbow promptly cracked, then another.
Florin flung himself at the wall, taking Islif down with him, but the Dragon running behind them screamed and crashed to his face, bouncing and moaning, with a bolt quivering through his knee.
“Jhess,” the forester growled, scrambling up, “you shouldn’t be here! You’ve no armor—”
“Shut up, Florin,” came the furious reply.
“Wait for us! We bring holy blessings!” cried two familiar voices.
Jhessail rolled her eyes. “You’re shunning me? What about them? The happy dancing holynoses themselves?”
Islif flung her a rare grin, and Florin waved his surrender—then peered and cursed in admiration.
A weak, pale, weaving-on-her-feet Pennae ran alongside Doust and Semoor.
Together once more, the Swords trotted on, the watch lionar beside them puffing, “We’ve closed the gates, and called every last blade out of the barracks—the Lady Lord herself’s out running around with her sword drawn, somewhere. They can’t escape us! ’Tis just a matter of time.…”
Islif threw him a jaundiced look, but said nothing. They ducked around a sagging, permanently parked cart and burst out of the alley.
“There!” Islif shouted, pointing.
‘There’ was the dark doorway of a warehouse, a refuse-strewn threshold where Agannor had just jerked his sword out of the throat of a reeling, blood-spattering Purple Dragon. Two crossbow bolts came humming past him out of the darkness, and one took down another Purple Dragon. A war wizard stepped coolly sideways to escape the other, and went right on casting a spell.
Purple Dragons converged on Agannor from all directions. Agannor cast looks all around, saw the Swords and gave them a mocking wave, then disappeared into the warehouse. Another pair of crossbow bolts claimed another two Dragons.
Puffing along beside Florin, the swordcaptain growled, “Where’re our bowmen?”
“Those murdering bastards could be just inside, aimed and waiting for us, know you!” another Dragon gasped as they sprinted for the warehouse door, keeping close to the walls of other buildings in hopes they’d not run up to meet more crossbow bolts.
Islif gave him a wolf’s grin.
“I know. I’m rather counting on it,” Islif said.
Something crashed down right in front of her, exploding into shards and splinters as it bounced and cartwheeled away. A chair, or rather it had been.
Islif looked up in time to see a grinning pair of men launch a wardrobe over a balcony rail at her.
“ ’Ware!” she roared, launching herself into a full-length leap.
The crash, right behind her, was thunderous; two Dragons managed not even a peep before they were crushed flat.
Semoor, running hard, skidded helplessly in the sudden spray of blood, but kept his feet and continued on.
“What in the tluin is going on?” Semoor said. “They’re throwing wardrobes at us?”
A crossbow bolt hummed out of the warehouse and spun him around, laying open his arm at the elbow as it grazed him—and took a Dragon full in the face.
“Naed,” Semoor gasped. Then he shouted, two sprinting steps later, “Ho! Changed my mind! Let’s have more wardrobes!”
“What is going on?” Jhessail gasped, as they neared the gaping warehouse door. “Who are all these foes?”
“Zhent agents,” a Dragon grunted from right behind her. “ ’Least those two on the balcony were.”
“Were?”
“They just got ’em,” he growled in satisfaction.
Florin ducked down, plucked up the splayed shards of a smashed and discarded crate, and turned.
“Fire spell?” Florin asked.
“Done,” Jhessail said. She stopped and fumbled forth what she needed from her belt pouch. A Purple Dragon ran on into the warehouse, warily ducking low, then promptly screamed as two crossbow bolts tore through him.
Flame flared up from Jhessail’s hand. She caressed the rotten wood Florin held out to her, then another crate proffered by Islif.
Florin thanked her with a grin, turned, and hurled the blazing wreckage into the warehouse. There its merrily leaping flames showed all watching dusty shelves filled with sacks and coffers, a dead man sprawled out on the ground, two men fleeing with crossbows, the Purple Dragon who’d stopped two bolts writhing in agony on the floor, and …
“Where’re the chains?” the ranger asked suspiciously. “Don’t these high loft warehouses load wagons just inside their doors?”
Islif tossed her blazing crate into the warehouse to add more light, but shook her head.
“I see none,” Islif said. “Come on.”
Emboldened by being able to see that no crossbowmen stood aimed and waiting, Purple Dragons rushed the doorway from several directions. The Swords joined the streams of warriors, but were a little behind the first men—the ones who shouted in alarm then died, smashed bloodily to the floor, as someone unseen let fall the chains from above in great thundering heaps that buried the men they slew or struck senseless.
Other chains swung out of the dark corners of the warehouse in deadly arcs and smashed men into broken things and hurled them back into the faces of their slower fellows.
By the time Florin reached the chaos of broken and struggling men at the warehouse threshold, things were brightening in a familiar, flickering manner. He looked up.
“Get back!” he roared, catching Islif and swinging her around into a breath-stealing, jarring meeting with the onrushing Jhessail. “Back, everyone!”
A sword flashed above the burning crates and barrels on top of a rack high above, severing a rope—and to the thunderous clatter-clatter-clatter of a winch going mad, the flaming rack plunged toward the floor.
“Get out!” Florin shouted, wa
ving his arms at onrushing Purple Dragons. “Fire!”
He was still shouting when the crash, behind him, shook him off his feet and made the entire building creak and groan. Tongues of flame spat past him, hurling shrieking, blazing men out among their fellows.
Purple Dragons cursed colorfully, war wizards threw their arms up to shield their eyes, and over the crackling roar, war horns cried fire-warnings. Once, twice, thrice, and then the bellow of Dauntless could be heard, rising above all the tumult.
“War wizards,” Dauntless said, “quench yon fire! Swordcaptains, run to fetch every priest you can! Get that fire out!”
As the Swords rallied around him, Florin found himself face-to-face with a Dragon he knew: Swordcaptain Nelvorr.
“Sir Sword,” the officer gasped, “put your blade away. The ones we’re chasing are in yon warehouse.” He waved his arm in a circle. “We have it surrounded, on the other side, and no one has tried to break out that way yet. If they do, they’ll die.”
Florin looked into the flames. The place was an inferno just inside the door, and the front wall was leaking plumes of smoke and swiftly climbing lines of flame that traced the pitch that had been used to seal cracks in the boards. To either side of the door, however, the warehouse looked untouched. There wasn’t even any smoke coming from its shuttered windows.
“Are there any cellars? Tunnels?” Florin snapped.
“No,” replied a voice from behind him. A voice he’d heard before. “At least,” the Lady Lord of Arabel added, a wand held ready in her hand, “none are supposed to be—and my tax collectors look hard for such things.”
“I’m going in there,” Florin told her. A war wizard finished an elaborate spell and the fire died down noticeably.
“You surprise me not,” she replied with a half smile, waving him forward. Florin gave her a smile and a nod. Then he ran, the Swords at his heels.
Smoke greeted them, thick and curling, as Florin ducked in around the eastern doorpost and led the way, keeping low with his sword out.
The Swords hastened through the thinning blue haze, peering this way and that in hopes they’d see the dreaded crossbows before a bolt found them.
The place was a labyrinth of open-sided floors; pillars with pegs embedded in them; and stacked, roped-in-place sacks, barrels, and coffers. Ramps, cobwebs, and motionless hanging chains were everywhere.
Lanterns glimmered far behind the Swords as Purple Dragons entered the warehouse. The dancing lights of flames were gone, leaving only the faint light of a few dusty glowstones, high up on the walls in their furry-with-webs iron cages.
Another pillar onward.
And another. With every cautious step the Swords grew warier; soon they’d reach this end of the warehouse. If the men they sought weren’t back down the other end—and from the way the catwalks up in the roof beams ran, and from where Florin had seen that sword slicing the ropes, that wasn’t likely … They had to be somewhere here.
Close.
Waiting.
Of course, this was the lowest level. They could be anywhere behind the sacks up above, on all those dark, open-sided storage floors.
“How many warehouses like this does the city hold, again?” Semoor muttered to Pennae. “Strikes me you could steal stuff by the wagonload for years, and it’d not be missed.”
Pennae gave him a fierce grin—then a fiercer scowl.
“Later,” she whispered into his ear. “We’ll talk about this later, O high-principled holy man.”
Ahead, Florin threw up his arm in a warning wave. Then he drew aside against a stack of crates and pointed.
The Swords looked out at what he’d already discovered: a sea of spilled grain, fallen from sacks sliced open in some accident or other that now hung limp and empty.
A line of boot prints ploughed through them in a path that ended abruptly in otherwise undisturbed drifts of grain. Men had hurried this way then simply—vanished.
“Jhessail?”
The mageling stepped forward, her face set, until she was standing just on the edge of the grain.
“Strong magic,” she murmured, spreading her arms almost as if basking in the sun. “Like a fire, beating on my face.” She took a long step sideways, shook her head, and then did the same in the other direction, returning to where she’d first been standing. “Just here.”
“Like a door,” Doust murmured.
Semoor bent, scooped up some grain in his cupped hands, strode along the path of disturbed grain, and when he got to its end, threw his handful forward.
Aside from a little wisp of drifting dust, it abruptly vanished, right in front of him. “The way is open,” he said, stepping hastily to one side.
No crossbow bolts came hissing out of the empty air, and after a tense breath or two Semoor rejoined them.
“Agannor and Bey went this way, you think?”
Islif nodded grimly. “I think.”
Florin nodded too.
“All right,” Florin said. “We’ve not got our armor or gear, but if we go back to get them, I’m thinking the murderers will be gone forever. What say you?”
“Let’s go get them,” Pennae whispered. “I saw their faces, and her blood on their swords—and they tried to slice me often enough.”
Jhessail nodded.
“They know all about us,” Jhessail said. “I don’t want that creeping back at me unawares, some night while I sleep. After them!”
The Swords turned as one and started through the grain.
There was an angry shout from behind them. “Hoy! Hold! Stand and down weapons!”
The Swords spun around, their weapons raised, and found themselves looking at Purple Dragons. Lots of Purple Dragons, in full battle armor, wearing helms and shields and hefting spears in their hands.
“Swords of Eveningstar, put down your weapons and surrender! Now!”
A hard-faced ornrion none of the Swords had ever seen before, who bore a flame-encircled red dragon on his shield, strode to the fore. He wagged a gauntleted forefinger at them.
“We’ve heard all about you!” he said. “I arrest you, all of you, for fire-setting and—”
Florin regarded the ornrion incredulously.
“What?” Florin said.
“Down with your weapons, or we’ll down you. And quick about it, or I’ll seize the excuse and save Arabel a lot of bother by just butchering you like the mad dogs you are! Adventurers are always trouble.…”
Trailing his sword behind him in his fingertips, Florin trudged to meet the man—who came at him like an angry storm, wading into the grain and continuing his tirade.
“You’re mistaken,” the forester began, “and the Lady Lord of—”
“Horse dung, lying adventurer! ’Tis from her tongue we all heard of your villainy! Your crossbows have murdered a dozen Dragons this night, and if her orders to try to take you alive weren’t riding me, I’d—”
Florin spread his hands to show his peaceful intent—and the ornrion’s hand came up and took him by the throat.
For a moment, the forester stared disbelievingly into the man’s grimly smiling face. Then his fist came in with all the force he could put behind it, smashing up under the Dragon’s jaw.
The click of teeth clashing on teeth was loud, and the ornrion was staring at the rafters, up on tiptoe and already senseless. His failing hand let go of Florin’s throat, and the forester twisted and snatched the flaming dragon shield free of the man’s limply toppling body.
“Swords!” Florin roared, spinning around with his sword in one hand and the just-seized shield on his other arm. “To me!”
Florin charged through the grain until suddenly he—wasn’t there.
There was an instant of gently falling through endless rich blue mists ere Florin’s boot came down on hard stone. Stone somewhere underground, by the coolness and the damp, earthen smell. The blue radiance faded—
—at about the same instant as something crashed into and through the shield, slamming into h
im hard enough to shatter its stout metal.
And Florin’s arm beneath it.
Triumphant laughter roared out from ahead as the fletched end of the broken crossbow bolt that had maimed him brushed past Florin’s nose, into dark oblivion.
Stumbling back as pain lanced through him, Florin wondered how likely he was to end up following it …
The Purple Dragons charged, a shouting wave of deadly spear points.
“Get through!” Islif yelled at Jhessail and Pennae, swatting their behinds to urge them to greater haste as they plunged past her. “Stoop! Clumsum! Get in there!”
She waved her sword in defiance as she raced after them, grinning frantically as the foremost spear reached for her, perhaps the length of her own hand away from piercing her.
Then the world blinked, and she was falling through blue mist.
It blinked again, and Islif was standing in a dark stone-lined corridor with the rest of the Swords, who were clustered around … Florin? Hurt?
“Hoy!” she cried, as she spun around to face the blue glow behind her, “weapons out!”
Spears were emerging from it, thrusting out of the swirling blueness with grim-faced Purple Dragons behind them. Three soldiers whose eyes widened at the sight of their surroundings.
They widened still more when Islif struck aside two spearheads with her sword and ran in past the third to backhand its wielder across the face.
He stumbled into his fellows, there was a moment of startled hopping and cursing—and Pennae came out of the dark with a startled shriek, daggers flashing in both hands, and Doust and Semoor trotting behind her.
The Purple Dragons wavered. Islif drove her knee hard into a codpiece then thrust her leg sideways, toppling that soldier into the one next to him. Pennae landed hard on their wavering spears, smashing them to the stone floor and splintering the shaft of one of them as she flung herself forward, her fists hammering down two dagger-pommels onto two helms.
The Dragons reeled, and Pennae jerked on their helms, tilting the metal down half-over their faces. They struggled under her, punching, kicking, and trying to rise—and as Islif wrenched their spears away, Semoor leaned in, plucked a mace from the belt of one Dragon, and crowned the man solidly with it, leaving him reeling.