The Herald

by Ed Greenwood

  “Spittle of Shar,” he snapped, “I missed that one! After him!”

  He pointed and then sprinted, not looking to see if any Shadovar followed.

  Yet soon enough he heard them pounding along after him.

  Every one of them. The ruse had worked. The Shadovar tore off through Candlekeep, away from the chamber of the balconies—and the dumbfounded Prefects.

  This morning, the attacking mercenaries seemed endless. Even more numerous than the trees that stood all around this particular corner of the widespread fray.

  Storm, Rune, and Arclath had been fighting for what seemed like forever, an endless deadly dance of swing, duck, dodge, parry, rebound from the numbing clang of blade on blade, and hack again. There were a score of besiegers to every defender of Myth Drannor, or even more.

  Even given how many were being slaughtered with every panting, passing moment as the ring of attackers tightened around the city, yard by blood-soaked yard.

  “F-fall back!” Arclath panted, slipping again on dead bodies underfoot. They were slick with blood, flies buzzing in profusion everywhere.

  Not that he could hear the little pests. He was half deaf from all the clanging of blades striking blades or shields or armor, men shouting or screaming, raw dying shrieks on all sides. It had been nigh ceaseless, until a few panting moments ago.

  Amarune flung out a hand to catch his shoulder and steady him. Gasping, he thanked her with a nod, and leaned on his sword, using it as a crutch to keep himself upright while he fought for breath.

  This little lull in the fighting had come when the foe had fallen back to regroup. Which in this case meant drag the wounded away, reform survivors into new bands under the commanders who were left—probably all of them; these particular mercenary captains led from the rear—and in the meantime send fresh troops forward to pick up bodies and the dismembered, and fling them into heaps to clear some ground to walk on.

  So they could all come charging up to the elf lines again.

  Huh. Such as the “elf lines” were. There were perhaps a score of elves still on their feet, for as far as he could see along this ridge. And behind them all, there was no more wild forest, just the trees that sheltered and adorned the homes and garden terraces and soaring spires of Myth Drannor itself.

  If the defenders retreated again, it would be the city itself they were yielding. Building by building.

  “Sorry I got you into this, my love,” Rune whispered into his ear, as they leaned together for support, both gasping for breath. “You could still be safe by your fireside, back at home.”

  “While you got butchered here without me? Never! After all, you’d haunt me over it—I’d never get a moment’s sleep!”

  “True,” Rune whispered as she leaned against him. Forehead to forehead, they clung to each other, sharing their aches.

  Storm had been helping elf wounded, and was now trudging back to meet them, with her hair, with all of her, drenched in blood.

  Brow to brow with Arclath—who smelled as good as ever, she couldn’t help but notice—Amarune watched the bard come slowly up to them, trailing a sword that dripped with gore. So Chosen got just as weary as mere mortals.

  Somehow that was both discouraging and reassuring at the same time.

  They’d all been fighting hard amid the trees for what seemed like forever, and everyone’s arms—sword arms especially—ached and felt as heavy as castle stones.

  “Kissing again?” Storm teased them, as she picked her way over heaped elf bodies to come up beside them. “You young ones never stop, do you? Don’t forget to breathe, now!”

  They were both still too winded to give her suitably arch replies, so Rune settled for a rude gesture. Storm chuckled and embraced her, hugging her and then massaging the younger woman’s shoulders. Rune groaned.

  Arclath smiled at them both fondly—as a war horn blared far off in the trees.

  From far back in the enemy ranks somewhere.

  He peered in that direction. The besieging mercenaries seemed endless; Arclath could see banners swaying among the trees as their bearers clambered over roots as high as tables, moving closer. The farthest banner was distant indeed.

  He sighed, and leaned a little more heavily on his sword. There were too many mercenaries, too great a host for the surviving defenders to hold for long.

  But then, he’d known all along that without far superior magic to hurl on the battlefield, Myth Drannor was doomed. It wasn’t a question of if the city would fall, but when.

  The banners were moving again.

  “They’re coming,” he muttered. “Are there any elves in reserve, or is it just this handful of us to hold back an army?”

  Storm looked back over one shapely shoulder, then told him, “No, there’s another handful coming. I’d say Fflar is standing more or less alone against the mercenaries attacking the far side of the city. He’s sent most of his command to join us.”

  Then she added, “Excuse me. Stay where you are.”

  As Amarune and Arclath watched, the bard plunged down the steepest nearby slope, into a little pit ringed by the heaped dead—and shook herself like a wet dog, all over, her long silver hair thrusting itself out straight and stiff like a pincushion.

  The heir of the Delcastles hauled Rune hastily down, so only a fine rain of blood fell on them like a mist, rather than a huge wet wall of it.

  When they scrambled up again, to peer at the advancing mercenaries—who were thankfully coming with wary slowness, not shouting and charging—the Storm who joined them had hair that was silver again, clean of blood. The rest of her, however, was still besmirched.

  “That’s a neat trick,” Rune told her. “Show me that, when we have time.”

  “Gladly,” Storm agreed, as she raised a hand in greeting to the elves hastening to join them.

  “Lady Storm,” the foremost warrior greeted her with a wry smile. “Well met. It’s been a few summers.”

  “It has, Velathalar. Good to see you again. Are those with you likely to take a suggestion from a human, or are they more interested in trumpeting their precious honor and so dying in their own way?”

  Arclath was greatly amused to hear that a dumbfounded male elf said “Eh?” in just the same tone of voice a male human did. But recovered, he had to grant, faster.

  “Why?” Velathalar grinned. “What suggestion are you apt to make?”

  “That we retreat, right now, to just there, where the fallen end, so we can stand on sure footing while the mercenaries struggle on the dead underfoot.”

  “Wise,” the elf agreed, “not that honor will agree.” He whirled around to snap an order to the elves with him. “Back! Back to where the footing’s clear!”

  “What?” a taller, older female elf snapped back at him. “And surrender soil of our city without even fighting for it? Where is your honor, Velathalar Muirdraevrel?”

  Velathalar turned and gave Storm an “I told you so” look that was so clear and comical that Rune found herself giggling.

  Despite more mercenaries than she could count mounting the last corpse-strewn slope with bills and glaives and spears ready in their hands that even now were being lowered to menace her.

  “My honor,” Storm told the elf, before Velathalar could begin a reply, “comes from staying alive to win more of it, in days and months and years ahead. You do all Tel’Quess more service if you live to fight and defend beyond the next few minutes. If you’re fighting for grass and trees, why these, just here, in particular? Once you’re dead, you’ll never again be able to defend any of them.”

  The bard hadn’t raised her voice, but her hair was stirring around her shoulders, and her words carried to every elf along the ridge. Magic or Weave work. And most of the elves pulled back a few strides to open ground.

  “They’re here,” Arclath said warningly, as he backed carefully to join them, Rune at his side and Velathalar guarding his other flank.

  The angry elf looked at Storm, and Storm gave her a sunny
smile in return.

  About then the elf realized the two of them now stood alone, a good three or four paces ahead of all the other defenders. She grimaced, sighed, then turned and retreated with more haste than grace. Storm stood behind her, guarding her back all the way—as the mercenaries reached the end of where they’d dared to clear bodies aside, and broke into a stumbling charge across the heaped and slippery bodies, with ragged yells that mingled into a general rising roar.

  And the din of battle broke out again, metal clanging on metal, laced with screams and grunts and yells. Storm’s tresses thrust forward like tentacles, wielding hand axes and daggers and at least one stolen mercenary spear, and the elves of Myth Drannor fought alongside her with a lithe agility that Arclath had already learned he had to keep from watching, lest he be fascinated for an instant too long and pay for his distraction with his life. The elves were skilled and fighting for their home—but they were also weary from days of fighting. No matter how many mercenaries they slew, the motley human hireswords just kept coming, in a great sea of helms and shields and breastplates, flooding through the trees in a flow beyond counting, a surge of bodies trampling their own fallen that forced the outnumbered defenders slowly back, and back again, and then into a hasty hacking scramble along the ridge to keep from being cut off and buried in thrusting enemy blades, and …

  “Fall back!” Velathalar shouted, too beset by attackers to snatch at his horn. “Sound the retreat!”

  High, fluting horns promptly did just that from behind the foremost elves, then larger and more distant horns took up the blaring call.

  Storm’s hair curled around three throats from behind, and snatched that trio of Velathalar’s attackers off their feet; he used the respite to swiftly slash the other two and clamber up a heap of dying men he’d helped to build, to bellow, “Back, and rally!”

  He shouted it twice, and by some magic of Storm’s, his second shout rolled through the trees like thunder. A glowing banner promptly unfurled atop a rise to the east, as a rallying point—but out of the trees beyond the mercenaries came a black, howling cone of biting jaws and raking claws, pouring through the air just above gleaming, bobbing mercenary helms to pounce on the banner.

  The rise became briefly a dark cloud of swirling death and tatters of banner, but then the air turned bright, and the claws and jaws were beaten back, fading to nothingness.

  Storm’s face, as she fought, turned grim.

  The city wards should have stopped that Shadovar spell; it shouldn’t have taken a counterspell from an elf in the fray.

  The inevitable end was coming much faster than she’d feared. Hereabouts, in this particular battle, perhaps in her next panting handful of breaths. Despite all the reinforcements Fflar had sent.

  Elves who could not be spared, so if they fell here …

  And in the end, she must do her utmost to preserve Amarune, and take her far from this, no matter what else happened or who fell.

  She thought all of this without one moment of hesitation in her deadly dance of ducking, twisting, lunging, and leaping, sharp blades of steel thrusting and slashing at her constantly, many blows so heavy that sparks flew at every parry. She slew mercenaries with the same brutal ruthlessness they were trying to use on her, and they were falling in their dozens and scores, shoved onto the blades of those behind them, kicked to make them fall and trip their fellows, stunned from above by branches groaningly spell-bent for a moment, and beset by hails of fallen weapons flung in their faces by Storm’s tireless tresses. This was to the death, with no parleys nor ransoms, no chivalrous agreements for breathers or chances to retrieve the wounded or the dead.

  Mercenaries were dying at a sickening rate—yet elves were falling fast too, and soon there’d be too few to hold any ground here at all, and the battle would be into the city streets and flying bridges, catwalks and room after splendid room of the homes and mansions that—

  “Arclath!”

  That anguished shriek nigh deafened Storm, and she whirled with her heart sinking, afraid that whatever had befallen Lord Delcastle, whom she had come to love and respect, would drive his beloved so mad with grief that she’d run right onto mercenary steel uncaring, or not seeing her peril at all.

  And saw Arclath staggering back with a blade through his neck, the snarling mercenary who’d driven it there already dying, his fierce snarl sagging into bulging-eyed and agonized disbelief as a furious woman had leaped on him, her thighs now wrapped around his shoulders—and one of her daggers hilt deep in his nearest ear, her other dagger slashing at the man’s sword arm as if its blade could slice right through plate armor if it just struck often and hard enough.

  Rune was going to overbalance, her weight dragging herself and the mercenary she was riding down, down atop the already dead and dying underfoot, and there were three mercenaries with well-used swords already lurching forward, ready to hack and stab …

  Storm sprang to meet them, slashing viciously at faces and putting her shoulder into the chest of the first one, to topple him back into others and win space enough for Rune to come crashing down atop her mercenary without getting impaled on a reaching blade.

  Storm sent her hair lashing out in all directions, to blind and to ensnare sword wrists and to tug at ankles and elbows, heedless of the pain as some of her hair was torn out by the roots.

  Rune was down, crashing atop the mercenary she’d slain, his sword in Arclath and his dagger flying free into the air, and Storm sprang over her and landed on her toes right in front of the mercenaries she’d wounded and sent falling. She spent a precious spell to whirl up a dozen fallen weapons into a clanging, darting wall of slashing steel to keep back the mercenaries coming up behind those she’d felled, and spun around to try to get to Arclath.

  Rune was there first, of course, sobbing and crying his name and trying to hold her man up—but stumbling helplessly to the ground with him. Or rather, thudding down onto the heaped bodies of the dead and dying. Storm shouldered her aside, to corral Arclath’s head in one hand, and kiss him long and hard on his blood-drooling mouth.

  As she brutally tore the sword out of his neck.

  “What’re you do—”

  Rune stopped in midshriek as she saw silver fire leaking from around their joined lips.

  Storm was holding Arclath up, kneeling over him, and in her strong but shaking arms Amarune saw her man writhe and stiffen. His eyes flared, momentarily becoming two silver flames.

  Then he shuddered, arched—and fell back out of Storm’s embrace, shaking his head and moaning like a bewildered child in pain. His eyes were his own again, but trailing smoke as they wept blood, his face clenched in racking agony.

  Yet there was no blood welling out of his mouth anymore, and the great wound in his neck was—gone.

  And Storm was getting to her feet with her face drawn and old, swaying and staggering, and throwing up her hands in a desperate magic that flung scores of weapons up into the air from the dead all around and whirled them at the mercenaries surging forward.

  Screams and wet gurglings rent the air as the front ranks of the besiegers collapsed into wild butchery, blood spraying in all directions, as Storm turned grimly to Arclath, who was once more in Rune’s fierce embrace, and said grimly, “It’s past time that the two of you went into hiding—and stayed there.”

  “And leave you to die here? Leave Myth Drannor to fall?”

  “Are we going to argue this?” Storm hissed fiercely, glaring at them both for just a moment before she found it prudent to whirl around and glare at the nearest mercenaries—those creeping around the edges of her spell to try to reach them.

  “Y-yes,” Rune managed, matching her glare for glare. “Don’t think I’m ungrateful—”

  “Oh, I don’t,” Storm replied, trading two swift parries with a mountain of a mercenary before dispatching him with a leaping thrust up through his mouth into his brain. “I think you’re being stupid. Just as I was stupid to bring you here.”

  She
spun around and slashed another mercenary across his eyes, letting the force of her swing bring her back around to face them—and another mercenary, who stumbled back in alarm at her speed. “A mistake—”

  She sprang to meet that stumbling mercenary, and at the last instant sidestepped and surprised the one beside him with a thrust through the man’s leather-gloved sword hand. He shrieked, she twisted her steel free and fed it back to the stumbling man—right through his neck, just as Arclath had been wounded, something he winced at the sight of—and turned to add, “—I’ll now—”

  She spun around again, to strike aside a hurled spear, then pluck up a fallen mercenary with her hair and fling him at the ankles of a trio of advancing besiegers, forcing them into cursing falls, and added over her shoulder, “—rectify.”

  And without any warning at all she spun around again with her arms spread, and gathered Arclath and Amarune into a fierce hug.

  Which became a tingling shroud of silver-blue fire, magic that snarled up into a rushing wind that flung all three of them aloft, soaring up in a great arc that tore through leaves and small branches to hurtle up into the sky, far above the countless helms and shoulders of the mercenary army below.

  And on through air that was surprisingly chilly, high and far before it started to descend, the huge trunk of a gigantic shadowtop looming up to meet them—

  Storm hissed something that snatched all three of them abruptly aside, to the left, to miss crashing into that huge tree.

  Instead, they smashed into the bough of another tree with enough force to wind and daze all three of them, and break Storm’s hug—so the three of them tumbled on through a bruising, buffeting, deafening chicane of torn and whirling leaves, shattering twigs, and dancing branches, plummeting down, down, and—

  Through a tangle of vines and snapping, collapsing dead trees those vines had strangled, to crash at last to earth.

  Or rather, several soft and mushy feet of dead leaves, to rebound out of muck that had a decidedly skunky smell, and roll to a painful stop in a thorn bush.