Reckoning of Fallen Gods

by R. A. Salvatore

  Victoria ignored him altogether, reaching for the third arrow, trusting in her sisters.

  Elysant leaped past her, back by the fire, and smashed her quarterstaff across it, launching a spray of embers into the faces of the charging dwarves. The two to the left fell back in surprise, the next in line to the right stumbled and grabbed at his stung eyes, and the one furthest right lifted an ugly knife and leaped in at the woman.

  But coming behind him, beside him, and past him, with a great malachite-aided leap, came Diamanda, and she swept her hand across the side of the powrie’s face as she went, only her hand wasn’t a hand, but a great tiger’s paw. The dwarf howled, grabbed at his torn face, and stumbled right into his nearest companion, who was also off balance.

  Diamanda landed and sidestepped fast as Elysant cut before her, sliding down to her knees and thrusting her staff into the midst of the tangled legs of the two dwarves. Up she came immediately, the tip of her quarterstaff planted, and she used the leverage to pitch both the dwarves to the side.

  Into the fire.

  At the same time, Victoria saw her target clearly, the powrie racing in at them, an arrow sticking from one shoulder, his axe up high over his head. She shot him in the face and he fell away.

  And away went the bow, too, the Disciple of St. Gwendolyn drawing the fine sword Braumin had given her, and rushing around Diamanda and Elysant to anchor the far right of the line. She warned Thaddius to keep up as she went.

  “Behind Elysant!” she clarified as the brother hustled in her wake.

  In mere moments, the three sisters had flanked the confused powries, shifting their entire defensive posture to the right side of the dwarf foursome.

  The two in the embers scrambled up, but one took a wicked crack in the face from Elysant’s staff, the other got his arm ripped by Victoria’s sword.

  The other two, though, recovered and swept around their fellows, rushing in at Diamanda, who met them with a scream and quick rush, only to feint and roll away, turning a complete circuit as Elysant swept before her, the quarterstaff banging against that strange multiheaded weapon and driving it to the side so that the further dwarf couldn’t get in close enough to score a hit on the retreating Diamanda.

  Elysant seemed a blur of motion, then, and indeed a blur, as she called upon the shadows offered by the diamonds in her cloak.

  Victoria quickly followed her, cutting in front of the second powrie on that end and stabbing at his face, but not to score a hit, for she could not. No, she simply drove him back a step, so that she could skid to a stop, reverse her footing, and throw a backhand with her sword at the furthest to the right, batting down his dagger arm.

  Just then Diamanda came around, her tiger’s paw raking at the dwarf’s face, the stiffened fingers of her other hand shooting forward to jab the dwarf hard in the throat.

  The dwarf staggered back, and then fell back more as starbursts erupted in his face, a series of tiny explosions from the hurled celestite crystals of Brother Thaddius. They burned and stung, smoked the dwarf’s dung-dipped beard, and poked little holes in his face.

  Diamanda glanced back as she moved to keep up with Victoria, to see Thaddius fumbling with several stones, seemingly at a loss. One hand went back to his pouch where he kept the little firebombs of celestite, while in the other he rolled several stones, in no apparent coordination.

  “Brother!” she said sharply to shock him into the moment.

  But she couldn’t say more than that or do more than that. Victoria rolled behind Elysant, flanking her to the left, and Diamanda had to move in tight to the right of the centering defensive warrior. She hoped Thaddius would have the good sense to get behind Elysant, but if not, there was nothing she could do for him.

  The three dwarves came on, more angry than hurt. The fourth moved to join them, but got hit by another celestite barrage and fell back once more.

  Victoria flipped her sword to her left hand and sent it out across in front of Elysant, inviting the dwarf before her to bear in, which he, predictably, did. The agile woman rolled backward, bending her knees to keep just ahead of the dagger, and as the dwarf bore in, Elysant’s staff stabbed across before him, right under the thrusting arm, and drove upward, lifting the blow harmlessly.

  And under the upraised staff, to the left, went Victoria, between Elysant and the dwarf she had driven back with her sword thrust, moving into the dwarf battling Diamanda, commanding his attention with a sudden flurry and rush.

  She stopped again, retreating quickly between her sisters, but the distraction was all that Diamanda needed, and out lashed the tiger’s paw, tearing skin from the dwarf’s face and shoulder.

  “Ah, ye ugly runts!” the dwarf gasped, falling back.

  Diamanda pursued, thinking she had a kill, but Elysant’s cry stopped her, and turned them all, to see another dwarf, an arrow in his shoulder, another in his face, rushing in at Thaddius. Elsyant dove back to intercept, but the dwarf she had blocked recognized the movement and his knife chased her and caught her, sliding into her lower back.

  Still, the small woman did not turn, but continued forward and drove the newcomer aside before he could get to Thaddius.

  Victoria intercepted the knife-wielder so he couldn’t do more harm. Diamanda closed tight to her, both moving with Victoria to re-form the defensive line.

  By all rights, they were winning the fight. They had hit their enemies many times harder than they had been hit.

  And yet they were losing. They all knew it. The powries, stuck with arrows, faces clawed, throats jabbed, hair burned, seemed hardly hurt!

  “Victoria, flee and tell St.-Mere-Abelle of our fate,” Diamanda said, and she slugged a dwarf hard across the face.

  But he laughed and swatted at her with his spiked club—which Elysant blocked with her staff.

  The cunning bloody cap rolled the club over that block, though, and clipped Elysant across the arm, tearing the sleeve from her white robe and gashing her shoulder-to-elbow.

  The tough Disciple of St. Belfour just growled through it, though, and spun her club like a spear and jabbed out, once, twice, thrice, into the dwarf’s face and throat.

  Pain burned in Elysant. Blood ran liberally down the back of her leg and from her arm, but she growled through it and worked furiously to keep the ferocious dwarves from her beloved sisters.

  But they were overmatched and outnumbered, and for all of the beauty in movement and precise strikes, the dwarves would not fall down.

  “Go, Victoria, the Church must know,” Diamanda cried, and the end was garbled as she took a glancing, but painful, blow from that many-headed weapon. She barely managed to straighten and fall back as the axe of another swept in at her, and still would have been hit had not Elysant’s quarterstaff flashed across yet again.

  “No!” Victoria cried.

  “The Church is greater than any of us! Go!” Elysant yelled at her.

  A dwarf leaped up high, descending upon Elysant, but Victoria sprang between them, her sword longer than the dwarf’s knife, the blade catching the descending powrie just under the ribs, driving up as his weight carried him down, down.

  Blood erupted from the wound and the dwarf tried to scream, but all that came forth was a shower of red mist and spurting liquid.

  Victoria couldn’t possibly disengage in time to bring her sword into a defensive posture, so she simply let the blade fall with the powrie—their first kill, and one, at least, would not be dipping its beret in the spilled blood of the sisters!

  Up and around came Victoria, seemingly unarmed, and that proved an advantage, as the powrie she had been facing thought her an easy kill and came in with abandon.

  She slugged him square in the face, sending him staggering backward, and how she wanted to leap upon him and choke the life from him!

  But she could not, and she followed her training and fell back in line beside Elysant.

  “Go,” Elysant pleaded with her yet again, and she meant it, for while one dwarf was down, the
others pressed them hard from every angle. They couldn’t hold on against the fierce bloody caps—Elysant’s left leg was going numb and the fingers on her left hand tingled so that she could hardly hold her quarterstaff.

  A powrie blade flashed out at Diamanda to Elysant’s right. She sent the staff out to block.

  But too late, and Diamanda staggered, her belly stabbed.

  “Tell them, sister,” Elysant pleaded with Victoria. “Tell them we fought well.”

  And Victoria almost fled, and intended to, but a hand fell upon her shoulder, and before she could react, a blue-white glow encompassed her.

  “Sister!” she cried to Elysant, and she moved a step closer and grabbed Elysant’s wounded upper arm.

  How Elysant howled, and started to pull away.

  But she too saw the blue-white ghostly glow flowing over her form, and instead she reached her staff out toward Diamanda, calling to her to grab it.

  And as the woman did, inviting the glow to encapsulate her as well, Elysant managed to glance back at Brother Thaddius.

  He, too, was glowing, for he had initiated the enchantment, after all, from the serpentine he held in his upraised palm, its texture blurred by the blue-white shield.

  The other gem he held, though, the mighty ruby, was not so dulled, for it was outside the shield.

  It glowed fiercely—Father Abbot Braumin had promised Thaddius that this stone would hold all that he could put into it and more.

  And so it had.

  And so Brother Thaddius lived up to his reputation with the Ring Stones, for from that ruby came a tremendous burst of fire, a blast that rolled about the four monks and the five powries, that rushed out to the trees and into the boughs, and despite the dreary rain and sleet, set them ablaze.

  And set the powries ablaze!

  But not the sisters and Thaddius, no, for the serpentine shield held strong.

  Elysant felt the warmth in her face, but the biting fires could not get through the shield and could not curl her skin.

  The fireball lasted only an instant, and when the immediate flames rolled to nothingness, the three sisters went at the dwarves with fury, for the stubborn beasts had not fallen.

  But the fight had turned, and the dwarves, wounded, horribly burned and dazed, could not get their bearings, could not mount any defense against the staff of Elysant, the pounding fists of Victoria, and the deadly tiger’s paw of Diamanda.

  One of the dwarves did get out of the immediate area, fleeing through the trees.

  “Sister, your bow!” Elysant cried to Victoria.

  They both realized that wouldn’t work when they glanced at the bow on the ground behind them, its string melted by the fireball, its wood smoking.

  “Catch him!” Diamanda cried.

  “Hold!” said Thaddius, stepping toward Victoria with an outstretched hand.

  All three women looked at him curiously for a moment, but then Victoria grinned and brought forth a gemstone, pressing it in Thaddius’s palm. He took it and clenched his fist up before his eyes, sending his power into the gem.

  Clever Diamanda removed her cat’s eye circlet and placed it over Thaddius’s head, and his vision shifted with the magic, turning night into day, showing him the fleeing powrie clearly.

  He didn’t even need to see the dwarf, though, for he could feel him. He could feel the metal rivets in the dwarf’s leather armor, and could feel keenly the long metal knife he held tight against his chest.

  Ah, that knife!

  Brother Thaddius thrust his hand forward and opened his fingers and the lodestone shot forth, speeding until it clanged against that blade.

  Of course, to reach the blade, it had to first drive right through the dwarf.

  The powrie fell to his knees, then toppled to his face.

  * * *

  The arguments raged day and night, one issue after another.

  “The Church has been through terrible times, Father Abbot,” Haney kept reminding Braumin Herde.

  Braumin nodded each time, and tried to offer a smile, truly appreciating Abbot Haney’s attempts to keep perspective on this trying College of Abbots.

  This late afternoon, the argument centered on the southern city of Entel, the only city in Honce-the-Bear serving as home to two separate abbeys. With Dusibol ascending to the rank of Abbot of St. Bondabruce and St. Rontlemore in chaos, the idea had been floated to give the man the lead of both abbeys until the situation could be better sorted.

  Of the seven major abbeys of Honce-the-Bear, St.-Mere-Abelle, St. Gwendolyn-by-the-Sea, St. Honce, St. Belfour, St. Precious, and the pair in Entel, no two were more ferocious rivals than Bondabruce and Rontlemore! St. Bondabruce was the larger, and had prospered greatly because of the Duke of Entel’s affinity toward the southern Kingdom of Behren. Many of Bondabruce’s monks claimed Behrenese heritage—Blessed St. Bruce himself was dark-skinned, and claimed ancestry in the fierce Chezhou-Lei warrior class of the Behrenese city of Jacintha.

  St. Rontlemore, on the other hand, had ever stayed faithful to the line of Ursal, and indeed had been built by one of the former kings who was angered by the Abbot of St. Bondabruce and the man’s overt love and loyalty to Jacintha. In the De’Unneran Heresy, Bondabruce had sided with the powers of Ursal, with De’Unnero and King Aydrian.

  St. Rontlemore had been routed.

  And now, with the smell of blood still lingering in the heavy air about the mother abbey, the upstart new Abbot of St. Bondabruce was trying to spread his covetous wing over St. Rontlemore!

  The volume in the great hall reached new heights that day, a volume not seen since the battle in that very room. A weary Father Abbot Braumin hadn’t even lifted the gavel, and could only shake his head, knowing that this had to play out, however it might.

  “Dusibol will challenge you if all of Entel falls under his domain,” Viscenti warned Braumin and Haney at one point. “Entel is strong, very strong.”

  Braumin Herde merely nodded and rubbed his weary face, with so many trials hovering about him. Given his bold moves, all controversial even among his supporters, he knew that he was not strong here, certainly not strong enough to determine the situation in Entel, which, with its proximity and strong ties to Jacintha, had always been a trouble spot for the Abellican Church.

  And so the arguing continued.

  “Vespers cannot be called soon enough,” Braumin lamented to Haney and Viscenti. He perked up even as he spoke, seeing the room’s outer door swinging open and a young brother rushing in, perhaps to call that very hour.

  Braumin’s excitement turned to curiosity when he noted that the clearly agitated young monk was rushing his way and holding a very wet sack.

  The man dared approach the Father Abbot directly, ignoring the stares of many in the room who were beginning to catch on that something must be amiss.

  “From legionem in primo, Father Abbot,” the young brother explained, handing him the sack, along with a rolled parchment. “It was brought in by a peasant rider. The man was nearly dead from starvation, as was his horse, for he had not stopped for many hours.”

  Braumin stared at him, unsure of what to make of the curious turn of the phrase describing the band sent to St. Gwendolyn, a playful name that had been no more than a private joke among Braumin’s inner circle, Brother Thaddius, and the three sisters who had gone off to St. Gwendolyn-by-the-Sea.

  Braumin unrolled the parchment, his eyes widening with every word.

  “Brothers,” he cried, rising from his seat. “Brothers! Sisters!”

  Now he did reach for the gavel, but he didn’t need it, for his tone had demanded and received the attention of all.

  “What news, Father Abbot?” Abbot Dusibol called—for no better reason than to inject himself into what seemed an important moment, Braumin recognized.

  Braumin could hardly read, for his hands began to tremble, and as he digested the text scrawled before him, he realized that he might have erred in calling attention to it before he fully understood its c
ontents.

  He looked up, the blood drained from his face, and he knew it was too late.

  “Our dear sisters and brother bound for St. Gwendolyn were waylaid on the road by bloody cap dwarves,” he stated.

  A collective gasp was followed by more than a little grumbling and smug proclamations of some variation of “I told you so.”

  Father Abbot Braumin handed the parchment to Viscenti and grabbed up the sack, pulling it open.

  His eyes lit up as he stared into the bag. He looked up at the crowd, leaning forward as one in anticipation.

  With a knowing smile—knowing that Pagonel’s band had, for the second time, bolstered his position, Father Abbot Braumin reached into the sack, and very deliberately began removing the contents.

  One powrie beret at a time.

  The cheers grew and grew and grew.

  Father Abbot Braumin knew then that he would indeed have a great voice over the events in Entel.

  * * *

  “There they are,” Sister Diamanda announced. She lay atop a bluff, under drooping pines with branches pulled down by heavy, melting snow. Down the slope before her sat a collection of farmhouses, and in the lane between them stood a man in Abellican robes.

  Elysant, Victoria, and Brother Thaddius crawled up beside her. They had been hunting for these monks since their encounter with the powries several days earlier—the powries had hinted pretty clearly that they were in contact with some monks, after all.

  “They deal with powries,” Diamanda went on. “They must be De’Unnerans.”

  “We do not know that,” Thaddius replied, rather sharply. He stared down at the houses and the brother in the square. A second brother joined the man, and Thaddius’s eyes flashed with recognition. He knew this man, Glorious, and knew, too, that Diamanda’s claims of allegiance were quite true.

  “Are you ready for a fight, sister?” Diamanda asked Elysant, who smiled and nodded.

  “She was ready before Thaddius used his soul stone on her wounds after the battle,” Victoria put in.

  “Truly,” Diamanda agreed, tapping Elysant’s forearm. “I cannot believe how powerfully you shook off the pain and continued the fight.”