Shadows of Doom

13

Angruin Stormcloak snarled in anger. They had a mage! So this was no simple uprising, but the work of a powerful enemy-perhaps meddling mages from Sembia or Cormyr, but more likely from within the Brotherhood. This fool attacking him would doubtless be some apprentice given a wand and told to prove himself, but still…

Stormcloak cast fire again. This time, the air in front of him turned golden, there came a melodious chiming as of many bells, and the scent of fresh-baked bread wafted past-but no flaming death blasted those who stood against him. His magic had gone wild. Again.

He stood alone, facing enemies across an open place, armed only with spells he could not rely on. Not a prudent situation.

Angruin turned and beckoned to those waiting in the castle with both his arm and his will. The thread of magic held. He reached silently down it and forced Lord Longspear, mounted at their head, to roar the charge and urge his mount forward. Then the Zhentarim wizard scrambled down off the road, to the side of the marketplace where the fewest dalefolk waited to storm back at him.

A moment later, he heard the angry thunder of many plunging hooves, and the Wolves swept down from the castle into the marketplace, scattering to level their lances and spur into the mouths of streets and alleys. For a breath or two the world was all snorting horses, creaking leather, and jangling harnesses. Then the black-armored Wolves were in among the buildings, and the ringing of steel-and the shrieking-began. Satisfied, Stormcloak stood watching as screaming men fled and fell. The folk of the dale would pay in blood for their defiance.

War came to a certain lane on charging hooves. The lances of two Wolves flashed down as they made for the mouth of the street, bellowing laughter and claiming specific targets as their kills.

The two Harpers there, crouched against a wall in front of Irreph and Ylyndaera Mulmar, rose smoothly, blades flashing. Belkram set his teeth and struck the lance of the first Wolf skyward.

As the lance flew up, Itharr leapt under it to tumble the Wolf off his horse with a kick. The second Wolf rode over him without slowing, leaning out to drive his lance through the naked high constable. As the glittering point swept down, Irreph put Daera behind him with one strong hand and raised his chains with the other.

Belkram's blade came down hard on the butt of that lance. The lance's tip leapt up and over Irreph's shoulder to skirl along the stone wall behind him in a shower of sparks.

Then the Wolf was past, hooves thundering down the lane, and Itharr was rising out of the dust with his dagger dark with blood, letting fall the visor of the first Wolf. "Now!" Belkram bellowed, stepping out into the marketplace and waving his blade. "Strike them down in the narrow places! For Mulmar, and freedom!" Roars and waved weapons answered him; dalefolk were still up and fighting.

Across the open space, the Zhentarim wizard snarled and raised his hand. Belkram ducked hastily back into the lane.

An instant later, the old man on his knees among the barrels smote Stormcloak again with a pair of magic missiles, spoiling his spellcasting. The wizard's scream of rage could be heard clearly over the shouting and the thunder of hooves.

Then a mounted Wolf waving a long, dark mace was thundering across the marketplace toward the lane.

"Is that Elminster?" Itharr yelled as the two Harpers snatched up a lance and swung it together, like a great broom, to sweep this third Wolf out of his saddle.

"I think so," Belkram called back as the man crashed helplessly to earth, boot heels bouncing. Itharr raced in to leap atop him, and their roll together was brief and brutal.

Long training made Belkram look back at where the second Wolf had gone, just in time to see him spurring back, lance first. Irreph was turning to face him, chains flying. Daera hadn't fled and now could only stare helplessly at the lance leaping at her throat-and scream.

Belkram shouted and ran, knowing he'd not be in time.

Itharr threw his sword, then his dagger after it. They flashed end over end through the air.

Irreph shoved his daughter hard and she fell. He stepped forward to swing his chains and smash the lance tip aside, but it was already dipping and turning to follow Ylyndaera's plunge.

A shuttered window on the other side of the lane flew open, and a red-cheeked goodwife shrieked defiance and hurled a chamber pot out at the galloping Wolf. It struck the side of his face squarely, whipping his head around as it shattered and breaking his helm, skull, and neck all in one dull crash. The falling body stopped both of Itharr's weapons on its way to the ground.

The goodwife raised horrified hands to her mouth and screamed. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell back out of view.

The two Harpers ran to Ylyndaera, who was picking herself up gingerly, spitting road dirt and holding her scraped hands painfully curled.

"Go hide, girl!" the high constable roared, shaking her. Then he looked up at the two men in leathers and snapped, "Take her somewhere safe!"

"There is no such place," Itharr told him quietly.

"I will not run from this," Daera told her father in a trembling voice. "What good is life to me if you are killed after I turn my back and run away? I'm staying!" She went to the nearest fallen Wolf and tugged a belt dagger from its sheath. It glinted in her hand as she scowled at the galloping Wolves out in the marketplace.

Then she turned to her father, face white and hands trembling. "Let's kill us some Wolves," she managed to say before she turned away and was very sick.

"Our swords are needed!" Belkram bellowed as Itharr tore his weapons from the fallen Wolf. "If the gods will it so, we'll meet again after the bloodletting's done!"

The high constable nodded, holding his sobbing daughter tenderly with hands that still trailed chains. The two Harpers clapped Irreph's shoulder and ran out into the marketplace.

Bodies lay everywhere, and not a few of them wore the armor of the Wolves. Their surviving comrades were milling about the streets and yards around the market, hacking and howling. After the initial easy butchery done by their lances and the plunging hooves of their horses, they'd found themselves surrounded, often isolated, and lacking room to readily turn their mounts. Wolves were now losing as many struggles as they won in the alleys. Old men and young boys alike leapt on them from windows and balconies above, or toppled barrels under their horses. If a Wolf fell, there was a general roar and rush, and he seldom had the time to get up again.

Stormcloak saw that the only route he could hurl spells down without slaying Wolves as well as dalefolk was the lane that had emptied when Irreph Mulmar snatched up someone smaller and dove headlong through a window.

He also saw two men in leathers coming for him, blades out, and knew he dare not trust in his spells to bring them down. He set his will and called Longspear back from a bloody fray far down a side street.

The Lord of the High Dale, his armor spattered and dented, spurred his snorting, wild-eyed mount back into the marketplace, turned it with ruthless strength, and rode hard at the two men, pulling the curved horn from his belt as he came.

The call to "retreat and rally" rang out. To a Zhentilar, ignoring a signal horn meant death; to a man they turned and fought or galloped their way back toward the open market. At their heels ran or limped the folk of the dale, closing in again around the edges of the trampled, corpse-strewn marketplace.

They were in time to see Longspear lean out of his saddle and swing mightily with his great gore-bathed warhammer at a man on foot who wore dusty leathers and a grim expression. The man dove and rolled aside as nimbly as any acrobat and came up circling, sword flashing.

Another Wolf lancer charged at the man in leathers from behind, but two white stars whistled from a shop front to strike the soldier down. The horse was riderless when it thundered past the man with the sword.

Another man in leathers was running in at the lord's other side. Longspear jerked his reins about savagely, but the man's sword was already leaping for his throat. With a shriek of straining metal, the warhammer met the striking steel just in front of the lord's impassive helm and turned it aside, but the man dropped it and dove in, hurling himself at the lord's ribs and upper leg.

The horse bucked. Armored arms flailed for balance, and Lord Longspear crashed to earth. The first man he'd struck at was waiting. His dagger went in under the lord's helm with the speed of a striking snake.

A great, savage roar went up from the watching folk, and they were pouring out into the marketplace, running amid the still-gathering Wolves. The dalefolk leapt and swung weapons as if driven by the gods themselves. The Zhent warriors fought to stay in the saddles of bucking mounts and laid about themselves desperately with their own blades. The red, shouting chaos of Tempus, god of war, reigned over the marketplace.

"I'm missing something!" Irreph Mulmar snarled in frustration, hearing the tumult outside the shuttered shop he'd plunged into. He thrust his struggling daughter into the arms of the fat woman who sold rope, cord, and thread there. "Ulraea, watch her for me, will you? And keep her here!"

"Aye, sir," Ulraea began doubtfully, but Ylyndaera twisted out of her grasp like swirling wind and leapt across the room toward the window her father had brought her in by.

"By all the gods, girl, forgive me," he said, chains rattling, and clipped her on the jaw as she ducked past.

Ylyndaera Mulmar continued gracefully, face first, to the floor and lay there unmoving. Irreph snatched her up by the shoulders; her head hung limply. Without pause he swung her into Ulraea's arms and said, "Just hold her here, will you? She'll be right again, all too soon. I must be out there!"

He whirled, shackles gleaming, and plunged back out through the window. One of its shutters broke off as he burst out into the battle, to hang dangling in his wake.

Stormcloak swayed amid the milling horses. He clutched his head and his gut, feeling wretchedly sick and wincing at the splitting pain in his head, all at the same time. Gods! So that was what it was like to be linked to the mind of a man when he's killed. Ohhh, gods above!

When Irreph charged out into the marketplace, a slim figure ran with him: a long-haired, beautiful woman in tattered leather armor, the one who'd earlier been with the wizard with the wand. A long sword gleamed in her hand. Irreph frowned. What had the Harpers called her?

One of the Knights of Myth Drannor, they'd said. Irreph shot another look at her; she winked back. He'd heard of that band of adventurers-who in the Dales hadn't? — and she certainly looked as if she knew how to handle a blade. He glanced back. There was no sign of the old man with the wand now. Elminster or not, he'd vanished.

Irreph began to think, for the first time that day, that the High Dale could be his again. He just might live to see the last of these accursed Zhents gone. He bounded forward and swung his chains with a savage grin, smashing the nearest Wolf from his saddle.

The man fell on the other side of his horse. He staggered up and got out his sword before Irreph could reach him. The Wolf's broad blade swung up, and the high constable had to leap back. His chains were too slow and heavy to stop the flashing steel of a good bladesman in time.

Then a slim sword came past his shoulder to his rescue, taking the Wolf's blade aside. Its wielder fenced with the Wolf in a dazzling exchange of cuts and parries before sliding her blade in with silken ease through one eyehole of the Wolf's helm. The lady Knight! Sharantyr, that was her name!

Irreph turned to her. "My thanks, Sharantyr of Myth Drannor," he said formally, as if he wore court robes and not merely hair and dirt. "Welcome to the High Dale."

"The honor is mine, High Constable," she replied calmly, saluting him with her bloodied blade. "Shall we stand together awhile?"

Irreph smiled and indicated the fray before them with an offering hand. She laughed and ran forward.

The next Wolf was already beset by four dalefolk wielding pitchforks and clubs. Sharantyr ran her sword point into the back of his knee, and he fell from his saddle in pain. His attackers did not give him time to moan very long.

They ran on, Irreph bearing to the left around the main press of horses and struggling men. "The castle!" he yelled. "We must get at the wizards. Without them, these Blackhelms are just so many swordsmen."

Sharantyr nodded, and they ran at another Wolf in their way. Irreph's chains smashed the man from his saddle without pause. Beyond, they saw the Zhentarim wizard who'd hurled fire and lightning standing at the end of the castle road, in obvious pain.

Sharantyr plucked a dagger from her boot and threw it, all in one smooth motion.

Had they been closer, she might have struck the man down. As it was, he saw death flashing through the air toward him and stepped aside. They both saw him shake his head, look around, and back away. His hands moved and he was gone, vanished as if he had never been there.

"The castle!" Irreph snarled again, and Sharantyr nodded. To their right, the two Harpers were hacking and thrusting like men possessed, leading the men of the dale against the Wolves. Pitchforks and daggers held by grim and trembling dale farmers were sending horses down in rolling agony or goading them to bolt, dumping their riders as they fled.

Irreph determinedly smote another Wolf from his saddle with a sweep of his heavy chains. The high constable grabbed the reins of the terrified horse, hauled himself into the saddle by brute strength, and forced the animal's head around toward the castle.

The horse snorted and bucked, plunging and twisting. Irreph hung on, his chains flailing the air. Sharantyr used her blade and voice to turn another horse aside. She ran along beside Irreph as the high constable's borrowed horse suddenly burst into a gallop toward the castle gates.

There were Wolves in the way, those who'd fallen back to hold their line of retreat. Only one was mounted, and his horse reared and gave way. Irreph drove through the gap, flailing with his chains at the Wolves around him. On his right, Sharantyr's glittering blade leapt and cut like a shuttle on the loom of some mad weaver.

A last shouting Wolf fell under the wild hooves of Irreph's borrowed horse, and they were through. By main strength the high constable kept his mount aimed up the road to the castle. Sharantyr sprinted along behind him and to his right, sword out.

Quarrels hissed around them, falling like rain, as they drew nearer to the towering stone walls. Ahead, the gates stood open for the Wolves' return. Irreph leaned low over the neck of the horse and spurred it on.

His mount stiffened under him. A crossbow bolt had struck its flank. It started to rear and spasmed again as another quarrel struck its neck just in front of Irreph's face. The world reared and rocked, then the high constable felt himself dragged from the saddle, back and to the right. He fell heavily on the cobbles in a rattling of chains, beside Sharantyr.

She was clutching the chain she'd hauled him down by, and breathing hard. "Come!" she gasped, as a fresh shower of quarrels sought their lives hungrily.

The twisting, rolling horse was struck again, but its agonized bulk shielded them from a bolt or two. Sharantyr led their charge up to the gates. Grim-faced Wolves were waiting for them, blades and shields raised.

As Stormcloak cast his spell, he could see the naked, wild-eyed high constable and that woman heading directly for him. All around, men were yelling or screaming or dying. In an instant they were gone as the teleport whirled him away.

Stormcloak was suddenly somewhere quieter. The castle, yes, but-gods! He was falling, only empty air under his boots! Where-?

He didn't have time for any more thought before he slammed hard into something that collapsed under him with a human shriek and a crumpling, metallic sound.

Stormcloak lay still, fighting for air. Under him, an unfortunate guard lay unmoving. His magic had gone awry, dropping him from at least three man-heights in the air. He shook his head and struggled grimly to his feet. Another spell gone wrong, and this day was not over, not for a long time yet.

Wolves watched openmouthed as Angruin Stormcloak rose stiffly from atop the crumpled body of the guard. His brow glistened with sweat and his face was white. He did not look back at the man who'd been beneath him.

A simple light spell had gone crazily wrong this morn. Then a fireball had failed in the marketplace, and now this. What was happening?

Angruin Myrvult strode toward his nearest spellbook. Seeing his face, Wolves scrambled aside to keep out of his way.

An old serving man with a battle-axe in his hands stood leaning against a wall and panting. He was covered with blood, some of it his own, and his leg hurt abominably where some Wolf had slashed it before dying. His head hurt, and his chest tightened in stabbing agony from time to time.

He'd never before felt such pain in his life as this rending hurt within him, but he leaned on the wall, holding the comfortable heaviness of the axe in his hands, and was very happy.

Out in the open space in front of him, Wolves were dying; many lay dead already. His friends were driving the Zhentilar warriors out! A few old men and two handfuls of untutored goodwives, lads, and farmhands were beating Zhent Blackhelms! Even in his proud days, he and his brothers-in-arms had fled from Zhents, or kept civil and quiet and as far away as possible in taverns and inns. And now he was beating them, he and his friends! The axe in his hands had bitten short the lives of eight Wolves already today, and if the wizards stayed away, the men of the dale would win the day yet.

His eyes were suddenly wet, and he set his lips and looked around the marketplace in pride, seeing old friends and others he knew groaning on the ground or sprawled still and silent. The blood price had been high and the day was not won yet, but by Tempus, the folk of the High Dale had stood proud this day!

He growled as the pain took him again, then turned the sound into a shout. "For the Dale!" he roared, as he had heard those two brave Harper lads cry earlier. "For freedom!"

He swung the axe around his head and started to run, lurching and staggering as he wrestled with the hammering pain in his chest. There were Wolves still standing in his sight, still work to be done. "For the dale!" he cried again, wildly, as his running feet brought him to the Zhents. He took a sword blow on his raised axe and blundered on into the Wolf who'd swung at him, knocking the armsman down. A farmer who'd been fencing with that Wolf, scythe against blade, grinned at him for an instant and stabbed down with the scythe. The Wolf's scream turned wet and bubbly before it died away.

The old man raised his axe, roared again, and went on to the next Wolf. The men of the High Dale were earning a victory, blow by bloody blow, and he meant to see that they got it.

"Not too old yet for such games, are ye?" Elminster asked himself as he sprang out of alley shadows to the empty saddle of a wandering, riderless horse.

The beast snorted and neighed in alarm, bucking and twisting its head around. Elminster hauled himself up into the saddle with grim, iron-hard fingers and answered himself, "Nay… see? Look ye!"

The horse bugled. Elminster let it dance under him as battle raged in the marketplace ahead. Few horses were left now. From the castle came the sound of horns blowing the same call he'd heard earlier: the retreat and rally.

He'd have to move quickly or they'd all be in his way. Elminster crouched low in the saddle, grinned at the thought of how long it had been since he'd last done this, and set the horse into a gallop.

It hurled itself forward, putting all its fear into flight, and burst through the running, milling mob with only a few shouts and a near miss or two. Then he was charging up the road to the castle gates, beard streaming behind him, a few crossbow bolts whistling past.

In the fray, Itharr thrust a Wolf through the throat and turned to Belkram, ignoring the spray of blood that drenched him. "That is Elminster, isn't it?"

Belkram nodded, teeth shining in a sudden smile. "Definitely."

Itharr wrenched a shield from the Wolf he'd just unhorsed and slain. "Let's go, then. After him!"

Belkram looked about. They'd cleared a little space around them, Wolves falling back warily before the blades of the two madmen in leather. He smiled at them and advanced.

Uneasily they gave way, and he moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with Itharr, who'd taken up the shield. Crouched together behind its angled protection, the Harpers hastened up the road to the castle.

Bolts thudded into the shield. Some snarled across the curving metal and were turned aside. Others stuck fast, dealing numbing blows to the arms beneath the shield. One pierced through, but its gleaming tip stopped a handwidth short of the two sweating Harpers. They traded rueful glances and hurried on.

Belkram kept a wary eye behind, blade ready, but the Wolves were too busy staying alive, as they fell back toward the castle, to chase two men already halfway up the road to the gates.

"Storm did promise us adventure," Itharr said dryly. A quarrel struck the shield sharply, jarring them both, and glanced away.

"I didn't think just catching up with a hundreds-of-years-old wizard would be this exciting," Belkram replied, "whether he was a trouble-gatherer or no. Well, I've been wrong before."

They were laughing together at that like crazed men as they came to the gates and found the high constable of the dale flailing away with blood-smeared chains manacled to his wrists, holding three battered Wolves at bay as the lady ranger Sharantyr fenced with them. A trail of blood and trampled, moaning guardsmen led from the gates to the courtyard beyond, where a riderless horse was rearing and screaming, lashing out with its hooves at the Wolves who tried to calm it. Elminster was, as usual, nowhere to be seen.