Shadows of Doom

17

"Is the high constable still alive?" Sharantyr asked as they came cautiously out of the turret and looked around. A quiet had fallen over the High Castle as the afternoon sun lit up its every nook and crevice. In the courtyard below, a few dalefolk could be seen cautiously probing bodies and piles of rubble and tumbled gear. Doors were closed, and turret windows shuttered. Save for a thin wisp of smoke rising from the castle kitchens, the fortress seemed deserted, as if no one lurked within, plotting victory and gathering swords and magic.

Elminster spread empty hands. "Mulmar? I barely recognized him, ye know, with the chains an' all. He headed for the battlements by one stair while we ascended by the other. I lost sight of him after that. I seem to recall hearing him cry out when they were firing all those quarrels at us." He winced. "If he fell there, in the forecourt, I may have sent him to the gods myself a little later when I hit the Zhent's globes."

At the memory, he drew the wand from his belt, looked at it quizzically, and sighed. "I can't remember what Art is left in this. It's gone wild so many times now, who can tell?" He shrugged. "Let us seek Irreph, whate'er befalls now. Thy thought is a good one."

Sharantyr smiled at him. "Of course. They always are." She handed her sword to him. "Here, hold this."

"The eternal saying of a woman to a man," Elminster observed wryly. "But why to me, and now?"

Sharantyr grunted under the dead, dangling weight of the corpse she'd picked up. "Because I need both hands… for this." She staggered back along the walk, the dead man on her shoulders, and dumped the carrion through the turret window.

"Drag a few over here, will you?" she called. "Before we look for the high constable, we'd best guard our rear."

Elminster dragged obediently. The lady ranger tossed the bodies down the stairs, Haragh first.

"They'll carve or crush their way past the one you trapped down there soon enough," Sharantyr said. "If they have to get past all of these to come after us-well, at least they'll be slowed down. Or if they use magic to shift them, we'll be warned." She puffed, heaved, and sweated until cold, heavy bodies choked the stair and covered the turret room floor. Then she squinted at Elminster, pulling hair out of her eyes, and said, "I'll be glad when this day's done, Old Mage. I'm beginning to feel old."

Elminster raised an eyebrow. "A thousand and more years old am I, and d'ye hear me groaning and limping and feebly protesting my age? Surely ye can manage the weight of a mere twenty-odd winters, lass!"

He grinned at her expression and added innocently, "Or is it thirty-odd?"

The Old Mage of Shadowdale then demonstrated the light weight of his years for all the Realms to see by running off as fast and nimbly as any naughty child at play. Sharantyr aided him by amply demonstrating his immediate need to do so.

"He lives," Elminster said tersely, kneeling by the sprawled, blackened body on the stair. Quarrels stood out from it like needles in a chatelaine's pincushion. The high constable lay in his blood amid a litter of chains, fallen Wolves, and odd weapons. "He'll want healing, even to see the moon this night."

"Then give it to him," said Sharantyr in a voice that trembled with fresh rage. "While I do what he was trying to."

Elminster turned. "And that is?" he asked mildly.

Sharantyr's face was bleak. "Destroy every Zhent still in this dale." Zhents had done this to a brave man who still wore their chains, just as Zhents had chained her, too, and… She thrust away those memories with a shudder, letting her rage build into the fire she'd need to slay as ruthlessly as she'd need to. As ruthlessly as they always did.

She found she was trembling, and that Elminster had noticed it and had begun to frown, so she drew in a deep breath and tried to assume a nonchalant manner. Hefting her long sword, she surveyed the notches and scrapes in its steel critically and added, "One of them owes me a new sword, too."

"Still feeling old and worn out?" Elminster asked her pointedly, slipping the ring of regeneration onto one of Irreph Mulmar's fingers and closing the limp, hairy hand of the high constable over it.

Sharantyr laughed harshly. "No. Not anymore." She turned away, whipped her sword through the air thrice, stretched like a great cat, and turned back to him. "Wish me luck, Old Mage," she said in a voice like silk falling onto waiting steel. "I've Wolves to hunt."

Elminster smiled. "All of Tymora's luck upon thee, and more. Take with thee all that Mystra and I have no need for." He rose hastily, smile fading, and reached out his hand to her. Wondering, Sharantyr laid her hand in his.

The Old Mage gently drew her to him. His lips were soft on her cheek.

"Take care, lass," he said roughly, "for I find more and more that I do not want to lose thee."

Sharantyr stared at him for a moment, openmouthed, then whirled about and raced away across the forecourt.

Elminster watched her go, shook his head slightly, and sat down on the step above Irreph, wand in hand, to guard the high constable of the High Dale. There are less steady jobs.

Sharantyr ran past the astonished women of the dale, who were clutching a variety of weapons and looking nervously at shuttered windows high above them, dark arrow-slit windows uncomfortably nearer, and closed doors. She gave them one hawklike, searching glance and ran on without breaking stride, drawn sword gleaming.

Ylyndaera stared after her and said urgently, "All of you, follow her! Come!"

Sharantyr ran hard, hair streaming, across the muddy courtyard toward a shadow in a back corner where the men had been earlier… men who were not there now. They must have found a way in. She would find it too.

Behind straw heaped up for the horses, Sharantyr found a pile of fresh stones. Then she saw the hole their removal had opened in the wall. Here the others had gone in. Here, guarded or not, she would follow.

She halted, breathing heavily from her run, and looked all around warily. Seeing no foe, she crouched to peer into the gloom, extended her blade, and followed it into darkness.

Her throat was suddenly very dry. She'd climbed into unknown dark places a time or six, aye, but always in the company of others-usually the merry, mighty Knights of Myth Drannor. With them, as they hewed down dragons and wizards alike while trading jests and insults, it was all too easy to feel invulnerable. But now… She crept onward, hoping no enemy archer or mage waited at the other end of this tunnel.

The strong smell of deep, damp earth rose around her with a faint, clinging odor of decay. Thankfully, there were no charnel or beast smells. This was no lair or bone pit, and the way ahead was short.

The tunnel opened out into a small, round room. Smooth-sided chutes-smaller, tubelike tunnels-opened into it on all sides and from above. The higher they went, the narrower they became. This was familiar, somehow. It resembled something she'd-of course! This was a privy pit, and the tunnels above-disused, by the lack of strong smell or dung underfoot-led to garderobes or cruder jakes in the castle above. But where had those dalesmen gone?

Two tunnels looked large enough to comfortably crawl in. The one to the left must lead toward the turret and the room they'd heard Stormcloak elect himself lord in. The one to the right went to the kitchens, great hall, guest rooms, and audience chambers.

Near the great hall, there'd probably be too many people about, and it would be too large to furnish easy cover against a crossbow. Moreover, there were-or at least recently had been-Wolves in the other direction. Lots of them. She peered down both tunnels but could find nothing distinctive about either, and no marks to show which way the men had gone.

She shrugged. Left, then. Sharantyr climbed into the tunnel, slid along uncomfortably on her knuckles for a time, thought about what a target her backside must make for anyone shooting a crossbow down this tunnel, and carefully sheathed her sword. Empty-handed, she could travel at twice the speed and found it far easier to be quiet. She went on, groping in deepening darkness, as the tunnel rose, met with smaller side tubes, and grew a little smaller.

Well, she was in the castle, but how to get out of this dark, close tunnel? Something small and four-footed scampered momentarily across her way. A rat, no doubt. Sharantyr started to wish she could see.

What if she met with something larger and hungrier, or a trap of some sort? She wouldn't even see it in the darkness.

She forced that thought down, concentrating instead on the sure knowledge that the chute carried waste down from somewhere, and so she must inevitably reach that origin.

Sharantyr hoped someone's backside wouldn't be covering it when she did. She could almost hear the sly voice of the thief Torm, her sometime tormentor in the Knights, making that snide observation. She smiled to herself and climbed on.

Then, very suddenly, her hands found a hard stone wall. She felt upward and discovered that her tunnel had ended in a shaft a little taller than she was, with some sort of grating as its ceiling. She drew her sword and probed carefully, searching for a trap. Her sword point pierced something yielding-cloth-and a stream of tiny pellets hissed down in a trickle past her face. She held out her hand to catch some of the grains and brought it to her nose. Rice! She had cut into a bag of rice.

Sharantyr probed carefully, tracing the outlines of the grating. Then she sheathed her blade, took a deep breath, crouched, and sprang up high, hands outstretched.

One hand smashed into a sack, scrabbled, and found a grip around a bar. The other smashed hard and painfully into metal. She gritted her teeth and hung by one hand for what seemed a long time, nursing throbbing fingers and shaking them in hopes nothing was broken.

Then she reached up, got a grip on the grating with her hurt hand, and started tugging and bouncing up and down. Her hand throbbed with every move, but the grating shifted slightly, lifting with her movements. She continued, as hard as she could, but the rice bags above held the grating down, and at last she had to admit defeat.

Sharantyr dropped again, drew her blade, and attacked the rice above her, stabbing again and again as hissing rice ran down into her hair, her bodice, and even through sliced and torn spots in her leathers.

She went on stabbing and jabbing until she could feel no weight on the grating above, then carefully worked the empty bags aside with her sword through the grate.

It was dark and cool in the chamber above. Very faint light filtered down to her. Sharantyr leapt up again.

This time the grating shifted as she struck it. She let go, dropped, and instantly sprang up again, striking the grating on an angle. As it lifted, she kicked the air hard and arched her body. The grating slid sideways with her clinging to it. The lady ranger twisted and arched her body again, and before the bars could fall back into place, she got the toe of one boot up through the opening.

The grating came down hard on her boot. Sharantyr grunted, heaved, twisted, and rolled all at once. She found herself sprawled atop more sacks of rice, still entangled with the grating, in what seemed to be a large and dark storage cellar.

Shar laid the grating carefully back in place, found the sacks she'd emptied, and covered it with them. Then she climbed over a great many sacks-some, by the sound, held dried beans-into a narrow trail among the sacks, crates, and barrels that crammed the room.

If this place was barred or locked from the outside, she was not going to be pleased. Sharantyr drew her blade again, held it carefully upright close to her breast, and went cautiously eastward, for the trail seemed to widen in that direction, and the faint light grew slightly stronger.

Her way ended in an old, stout wooden door. She pushed at it and then pulled, but it had no handle on this side. She felt around the door, found its edges, and carefully slipped her dagger up one of them.

As she expected, the blade struck a catch or hasp. If it was locked or pegged down, she was in trouble. But if it could be lifted by driving the blade upward-Yes! The door swung open, and Sharantyr reached for the hasp with racing fingers to quell any noise of its falling.

Done. The room beyond was also unlit, but light reached long fingers into it from a torch in a wall bracket beyond a door or wooden gate that was more gaps and knotholes than wood. Sharantyr drifted up to it, put away her dagger, reached nimble fingers through to lift the peg that held it shut, and peeked out into the corridor.

Two bored-looking men were seated not six paces away, sorting potatoes on a long table covered with what looked like a very old tapestry. They worked in silence, and when one of them suddenly spoke, his voice seemed very loud.

"If you'd just kept your jaw still when he asked about the wenches instead of tryin' sly stuff, he wouldna found us out, an'-" The voice held the exasperation of a renewed grievance.

"Shut up," the other man said in a tired voice. "Be glad ye're down here carving dirt-balls instead of up there, sweating in your armor and being carved up by the idiot merchants and farmhands that some crazed-wits has stirred up. They're still attacking the castle!"

He tossed a potato lazily over his shoulder. Sharantyr swallowed, reached up-There! — and snatched it silently out of the air. She set it down very carefully at her feet and took another silent step forward.

"Ye should have heard His Awfulness," the man went on, "when I went up to the kitchens. Fairly frothing, he was. He'd just finished telling the council that he was lord now-so there! — cool as ye please, when some wench in leathers comes tumbling down the stairs and nearly runs him through with a sword. He was screaming and scrabbling on the floor, they say, and had to 'port away, to escape. As it was, this gal carved up his entire bodyguard and some of us, too!"

"What?" the other man gasped. "All by herself? She took out Dannath?"

"And Uthren, and Balagh. Oh, aye, this must have been some play-pretty, in truth! I'd like to see her, let me tell ye! In the dark, and her alone, if ye catch my warmest thought…"

"May the gods," said Sharantyr conversationally into his ear, "grant thy every wish."

As he spun around to face her, she drove her knee up hard. The man could not find breath to scream. He simply bent double, eyes staring at her in disbelief as he collapsed. Sharantyr was already stepping past him to drive her sword into the other man's throat.

He gurgled and went down. She spun back to the first, caught his throat in a strangling grip to quell any outcry, and said softly, "Now that you've seen me, Zhent butcher, I'm afraid I'm going to have to turn down your 'warmest thought.' Here, have a potato." She plucked a smallish potato from the table, rammed it into his mouth, and held it there as her blade went into his stomach.

The body bucked under her, and Sharantyr felt sick. If he cried out she might die, so she held him down, vomited all over him violently, and then picked up her sword again. She held her aching ribs for a moment and leaned against the wall to clear her head before moving on.

The corridor ended in steps leading up into a passage heavy with the smell of stew. Her stomach lurched again.

Sharantyr shook her head and stepped boldly into the hall. She strode down it, past open doors and people chopping wood and bustling about stoking cookfires. One sad-faced, gray-haired woman caught sight of her, but Sharantyr raised a finger to her lips and went on. No alarm was raised behind her.

The passage ran east and upward. Sharantyr went up with it and was almost relieved to enter a room full of sprawled Wolves, half out of their armor, with a gaming board on a table in their midst and bloodied weapons leaning against the walls.

She tore into them, slashing and stabbing like a maniac. Startled men cursed, scrambled to reach weapons, writhed in agony-and died. Covered in their blood, Sharantyr went on. Gods grant that after this day she would never have to kill again.

But it is the nature of men, she thought savagely, remembering Elminster's dry voice at a campfire long ago, to forget promises, to break agreements-and to kill.

"Gods curse and damn all Zhent Wolves!" she roared, close to tears. Her outcry brought running, booted feet and their Zhentilar owners with them, many blades raised against her.

With a wild cry, Sharantyr charged in among them, whirling and leaping, her blade dancing and singing around her. She was no equal to Storm, or even Florin or Dove of the Knights, but they were not here and she was, and there were evil men to be struck down so that a dale might live again, and Elminster find a peaceful refuge for a day or three, and-It suddenly seemed to Sharantyr that she'd been fighting for a very long time, perhaps years, without a break, and that the blood spattering her now would never wash off. She began to cry as she fought.

They say in Zhentil Keep that women who weep with swords in their hands are widows of the slain. If a Zhentilar rides into a place where the hand of Zhentil Keep's armies has been felt before, and women weep and run for swords at the sight of the black-helmed warriors, he will take special care to slay those women, for they will not rest, it is said, until they have avenged their husbands or died trying, to join them in the Realm of the Fallen.

Wolves drew back from her in horror as old tales they'd heard as boys, scoffed at as youths, and forgotten as men came alive before their eyes. They stumbled back, faces white, as the woman in slashed and tattered leathers leapt and darted among them, dealing swift, endless darkness with a battered blade.

"Die, damn you!" she wept, and gave them death.

"How did she get in?" one man raged, parrying with all his might.

"What boots it?" another yelled back. "Run! Run, if you would live! Ru-uuughh!" Sharantyr's long blade found his throat from behind, and his run ended there in a dying plunge to the stone floor.

In the end they all broke and ran, those who could move at all, leaving her panting and blood-drenched, alone with the dead. Sharantyr cried and cried, kneeling among death, until she could cry no more.

She rose, white-faced in the torchlight, and thought of Stormcloak. He was the real foe, he and his mages. He must die.