Swords of Dragonfire

Yassandra Durstable went down the stairs like a gloating shadow, the blue-green fire of the two wands in her hands still crawling away from her in a deadly, staggering wave of struggling crossbowmen dying on their feet. The only living war wizard she’d seen in the cellars had gone down into a silent heap of protruding bones in her first wand-burst, but these magnificent brutes were still fighting her magic, clawing at the air as it rode them and cursing their inevitable doom.

She’d blasted them all from behind, of course. Why tempt the gods to hand any foe a chance?

Now the last crossbowman was down, and with him the last dying flames of wandfire, leaving but one sound ahead of her in this dark and cool cellar. From the only light here in the cellars, a little way down the room, came the faint sizzling of cooking flesh.

One of the war wizards-and she couldn’t see all of their corpses; some could well be very much alive, and lurking in other cellar chambers ahead of her-had blasted a Zhentilar warrior with a spell that had left his body burning like a hearthfire.

A fire in a hearth that had a good chimney-it made very little smoke but a lot of racing, flickering flames. The corpse-light wouldn’t last long. Smiling grimly, Yassandra advanced past him cautiously, wanting to get out of the view of anyone standing at the top of the cellar stairs with a wand or a crossbow, before she cast light magic of her own.

Doom fell on her-hard-without the slightest warning.

Pennae swung down on the war wizard from above and behind, arms trembling from the strain of bracing herself between two rusty hooks. She hurled herself out of the inky darkness in the lee of a ceiling-beam and scissored her legs viciously around the wizard’s head, swinging hard to the left and kicking upward as she did so.

Yassandra’s neck broke with a horrible wet crunch-and Pennae put all her might into a frantic shifting of herself forward, so as to pass over the lolling head and down on the wizard’s arms from above, rather than ending up with her feet pointing at the ceiling, head-downward with the dying woman toppling back over onto her.

She had to gain control of those wands- had to!

Pennae was still clawing at the air and a swinging beam-hook for balance when Yassandra sobbed the words that set off the wands, blasting the ceiling above with more blue-green fire.

“Tluin,” Pennae announced calmly, as the spraying magic shook the dying body under her, driving it back just enough that she could overtop Yassandra and reach down the war wizard’s failing, spasming arms.

Hopefully before hungry blue-green fire thoroughly cleaned Pennae’s teeth-and throat, and her gizzard and whatnots beyond it too-for her.

Dauntless and his Dragons were halfway across the deserted common room, swords singing out of scabbards and striding hard, when the floor to the angry ornrion’s right, just behind him, burst upward in a splintering roar and flood of blue-green flames.

Shattered floorboards erupted in a deadly spray, hurling two Purple Dragons bodily up into the ceiling above.

With a roar almost as loud as the wandfire, Dauntless launched himself at the cellar stairs in a furious rush, the three remaining Purple Dragons right behind him. They were pounding down the steps even before the bloody, broken remains of their two comrades peeled free of the riven ceiling and fell wetly onto impaling splinters below.

Pennae struck the wands out of Yassandra’s weak hands as they fell, and the wandfire abruptly stopped.

They hit the floor together, hard, the war wizard’s body slamming down atop the wands, and out of long habit Pennae slashed Yassandra’s throat open; for who knew what sort of spells a war wizard might have, to snatch herself back from the sword-edge of death? Mute mages hurled fewer spells.

Fearful and angry shouts rang out, deeper in the cellars-and no wonder; a sleeping man could have heard every instant of the wandfire! Pennae rolled hastily over to lie still among the bodies, dragging the dead war wizard atop her.

Feigning death was wisest until she knew who held sway down here. There! In the flickering corpse-light she could see a few crossbowmen coming cautiously into the room from somewhere deeper in the cellars, peering around with their poisoned-quarrel-loaded bows held ready.

Some jagged shards of wood fell from the torn ceiling, and a startled bowman fired a quarrel at their noise. It flashed past Pennae and down the room, thudding hard into an unseen wall… a wall of thick, damp wood, by the sound of that strike.

Heavy boots suddenly thudded across the ceiling overhead, moving in a hurry, and came charging down the cellar stairs.

Suddenly all the crossbowmen were firing.

Crossbow quarrels came leaping up out of the darkness as Dauntless and his Dragons plunged down the stairs; the ornrion scarcely had time to curse and fling up one armored forearm to shield his face before the swordcaptain beside him blurted out a sudden, wet snarl and fell over backward, a quarrel in his face.

Thrumming viciously, quarrels slammed into Dauntless, twice-thrice-if they’d been longbows, he’d be full of arrows already and likely dead. Another of his Dragons grunted, behind him; staggered but not transfixed by a striking quarrel.

“Down!” Dauntless roared, “ In the name of the King! ”

These foes would have to be taken down before they could reload and fire again; if there were more with loaded crossbows ready, it’d be just too bad for an ornrion called Dauntless.

Wherefore he flung himself recklessly down into the darkness, caring nothing for footing or dignity, sword reaching out. The crossbowmen would have to crank their windlasses like madmen to recock their crossbows, a noisy task that took time no matter how strong and fast they were, and then slap quarrels into firing-channels.

They knew they hadn’t time enough, and flung down their crossbows to claw out daggers and short swords, even as the ornrion hurled himself off the stair to crash bodily into two of them and bear them to the cellar floor, bouncing hard.

“Murderers!” he roared. “In the name of the king, Azoun the Purple Dragon, I-urrkk!”

The punch across his throat temporarily silenced Dauntless, but the man who dealt it started dying an instant later, when the ornrion drove a dagger into his eye with brutal ruthlessness and rolled hard to his left, fully onto the second crossbowman he’d borne to the floor. By then, the other crossbowmen were coming for him with swords and daggers drawn. His Dragons rushed past to meet him.

“Aye,” a crossbowman snarled, “that’s just what we’ve been doing: murdering war wizards! And we should have no trouble at all with a few Purple Dragons!”

Then blade was clanging on blade, and the hollowness of that boast was swiftly apparent. The crossbowmen were fast and mean-but the Dragons were veterans of many an Arabellan alley-brawl, trained to work together in battle. They were bigger, stronger, and far more heavily armored. One Dragon grunted in disgusted pain as a sword slid through the leathers covering the joint above his left forearm, but that slight wound was the only harm the three soldiers suffered before the crossbowmen broke and ran, leaving four of their fellows dead.

Dauntless pounded after them, barking a command over his shoulder that left the wounded Dragon tarrying to slice all the bowstrings he could see. The ornrion caught another crossbowman before the staggering man could get out of the room with the stair, hewing him down from behind and trampling him without slowing.

The crossbowmen fled right at-and through — an apparently solid stretch of dark, cobwebbed stone wall. Dauntless plunged after them, right on their heels and hacking the air wildly on all sides to try to foil any slayers waiting for him.

There was a moment of tingling darkness as he passed through the illusory magic that cloaked the unseen doorway, and then he was in a lamplit room where startled crossbowmen fought desperately against other, hard-faced men with better swords and daggers, who’d been… yes, plundering the bodies of dead war wizards!

“You dare? ” Dauntless bellowed, smashing his way right through a hapless crossbowman to get at the nearest of these new foes.

“Ha!” that man laughed, striking aside the ornrion’s sword with the ease of a veteran swordsman. “Of course we dare! We dare anything for the glory of the Brotherhood! Zhentarim triumphant! ”

One of the crossbowmen kicked the man’s feet out from under him and stabbed him brutally as he toppled. Dauntless rewarded the slayer with a slash that half-severed his head and left it lolling as the dying man let out a wet, burbling squeal and collapsed atop the Zhent he’d just slain.

Dauntless ducked under the wild slash of a halberd-what sort of fool tried to swing such a weapon, in cramped chambers like these? — as Zhents and the crossbowmen-and whom did they serve, hey? — enthusiastically killed each other all around him. He saw one of his Dragons lay open the halberd-wielder’s throat with a mighty, off-balance slash, and snarled, “Try to take one of the idiots who used the crossbows on us alive! I need some answers!”

“Commanded,” First Sword Brauthen Haernhar growled in the usual Purple Dragon acknowledgment that an order had been heard and understood. He kicked a Zhent hard enough in the cods to lift the man off his feet, into a helpless plunge forward onto the Dragon’s waiting blade.

The crossbowmen were all dead now, killed with swift ease by Zhents who were obviously disciplined, well-trained warriors. They must be Zhentilar at work here without their customary armor and spears, so as to avoid raising an alarm that would bring Baron Thomdor riding hard into Halfhap with several hundred mounted Dragons at his shoulders.

Which meant that whatever the fate of Lord Duskur Ebonhawk’s plundered riches or the Knights of Myth Drannor, and regardless of Lady Lord Lhal’s orders, Ornrion Taltar Dahauntul must survive this fray and get alive back to Arabel or to a moot with one of Baron Thomdor’s patrols, so the Warden of the Eastern Marches swiftly learned of these Zhents. If the Zhentarim were in Halfhap, then they were in Arabel, too, or soon planning to be… and if ever Arabel fell to the Black Brotherhood, all northeastern Cormyr would become a lawless battlefield of marauding monsters unleashed by Zhents, orc and goblin hireswords let loose on every steading and hamlet, and all A Zhent lunge came within a shrieking bladewidth of finding the gap in his armor-and Dauntless found himself forced to lean into that lunge, almost embracing the steel seeking to slay him, as he parried a teeth-jarringly hard cut to the side of his helm, and needed room to interpose his own sword or risk decapitation.

He managed to avoid both blades somehow, reeling back out of that tangle of swords in time to see First Sword Brauthen coughing his way to the floor with a sword in his guts, clawing at it vainly and desperately as the Zhent wielding it laughed in triumph.

He should turn and flee, alone now in this room of Zhentilar, but Brauthen deserved to be avenged-for what good is a glittering kingdom, if it lifts no finger to help or seek justice for every man who dies for it? — and he was damned before the gods if he’d turn away when it was so easy, with Brauthen grappling the Zhent’s blade, to spring to the side and slash open that laughing face as he did so.

So Dauntless killed that man, and the next, winning himself time to flee and turned-to discover the illusion of solid wall was in force on this side of the hidden doorway too!

He could not be sure where it was, and the blades reaching for him even now would give him no time for any sort of a search.

Then Swordcaptain Darasko Starmarlee, whom he’d left behind, wounded, to disable crossbows, burst suddenly through seemingly solid stone gaping in astonishment, with blade held high-but not high enough to properly parry the vicious swing from the Zhent who’d been charging to block off the ornrion’s escape.

Starmarlee’s jaw and throat exploded in gore, and the swordcaptain reeled helplessly forward, past Dauntless and under the knees of the Zhent leaping after him. Which left only Starmarlee’s slayer between Dauntless and the way out.

It was a matter of swift and burning satisfaction to butcher that Zhentilar and charge past him, still hot with rage, back out into Utter darkness. There must be doors in the common room above that could be swung down over the stairs, and that thrice-cursed innkeeper must have closed them!

Locked them, too, no doubt, dragged a weight atop them, and gone to fetch weapons with which to greet the face of an ornrion straining to heave things aside and gain freedom. Well, his belt axe was a puny thing, meant more for kindling and smashing locks and hasps than for fighting, but if he had to hew through doors-or the cellar ceiling, elsewhere-he would. After killing every last Zhentilar down here, of course.

Dauntless had already stepped aside along the wall, out of sheer warriors’ instinct, and turned to make ready to deal death to Zhentilar in the dark. Strike the first man down from one side, then get across to the other to await the second.

There! He thrust hard and low at the faint gleam in the darkness, and was rewarded by a snarl of pain and the heavy thud of a man falling precipitously to his knees. He drove his blade down into an unseen back, twisted it, and vaulted over the now-screaming man to the far side of the unseen door.

The second Zhentilar came through in a rush, with the third just behind him, both men veering sharply aside, in different directions, as they burst into the darkened room. Which meant one ran right onto the ornrion’s waiting blade, and Dauntless was able to swing the impaled man around as a shield against the other. The man whirled at the sound of his comrade’s sobbing gasp, charged toward the sound, stumbled over the Zhentilar Dauntless had already felled, and came blundering into his impaled fellow, whom he hacked and stabbed enthusiastically from behind. Dauntless waited until a deep slash left the man’s sword stuck deep in the ribs of his dying fellow, and then stepped nimbly around to drive his dagger into the man’s neck.

The man groaned loudly, as the last Zhentilar-unless there were more beyond those Dauntless had seen in the room-hurled a blazing leather glove through the illusory wall, and followed it with lit lantern in one hand and sword gleaming in the other. This let Dauntless see him well enough to act before the man caught sight of Dauntless behind the dying Zhentilar-or the two Zhentish swords Dauntless had just thrown at him.

The Zhentilar struck one blade aside with his lantern, but the second one broke it, plunging the cellar into darkness for the space of a breath or two, ere the warrior of the Brotherhood started to burn. Spitting curses, the Zhentilar staggered back, wildly waving one blazing, doused-in-lamp-oil arm in a vain attempt to extinguish the licking flames.

Dauntless devoted himself to plucking up and throwing every weapon he could find, a storm of tumbling steel that the raging Zhentilar struck aside with his own sword, roaring as the pain went on clawing at him, until he turned to stagger back through the hidden door, clawing at the fastenings of his own leathers.

Whereupon Dauntless bent, picked up the last sword, and brutally swept the Zhentilar’s ankles out from under him, hurling the man head-first onto the cellar floor. The ornrion pounced and stabbed. He cut away a big piece of leather, laying bare the dying man’s shuddering back and giving himself a torch of burning-edged leather cloaking the tip of his borrowed blade.

He retrieved his own sword from the Zhentilar he’d left it buried in and strode grimly around the room. Dare he try the stairs? Or should he seek another way out of these cellars? He gave the stairs a teeth-bared glare, then peered around at all the bodies and the There! Hanging from the back of the stairs! A lantern… two lanterns. Well-made, almost new candle-lanterns with sliding shutters and hot-hoods, the candles as thick as his wrists and shielded on three sides with bright-polished steel. Dauntless lit them both from the burning scrap of leather and thankfully let it fall to the stone floor.

Well, these made him a target, but bought him the chance to explore down here. And he’d best be about it. He hung one lantern from a ceiling-hook to light up the room, adjusted the other to shine a directional beam, and started past all the bodies, shaking his head at all the dead war wizards. Vangerdahast would blast this place clear over the Thunder Peaks when he found out.

Unless he didn’t find out in time, and this end of Cormyr was all Zhentarim territory by then.

Which, again, meant one Ornrion Taltar Dahauntul had to get out of here and report back to Arabel. “ This Ornrion Dahauntul,” he muttered aloud. “There is no other.”

He stalked past body after body, never noticing the lone eye watching him from under the sprawled and gory Yassandra Durstable, heading for whatever else awaited behind the stairs, besides lanterns.

There came a sound from overhead, of something heavy being dragged aside, and heavy footfalls. At the top of the cellar stairs.

Dauntless set down his lantern carefully, turned and raced back to the one he’d hung up, hooded and shuttered it but left it hanging, and raced back to the lantern on the floor. More bumps from overhead, as things were flung aside.

He shuttered the second lantern and hunkered down just behind it amid the bodies, shielding his face with one forearm and hefting his sword before letting it rest ready in his lap. Hopefully he looked dead.

If not… well, he’d die fighting a breath or two from now.

Whatever had covered the stairs was flung back, and light flared, floating down the stair in eerie silence. Dauntless peered over his arm.

A glowing ball of light-bright-glowing air, not flames-floated down into the cellar as silently as a falling feather, flying off into a far corner of the room, as boots struck the stairs. Lots of boots, belonging to dozens of Zhentilar warriors in full black battle armor, drawn swords and axes gleaming in their hands and one-no, three-Zhentarim wizards striding in their midst.

Gods bedamned above. Wizards!

He was going to die here. He was going to die now, or a breath from now. Well then, gods, Dauntless thought, see that you save Cormyr.