throats without getting caught at it! 'Tis going to end in spell-battle, see if it doesn't, and the fewer competitors around to hamper us of the Cult in taking her down, the better! I hear a Cult wizard called Lharass has found some ancient spell or other that can chain mages with their own magic! I wonder if this Shandril can be held by chains of her own spellfire?'
'I like the sound of this less and less,' Holvan muttered. 'Whatever happened to putting daggers in merchants' backs and taking their coins to the nearest Lord of the Cult, for him to gather and present to some dread wyrm, while we trot safely off and find us some more merchants?'
'The world changed, Holvan. It always does. I prefer the old simple ways, too, but somehow the rulers and flying wizards of the Realms forgot to ask my opinion. They always do.'
'The bolts've stopped, Brasker; should we-?'
'Bide just a bit. I'd be less than pleased to offer myself as the only target still standing, if they're just lying low… no, there's Voldovan coming back, and he's talking to that fool Nargalarr, the pot-seller. It must be over. Back to our wagon!'
'Shouldn't we-?'
'No! Brigands love to fall back and wait for everyone to get into the road and start tramping around talking about their great valor and who got away from them-then rake all the chattering heroes with another volley. So we run fast and low from wagon to wagon back to our own, and nowhere else! If one of the guard wants to talk, he can do it running after us! Come on!'
There was a brief scrambling, a thud of boots, then relative calm.
'Brasker and Holvan,' Shandril murmured. 'Remember those names.'
'Done, love,' Narm whispered. 'I'm beginning to think every third merchant in this caravan is after us!'
Whatever reply Shandril might have made was lost in a sudden cacophony of shouts, screams, humming bolts, and the thudding of running feet-followed swiftly by a deafening chorus of clanging, singing steel. Brasker, it seemed, had been right. They heard Voldovan roaring something, and 'In here!' someone hissed, and coffers were flung aside in the upturned chaos of the wagon. 'Hurry!'
A chest fell heavily, an already riven cask groaned, and suddenly the tangle of coffers at Narm's feet were thrust aside, and a face peered in at them. A stranger's face with a drawn and bloody sword beside it, and another unfamiliar face at its shoulder. 'This'll do,' one of the men said, not yet seeing the young couple lying motionless ahead of his boots. 'There's space enough to hide back here. We can-ho!'
The brigand's blade drew back as he saw Narm and Shandril, ready to stab-and his companion shouldered aside an untidy heap of coffers, and joined him in staring.
'Well, well, two lovebirds,' the first brigand said in delight, as his blade swept down. 'Greet you the gods together!'
Narm raised a hand to cast a hasty spell-but Shandril's spellfire was swifter. The man's blade melted to nothing ere it could touch them, and his head followed, leaving a wavering, headless thing of ashes. Wide-eyed, the second brigand hacked desperately at the deadly lass lying at his feet, blade flashing down…
'Sar tha,' Narm said crisply, his fingers spread. Magic roared out of him in a fistlike thrust of force that smashed brigands, coffers, wagonboards and all before it, so that there was suddenly nothing but air beyond their feet.
Air filled with the broken, tumbling fragments of coffers and blades and brigands.
Narm and Shandril sprang up together and ran to the opening Narm's magic had smashed through the end of the wagon… in time to see the debris he'd sent flying bounce, tumble, and roll to various small halts on a scarred road.
Right beside a pair of worn and rather familiar boots. Boots that were still on the widely planted feet of-yes- Orthil Voldovan, who stood with his hands on his hips. He held a bloody sword in both of those hands, and a grim and ragged group of guards had gathered behind his shoulders.
He looked at the young couple standing in the shattered end of the wagon, and they looked back at him, wisps of spell-fire still licking up like tiny flames from Shandril's fingers.
'Well met,' the caravan master said sarcastically. 'I was wondering where ye'd gotten to. In case ye haven't noticed, we're fighting a small war out here!'
Shandril stared at him, then down at something writhing and flopping on the ground behind one of the guards. Peering at it, she strode out of the ruined wagon and right past Voldovan, never even noticing the hard look he gave her, nor his slow pivot on one boot heel to give her the full weight of his glaring disapproval as she hastened past. Narm trotted after her, trying an apologetic smile on Master Orthil. It was ignored.
The flopping thing proved to be Beldimarr, half-sitting on the road with crossbow quarrels standing out of his left arm and leg. The latter wouldn't hold him, and he was dragging himself along on knuckles and knees, his left arm pinned to his side by the heavy warbolt, with dark red blood streaming down over his battered armor. In one hand was clenched his belt flask, and in the other, a dagger. He was trying to get to Arauntar.
Shandril got there first, but she might as well not have existed as far as the two grizzled old guards were concerned. 'Our pact,' Arauntar gasped, foaming blood running from his mouth with each word. 'Keep it!'
The senior guard resembled a gigantic, copiously bleeding hedgehog. He lay groaning in the road-mud in a small lake of his own blood, transfixed by almost a dozen crossbow quarrels. All he seemed able to move were the trembling fingers of one hand, and his head. He glared at Shandril as she knelt between him and the struggling Beldimarr, and gasped, 'Get back! Gods damn you, lass!'
'What pact?' Shandril snapped. 'What're you doing, Beldimarr?'
The guards drew in close around her, and one reached down a hand to her shoulder to pluck her back-but Narm caught that reaching arm, shaking his head… and with a look of faint surprise at himself for doing so, the guard drew his hand back.
Beldimarr gave Shandril a glare every bit as furious as Arauntar's, and snarled, 'What we all do in this trade, lass. As agreed aforetime between us, I'll give my friend a last pleasure-' he lifted the flask as far as he could, and then came down on that hand again with a grunt of pain '-an' then send him beyond pain, to the gods!' He lifted his dagger. 'Now get out o' the way! He's died for you, lass. Now, let him go!'
'No!' Shandril snapped. 'Narm, Voldovan, keep everyone back!'
'What?' the caravan master growled. 'What crazed-',
'Do it,' Narm said quietly. 'Trust her. I'm alive now because she did this for me.'
The guards threw him startled looks, and more than one pair of eyes swiftly narrowed. 'Is this some sort of fire-witch magic?' one of them snapped.
Shandril looked up. 'Yes! Please watch, but do nothing to, stay me-and perhaps I'll be nigh the next time, when you need it!'
In the startled silence that followed her words the maid of Highmoon looked from Beldimarr to Arauntar and back again and murmured, 'Please, both of you, trust me.'
Beldimarr shrugged and jerked his head toward his stricken friend. Shandril turned to the dying Harper and asked, 'Arauntar, do you want to live?'
'Not in this much pain,' he snarled back, and then groaned out a huge gout of blood and whimpered, ' 'Course I do!'
'Beldimarr, Voldovan,' Shandril snapped, 'lift him a little off the ground, as gently as you can. I need to get under him.'
'Under-?' Trading doubtful looks, the two men gingerly laid hold of Arauntar's armpits and ribs, reaching awkwardly around the many quarrels, and then shifted him a hands-breadth into the air.
The guard roared with pain, a cry that collapsed into sobbing as Shandril threw herself down into the blood, on her back, and wormed her way under Arauntar as if she was a lover embracing him. 'Right,' she gasped, struggling for breath. 'Let him down, and let go of him. Now, get back!' -
Some Strange Sort of Sword
Some of us fight with swords, and some with nimble tongues or poison or coins. Oh, aye, and some of us
