'He is,' Korthauvar of the Zhentarim muttered to himself, casting a quick look around at the night. 'Oh, he is.'
The dagger plunged in, the Red Wizard winced and pulled, and another throat bled. He shuddered. A good fireball, now, or lightning to hurl men shrieking, left them just as dead, but not this… this… boarlike butchery… He set his teeth as his gorge rose, shook his head, and went on.
There was but one guard more, draped over a corner of the wagon-perch, Voldovan's boots beside him. The caravan master had fallen back inside his wagon where all was dark and still. The Thayan eyed that dark gap cautiously. Dare he hope the spellfire-wench and her mate slept, too?
Best stick to the plan. The guard first, then Voldovan- then truss the young mage and have him out of the wagon and away into the night. If she awakened while he was still out hunting the two veteran guards, he'd have a hold over her… and even if the caravan went on, she'd stay to search for her Narm. 'Twould just be a matter of waiting, as she clambered and peered and called in vain, until exhaustion took her into real slumber, and he could enspell her at will.
The Red Wizard smiled, stepped forward, raised his dagger-and the guard's eyes snapped open! The armsman growled, 'What the-?' Around them, the camp erupted into life and sound-a chorus of curses and bewilderment.
The guard glared at the mage with the knife and bellowed, 'Attack! Voldovaaaan!'
The Red Wizard sprang back, snapped out a hasty incantation as the guard's sword rang out, and was gone, back beside his own wagon before he'd even had time to curse. He made up for that now.
'Beshaba spit on all!' he roared, charging up its steps and inside. The camp was in an uproar, the guard couldn't have failed to recognize him. The thud of pounding, running feet was rising in his ears already. He had to get his spellbooks and begone, before A sword slashed open the cloth across the wagon windows, and a furious voice shouted, 'There he is!',
Men in the worn leather and rusty chain of caravan guards came boiling through the mouth of the wagon, and the Red Wizard turned with a snarl on his lips and a wand in his hand and gave them death.
The front of the wagon burst forth in a bright flood of flame and broken bodies that brought Arauntar running, and other men, too, with drawn swords in their hands. 'Magic!' someone shouted. 'Always bloody magic!'
Another merchant who was also a wizard saw his chance and hurled lightning, but Arauntar wore more leather than steel, and one of Voldovan's recent hires took the crackling bolt instead. That guard staggered, clawed the air, and went over on his back, outlined in spitting blue-white sparks.
The Zhentarim cursed and threw up his hands to cast another spell, but Arauntar ducked behind a snorting group of hobbled, frightened horses, and bellowed, 'Guards! To me! That wagon-have the man out of it, and down dead! 'Ware spells!'
Men were shouting all over the camp now, and running with swords and daggers out. Shandril Shessair came to the mouth of Voldovan's wagon white to the lips and fire-eyed in fury.
Another Zhentarim hurled a fireball at her from his own wagon. Shandril saw the tiny streak of flame hurtling toward her and smashed it back with spellfire.
A great burst of flame shot up into the night where spell and spellfire met, spitting streamers in all directions like a Lantanna firework, and billowed up in a plume of brilliance that lit the tilted field as bright as day.
In its radiance the Red Wizard could be seen fleeing the smoldering wreck of his wagon, trotting away downslope.
Shandril set her lips in a thin line and sent him spellfire.
In all the shouting and waving of blades, no one saw a thin cloud, like a cloak of shadows, descending silently out of the night, but everyone noticed when the plume of flame suddenly went dark and dwindled. No eye failed to see when something dimmed the spellfire that was clawing at a screaming Thayan.
Darkness roiled silently, as if in pain, spellflames whirling away in all directions. Shandril's streamer of spellfire faded, and shrank back.
Shandril's eyes widened in astonishment as she watched, and from the Zhent's wagon came a harsh laugh and another spell.
Lightning spat across the trampled sward, seeking the life of Shandril Shessair, but the shadow swooped, and the bolt darkened, sank, and died… as if something had devoured it.
'Get to that god-rotting wagon!' Arauntar roared, and the Zhentarim burst out of his door and fled away across the field, just as the Red Wizard had.
Arauntar cursed, flung his sword, and watched it bounce far short. The wizard looked back and laughed. He was still laughing as he came to a crashing halt with Beldimarr's blade through him, and the fiercely grinning Harper at the other end of it.
'Ho!' he called, as the dying wizard gurgled and slid down his dark, wet steel, clawing vainly at it, 'I don't know what's drinking magic, but 'tis a night for sword-swingers at last! Where's that murdering mage?'
'Gone that way!' Arauntar called, pointing with his dagger, as he came running to scoop up his sword. 'You go after him, an' I'll see to the lass!'
All around them, the fighting was getting personal and bloody. Some merchants had fear or temper enough to get out blades and join the fray. Others ordered their bully-blades to defend their wagons. Guards snapped orders, were defied, and replied with sword-thrusts.
'Go!' Beldimarr shouted, shoving Arauntar back toward Voldovan's wagon. 'Look!'
Arauntar spun around and saw, cursed bitterly, and put his head down and ran.
A dozen swordsmen were whirling around Voldovan's wagon like a dark storm, fencing with each other and the snarling, already wounded caravan master. Whenever they had a moment free from fending off hostile steel, they plunged their blades hilt-deep in the cloth sides of the wagon, thrusting hard at whoever might be within. Arauntar heard at least one startled scream from Shandril and a wild shouting that was probably Narm trying to cast a spell-and finding to his horror that nothing happened.
As the Harper ran, faster and harder than he'd ever sprinted in his life before, he clearly heard the young mage's next words: “Tis here, Shan! In here with us! Some sort of dark-thing!'
'My knife does nothing to it,' Shandril gasped, as Arauntar pounded nearer and Voldovan sank back on his perch with a sob of pain, bleeding in two places and with eager swordsmen pressing in for the kill. One of them- gods blast him! — was a guard just hired in Triel!
The Harper arrived hacking a neck here, a face there and had those men down or reeling back in two swift, panting moments.
'Try flame on it!' Shandril was crying, inside the wagon.
'The lantern!'
Narm's reply was a roar of pain, mingled with Shandril's scream. A moment later, they reeled out onto the perch. A moment after that, Arauntar saw why.
Someone had got hold of a long lance-a horse lance, cargo from one of the wagons-and thrust it through the back of Voldovan's wagon. The slashed, flapping-down back of Narm's clothing and the bloody bared skin beneath told clearly enough where it had scored.
Arauntar went for that man with a roar, hoping to distract him from cutting his own door through the wagon-back and clambering up inside. The moment the Harper was gone from the front of the wagon, someone hurled a blade out of the night and hit Voldovan in the face with it. The startled caravan master fell off the perch, leaving the way clear to the young couple inside.
Three swordsmen surged forward as one, with an eager roar, and from out of the night, hair streaming behind her, came a woman none of them had ever seen before. A long, slender sword gleamed in one of her hands and there was a dagger in the other. She crashed into them from one side, driving them together into a confused tangle of steel by the sheer fury of her charge.
'For Myth Drannor!' Sharantyr cried. 'For Shadowdale!' Her blade clanged, crashed, and sang again. A man groaned and fell over dying. Shandril peered out of the wagon in wonder, calling, 'Sharantyr?'
One of the other swordsmen howled in glee and hurled his dagger at the spellfire-wench. Narm sprang desperately in front of his lady and smashed the weapon aside with his arm. It clanged away off the wagon, and he winced and sank down, Shandril clutching him and drawing him back inside.
