The old mage chuckled. “Think of us as big swords who talk back to officers,” he said, his voice still raw with pain, “and you may yet learn to work with us quite easily.”
Alusair shook her head in amusement, then asked the smoke-filled sky in mock despair, “I had to lose a city to learn this?”
“Well,” the wizard gasped, his eyes scouring the sky for more ghazneths, “you could listen to Vangerdahast a little more closely.”
Alusair looked at him sweetly, then uttered a stream of oaths so colorful that the old mage winced and turned his head away-which was when another ghazneth burst out of the smoke.
Guldrin Hardcastle screamed as the curved orc blade burst through his fancy armor, under his right armpit, and thrust up and out of his throat-then he was gurgling forth his own blood too swiftly to scream any more.
Choking, he struggled to cry out to his brother, knowing already he was doomed and furious beyond all imagining that he was going to die here, unpraised, never to claim Hardcastle House as his own and stride into court as the head of
“Rathtar!” at last he managed to find breath to cry.
“Rathtarrrr!”
He’d never felt such pain-a sickening, wrenching burning that threatened to overmatch even the fire of his fury. It was tearing at his guts, it wasHe hacked and kicked, and screamed in pain at what that did to him, even louder than the orc he’d just hewn down… his slayer, dying now as surely as he was. Red-eyed, raging… and fading, fading into a deep purple dimness…
“Die, tuskers!” the Steel Princess roared, her voice as raw and deep as any man’s, her sword and dagger dripping black with orc blood.
She was everywhere along the line, her blade leaping like a fang over the shoulder of this cursing, reeling Purple Dragon, and that blood-drenched, exhausted man of Arabel. Where she went, her hair streaming out behind her, men shouted their exultation and hacked and slashed with renewed vigor. It had been hard, brutal work, cutting their way out of Arabel step by bloody step with the orcs roaring all around them and the dragon swooping down time and again to spew flame or just rake away heads with its claws, as it swept past so low overhead that the wind of its passage made men stagger or crash face first onto the heels of those staggering just ahead.
The king strode into their midst, and his warden led the men and women of Arabel. Many of them were content to carry wounded fellows or the exhausted war wizards who’d worked to hold open the magical gate that had taken so many Arabellans to distant safety. Many of the marchers trembled in fear, kept from utter shrieking collapse only by the spells of the grim-faced, fearful priests who walked with them, as the dragon wheeled and glided over the Cormyreans again and again.
Alusair snarled as she saw a black orc blade burst through the mail of the Purple Dragon ahead of her. As the man sobbed and started to fall, she ran right up his back, binding the blade that had slain him in his ribs, and with the toe of her boot secure on his belt, rose on high to stab down over him, driving her blade down with both hands into the throat of the orc who’d slain the man.
The orc squealed, and the sound he was making became deeper and wetter. He stopped trying to wrench his sword free and sat back onto the trampled ground to die. The orcs all around were roaring at Alusair and straining to reach her with their curved black blades. She roared “Death to you all!” right back at them as her perch fell dead to the ground under her. The dragon’s talons stabbed ineffectually at the air where she had been moments before, raking a bloody toll on the orcs instead of the fighting princess of Cormyr.
The shout came raggedly to her ears in an instant’s lull in the almost deafening clash of arms:
“Rathtarrrr!”
She spun around as she rose, slashing blindly out behind her in case any overbold orc was springing at her back and looked to where she’d thought that shout had come from.
She was in time to see Guldrin Hardcastle go down.
“Rathtar!” she cried, pitching her voice high and shrill to cut through the grunts and roars of orcs and the curses and groans of men rushing together all around her.
A head turned-darkly handsome, as sullen as ever. Rathtar Hardcastle was killing his share of orcs with his resentment borne before him like a shield. He was just one of scores of young, handsome noble wastrels baffled as to what they must do to get the respect they felt Faerun-or at least the court of Cormyr-owed them.
A sort of hope kindled in his eyes as Alusair beckoned him with a jerk of her head, already a stride past him as she cut down an orc with brutal efficiency.
“Come!” she snapped, pointing with her blade as the gape-jawed orc fell away from it.
Rathtar sprang to follow, almost stumbling in his eagerness. When he regained his footing, he found seven orcs or more lumbering into Alusair’s path. The Steel Princess never slowed, her blade singing back and forth as if it weighed nothing and the snarling, stinking orc bodies it cleaved were made of feathers or mere shadows.
The man who did not yet know he was mere breaths away from becoming the Hardcastle heir swung his own blade with enthusiasm. This was something he could do, some way he could prove himself as every bit as much a bright hero of Cormyr as those old and grizzled men in medal-bedecked uniforms who limped sagely around the court, staring disapprovingly at anyone younger than themselves. Why, when he
The last orc fell away under Alusair’s savage charge-gods, what a woman! Rathtar was more than a little afraid of her, even with her shapely behind waggling inches in front of his nose and the sleek line of her flank rippling as she turned to dart her sword tip under a struggling Purple Dragon and into the snarling face of an orc the dragoneer was grappling with.
She was leading somewhere, for some glorious task, no doubt. Rathtar Hardcastle was going to be recognized at last, was going to be-
Alusair spun suddenly, almost casually striking aside Rathtar’s lowered blade as he almost ran it through her, and clapped him on the shoulder just as he’d seen her do to a hundred weeping or pain-wracked Purple Dragon veterans.
“Yours,” she murmured into his ear, and her lips brushed his cheek for just a moment as she spun away, murmuring, “I’ll stand guard.”
It felt like his cheek was burning, where her lips had been. Rathtar reached up almost wonderingly to touch it as he stared down and suddenly, chillingly, knew what this was all about.
His older brother Guldrin, as large and slow-witted as ever, was staring up at him with eyes that were going dull, blood oozing like a dark red flood from his slack mouth.
“Y-you heard me,” Guidrin mumbled, as Rathtar crashed to his knees on dead orcs and reached out for him. His lips twisted. “For once.”
“Are you-?” Rathtar snapped, trying to lift him.
Guldrin nodded almost wearily. “Dying? Aye. You’re… heir now. You with your looks and giggling lasses every night, and… and… oh, gods, have my blessings and make Father proud.”
Much blood fountained from his mouth, and he groaned weakly before gasping, “T-tell him… tell him I died well.”
“I will! Oh, gods keep you, Guld, I will!” Rathtar shouted, finding himself on the verge of tears. Somewhere inches but a world away, steel rang on steel and Alusair snarled at the orc she’d just slain and hurled aside, and at the one behind it who was fast losing enthusiasm for facing this warrior woman with the eyes of flame.
They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, the older brother and the younger, then… then Guldrin was simply gone from behind those staring eyes.
Rathtar let his head fall slowly among the dead, blinking back hot tears, and spat, “Death! Death! Death to all orcs!”
He thrust aside Alusair as if she was an inconvenient hanging tapestry and plunged into the orcs beyond her, stabbing and slashing like a madman. The Steel Princess raced after him, calling his name vainly and trying to guard his flanks, though she could only reach one.
It was only a few breaths before a black orc blade burst through the flank she was guarding, driven in from the other side, and Rathtar Hardcastle went down on his face without a sound. Alusair cut open the grinning face of his orc slayer as she spun around to race back to safety, reminding herself to stay alive to get to Suzail and personally tell Ildamoar Hardcastle how bravely both of his Sons had fallen in battle. Cormyr owed the loyal old nobleman that and more.
Someone stumbled over backward, arms windmilling in almost comical futility, two orc blades standing out of
