A half-dozen shards dropped from the sky like ripe apples from a tree. Those Zhentilar that had shields now struggled to free them from their hacks or their saddles. Screams went up from the rear and center of the advance.
Cyric looked to Slater. 'What did he say?'
Ren glared at the thief. 'Tyzack said to ride! We must reach the shelter of the southern rise before the shards drop from the sky!' The blond fighter kicked his horse into motion, and a large group of soldiers followed him.
The rain of metal shards increased, as if the bottom of the huge, invisible box that had been holding them were torn open, allowing the flechettes to plummet to the ground. Screams sounded from throughout the ranks. Handfuls of Zhentilar were struck down, dead or gravely wounded.
'Ride!' Tyzack screamed as if he had suddenly realized the danger. The black-haired man kicked at the sides of his mount, propelling the beast forward.
In seconds, Cyric found himself racing toward the auburn, skeletal ridge. The shadow caused by the cloud of knives was deepening, and it seemed to be following the Zhentish army. The cries of the Zhentilar who were struck down by the shards filled the air, their shrill screeches cutting through the dull roar made by hundreds of galloping horses.
The Zhentilar are at my back, Cyric mused. Then suddenly his amusement turned to fear. He felt exposed and very much alone at the front of the horde of charging soldiers. The thief's shoulders tightened, and he strained to listen for any mount that was closing on him, knowing that at any moment the rain of steel from above could end all of his problems.
The thief focused on the ridge, even though he thought their flight was useless. Then one of the rifts leading off from the skeletal hills beckoned, growing larger, its night-black shadow opening wide in front of the soldiers like the maw of a hungry animal. More and more Zhentish riders were struck by the shards. The lucky ones were killed outright. The unlucky ones fell from their horses and were trampled beneath the hooves of their comrades' mounts.
Slater was still riding near Cyric when they finally reached the mouth of the rift, where Ren and a majority of the Zhentish that had followed him had taken refuge. The soldiers' abandoned horses raced around, frantically trying to avoid the burning pieces of metal. From the number of horses either wounded or riderless at the end of the rift, Cyric judged that a hundred men had already taken refuge inside it.
But inside the ten-foot-wide gap, the Zhentish were faring no better than those still out on the plain. 'This is absurd!' Cyric cried. Then a flechette smashed into his horse's neck, and the mount tossed the thief onto the ground. Luckily for the thief, however, he was close enough to the rift that the riders behind him had slowed their pace enough to avoid trampling him. Still, Cyric was momentarily shaken by the fall.
Before the thief could utter a word of protest, Slater grabbed him by the arm, and they were forced into the dark, cool rift by the flood of soldiers desperately crowding into the opening. Once in the rift, Cyric grabbed a rough wooden shield from a trampled body and raised it over his head. Slater, taller than the thief, had to crouch slightly to remain beneath its cover. The warm, smelly crush of bodies surrounded the thief and the warrior, and Cyric cursed loudly whenever he was bumped or pushed.
'They're not using their heads!' the thief yelled to Slater, who cowered next to him, listening to the frantic cries of the Zhentish and the hiss of falling shards. Above the Zhentilar, the rain of shards continued. The walls of the rift helped to slow the metal fragments; many struck the rock first, then tumbled with decreased momentum toward the soldiers, burning them but not killing them. But many knives still fell directly into the ranks, and the screams of the dying filled the rift with horrible echoes.
'Use your shields!' Cyric screamed, then Slater joined him in the cry, trying to make their voices heard above the din. A dozen soldiers immediately surrounded the thief, looking to him for orders, their eyes wide and frightened. But Cyric's words seemed to slice through the chaos as surely as the sharp edge of a blade through unarmored flesh. 'Use your shields! If you don't have a shield, crawl under a corpse!'
More soldiers turned to Cyric and obeyed his commands.
'Interlock the shields, then — ' Cyric screamed as a burning metal shard pierced his shield, striking his arm. There was a hiss, and the hawk-nosed man felt his flesh burning. He gritted his teeth and turned to Slater. 'Anchor the shield, I've been hit.'
The Zhentish woman complied with Cyric's commands. As the thief pulled his arm away from the shield — and the shard that still hissed at its center — a group of nearly fifty soldiers with shields closed ranks around the thief, near the center of the rift.
'Give the tallest men the shields!' Cyric yelled, holding his hand over the blackened wound. 'Those without shields, stay low, under the protection!'
The shards continued to fall, but now the sound of shields being struck echoed through the cavern, drowning out the moans of the wounded and replacing the screams of the dying. Of course, occasionally the steel slivers found the meaty forearms on the undersides of the shields, but no one complained.
Cyric tore part of his shirt and wrapped a hasty bandage around his arm. 'Forget the pain!' he cried. 'At least you aren't dead!' Then he moved between the huddled men as best as he could to give orders to another segment of the frightened troops, Slater always at his side. 'Those of you on the ground, help the wounded. Forget the dead; they can't be helped! Keep those shields up if you want to stay alive!' Cyric yelled, slapping some men on the back, encouraging others as he moved through the ranks.
Cyric's plan was working. Throughout the rift, more than one hundred Zhentilar with shields huddled under the network of protection.
At one point, as Cyric sat resting while Slater rebandaged his wound, she asked Cyric how he had thought of having the men use their shields as one instead of separately.
The thief smiled, or at least came as close to smiling as he had since the deadly rain had begun. 'Storming a castle once… long ago. It's called 'forming a tortoise,'' the thief said. 'It keeps your troops from getting slaughtered when the enemy decides to drop oil on your head or have their archers fire a rain of arrows at you.' He looked up at the men holding the shields over him. 'It's really quite simple.'
'Cyric!' a low, throaty voice called from the huddled soldiers.
The thief spun and saw Ren crawling toward him, without a shield, his shirt torn and bloody from a number of small wounds.
'Tyzack's dead,' the blond soldier rumbled. 'He froze when death looked him in the eye, the coward.'
Both men stood and stared at each other for a while, waiting for the storm to pass. Eventually the steady thump of shards hitting the shields lessened, then stopped altogether. The hiss of the still-warm fragments singeing the shields remained, as did the murmurs of the men and the cries of the wounded. Many of the men holding shields had begun to lower them, but Cyric shouted for them to hold their shields up until he gave orders to the contrary.
The thief turned back to Ren. 'If Tyzack's dead — ,' Cyric began, his brow furrowed.
'Then you're our leader now,' Ren said and bowed his head slightly. 'I live to serve.'
The thief's head was swimming. Cyric quickly considered turning command over to someone else, but that would almost certainly turn out to be Ren, and that would most likely mean Cyric's death. As usual, the hawk-nosed man was sure that he wasn't being given a choice. 'But who do you serve, Ren?'
Ren frowned. 'As I said, I live to serve. You saved the men. You should lead them.' The blond man paused and ran a hand across his dirty, blood-smeared face. 'There is no reason to fear me… for now, anyway.'
The thief ignored the last comment. 'Show me Tyzack's body,' Cyric said quietly.
The two men maneuvered some distance through the shield bearers. Finally Ren pointed toward a dead man lying ten feet beyond the last Zhentilar with a shield. Although darkness was now descending, Cyric could see that a metal shard had pierced Tyzack's chest, very near his heart. And the thief noticed something else: Tyzack's throat had been cut. The shards would not have been so efficient, Cyric thought as he turned to stare at Ren.
The thief stepped out from beneath the shields and looked up at the empty sky. Metal fragments lay on the ground all around him, some still red hot. Ren followed Cyric out from under the shell of shields and joined the new leader of the two hundred or so Zhentish soldiers that had survived the rain of death.
''Tell me,' the thief rumbled as Ren came to his side, 'what secret did Tyzack bear that was so horrible he had you kill to protect it?'
The blond man paused for a moment and looked down at Tyzack's body. 'Lately he'd become frantic that
