thunder of hooves.
Then a mounted Wolf waving a long, dark mace was thundering across the marketplace toward the lane.
'Is that Elminster?' Itharr yelled as the two Harpers snatched up a lance and swung it together, like a great broom, to sweep this third Wolf out of his saddle.
'I think so,' Belkram called back as the man crashed helplessly to earth, boot heels bouncing. Itharr raced in to leap atop him, and their roll together was brief and brutal.
Long training made Belkram look back at where the second Wolf had gone, just in time to see him spurring back, lance first. Irreph was turning to face him, chains flying. Daera hadn't fled and now could only stare helplessly at the lance leaping at her throat-and scream.
Belkram shouted and ran, knowing he'd not be in time.
Itharr threw his sword, then his dagger after it. They flashed end over end through the air.
Irreph shoved his daughter hard and she fell. He stepped forward to swing his chains and smash the lance tip aside, but it was already dipping and turning to follow Ylyndaera's plunge.
A shuttered window on the other side of the lane flew open, and a red-cheeked goodwife shrieked defiance and hurled a chamber pot out at the galloping Wolf. It struck the side of his face squarely, whipping his head around as it shattered and breaking his helm, skull, and neck all in one dull crash. The falling body stopped both of Itharr's weapons on its way to the ground.
The goodwife raised horrified hands to her mouth and screamed. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell back out of view.
The two Harpers ran to Ylyndaera, who was picking herself up gingerly, spitting road dirt and holding her scraped hands painfully curled.
'Go hide, girl!' the high constable roared, shaking her. Then he looked up at the two men in leathers and snapped, 'Take her somewhere safe!'
'There is no such place,' Itharr told him quietly.
'I will not run from this,' Daera told her father in a trembling voice. 'What good is life to me if you are killed after I turn my back and run away? I'm staying!' She went to the nearest fallen Wolf and tugged a belt dagger from its sheath. It glinted in her hand as she scowled at the galloping Wolves out in the marketplace.
Then she turned to her father, face white and hands trembling. 'Let's kill us some Wolves,' she managed to say before she turned away and was very sick.
'Our swords are needed!' Belkram bellowed as Itharr tore his weapons from the fallen Wolf. 'If the gods will it so, we'll meet again after the bloodletting's done!'
The high constable nodded, holding his sobbing daughter tenderly with hands that still trailed chains. The two Harpers clapped Irreph's shoulder and ran out into the marketplace.
Bodies lay everywhere, and not a few of them wore the armor of the Wolves. Their surviving comrades were milling about the streets and yards around the market, hacking and howling. After the initial easy butchery done by their lances and the plunging hooves of their horses, they'd found themselves surrounded, often isolated, and lacking room to readily turn their mounts. Wolves were now losing as many struggles as they won in the alleys. Old men and young boys alike leapt on them from windows and balconies above, or toppled barrels under their horses. If a Wolf fell, there was a general roar and rush, and he seldom had the time to get up again.
Stormcloak saw that the only route he could hurl spells down without slaying Wolves as well as dalefolk was the lane that had emptied when Irreph Mulmar snatched up someone smaller and dove headlong through a window.
He also saw two men in leathers coming for him, blades out, and knew he dare not trust in his spells to bring them down. He set his will and called Longspear back from a bloody fray far down a side street.
The Lord of the High Dale, his armor spattered and dented, spurred his snorting, wild-eyed mount back into the marketplace, turned it with ruthless strength, and rode hard at the two men, pulling the curved horn from his belt as he came.
The call to 'retreat and rally' rang out. To a Zhentilar, ignoring a signal horn meant death; to a man they turned and fought or galloped their way back toward the open market. At their heels ran or limped the folk of the dale, closing in again around the edges of the trampled, corpse-strewn marketplace.
They were in time to see Longspear lean out of his saddle and swing mightily with his great gore-bathed warhammer at a man on foot who wore dusty leathers and a grim expression. The man dove and rolled aside as nimbly as any acrobat and came up circling, sword flashing.
Another Wolf lancer charged at the man in leathers from behind, but two white stars whistled from a shop front to strike the soldier down. The horse was riderless when it thundered past the man with the sword.
Another man in leathers was running in at the lord's other side. Longspear jerked his reins about savagely, but the man's sword was already leaping for his throat. With a shriek of straining metal, the warhammer met the striking steel just in front of the lord's impassive helm and turned it aside, but the man dropped it and dove in, hurling himself at the lord's ribs and upper leg.
The horse bucked. Armored arms flailed for balance, and Lord Longspear crashed to earth. The first man he'd struck at was waiting. His dagger went in under the lord's helm with the speed of a striking snake.
A great, savage roar went up from the watching folk, and they were pouring out into the marketplace, running amid the still-gathering Wolves. The dalefolk leapt and swung weapons as if driven by the gods themselves. The Zhent warriors fought to stay in the saddles of bucking mounts and laid about themselves desperately with their own blades. The red, shouting chaos of Tempus, god of war, reigned over the marketplace.
'I'm missing something!' Irreph Mulmar snarled in frustration, hearing the tumult outside the shuttered shop he'd plunged into. He thrust his struggling daughter into the arms of the fat woman who sold rope, cord, and thread there. 'Ulraea, watch her for me, will you? And keep her here!'
'Aye, sir,' Ulraea began doubtfully, but Ylyndaera twisted out of her grasp like swirling wind and leapt across the room toward the window her father had brought her in by.
'By all the gods, girl, forgive me,' he said, chains rattling, and clipped her on the jaw as she ducked past.
Ylyndaera Mulmar continued gracefully, face first, to the floor and lay there unmoving. Irreph snatched her up by the shoulders; her head hung limply. Without pause he swung her into Ulraea's arms and said, 'Just hold her here, will you? She'll be right again, all too soon. I must be out there!'
He whirled, shackles gleaming, and plunged back out through the window. One of its shutters broke off as he burst out into the battle, to hang dangling in his wake.
Stormcloak swayed amid the milling horses. He clutched his head and his gut, feeling wretchedly sick and wincing at the splitting pain in his head, all at the same time. Gods! So that was what it was like to be linked to the mind of a man when he's killed. Ohhh, gods above!
When Irreph charged out into the marketplace, a slim figure ran with him: a long-haired, beautiful woman in tattered leather armor, the one who'd earlier been with the wizard with the wand. A long sword gleamed in her hand. Irreph frowned. What had the Harpers called her?
One of the Knights of Myth Drannor, they'd said. Irreph shot another look at her; she winked back. He'd heard of that band of adventurers-who in the Dales hadn't? — and she certainly looked as if she knew how to handle a blade. He glanced back. There was no sign of the old man with the wand now. Elminster or not, he'd vanished.
Irreph began to think, for the first time that day, that the High Dale could be his again. He just might live to see the last of these accursed Zhents gone. He bounded forward and swung his chains with a savage grin, smashing the nearest Wolf from his saddle.
The man fell on the other side of his horse. He staggered up and got out his sword before Irreph could reach him. The Wolf's broad blade swung up, and the high constable had to leap back. His chains were too slow and heavy to stop the flashing steel of a good bladesman in time.
Then a slim sword came past his shoulder to his rescue, taking the Wolf's blade aside. Its wielder fenced with the Wolf in a dazzling exchange of cuts and parries before sliding her blade in with silken ease through one eyehole of the Wolf's helm. The lady Knight! Sharantyr, that was her name!
Irreph turned to her. 'My thanks, Sharantyr of Myth Drannor,' he said formally, as if he wore court robes and
