As they hurried across, Jhessail asked the first old farmer on the bridge, 'How goes the battle?'
'Not well,' he rasped. 'Too many Zhents!'
'A problem we're familiar with,' Torm agreed grandly, urging his horse off the bridge.
An instant later, the ground rocked and thundered. Riders fought to control snorting mounts and stay in their saddles as they gaped at a huge ball of flame that rose up, up into the sky over Shadowdale.
'The tower?' Illistyl gasped, white to the lips. 'Florin?'
'Not the tower,' Jhessail said, shaking her head. 'But close by, west and south.'
'The temple of Lathander,' Rathan grunted, 'or I'm an idiot.'
'You are an idiot,' Torm pointed out.
Rathan's reply was a certain wordless gesture with his mace as he hauled on the reins, taking his horse to one side of the cart road and gaining room to gallop. Torm cast a quick look back to see all the Riders doing so, and pulled his mount to the left, catching a glare from Kuthe for his tardiness.
'Ready, all?' Captain Nelyssa asked crisply. 'Forward!'
At her yell, they nudged their mounts into a gallop and swept north into the heart of Shadowdale.
The smoke lay like a haze in the air here, drifting out of the trees to the east, and the fields around them were green and deserted. Up ahead, they could hear the swelling sound of shouts and screams and the clangor of steel on steel. Here and there a blade flashed as it caught the sunlight through the smoke and swirling dust.
The crossroads in front of the Old Skull Inn was heaped with dead. The twisted mounds were so high the Zhentilar, advancing in a great horde from the east, had to scramble and climb. The grisly, slippery wall was being held against them by desperate dalesmen wielding axes and blades.
Among the dusty defenders were Storm Silverhand and her sister, Dove, both clad in battered and scorched plate armor but bareheaded, their silver tresses swirling as they fought. Storm leapt into the air and smashed aside a foe's blade, her other hand snaking in to take him by the throat. Muscles rippled in her arm as they crashed back down to earth together. The Zhent blackhelm struggled for a moment in her iron grip-then fell limp, his neck broken. Two of his fellows scrambled up the mound of dead, waving blades to get their chance at the Bard of Shadowdale.
Dove Falconhand took that chance away, rushing along the line of defenders to thrust one Zhent desperately aside into the other armsman. Off-balance, the blackhelms stumbled among the corpses. Storm dumped the man she'd just slain atop one, and kicked the other in the face with her boot. He fell down the heap, head rolling limply, and was smashed aside by more Zhentilar rushing up to challenge Storm in their turn.
'That's the problem with Zhents,' Rathan growled as they turned their horses toward the black-armored host crowded up against the wall of dead. 'There're always too many of them.'
'Lances down!' Nelyssa cried, and led the charge.
Through the thunder of pounding hooves they heard someone of Shadowdale cry, 'The Riders! The Riders of Mistledale!'
'And the mighty Torm, too!' the thief shouted back, just before they crashed into the Zhent lines.
Men reeled like broken dolls under the impact of hooves and lances and thundering war horses, and when the press of bodies slowed their progress, the Riders let go their lances and laid about themselves with swords and maces.
'Shadowdale!' Dove Falconhand snarled, leading a charge from the ridge of slain.
There were screams of agony and frustration from the Zhents, packed too tightly together to raise weapons or move from the blades.
A desperately wielded spear sought Torm's thigh; he sprang from his saddle and vaulted into the fray, drawn sword extended between his boots. He came down atop a Zhentilar and rode the man to the ground, stabbing viciously with the dagger in his free hand. The man convulsed and lay still; by then Torm was two kills away, his slim blade and dagger sliding in and out before the close-packed Zhents could react.
With a wall of corpses around him like a shield, he struck out from between their bodies, swift and sure, thrusting, dancing away from blades… until the crash of a felled Rider and his horse cleared some space, and the dead began to topple and slump all around.
Into the opened space leapt Storm, clapping a gasping Torm on his shoulder. 'Bravely done!'
'Ah-all for… you… Lady,' Torm huffed, trying to essay a courtly bow-and slipping in gore so that he lurched to one knee. The fall saved his life; a whirling axe meant for his head flashed harmlessly through empty air.
Storm hauled him upright. 'The battle's this way,' she said helpfully, pointing with a sword that was red to the hilt.
He gave her a fierce smile in answer. Then his jaw dropped. 'By the gods, look!' he bellowed, pointing. Storm turned in time to see Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr advance another pace through the ranks of Zhentilar. Fighting in unison, standing close together in a human arrowhead, they were dealing death with furious speed.
'The Rangers Three,' Storm said, watching her pupils in admiration.
The hesitant gangliness she'd seen all too often the day she'd fought Belkram and Itharr at the farmhouse was gone. Now they moved like dancers, deft and quick. Sharantyr was the key. Her smooth style had drawn the two Harpers into a team. Storm began to believe their survival in the castle of the Malaugrym was more than good fortune bolstered by the aid of Mystra and Elminster. She shook her head in pleased admiration and threw herself into the battle once more, coming up alongside the Rangers Three in their bloody foray into the Zhent ranks.
The Rider charge had cleared space enough to fight, and the easy killing was done. Fresh Zhents were pressing forward for their first chance to fight, and there seemed no end to them.
They'd struck at Shadowdale from the west, and from the north. Some fell magic had wrought a great explosion and fire westward, hard by the Twisted Tower. There was fighting all over the dale, and the day might still be lost-but this welcome, unexpected aid had come from Mistledale, from whence she'd expected only more blackhelms.
'Azuth be with us,' she breathed, feeling fresh sorrow at the thought that Mystra was no more.
Storm swept her notched long sword up to strike aside a reaching halberd. Catching hold of it as the man rushed helplessly forward, she pulled, sprawling him to the turf in front of her. A dalesman stabbed the Zhent in the face before he could rise, and from somewhere near at hand Storm heard the deep laughter of Bronn Selgard, the smith. Dove must be rallying the last folk from the inn to join this push, to drive the Zhents back into the trees.
There was a ringing sound as the great iron-headed hammer Bronn wielded crashed down on some unfortunate Zhent's helm. The winded Rangers Three began to fall back. A spell hurled bodies in all directions, tearing a breach in the wall of corpses behind her.
Storm turned, frowning-creating a breach for the Zhents to pour through? What simpleton had birthed such a plan? — and then laughed aloud in delight.
'For Shadowdale!' came the roar from beyond the wall. Warriors in full plate armor rode through the breach, lances gleaming. At their head, three figures rode abreast: Florin; Mourngrym, lord of Shadowdale; and Shaerl, his lady.
''Ware!' Storm yelled to the Rangers Three, waving them aside.
Dove sprang acrobatically across the path of the charging horses, somersaulted in a clanking of protesting armor, and fetched up beside Storm. Just then, the lances of the charging dalefolk came down, crashing into the massed Zhentilar in a great screaming of men and horses and tortured metal.
As first, the horses were slowed by the sheer weight of blackhelms standing against them. The mounted armsmen of the tower spurred out and around them, striking at the foe on either side. When the last horseman had charged, the Zhent lines had fallen back a good twenty paces-a distance marked by a carpet of black-armored fallen.
The dale riders pulled back to spare their horses from Zhent blades, and a cheer went up from the weary farmers and merchants who'd held the wall of dead so long against the forefront of the Zhent army.
A little space opened up between the defenders and the army of Zhentil Keep; Dove stared across it and hissed, 'Oh, for some arrows…'
'All gone, hours ago,' Storm told her, and they embraced wearily, eyes on the foe. Both sides had paused to catch breath, it seemed, staring at each other across the fallen, but making no move to attack.
'Gods, look how many there are,' Shaerl murmured. 'Can we hold them until sunset?'
'We must,' Mourngrym replied shortly, looking around at the dead. 'And dark'll bring the wolves and wild
