dogs out to feed, too.'
'Well fought, you three,' Storm called to Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr, who'd sat down together on some dead Zhentilar, rubbing at aching shoulders and bruised forearms.
'Of course,' Itharr replied. 'After all, you taught us.'
Storm chuckled. 'To dance with your blade, aye, a little-but fighting as one is your own doing.'
'They're coming again,' Dove said, striding forward.
' 'Ware, all!'
She swung her sword in wide, wild arcs to loosen stiffening muscles, and set herself to meet the Zhentilar attack; a cautious affair this time, with two or three blackhelms moving against each defender.
'This could be bad,' Belkram murmured.
Sharantyr sighed. 'Just try to stay alive… I need you both.'
'You do?' Itharr asked, adopting Torm's manner of mock astonishment.
'I do,' Sharantyr growled back at him. 'We've got those Malaugrym to catch, remember?'
'Gods,' Belkram cursed as he caught a hard-swung Zhent blade on his own and was driven a pace back. 'Do Elminster's little tasks never end?'
'Where is Elminster, anyway?' Itharr panted, slashing a staggering Zhent across the face and bringing his blade up into the throat of the blackhelm fencing with Sharantyr.
'Off saving some other corner of the Realms, no doubt,' Belkram said, driving his foe back with a few solid swings.
'I don't care about other corners of the Realms,' Torm called to them, 'only the one I'm in.'
'An essentially selfish philosophy,' Dove scolded him.
'But one that all lesser mortals must needs cling to, if they want to cling to life,' Torm returned archly. He threw the blade in his hand into one eye of a snarling Zhent, who was charging in beside the one he was fighting. The man crashed down, and the thief leapt high to avoid being knocked over. His Zhent opponent wasn't so nimble, and toppled sideways, whereupon Hammerhand Bucko, the wagonmaker of the dale, calmly crushed the man's head with a sledgehammer.
'Thank you,' Torm told him politely.
After gaping at him for a moment in amazement, Hammerhand grinned.
A trumpet rang out, the Zhents pressed forward, and the defenders of Shadowdale became all too busy to talk.
A tortured scream topped the fray as Nelyssa's mount reared up, three blades in its belly, and went down. The paladin threw herself clear at the last moment. Only some desperate bladework by Storm and Dove, sparks dancing from their furiously plied blades, kept the captain of the Riders alive until she could find her feet and fight on.
Kuthe grunted in pain and went down, a spear through him, and a moment later the Rider beside him fell, transfixed by three Zhent blades.
'Too many of them!' Merith snarled in frustration, swinging two swords in deadly, whirling unison. 'What price sundown now?'
'There's too many! We can't hold them!' Illistyl shouted, swinging a sword awkwardly.
'We must hold them!' Mourngrym snarled back at her from the heart of a knot of Zhents.
'Where in the name of the Seven Dancing Gods is the Old Mage?' Storm raged as she carved her way to the lord of Shadowdale. 'Especially now that we need him-for once.'
'The temple,' a wounded priest of Lathander gasped from behind her. 'He stood alone there-or with a woman, some said-against Bane himself!'
Storm turned and stared at the rising column of black smoke that marked the distant temple. 'No,' she whispered. 'Oh, no.' She leapt clear of the fray, scant inches ahead of a Zhent blade, and sprinted away across the heaped dead.
Sharantyr turned, hacked through a Zhent blackhelm twice her size, and saw Storm spring into the saddle of a dale war horse. It leapt into a full gallop like an arrow shot from a bow, heading west.
Though Shar whirled back to face another foe, she still saw Storm's anguished face in her mind. No one should look like that. Nothing should ever happen in Faerun to make the Bard of Shadowdale look like that.
She parried the Zhentilar blade and spun away to run after Storm's racing dapple gray, heedless of the heaped dead.
Uncertainly, Belkram turned to follow, but Itharr shouted in alarm.
'Look you!' He pointed the other way, east beyond Krag Pool, where new plumes of smoke were rising through the green leaves of the trees.
'Gods,' Shaerl gasped, her face white, as she stared east into the blazing forest. 'The Zhents have fired the wood! The dale may become our pyre yet!'
The defenders of Shadowdale, too few and too weary to fight a blaze, stared at the quickening flames in horror.
'Now,' Dove said firmly, ' 'tis time!' She held up the blade she bore and called, 'Eanamorrath!'
Lighting leapt from its suddenly blazing length, crackling along the line of blackhelms to strike the blade Lord Florin wielded. His sword flashed. Florin hissed at the shock of the bolt surging through the weapon, and then the lightning leapt back, sinking back into Dove's blade as if it were an errant phantom returning home.
In its wake lay a blackened path of dead Zhentilar, sprawled wherever the bolt had danced, and the air was sharp with the smell of the strike that had felled them. The surviving Zhent warriors drew back in disarray, leaving the defenders alone with the dead.
'Florin!' Itharr shouted. 'Lord Florin!'
The Shield of Shadowdale turned his head.
Itharr called, 'We must pray to Mielikki for a downpour!'
'But if all the gods are cast down and powerless…' a Rider leaning on his sword nearby said.
'No! He's right!' Illistyl snapped. 'Mielikki and Eldath dwell in Faerun; their power is sourced here. Shaerl! Is your maid, Jenna, anywhere about?'
'I–I sent her to help Jhaele tend the wounded at the Old Skull,' Shaerl said doubtfully, wiping sweat and tangled hair out of her eyes. 'Why?'
'She worships Eldath,' Illistyl snarled. 'Come!'
'And what of the Zhents?' Mourngrym bellowed. He waved an arm to indicate the hundreds of Zhentilar still facing them, though the blackhelms seemed to be retreating to the trees at the edge of the dale.
'Fall back,' Illistyl told him. 'Back to this ridge of bodies. You can see the inn from there, and Florin and the Rangers Three can join Jenna in prayer. If the woods burn, we are all lost, whether we fight for Shadowdale or Zhentil Keep!'
They all stared at her a moment, then scrambled to take up new positions among the mounds of fallen. Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr found themselves trotting toward the inn, panting, while Florin ran on ahead, feet racing as if he were rested and fresh. Shaerl and Mourngrym ran along behind them as rearguard, and the stout priest Rathan puffed after the hurrying band.
'Gods,' Belkram said, stumbling as his throbbing feet sent fresh lances of pain upward. 'I don't think the gods meant me to be a hero! Being one of those sleeping temple guards seems more within my grasp!'
'Here, now!' Rathan Thentraver said in offended tones. 'Dost thou slander the holy?'
'All too often,' Itharr told him as they picked their way among the wounded laid on blankets, restless in their pain. Someone was wailing in grief, and blood-soaked bandages-and flies-were everywhere. 'What does this Jenna look like?'
'Just look for Florin,' Belkram instructed, pointing at the open inn door, 'He must be in th-'
The ground heaved. A deafening howl of rage and grief smashed into the ears of everyone in Shadowdale. Thrown to their knees, the three rangers looked back east, from whence the sound had come.
A sphere of raging flames hung high in the air over the burning trees, spinning. The flames from the woods below were being drawn up into it. It pulsed, becoming almost blinding in its fury-but against the bright whirling flames a figure could be seen standing in its fiery heart; a wildly leaping figure clad in the black tatters of a gown.
'Oh, sweet gods spare us!' someone gasped.
