All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [39]
When the foremost man was an easy ten paces from the overgrown stones of a wall, he turned and shrieked like an owl, thrice. In response, the mage lights drifted silently forward, over the helmed heads of the soldiers, into the dark and hollow places of stone ahead.
Nothing moved. There was no sound that could not be put down to small things that flap or scuttle in a forest by night. Cautiously the Zhentilar moved forward, swords out, probing the ferns and brambles ahead for spring bows, trip cords, and pits. They found nothing.
From here and there along the edges of the ruin, double owl hoots rang out as scout after scout signalled his safe entry into the keep. Files of men bearing torches began to work their way through the trees in answer to the calls.
A scout halted in a dark chamber, hearing the stony scrape of something moving to his right, through an archway thick with vines and mottled moss. "Be that you, Baeremuth?" The whisper was cautious, and the reply was quick and low.
"Aye. Fflarast?"
"Me," Fflarast confirmed, turning his loaded hand crossbow aside to prevent any accidents. "Anything of interest?"
"Lots of rubble, and something's nest… vole bones an' the like. I think this place really is deserted."
"Good. Crazed orders, hacking through the woods in the dark just to camp in a ruin, but…"
"Better'n trying to fight our way into Mistledale down that bow-shot throat, if we'd taken the road. They must have at least a dozen archers – an' a dozen's all they'd need, Fflar, to take down four hundred or more of us, for sure. This way, we can strike out of the woods all along the south side of the dale. Those farmers'll run themselves crazed trying to be everywhere at once to stop us."
"You plot like a swordlord," Fflarast muttered. "We'd better get on, or Dellyn'll be running his blade up our backsides and bellowing at us for being a pair of craven laggards or spies for the enemy."
"Huh. He sees spies under every stone, that one," Baeremuth replied, and suited actions to words by turning over a rock that was suspiciously damp among dry, dusty ones.
There was a sudden rush of rubble and a crash that shook the room. Fflarast cursed and staggered back, trying to keep his feet, but ended up sitting down hard on rubble. When he'd scrambled up and could see again through the rising dust, his mouth went suddenly dry.
Baeremuth Asanter lay under a fallen block of stone nearly as large as a pack mule. Thin rivers of blood were running out from beneath it – and Fflar could just see the tips of the fingers of one hand, reaching vainly for aid. It would reach forever now.
Death GROWS Impatient
Fflarast Blackriver peered again at his comrade's remains and then backed away very carefully. The rock-fall hadn't been accidental.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble with wooden wedges and spars and balanced stones-and even flung dust around afterward to hide their work. The wedges were the bright hue of newly cut wood; this had been done within the last day or so.
"Oh, Bane preserve us," Fflarast whispered, backing out of the chamber. At that moment, a heavy booming off to the right marked the discovery of another trap. It was followed by a faint, raw screaming that went on for a long time before ending suddenly in a gurgle. Fflarast knew those sounds. Someone had put a half-crushed man out of his agony with a quick sword thrust to the throat.
"Ye gods and small creeping things hear my plea," the Zhentilar warrior whispered, invoking the old, old prayer of desperate warriors. He wasn't facing half a hundred ores alone on a crag, like the legendary Bor-thin had been when he roared out the invocation, but dead is dead, and Fflarast Blackriver had only one life to lose. Moreover, he valued it just as much as Borthin had his own.
There came another rushing of stone off to the left, and startled