All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [59]
"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 Hammer-hand 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 black-helm 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