Darkwell - Douglas Niles [145]
This goddess could not replace the druid spells that the great mother had given to Robyn. Those were gone forever. But in their place, she sent the divine blessing of clerical might: the power to turn away the dark forces of the walking dead, the power to cure grievous wounds, the power to bless her companions.
And the powers of new spells, different from the nature of the spells Robyn had once cast but certainly no less powerful. Now Robyn, Cleric of Chauntea, stepped to the side of her king to face the power of ultimate darkness.
"I banish thee, in the name of Chauntea!"
* * * * *
Friar Nolan held his clerical talisman proudly before him, and the dead of the sea shrank back, covering their eyes with rotted, fleshless hands.
"Forward, for Corwell!" Randolph, beside the cleric, called out a challenge, and a dozen men of the Ffolk rushed after him. His longsword cut the throat of a surprised sahuagin before the monster could react to the flight of its undead allies.
Theirs was but a small island of victory in a vast sea of defeat. The bold friar's spell could turn only a dozen or so undead at a time, enough to give Randolph and his men a chance for a brief, limited counterattack, but that was all.
To all sides, across the moors, through the streets, and up the slopes of Corwell Knoll, the dead of the sea ranged freely, accompanied and prodded by their reptilian mistresses. The arrival of the northmen had provided brief moments of hope, but they, too, were being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the foe.
Grunnarch stood in the forefront of his warriors, his great battle-axe rising and falling with machinelike regularity, slashing the head from a sahuagin or slicing the legs from a zombie. All around him sprawled the grisly remains of his victims. Grunnarch, in turn, was also surrounded by the bodies of many of his own men. And body for body, he knew the battle could have but one outcome.
Near him fought young Koll, the flush of berserker rage upon him. His own sword was long since smashed to pieces on the heavy shield of a sahuagin war chief, but he had seized the monster and broken its neck with his bare hands. Then he had grabbed the creature's trident, which he now used to lay about himself with fanatical savagery.
Wading through ankle-deep gore, surrounded by a thundering cacophony of sound, the chaos of a life-and-death struggle, Koll became a true warrior of the North. He felt newly born as the berserker frenzy carried him to heights of ferocity he could never have imagined. His mind whirled with a thousand new sensations, and he knew that he was one of those rare men of the North truly born to fight. But even such a frenzy could not, alone, carry the day against such a numerous foe. Koll's trident pierced the chests of two zombies at once, pressing them backward and then pinning the struggling corpses to the ground. With a roar more leonine than human, he seized an axe from a fallen warrior and began hacking with that.
In a matter of moments, he was down, tripped by the long haft of a sahuagin spear. Another fish-man leaped forward to slice his throat with its sharp teeth, but before the horrible jaws could close, the monster fell dead, slain by a single sword thrust.
Koll looked up, the frenzy falling from his eyes, to see a smooth-cheeked young warrior standing over him. The fighter wielded his sword with smooth skill, cutting another fish-man down and sending a zombie stumbling backward with a dangling leg. His rescuer was short but solid.
The warrior reached a hand down toward Koll, lifting him to his feet, and as he rose, the woolen hood fell from the head of his rescuer.
"Gwen!"
Her brown eyes smiled back at him, though her mouth remained fixed in a grimace of intensity. She thrust again, wielding her blade with deft precision. Koll quickly stood at her back, and together they fought against the onslaught