Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [68]
"I couldn't. The realm still has need of your services," said Vangerdahast, hoping he had finally hit on a way to lift Rowen's despair. "We must get the scepter to Azoun."
"But you wished Nalavara out of existence," said Rowen, as always too observant for his own good. "Three times. I heard it."
"And she no longer exists here, wherever here is." Vangerdahast raised his hand and displayed the ring of wishes. "Unless this damned thing worked better for me than it ever has for any of my predecessors, Nalavara remains a force to be reckoned with, and you may be our only way of getting the scepter to Azoun."
"Me?"
"When the change takes you," Vangerdahast explained. "Xanthon could come and go at will. As you become more of a ghazneth, presumably you will, too."
"And you think you'll be able to trust me?" Rowen asked. "With the scepter in your hand?"
"That's the reason I risked what I did, yes," said Vangerdahast, "though you may have to leave alone if it proves impossible for me to go with you."
Rowen laughed bitterly and stood. "If I must leave alone, I think it would be wiser for you to kill me." He began to back away from the edge of the pit, and said, "What good will the scepter be to Cormyr if I have drained all its magic?"
20
Alusair let her arm fall and nodded in grim satisfaction as the banner beside her dipped for the last signal.
Obediently, at the head of the valley, a banner dipped in answer.
"Positions," Alusair murmured almost absently, her eyes on that distant height.
Men moved to their bows and the bristling "flowers" of arrows standing ready in the turf, the few hopeless shots taking up bills and pikes behind the archers. They'd step forward only when the charging foe were mere paces away.
It seemed to take only a few quick breaths before the first smoke drifted up. Alusair smiled grimly.
"Welcome to our cookfires, you eaters of men," she said aloud, reaching for her own bow. It shouldn't take long now.
Orcs had no more love of smoke than men and could no more resist ready food and water. Alusair's men had driven the few stray sheep they'd found down to the ponds in this valley the day before, setting the perfect lure.
Like stupid beasts the orcs had plunged down upon the prize. They even fought among themselves over who'd get mutton for evenfeast. They were down there now, and Alusair had made ready their next meal: massed volleys of arrows, right down their throats.
Smoke was rising in dark clouds now, the breezes driving it right down the valley.
"Waste no shafts," Alusair murmured, repeating the order she'd given rather more forcefully some time ago. "Fire only at tuskers you can see."
There came a snarling out of the smoke, then its cause.
Orcs were running hard, some with unlaced armor bouncing askew, but all with weapons out and ready. Red eyes glittered with rage and smoke-smarting pain, seeing the doom to come and knowing there was no way to escape it.
All around Alusair bows twanged and death hummed. The Steel Princess chose a target, sighted, and let fly. She plucked up another shaft from the sheaf standing ready even before her victim threw up its hands to claw at the air, her shaft standing out of its throat, and fell over on its side in the dust. It rolled under the running feet of orcs who stumbled and fell, but kept coming-only to sprout swift thickets of arrows and fall in twisting spasms of pain.
A barricade of writhing orc bodies was growing across the mouth of the valley. The slaughter was as impressive as it was swift. Unless they dared to tarry among the vultures for other orcs to kill while they tore free their shafts to use again, Alusair's warriors would have very few arrows left to loose at later foes. Not that arrows were much use against the dragon she expected at any moment. Lord Mage Stormshoulder had hazarded a spell to warn her of what it had done to her father's army, and she had seen it winging across the horizon not long after setting this trap.
As if that grim thought had been a signal, a dark and sinuous shape