Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [90]
Narm drew in a deep, shuddering breath, nodded, and tried to smile. Someone shouted – a short, desperate, cut-off cry – and he looked back over his shoulder.
He couldn't tell who'd just died or who'd slain them.
Several wagons were burning, and others lay scattered in shards and ashes, blown apart by this magic or that.
Narm shook his head, felt around in the wrack at his feet for a leather water-flask, and asked, "Why don't we find ourselves a wagon that's still intact and go play dead there?"
Shandril smiled slowly. "As Torm might put it: you say the sweetest things."
Narm winced, took a swig of water, and crouched low as magic flared out from behind a wagon. Small, sizzling balls of flame streaked across trampled, body-strewn Haelhollow at someone else, for once.
"On the other hand," he gasped, sitting down hastily amid the wreckage, "we could far more convincingly play dead right here!"
His lady burrowed through the tumbled heap of gear like a small whirlwind, hooting with laughter, to put warm arms around him.
Arauntar trotted into view, breathing hard and drenched in too much blood for it all to be his own.
He held a drawn, dripping sword in either hand, and looked grim and dangerous. Peering at the heap of shattered gear, he scowled at the giggling mirth rising from it, and growled, "That's all we need!
Dead men everywhere, a dozen wagons wrecked or gone, an' now the lass has gone mind-shattered on us!"
He glared at the sky. "A crazy woman with spellfire!
Mystra, forgive me, but I really don't recall doing something so bad to you that I deserved this!"
The heap of wreckage surged with wild, redoubled laughter, and this time, helplessly, a second, slightly deeper voice joined in.
Shaking his head and growling, Arauntar waded forward into the hulk of the ruined ready-wagon.
*******
"Dead Dragons preserve!" Thoadrin cursed softly, watching spells flash and men hack at each other – and more than one wagon cartwheel up into the sky, almost lazily shedding goods and merchants and harness. The ground shook as spell-blasts spat men and horses away into the Blackrocks like so many torn and dirty rags. More men came boiling out of nigh every wagon with wands leveled or rings winking on their hands or spells snarling from their lips.
The few Cult warriors who'd survived Shandril's attack to cower behind spellfire-scorched rocks with Thoadrin all gaped at the spellstorm below. Not a few of them drew back and cast him quick glances, as if judging the best time or chance to flee.
"We retreat when I give the order," he told them softly and held up a last cocked and loaded crossbow where they could see it. "Fleeing the Way can be so dangerous…"
One of his men looked at him, then at a knob of rock where spellfire had melted away a height like a small turret, leaving nothing of the four men who'd been crouching behind it but dark, greasy smears on stone. "So dangerous," he echoed, and laughed bitterly.
Thoadrin gave him a stony look but put the crossbow down again, unflred.
*******
When the cursing priest of Bane ducked into the shelter of the dark, silent, horseless wagon bearing the sign that said "Haransau Olimer's Best Blandreths," a quick glance was enough to reassure him that it stood empty. Any number of blackarmored men might be lying still and flat on their faces amid all the blandreths, of course, but nothing moved, and he could hear no breathing but his own – great loud gasps that told the watching world Stlarakur of Bane was terrified, unaccustomed to hastening anywhere, and in need of a little time to catch his wind before hastening anywhere else.
Stlarakur of the Zhentarim wasted a little of his precious wind in a muttered, heartfelt flood of curses that branded Bane the cause of the bloodshed, affray, and ruin raging all around the wagon – and Bane's response to such an insult was swift and sure.
The shadows behind the wagon-curtain grew an arm with a