Shadows of Doom - Ed Greenwood [70]
Then a mounted Wolf waving a long, dark mace was thundering across the marketplace toward the lane.
"Is that Elminster?" Itharr yelled as the two Harpers snatched up a lance and swung it together, like a great broom, to sweep this third Wolf out of his saddle.
"I think so," Belkram called back as the man crashed helplessly to earth, boot heels bouncing. Itharr raced in to leap atop him, and their roll together was brief and brutal.
Long training made Belkram look back at where the second Wolf had gone, just in time to see him spurring back, lance first. Irreph was turning to face him, chains flying. Daera hadn't fled and now could only stare helplessly at the lance leaping at her throat-and scream.
Belkram shouted and ran, knowing he'd not be in time.
Itharr threw his sword, then his dagger after it. They flashed end over end through the air.
Irreph shoved his daughter hard and she fell. He stepped forward to swing his chains and smash the lance tip aside, but it was already dipping and turning to follow Ylyndaera's plunge.
A shuttered window on the other side of the lane flew open, and a red-cheeked goodwife shrieked defiance and hurled a chamber pot out at the galloping Wolf. It struck the side of his face squarely, whipping his head around as it shattered and breaking his helm, skull, and neck all in one dull crash. The falling body stopped both of Itharr's weapons on its way to the ground.
The goodwife raised horrified hands to her mouth and screamed. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell back out of view.
The two Harpers ran to Ylyndaera, who was picking herself up gingerly, spitting road dirt and holding her scraped hands painfully curled.
"Go hide, girl!" the high constable roared, shaking her. Then he looked up at the two men in leathers and snapped, "Take her somewhere safe!"
"There is no such place," Itharr told him quietly.
"I will not run from this," Daera told her father in a trembling voice. "What good is life to me if you are killed after I turn my back and run away? I'm staying!" She went to the nearest fallen Wolf and tugged a belt dagger from its sheath. It glinted in her hand as she scowled at the galloping Wolves out in the marketplace.
Then she turned to her father, face white and hands trembling. "Let's kill us some Wolves," she managed to say before she turned away and was very sick.
"Our swords are needed!" Belkram bellowed as Itharr tore his weapons from the fallen Wolf. "If the gods will it so, well meet again after the bloodletting's done!"
The high constable nodded, holding his sobbing daughter tenderly with hands that still trailed chains. The two Harpers clapped Irreph's shoulder and ran out into the marketplace.
Bodies lay everywhere, and not a few of them wore the armor of the Wolves. Their surviving comrades were milling about the streets and yards around the market, hacking and howling. After the initial easy butchery done by their lances and the plunging hooves of their horses, they'd found themselves surrounded, often isolated, and lacking room to readily turn their mounts. Wolves were now losing as many struggles as they won in the alleys. Old men and young boys alike leapt on them from windows and balconies above, or toppled barrels under their horses. If a Wolf fell, there was a general roar and rush, and he seldom had the time to get up again.
Stormcloak saw that the only route he could hurl spells down without slaying Wolves as well as dalefolk was the lane that had emptied when Irreph Mulmar snatched up someone smaller and dove headlong through a window.
He also saw two men in leathers coming for him, blades out, and knew he dare not trust in his spells to bring them down. He set his will and called Longspear back from a bloody fray far down a side street.
The Lord of the High Dale, his armor spattered and dented, spurred his snorting, wild-eyed mount back into the marketplace, turned it with ruthless strength, and rode hard at the two men, pulling the curved horn from his belt as he came.
The call to "retreat and rally" rang out.