Shadows of Doom - Ed Greenwood [91]
Sharantyr smiled at him. "Of course. They always are." She handed her sword to him. "Here, hold this."
"The eternal saying of a woman to a man," Elminster observed wryly. "But why to me, and now?"
Sharantyr grunted under the dead, dangling weight of the corpse she'd picked up. "Because I need both hands… for this." She staggered back along the walk, the dead man on her shoulders, and dumped the carrion through the turret window.
"Drag a few over here, will you?" she called. "Before we look for the high constable, we'd best guard our rear."
Elminster dragged obediently. The lady ranger tossed the bodies down the stairs, Haragh first.
"They'll carve or crush their way past the one you trapped down there soon enough," Sharantyr said. "If they have to get past all of these to come after us-well, at least they'll be slowed down. Or if they use magic to shift them, we'll be warned." She puffed, heaved, and sweated until cold, heavy bodies choked the stair and covered the turret room floor. Then she squinted at Elminster, pulling hair out of her eyes, and said, "I'll be glad when this day's done, Old Mage. I'm beginning to feel old."
Elminster raised an eyebrow. "A thousand and more years old am I, and d'ye hear me groaning and limping and feebly protesting my age? Surely ye can manage the weight of a mere twenty-odd winters, lass!"
He grinned at her expression and added innocently, "Or is it thirty-odd?"
The Old Mage of Shadowdale then demonstrated the light weight of his years for all the Realms to see by running off as fast and nimbly as any naughty child at play. Sharantyr aided him by amply demonstrating his immediate need to do so.
* * * * *
"He lives," Elminster said tersely, kneeling by the sprawled, blackened body on the stair. Quarrels stood out from it like needles in a chatelaine's pincushion. The high constable lay in his blood amid a litter of chains, fallen Wolves, and odd weapons. "He'll want healing, even to see the moon this night."
"Then give it to him," said Sharantyr in a voice that trembled with fresh rage. "While I do what he was trying to."
Elminster turned. "And that is?" he asked mildly.
Sharantyr's face was bleak. "Destroy every Zhent still in this dale." Zhents had done this to a brave man who still wore their chains, just as Zhents had chained her, too, and… She thrust away those memories with a shudder, letting her rage build into the fire she'd need to slay as ruthlessly as she'd need to. As ruthlessly as they always did.
She found she was trembling, and that Elminster had noticed it and had begun to frown, so she drew in a deep breath and tried to assume a nonchalant manner. Hefting her long sword, she surveyed the notches and scrapes in its steel critically and added, "One of them owes me a new sword, too."
"Still feeling old and worn out?" Elminster asked her pointedly, slipping the ring of regeneration onto one of Irreph Mulmar's fingers and closing the limp, hairy hand of the high constable over it.
Sharantyr laughed harshly. "No. Not anymore." She turned away, whipped her sword through the air thrice, stretched like a great cat, and turned back to him. "Wish me luck, Old Mage," she said in a voice like silk falling onto waiting steel. "I've Wolves to hunt."
Elminster smiled. "All of Tymora's luck upon thee, and more. Take with thee all that Mystra and I have no need for." He rose hastily, smile fading, and reached out his hand to her. Wondering, Sharantyr laid her hand in his. The Old Mage gently drew her to him. His lips were soft on her cheek.
"Take care, lass," he said roughly, "for I find more and more that I do not want to lose thee."
Sharantyr stared at him for a moment, openmouthed, then whirled about and raced away across the forecourt. Elminster watched her go, shook his head slightly, and sat down on the step above Irreph, wand in hand, to guard the high constable of the High Dale. There are less steady jobs.
* * * * *
Sharantyr ran past the astonished women of the dale, who were clutching a variety of weapons and looking nervously at shuttered windows high