Tangled webs - Elaine Cunningham [118]
At long last she slipped past the creature's guard and sank her dagger deep into its gut. She gave the weapon a vicious twist and wrenched it out, then thrust in again. The dying sahuagin's knife dropped from its nerveless claws, and the creature once again fell to its knees, its eyes bright with adoration and fixed upon Liriel's dark, elven face. The drow delivered a backhanded slash to the creature's throat, ending its misery and quenching the incomprehensible, fervid light in its black eyes.
The strange encounter left Liriel feeling shaken and somehow tainted. She shook off the lingering, queasy dread and whirled to address the nearest opponent.
A large sahuagin had managed to toss a weighted net over a red-clad warrior and was poking at the trapped man with a long spear. None of the thrusts hit a vital point; the fishman was toying with its prey with obvious and sadistic glee. Without thought, Liriel conjured a small fireball and hauled it back for the throw. Startled by the sudden burst of light, the sahuagin spun to face her. Its viciously grinning jaws fell slack with astonishment as it faced the magic-wielding drow, and terror froze the creature in place. Pitiless, the young wizard hurled her weapon with deadly accuracy. The fireball flew unerringly into the creature's enormous mouth. The explosion sent a spray of gore and ichor flying, and the headless sahuagin dropped heavily to the ground.
Liriel stepped over the body and crouched beside the wounded man. Her dagger flashed as she quickly cut him free from the entangling net. Although he bled from a dozen shallow wounds, it was apparent that he could yet fight. The drow pressed one of her own knives into his hands. Hauling him to his feet, she gave him a firm shove in the direction of the nearest sahuagin. The man tossed a quick, grateful nod toward the drow and then flung himself into battle, roaring an oath to Tempus as he went.
A brief, faint smile curved Liriel's lips. The Ruathen were warriors to the core, ready to respect and accept another warrior who had proven worthy-perhaps even one as strange as she. The thought brought her a moment's warmth, and then it fled as the crush and turmoil of battle closed in about her.
The drow fought alongside the N orthmen, using all the battle skills at her command. Her bolos spun around the legs of the fish-men and sent them sprawling; her throwing knives buried themselves in the eyes and throats of the sahuagin; her dagger dripped with greenish ichor. When at last the invaders lay dead, the eyes of all the Northmen settled upon their strange ally.
"You are dock-altar, yet also a rune-caster," one of them ventured in an awed tone. "it has been long years since such a rune-casting warrior led this village in battle, but in ages past it was ever so. Most of the people of Ruathym do not much care for magic, but here we remember the ancient ways and honor them. How are you called?"
For some reason Fyodor's special name for her danced ready on her tongue. "Raven," she said simply.
This brought approving nods from the warriors. Liriel remembered the tales Fyodor and Olvir told, ancient stories that claimed ravens visited the battlefields to guide the spirits of the slain into the afterlife. Yes, it was a good name for a drow among Northmen.
She let the men lead her into the village, which, it seemed, was only a few hours' walk north of the village of Ruathym. They promised to show her the way back after the songs were sung to honor the slain. And so she sat in a place of honor beside the village chieftain-the man she'd saved from the sahuagin's net-listening as the village skald spun out the lineage and deeds of the men who had fallen during the sahuagin attack, and watching as sparks from the funeral pyre leaped high into the clear blue sky; it was a strange ceremony, yet the drow found it oddly moving. In Menzoberranzan, the dead were usually interred in small, airtight stone crypts dug into the solid rock that lay north of