The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [148]
They did not have to wait long. A grand voice could soon be heard rolling down the passage outside… and drawing steadily nearer.
"While Tanthus is our most capable skulker, Sargin here also has his share of daring blunderings and bold butcherings, which I'm sure he'll be happy to share with you at a more appropriate time. Just now, we near a place of possible peril, so Shamurl and I will stride to the fore and do what we do best: storm the foe!"
Embra and Craer, who were sprawled where they could see each other, had just time enough to exchange incredulous looks before armored figures sprang through the open door and struck heroic poses, drawn swords glittering.
Their full armor shone with a spell-glowing plating of silver, and amid its cold fire could be seen two helmless heads: a grim and scar-faced woman, and a fat-cheeked man who sported a ferocious black spade of a beard. "Ready for battle," the latter declaimed in that rolling richness of a voice, "we hold the front whilst our companions advance!"
Two men in black leathers and black silk masks glided forward, holding splayed trios of throwing knives ready in their hands. Behind them shuffled four minstrels with handharps and pipes-and it could be seen that the bearded man was addressing them.
"Before us lies the bloody wrack of battle," he declared, gesturing with his blade. "We must be nigh some fearsome beast, to lay low such capable and valiant blades-or perhaps the fell Sorceress Silvertree wields her Dwaer to deadly effect, whirling the very furniture into flight to smite her foes at her bidding! I know no fear, for I, Amarandus the Lion, have never yet tasted defeat. Whatever dark danger might await us, we the Bright Blade and Hope of Aglirta shall not fail, but win our way on to glory! Watch now, as forth we fare, into-"
"Blessed silence," Craer snarled, rearing up to hurl a dagger with heartfelt force.
Amarandus the Lion was fast. The glittering blade in his hand swept up and struck the dagger aside with a bell-like clang.
Unfortunately, Craer had thrown a second blade, only a little behind the first. A bearded throat stopped it with a gurgle, and Amarandus the Lion spun slowly around in arch-backed agony, dramatic to the last-and toppled over on his face with a crash.
The procurers of the Bright Blade had their own knives, and flung them at Craer both hard and fast-but Hawkril rose out of the sea of furniture like an armored mountain, and most of the daggers rattled off his armor plates as he waded forward, sweeping his longsword in low, vicious cuts that kept the leather-armored men ducking or leaping away. As the other armored warrior, Shamurl, waded into the wrack of shattered wood and sprawled bodies to reach Hawkril, the bards gasped and peered like commoners around a dueling ring.
"They'll be taking bets next," Sarasper growled, glaring at them-and then ducking hastily away from a pair of hurled knives. Embra pursed her lips and loosed some blades of her own, needles of magical force that sang through the air, fast and arrow-straight. Tanthus was fast enough to dive headlong out of the way of the one sent to doom him; Sargin wasn't.
"Have they no wizard?" Embra muttered to Sarasper, as they crouched together behind the leaning ruin of a massive and once-magnificent cabinet. "Was this Liontongue that much of an arrogant fool?"
"Perhaps so," Sarasper replied, watching the warrior-woman with narrowed eyes as she closed with Hawkril. "And yet…"
Shamurl raised her sword when she was just beyond the reach of Hawkril's blade, gave him a brittle smile, and carefully cut open her own palm. Turning her hand to cup the welling blood, she dropped some flakes of rust and metal shards into her own gore, and whispered a word over it.
"Hawk, get back!" Embra shouted. "That's a flowmetal spell!"
A blade whirred at her head as Tanthus