Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [66]
Dag was suddenly distracted by the sensation of cold fire that stabbed at his left side-painful, yet not entirely unpleasant. He slipped his hand into the leather bag that hung at his belt and removed from it the source of his discomfort, a small globe like the one he had given Sir Gareth.
The face in it was dusky gray, vaguely elven in appearance, and seamed with scars earned over long decades of service to evil. The haif-drow assassin gave a single, curt nod.
Dag smiled and slipped the globe back into his bag.
“They have secured the winch room and are ready to raise the portcullis,” he said to his captain, a bald, black-bearded man who was more than a head taller than flag and nearly twice his breadth. What Captain Yemid lacked in strategic innovation, he made up in sheer brute force and the corresponding ability to pass along orders and make them stick. “Sound the charge,” Dag commanded.
Yemid thrust a ham-sized fist into the air. Instantly one of the men lifted a curved horn to his lips and winded the signal for attack. A score of heavy cavalry thundered toward the fortress, huge war-horses, barded with plate armor and bearing fully armored warriors. Behind them came the next wave, another twenty mounted soldiers who would chase down and slay any who managed to escape. Finally came the infantry, fifty men, well armed and well trained, fortified with the battle frenzy that came in the wake of flag Zoreth’s Cyric-granted spells.
It was not a large force, but it would more than suffice. Thirteen men were already in the fortress, killers as silent and deadly as ferrets hunting aging roosters and nesting doves. Dag only hoped there would be enough killing for his men to sate their bboodlust; if not, some of them were likely to turn on each other, seizing the opportunities of battle confusion to settle some old insult or petty rivalry. It was not an uncommon occurrence among the Zhentarim.
A senseless waste, Dag mused as he kicked his horse into a run. It was better to hoard anger like treasure, building and nurturing it until it became a weapon, one that could be unleashed to good effect.
Nearby, one of the soldiers fell from his horse, an arrow protruding from his chest. Good. There was still some fight in the paladins. To minimize his own risk, Dag leaned low over his horse’s neck as the steed galloped past the infantry. He kept his eyes fixed on the great wooden door in the fortress wall.
The portcullis rose in a series of quick, sharps jerks as the assassins winched it up. The knights of Darkhold swept toward the wooden door, long spears leveled before them.
Four of them struck the gate at nearly the same instant. The two halves of the wooden door burst inward, a gratifying testament to the invaders’ success in throwing the bars. Zhentarim fighters poured into the breached wall. Dag spurred his horse on viciously, determined to enter the fortress before the fighting was done.
* * * * *
In Hronulf’s tower chamber, Bronwyn was the first to hear the alarm. She poised, her hand on the door, and then spun back to face her father. “That horn. I know that signal,” she said grimly.
Hronulf nodded and strode for the door. “Zhentarim. You stay here-I must go to the walls.”
Bronwyn seized his arm, all thoughts of anger forgotten. “It’s too late for that. Listen.”
The faint sound of battle seeped through the thick stone and stout oak. Hronulf’s eyes widened. “They are inside the fortress!”
She nodded. Her mind raced as she tried and discarded possible plans. “Is there a back way out of here?”
The paladin smiled grimly and drew