Authors: R.A. Salvatore
Like a wave, his men parted before him, opening a line to the great portal.
Aydrian drew out Tempest and leveled the blade, then sent every bit of his strength into the graphite set within the sword, and a tremendous white bolt of lightning shot forth.
The doors shuddered inward; the great locking beams—weakened by the fires and the press—snapped apart.
The swarm flowed into the courtyard of St.-Mere-Abelle.
“Kill all who will not yield,” Aydrian told his men and, flanked by Sadye and Marcalo De’Unnero, the young king walked his horse into the monastery’s courtyard.
“W
e’re too late,” Prince Midalis lamented when he saw the approach of the huge army, angling to intercept him.
“Flee or fight?” Bradwarden asked.
Prince Midalis turned a steely eyed gaze the centaur’s way.
“Fight well and die well!” Bradwarden roared, and he took up his pipes.
The men from Vanguard and Alpinador formed into a defensive square about Midalis and Bruinhelde and the other leaders, setting themselves against Kalas’ charge.
An arm of the duke’s army swung around to the north to seal off any retreat, but the prince’s warriors had no intention of fleeing.
As one, the prince and his forces ducked low, as Agradeleous soared above him,
Brynn and Pagonel taking the dragon out in a sudden charge. They got near to the opposing army, with Agradeleous even managing to spew forth his breath at one leading group of soldiers, but then such a hail of arrows reached up at them that Brynn was forced to turn her beast about and fly fast away.
“Well disciplined,” Pony remarked to Midalis. “Let us see how they deal with me.” She reached forth her arm and jolted the nearest group of infantry with a blast of lightning, all of the men falling to the ground and jerking about wildly.
“Ride with us!”
Pagonel shouted to Prince Midalis as Brynn brought the dragon down beside him. “We cannot fight our way through the whole of King Aydrian’s army with any hope of stopping him!”
Prince Midalis looked around at the other leaders.
“Go!” Andacanavar shouted at him.
“Be quick!” Bruinhelde agreed. “We’ll give these attackers second thoughts!” The barbarian leader turned to his men, then, and shouted, “Fight well and die well!” And that cry was echoed enthusiastically all along the Alpinadoran line.
Prince Midalis scrambled up behind Pagonel. “Find Aydrian,” he bade the mystic and Brynn.
“I can smell him,” came the growling response from Agradeleous, and the dragon leaped away.
“Neither is our place here,” Belli’mar Juraviel said to Pony and Bradwarden. Even as he spoke, they heard Aydrian’s thunder, and the cries from inside the monastery’s walls. “He has found his way in!” Juraviel shouted. “We must stop him!”
Pony, on Symphony, and Bradwarden moved close to the elf, who lifted his open hand, showing the emerald of Andur’Blough Inninness. “You are ranger first,” he said to Andacanavar.
The big man hesitated and looked nervously to Bruinhelde.
“Go and kill him in battle!” Bruinhelde said without the slightest hesitation. “I’ll die singing your name, mighty Andacanavar!”
A moment later, Belli’mar Juraviel and his four companions took a gigantic step, right past the southern edge of Duke Kalas’ approaching forces, to appear near the broken gate of St.-Mere-Abelle.
They charged immediately for that gate, striking hard at the stragglers of Aydrian’s force. Behind them, they heard the concussion as Duke Kalas’ force collided with the warriors of Vanguard and Alpinador.
Pony tried hard not to hear those cries.
B
raumin Herde left Father Abbot Bou-raiy and the others in the great hall of the main keep. The former bishop of Palmaris rushed up the wide stairway and ran along the balcony, then went up again, using a circular stair that would take him to the keep’s highest level, and up again along the same stairs to the flat and defended roof of the structure.
From there, he could see the sweep of Duke Kalas’ forces, locked in ferocious
battle with Prince Midalis’ men outside the monastery’s walls. From there, he could see the great dragon, three figures atop it, soaring about the battlefield, apparently battling on Prince Midalis’ side. Braumin Herde had no idea what the fire-breathing beast was all about, or where it had come from, or why it might be allied with the prince, but he was surely thrilled to discern that it was an ally and not an enemy!
Any hope the dragon inspired could not hold for long, though, for Braumin’s gaze was inevitably drawn back within the abbey, where pockets of fighting had erupted in every building and all along the wall. Men were dying by the score, Braumin knew, and there was nothing he could do.
He continued his scan, then froze in place, his gaze settling on a group making its way across the courtyard from the broken gate.
“Who is that?” one younger brother asked of him, following his lead.
Braumin Herde couldn’t get the names of King Aydrian and Marcalo De’Unnero out of his mouth. “Our worst nightmare,” he did manage to whisper.
“What are we to do, master?” the young monk asked, and Braumin glanced over at him, to see several others staring at him for some guidance here.
“Pray, brothers,” he said. “Shoot straight and pray loudly.”
With a deep breath, Braumin steadied his feet under him and headed back for the stairway and back into the keep.
“T
he rat has retreated to his hole, it would seem,” Aydrian remarked, motioning toward the solid keep across the courtyard and overlooking All Saints Bay.
“Then let us go and kill the creature,” De’Unnero agreed.
Aydrian and Sadye paused then, hearing the pop of bone from their companion. De’Unnero was wearing his monk robe, and so they couldn’t see the details of the transformation. Under the folds of that robe, they did see the movement of his limbs, though, as his legs transformed into those of a mighty tiger.
“I will join with you inside,” De’Unnero explained, and he leaped gracefully away, sprinting across the rest of the courtyard to the base of the keep’s solid wall. With hardly an effort, it seemed, the weretiger leaped straight up, landing lightly on the sill of a second-story window.
With a glance back at Aydrian, De’Unnero slipped inside onto the balcony in the great hall. He moved across to the solid railing and peeked over, looking down upon Fio Bou-raiy, who was seated on the single throne and flanked by several of St.-Mere-Abelle’s masters.
De’Unnero glanced about, noting the statues set in alcoves at the back of the balcony. The railing was high and solid, providing good cover, and the monk figured that he could get to the stairs easily enough without being seen.
Looking at the stairs, or more particularly, at the huge circular window set in the wall above them, did give him pause, though. The morning light streamed through that window, that image of Avelyn’s upraised arm.
Before De’Unnero moved again, he heard the door in the room below crash
open, and he knew that King Aydrian had arrived.
I
t pained Prince Midalis to leave his men. He wanted to stay, with the dragon and the mystic, and the woman with her devastating bow.
And Brynn was nothing short of amazing, up there on Agradeleous, flying cover for the soldiers battling below.
“I smell him!” Agradeleous cried over and over again.
“Then find him!” Pagonel demanded.
With a flap of his leathery wings, Agradeleous lifted higher into the air, then slowly turned about and fell into a dive past the northern edge of the monastery and down over the cliff facing, gathering speed as he went.
Prince Midalis watched the battle until the dragon dove low, the cliffs shutting him off from his warriors, from Liam O’Blythe and Bruinhelde and all the others.
He could still hear their battle cries, however.
He knew that he had to trust.
T
hey plowed through the confusion at the broken gate. If two warriors trained in
bi’nelle dasada
weren’t enough to scatter Aydrian’s forces clustered there, the sheer strength of Bradwarden and the well-placed arrows of Belli’mar Juraviel surely were.
Pony rolled down from Symphony, falling into place beside the Alpinadoran ranger. As soon as they engaged a group of opponents together, it became apparent that she and Andacanavar couldn’t quite find the level of harmony that the woman had once enjoyed with Elbryan. For the barbarian’s sword dance had been adapted to fit his physical size and strength. When a soldier charged at him, he parried with a horizontal blade and quick-stepped back, typical of the dance. But then Andacanavar slid his back foot to the side and stepped out wide. Halting his progress, he reversed momentum, coming across with a devastating slash of his elven greatsword that laid low his foolishly pursuing opponent.
Andacanavar’s sidelong step left Pony out alone for a moment against two other warriors, but the woman worked her sword quickly and accurately, turning thrust after thrust with apparent ease.
Then Bradwarden stepped up to fill the void left by the Alpinadoran ranger. The centaur stabbed his huge bow out as if it were a spear, just as one of Pony’s opponents broke from her and charged at him. The tip of the bow caught the man just below his breastplate and the centaur drove ahead and up, lifting him right from the ground. Arms and legs flailing, he went tumbling back, and when he finally caught himself and tried to come back in, the centaur had that bow leveled his way, an arrow that seemed more like a heavy spear set on its bowstring!
The man screamed and turned and scrambled past a comrade who was charging in to join the fight.
A slight shift put the arrow in line with this newcomer, and the centaur’s arrow blasted through his metal breastplate, lifting him from his feet and throwing him
back and to the ground.
Off to the side, Pony parried and retreated, then came back suddenly as her opponent lifted his sword above his shoulder. Her reversed movement, a brilliant execution of the sword dance, was too quick for her opponent even to register it. His eyes wide with sudden horror, the man could not hope to bring his sword down to deflect the thrust.
Pony struck true, her sword sliding into the Kingsman’s belly, and he fell away, howling and clutching at the wound.
Another man came in fast for Pony’s side, but she turned in time to parry.
He never got that close, though, stopping suddenly and grasping at the small arrow that found his throat.
Pony glanced back over her shoulder and then up, to see Juraviel perched atop one of the huge open doors, bow in hand. The elf offered a wink and a nod.
Even as Pony lowered her gaze somewhat, she saw another man fall away, creased by Andacanavar’s slashing sword; then another fell to the great ranger as he came out of the slash and right into a devastating long thrust.
The four could stand there and defeat any who came against them, Pony understood. But that was hardly the point, and killing soldiers unwittingly serving Aydrian brought her no joy, and no hope.
Glancing across the courtyard, she saw a robed figure rise up in a great leap, as if magically, along the wall of the great keep, and she knew beyond any doubt that it could be only one man.
“Get me there!” the woman cried to Bradwarden and Andacanavar, and when they looked her way, she indicated the base of the wall across the way.
“Elf!” Bradwarden called, but when he looked at the open door, Juraviel was not to be found. “The hard way then!” the centaur roared, and he and Andacanavar flanked Pony and started across. Few of the soldiers wanted to face them, obviously, but in the chaos that was the courtyard of St.-Mere-Abelle, some did indeed find themselves caught before the charge of the trio.
Bradwarden simply ran one down, trampling him to the ground.
Andacanavar leaped past the centaur and felled two others with a great sidelong slash.
And Pony fell in behind the centaur, intercepting the thrusting sword of a man thinking to stab at the creature’s exposed flank. The woman rolled her sword over the attacker’s, then drove it down. Sensing a second attacker coming in at her back, she turned and stepped forward, releasing the sword and snapping her pommel up into the first man’s face, staggering him. Then she called for Bradwarden, and the centaur glanced back, shifted his weight to his front hooves, and double-kicked with his rear legs just as the second man went rushing by.
By the time the centaur’s back legs touched down, Pony had finished the stunned man off and was already moving past him.
Their swath of devastation got them to the wall in short order.
“Help me,” the woman bade them, motioning to the second-story window—
the same window through which she had seen Marcalo De’Unnero disappear.
Andacanavar hoisted her atop Bradwarden’s back, then spun about to join battle with stubborn pursuers.
“Ye ready?” the centaur asked.
“Go!” came the reply, Pony fishing in her pouch for her gemstones. Bradwarden’s buck lifted her into the air, and she caught herself with the magic of the malachite, activating its levitation so that she continued up, up until she had gained the ledge.
She went inside as Juraviel reappeared, fluttering to the ledge to replace her. The elf started to follow her in, but then stopped and turned his attention back to the scene below, where a host of enemies had come suddenly against Bradwarden and Andacanavar.
“Good to have ye back, elf!” the centaur cried as one man, against whom the already-engaged Bradwarden could offer no defense, staggered backward instead of charging in, an arrow sticking out from his forehead.
“Someone has to keep you out of trouble, fool centaur!” Juraviel called back.
“H
ow dare you desecrate this holy place!” Fio Bou-raiy screamed at Aydrian, and the Father Abbot came out of his throne to boldly face the approaching young king even as his fellow Abellicans fell back before the spectacle of the magnificent man.
“Desecrate?” Aydrian echoed. “I am returning St.-Mere-Abelle to its former glory!” He hadn’t even drawn Tempest from its sheath, but had slipped a lodestone into one hand. Rather than targeting any metal on Bou-raiy directly, Aydrian focused instead on a plate set at the top of the throne behind the man.