Authors: Richard Lee Byers
That single word carried its own palpable charge of magic, and the cleric of Bane faltered and botched his prayer. He spun around toward the wayfarer in his nondescript travel stained clothing and acid-scorched leather armor, who was wearing his sun amulet in plain view. Pavel gave the Zhent a malevolent smile, and a duel of priestly magic began.
A warrior advanced on Dorn. The hunter blocked a sword cut with his metal hand and instantly hit back. The Zhent knew his business and parried in his turn. Dorn’s knuckle spikes ripped the small, round wood-and-leather shield to useless scraps, but at least it had saved its user once.
The iron half of his body forward, Dorn advanced. The Zhent fell back, and such was the press and confusion he
bumped into one of the boatmen despite the latter’s attempt to scramble out of the way. It cost the warrior his balance, and that was all the opening Dorn needed. He lunged and killed the man with a punch to the torso, the spikes on his artificial hand piercing the Zhent’s mail as if it was made of paper.
When the soldier dropped, he dragged Dorn’s fist down with him. The knuckle blades had somehow tangled in the corpse’s ribs.
Dorn was still trying to pull free when orbs of ice exploded from the empty air immediately above him. He attempted to shield himself with his iron arm, but because of the dead weight hanging from it, he was a moment too slow. One of the missiles smashed down on the top of his head. The shock made him collapse to one knee. Blood flowed down from his torn scalp into his eye.
Around him, other folk similarly afflicted screamed in pain. Dazed, half blinded by gore, he cast about, seeking the wizard who’d been ruthless enough to conjure the attack without caring that it would likewise injure many of those who’d offered no resistance. After a moment, he spotted the bearded, whippet-thin Zhent in question. The reaver was one of the couple who’d stayed on the dock, and because he’d worn a broadsword, helmet, tunic, and buckler like the common men-at-arms, Dorn hadn’t recognized him for what he was. No doubt that was as the mage had intended it. The shield lay at his feet, discarded so he could make his cabalistic passes more deftly.
Brandishing some sort of talisman, he commenced another spell. Dorn shook the corpse loose, lurched upright, and flung his knife, realizing even as he did so that it probably wouldn’t help. He was a good marksman with a bow, arbalest, or spear, but had never spent much time practicing to throw a dagger.
As expected, the blade tumbled off course. He charged the pier, bulling people out of his way, taking too long. It was sickening to know he wouldn’t reach the wizard in time
to avert the next spell, whatever painful, potentially lethal effect it would produce.
Fortunately, something else stopped it. A mote of light streaked through the air, hit the magician’s chest, and exploded into a dazzling, booming blast of yellow fire large enough to engulf both him and the warrior poised to protect him. Squinting against the glare, Dorn realized Kara must have seen his plight and conjured the attack. The magical blaze winked out of existence within a heartbeat, but not before setting the Zhents’ somber uniforms and the top of the wooden walkway aflame. Howling, the burning men leaped into the water. The warrior weighted down with mail was almost certain to sink to the bottom and drown. The magician might make it ashore, but even if he did, it seemed unlikely he’d be willing and able to rejoin the fight.
Grinning, Dorn turned to find another foe. In so doing, he startled the small man who’d been creeping up to stab him in the back. Eyes wide with alarm, the fellow recoiled. He wasn’t one of the black-clad warriors, but rather, another passenger. Maybe he was a loyal subject of the Zhentish lords, stupid or wicked as that would make him, or perhaps he simply thought that in any conflict, the side that included creatures as monstrous as half-golems was the side any decent person ought to oppose.
Whatever the fool was thinking, Dorn, whose head was still throbbing and bleeding copiously, was in no mood to let him live, and he rushed in. The little man slashed frantically, but Dom could see the attacks wouldn’t penetrate deeply enough to reach the vulnerable flesh behind his iron parts. He simply ignored the would-be back-stabber’s assault and raked him open from lungs to guts.
Dorn turned, looking for someone else to kill, out no one was in reach. Across the deck, a chop from Raryn’s ice-axe slew the Zhentish priest’s remaining defender even as one of the flying luminous maces Pavel liked to conjure bashed in the skull of the Banite cleric himself, and that appeared to be that. The fight was over, Dorn and his comrades had won,
and the others appeared essentially unscathed.
They’d overcome long odds and bested representatives of a predatory fraternity less clandestine out as generally despised as the Cult of the Dragon itself. That, however, failed to elicit any cheers from the other folk on the boat, who were looking on aghast.
“By Umberlee’s fork” a sailor whined, “now the bastards will murder us all.”
He might be right. Aboard the Zhentish vessels, crossbowmen and spellcasters were scurrying into position to attack at range. Other men-at-arms aboard the full-size warships were lowering longboats into the water.
“We’re leaving,” said Dorn. “Explain you took no part in the fight, and the Zhentarim will understand they have no reason to harm you.”
He was by no means certain of that, but it was the best he could offer.
“We need to run now,” Raryn said, spatters of someone else’s blood caught in his white goatee and the polar bear fur covering his massive chest, “before the quarrels and thunderbolts start flying.”
“Wait one moment,” Kara said.
She sang the ascending arpeggio of another incantation. The magic whipped up gusts of wind that somehow only buffeted her, lashing her skirt and long, moon-blond hair this way and that.
The ambient temperature plummeted, the first feeble warmth of the northern spring lapsing back into the chill of the winter just concluded, and the air between the docks and the Zhentish vessels curdled. A pearly fog bank oozed into existence above the purple water, depriving the reavers of visible targets.
“We still must hurry,” Kara said. “I don’t know how long the obscurement will last before one of their mages succeeds in dispelling it.”
“Right,” said Dorn. “Everybody who wants to be elsewhere when the mist disappears, grab your belongings and go.”
Luckily, the whole dock wasn’t burning yet. They could still use it to scramble from the ferry onto the shore. As soon as they reached dry land the other travelers scuttled off in various directions, distancing themselves from the madmen who’d openly killed Zhents. Dorn didn’t blame them and in fact was glad to see them go their own way. He and his partners didn’t need any useless new companions slowing them down.
The half-golem led his friends south, away from the docks and on through the village. Even running flat-out, it was impossible to miss the signs of trouble. No children were in view. Indeed, even adults seemed to be staying off the streets as much as possible, and the houses were closed up tight, though normally, the occupants would have flung open all the doors and windows to air out the winter staleness. Zhents had painted obscenities and crude symbols of Bane and the Black Network on various walls, taking special care to deface the Grange and the Temple of the Half-Moon, a house of worship devoted to Selűne, and to a lesser degree, the other deities of light. Plainly, even if the invaders didn’t choose to formally proclaim themselves the conquerors of Elmwood, that was the ugly truth of it.
“Where are we going?” panted Will, warsling dangling ready in his hand.
He was hearty, but any halfling had difficulty covering ground as quickly as long-legged humans.
“Out of town,” Dorn said, well aware that it wasn’t a particularly satisfactory response.
“They’ll hunt us,” Raryn said. “We either need to lose them or set a trap.”
Something small swooped past Dorn’s head. Edgy as he was, he nearly grabbed and crushed it in his iron fingers before realizing it was simply a robin.
Or maybe not, for it didn’t behave like any songbird he’d ever seen before. The little creature with its brown back and yellow-red breast landed on the muddy ground in front of the fugitives, twittered, flew off down a side street, wheeled,
returned, chirped some more, and flapped away in the same direction a second time.
“It wants us to follow it,” Kara said.
Will shrugged and said, “Well, it doesn’t look Zhentish.” “If you had a brain,” said Pavel, “you’d know what’s going on. Dorn?”
“Yes.” Feeling somewhat foolish about it, the half-golem looked down at the robin, which, its head cocked, was peering back with a beady black eye, and said, “Lead on.”
The bird seemed to understand for it took off immediately. The fugitives followed it past the last houses, across a boggy field, and toward a wood. if that in fact was their destination, Dorn wondered grimly how folk without wings were supposed to make their way in, for tangles of brush and briars choked the spaces around the old oaks and pines.
The answer came a moment later. Rustling and rattling, a mass of brambles divided to expose the start of a trail, Once everyone had passed, the brush wove itself back together, sealing the entrance once more.
The path led to a shadowy glade containing a low, shapeless, sod-roofed but that looked more like a bump on the ground than anything manmade. A gray-haired female dwarf armed with a cudgel and short sword, a slender woman of mixed human and elf blood dressed in the silvery robes of a priestess of Selűne, and a bald, middle-aged man attired in rough brown homespun stood in front of the humble shelter waiting to greet the arrivals. The robin swooped to perch on the hairless fellow’s hand where it warbled with excitement.
“Yes,” the man said, stroking the bird’s head with his fingertip. “You did well, and I thank you.” He gave the newcomers a mournful smile. “Welcome, friends.”
“Are you all right?” Thoyanna Jorgadaul asked.
The dwarf was Elmwood’s constable and de facto
“You mean, aside from having my head split open?” the half-golem growled.
“Sit down,” said Pavel. “Let me check that.”
“You know,” said Will, doing his best to speak in the earnest tone of someone who only wanted to help, “Alamarayne Moonray’s a real healer. Maybe she”
“Silence, worm,” Pavel said. He peered down at the gash in Dorn’s scalp. “You’ll be all right.” He murmured a prayer to the Morninglord, set his hand glowing with red-gold light, and laid it on the wound, closing the cut and stanching the flow of blood. “Does anyone else need care?”
Apparently, no one did.
“You should be safe here for the moment,” said Ezril Treewarder, Elmwood’s resident druid, tossing his hand to send the robin fluttering off. “Though I fear it’s only a matter of time before the Zhents discover the sacred grove.”
“At which point,” said Alamarayne, “they’ll come for the lot of us.” Will remembered the pretty half-elf as merry and even coquettish, but just then she seemed about as cheery as a mass grave. “Thoyanna and I earned their ill will by defying them when they first sailed into port.”
“We thank you,” said Dorn, “for taking us in. But how did you even know we were here, let alone that we needed to disappear?”
“The birds and animals watch the town for me,” the druid replied.
As if to make the point, a huge gray wolf padded out of the gloom beneath one of the holy oaks and nuzzled at his hand. He scratched the beast under one of its ears, then waved toward the low wooden benches arranged around a lire pit, where, by the looks of it, no one had kindled a blaze in a number of days, probably for fear the invaders would see the smoke.
“Shall we sit and refresh ourselves?” Ezril asked. “The cusp of winter and spring is the hungriest time of the year, especially for folk in hiding, but I still have some acorn crackers, jerky, and beer.”
The hunters brought out some of the emergency rations they habitually carried in their packs. Combined with Ezril’s provisions, they made for a meal that was stale, tasteless, and hard enough to break a beaver’s teeth, but at least it stretched farther than it would have otherwise.
After everyone had pretty much eaten his portion, though the tall, terra-cotta communal beer stein was still making its way around the circle, Dorn said, “We have to reach Thentia fast and do some more traveling around the Moonsea.”
Thoyanna snorted and said, “Good luck. Now that you’ve killed some of the Zhents, they’ll be watching out for you, and you’re about as distinctive a band of travelers as I can imagine. They won’t let you sail anywhere.”
“Maybe not from Elmwood,” said Will, “but you can’t tell me they control the whole southern shoreevery inlet, rowboat, and fishing shack. Shadows of Mask, the region’s famous for its pirates and smugglers. Somewhere we can hire a knave to sneak us north.”
“You’d think so,” said Ezril, still petting the wolf, which lay at his feet, “but travelers report the Black Network has some way of finding and attacking folk who sail without permission.”
naturally the Zhents would put that story about,” said Will. “If they said anything else, it would only encourage people to flout their rules.”
“The rumor may be true,” Alamarayne said. “I’ve performed divinations to find out, and the results, though inconclusive, are alarming. I think folk are right to be afraid.”
“So what are we talking about?” asked Dorn. “They locate ships by peering in magic mirrors then raise storms to sink them?” If so, Will reflected, the time of year was probably conducive to it. The month of Tarsakh generally brought heavy rain. “Or send unnaturally fast enchanted war galleys or trained water monsters to catch them? Whatever the problem is, surely the cities that always stand against the Zhents will do their best to wreck their plan.”
“That’s our hope,” Thoyanna said, crunching a final mouthful of cracker, “but no one’s turned up to free Elmwood yet. Maybe these dragon flights, if they’re real”
“They are,” Kara interjected.