The Rage (34 page)

Taegan drove his sword between Quelsandas’s ribs. When

he yanked it out again, blood spurted, and kept rhythmically pumping forth.

A moment later, Rangrim bellowed, “Ilmater!” and smashed the warhammer down.

A vertebra audibly cracked, and the bronze thrashed in pain.

It was hard to believe, but Taegan thought that he and Rangrim might actually be on the brink of winning. Quelsandas started to pivot, and the fencing master scrambled to stay on the dragon’s flank, away from the jaws and forefeet. The bronze flung himself sideways and down.

If not for the spell of quickness, Taegan would surely have been crushed. As it was, he had just enough time to recognize that his only chance of survival lay in diving toward the dragon, inside the arc of the creature’s fall. He darted under Quelsandas, and the bronze’s vast, toppling bulk crashed to earth behind him.

The avariel whirled and saw that Rangrim had been less fortunate. The lord was still in the saddle, his feet hooked in the stirrups, and Quelsandas rolled like a gigantic hound smearing itself with some enticing scent discovered on the ground, grinding his longtime human friend beneath him. When the bronze heaved himself to his feet, Rangrim flopped atop him like a rag doll, his suit of plate flattened out of shape.

Quelsandas wheeled toward Taegan, snarled, and pounced, perhaps not quite as nimbly as before. The elf lunged beneath the dragon’s snapping jaws and thrust his sword through the scales armoring the throat. The blade drove in deep, and he heaved on the hilt, tearing the wound wider. Quelsandas snatched his head away from the pain, and that too served to enlarge the hurt before he ripped himself free. Blood gushed and splashed on the ground.

Quelsandas poised himself for another attack, then faltered. His sides heaved rapidly, and air whistled in and out of a breach that hadn’t existed a moment before. Taegan recognized the signs of a punctured windpipe. The dragon couldn’t catch his breath.

The elf sprang in, avoided a relatively clumsy talon strike, and rammed his sword into the wyrm’s belly. Sparks sizzled and popped around Quelsandas’s wet, glistening fangs, and the bronze crumpled to the ground.

Taegan rushed around the enormous corpse to reach Rangrim. Up close, a look sufficed to dispel any lingering doubt that the paladin was dead. The avariel supposed he’d already known that, out he had hoped he was mistaken.

Nor was that the worst of it. When he surveyed the battlefield as a whole, he saw three other dead bronzes, slain in self-defense by their human comrades as he and Rangrim had needed to kill Quelsandas. The other two had evidently run off, possibly chasing fleeing prey. So that particular threat was over, but it had done all the damage necessary to turn the day into a disaster.

The Warswords had sustained heavy casualties and were in general disarray, whereas, since they’d had the good sense to keep their distance from the frenzied bronzes, contenting themselves with shooting arrows and casting spells at the queen’s men as targets of opportunity presented themselves, the cultists and their minions were still fresh and relatively unscathed. The dracolich and its rider leaped forward, leading a wave of loping werewolves, hooting hobgoblins, human fanatics, and black and green wyrms their foes no longer had any hope of withstanding.

Some of Rangrim’s warriors simply threw away their shields, weapons, and any other object whose weight might slow them down, turned tail, and bolted. Others tried to retreat in good order. A knight with a crimson scarf—a lady’s favor, evidently— knotted to his helmet bellowed for his retainers to keep together as they galloped into the trees. A wizard cast a spell that made a band of archers fade from view, threw blasts of fire and frost to hold back the advancing foe, then blinked from sight himself an instant before a skull dragon’s acidic spew splashed over the patch of ground where he’d been standing.

But it was hard to believe that the cool-headed bravery of such folk actually mattered. The expedition was still routing.

In a few minutes, the survivors, assuming there were any, would be scattered far and wide.

A javelin plunged into the earth beside Taegan’s foot, reminding him that he needed to rout just as much as the next fellow. His wounded, useless wing throbbing, he ran.

The charm of haste wouldn’t last much longer, out for the moment, it enabled him to stay ahead of the charging foes. Well, most of them. Coarse, gray-black fur bristling, slaver foaming from its jaws, a female werewolf leaped in on his flank and clawed at him. He pivoted, blocked the stroke with a cut that half severed the beast-woman’s misshapen hand finished her with a thrust to the heart and dashed on.

Dorn and his companions had rowed most of the way toward the war galley that was their destination before the yellow flame flowered back on shore. The blaze constituted a fairly desperate diversion, the folk of Elmwood sacrificing one of their own houses to draw the Zhents’ attention. But at least it was a decrepit, ramshackle structure, unoccupied, Thoyanna said, since the spinster who’d dwelled therein died of old age and influenza two months before. Assuming the fire didn’t spread, the loss would be relatively insignificant.

Those Zhents who were still awake gathered in the bow of their vessel to gawk at the flickering light in the darkness. They didn’t seem particularly alarmed, and that was as Dorn had expected. A fire on land didn’t look like an attack against a ship floating at anchor in the harbor.

Still, with several of the invaders peering out across the black, rippling surface of the inlet, Dorn had to resist an impulse to duck down, even though they weren’t actually looking in his direction and probably couldn’t make him out in the murk even if they did. Just as importantly, even he couldn’t hear his sweeps creaking in the oarlocks or swishing through the water. Pavel’s magic muffled any noise that

might otherwise have sounded from the rowboat. In theory, the launch should be virtually detectable, but the Zhentarim had spellcasters, too, and it was impossible to be sure.

He and his companions guided their craft into proximity with the galley’s elevated stern. While the hulls bumped together, Will took a sturdy hemp line tied to a fisherman’s heavy lead sinker and tossed the weight upward. It was a deft throw. The sinker looped the rope up over the rail and dropped back down into the halfling’s outstretched hand.

Will climbed the rope as agilely as a spider ascending a strand of webbing, peeked over the gunwale, then scrambled onto the galley’s stern, out of his comrades’ view. After a moment, he peered back down at the rowboat and beckoned for the others to ascend.

Dorn hauled himself up next. As he clambered aboard the warship, he exited the bubble of silence Pavel had created around the launch. He could hear the faint groan of stressed timber that attended any large, floating vessel, even one at rest, the snoring of the Zhents still wrapped hi their blankets on deck, and the conversation of the men at the far end of the craft. One of them expressed the hope that the entire village and all its inhabitants would burn. Then the Black Network could bring in its own folk and build the kind of outpost it truly needed from the ground up.

Dorn glanced over the side. Alamarayne appeared to be having trouble scaling the rope, so he pulled it in hand over hand and dragged her up. He hoped the moon priestess fought better than she climbed. He was by no means certain of it. Not every cleric possessed Pavel’s courage and combat skills. But she, like the other village elders, had insisted on taking part in the raid. Ezril and Thoyanna had accompanied Pavel and Raryn to the next galley over.

Once he helped Alamarayne over the rail, the two of them hunkered down. In their dark cloaks, they hoped to go unnoticed in the gloom or failing that be mistaken for black-clad Zhents bundled up against the chill night air. Muffled in his own inky garments, dagger in hand but hidden inside his

cape, Will crept forward through the shadows to peer closely at the sleepers.

The Zhents were all human, with nary a halting among them. If any of them so much as caught a glimpse of Will, he’d surely cry out a warning to his fellows. But the former guild thief maintained no one would spot him, and Dorn shared his confidence. His partner had a talent for stealth that bordered on the uncanny.

Will was looking for mages and Banite priests. All three war galleys likely carried spellcasters, and such folk posed the greatest threat to the success of the raid. Accordingly, the hunters hoped to neutralize them before the Zhents even realized anything was amiss.

They might have managed it, too, except that they ran out of time. With their small force divided into three contingents, none able to communicate with the others, it was impossible to coordinate their actions precisely, and from Dorn’s perspective, anyway, Kara attacked too soon. He couldn’t yet see her—she’d presumably flown in low from the north while the Zhents looked at the burning house to the south, as per the plan—but her song throbbed through the night to cast a spell. A crashing, clattering noise drummed from the war galley at the far end of the line as conjured chunks of ice pounded the vessel and the folk thereon. Men cried out. A moment later, a plume of Kara’s bright, crackling, lightning-laden breath swept across the deck.

If she’d caught the crew by surprise, she’d quite possibly wiped them out already, but the Zhents aboard the other ships realized they were in danger. Such being the case, their archers or crossbowmen might be lucky enough to shoot the dragon down, but considering that they’d be loosing their shafts at a target possessed of natural armor hurtling through the dark, it seemed unlikely. Left to their own devices, however, wizards and priests were likely to fare much better.

Accordingly, as one of the reavers cried for everyone to wake up, and slumbering men threw off their covers and

reared up from the deck, Dorn squinted against the gloom, looking for some sign to tell him which of his enemies was a spellcaster. After a moment, he spotted a long-legged man bearing a morningstar. The Zhent had been wearing a steel gauntlet, too, even as he slept. He was almost certainly a cleric of the Black Hand. Unfortunately, he was most of the way forward. Maybe Will was maneuvering close to the priest, working his way into position to strike him down, but if so, Dorn couldn’t tell it. He’d lost sight of his small comrade when everyone started jumping up and scurrying about.

Dorn thought he had to try for the Banite himself. Keeping his head down and his cloak wrapped around the iron half of his body, he shoved his way toward the bow. The confusion aided him. The Zhents were too intent on arming themselves and peering at the war galley already under attack to pay much attention to one more dark figure pushing his way through the press.

Then, however, one of the reavers stooped to retrieve his conical helmet from the deck, chanced to glance up, and evidently discerned Dorn’s metal half-mask despite the obscurement provided by his hood. The Zhent cried out in surprise. Dorn sprang and smashed the fellow’s head in with a sweep of his iron fist.

At least he’d made it almost within reach of the priest before being spotted. He took another stride, and a warrior rushed at him, swinging an axe at his head. Dorn caught the blow on his artificial arm, riposted with a punch that drove his knuckle spikes into his foe’s chest, and charged on.

Two more Zhents came at him with broadswords. He shifted so they couldn’t both cut at him at once, parried a slash from the one that still could, hitched forward, caught hold of the reaver’s extended arm, jerked it out its socket, and flung him aside.

The other swordsman lifted his blade, then froze. Thanks to his years with Pavel, Dorn recognized the effect of that particular sort of clerical magic when he saw it. Evidently Alamarayne was useful in a fight, for wherever she was at the

moment, she’d paralyzed the Zhent. Hoping she was taking care to protect herself as well, Dorn smashed the warrior out of his way before his mobility could return. That brought the half-golem face to face with the Banite.

Unfortunately, the soldiers had delayed him long enough for the priest, a thin man with a sly, foxy face, to use his magic. He swept a talisman shaped like a clenched fist through a mystic pass, and Dorn’s guts twisted in pain and nausea even as his muscles cramped. At once the Banite lashed out with his morningstar, which had blue-white sparks jumping and crackling along the chain and massive spiked bulb of a head.

Dorn tried to block it, but his sudden illness hampered him. The morningstar slammed into the ribs on the human side of his body. His brigandine cushioned the blow, but it could do little to stop the essence of lightning contained in the weapon from burning into his body. He jerked with the pain of it, and the priest whirled the morningstar back for another swing.

Dorn made a desperate grab, and despite his sickness and dizziness, caught hold of the chain before the end of the morningstar could strike him. Unfortunately, that contact alone sufficed to send more lightning blazing down his metal arm and into the vulnerable flesh beyond. Still, much as he needed to, he didn’t let go, lest the cleric continue bashing him. Instead, forcing his twitching, spasming muscles to obey him, he jerked the Banite close and drove his knife into his heart.

Only then did Dorn drop the morningstar. That ended the shocks jolting along his nerves, but not the weakness and queasiness with which the Banite had cursed him. That would simply have to run its course, and he’d just have to go on fighting in spite of it.

To his relief, he didn’t have another foe poised to attack him that very instant. In the darkness and chaos, some of the Zhents probably had yet to realize foes had boarded their vessel, and thus he had a second to brace himself for the next

fight, as well as glance about and try to assess how the raid as a whole was going.

Back toward the stern, Will faked a step to the right, then darted left, rolled, and somersaulted to his feet. The maneuver carried him safely past the fangs and fiery breath of a huge, hound-like thing with glowing red eyes and into striking distance of the plump, bearded man who had evidently conjured it. Will drove his short sword into the wizard’s groin, and the Zhent went down.