Rosemary Jones: Cold Steel and Secrets Part 3

Stunned, the Nashers waited in silence for Montimort to speak.

Sarfael glanced at Elyne. Alone, of all of them, her eyes were on the boy’s face rather than the box in his hands. “He’s all right,” Sarfael reassured her.

Finally, the impatient Arlon blurted out, “Well, do you have it? Is it the crown?”

Blinking his eyes as if he had just woken from a dream, Montimort shook the box slightly. Something heavy rattled inside.

“Open it,” Arlon commanded.

“No!” Sarfael said, stepping forward. “Not here. Not in the open and the dark. Let’s take it somewhere safe.” Somewhere I can steal it, he added to himself, and before you can all get a good look at it.

Because, at the end of the day, a box was just a box. Even one that rattled. A story for the taverns. The sight of a true crown, one that had been seen and might even be placed on one of the heads in their group, that story would be far more dangerous for the teller and the listeners. Dhafiyand might even act to silence such a story with blood.

Shouts of the watchers on the edge of the hill startled them all. Sarfael turned away from Montimort to see watchers tumbling back toward them, torches waving in the air, pursued by grim and ghastly shapes.

“Ash zombies!” they yelled.

Out of the mist, the undead came up the hill, ringing the Nashers on all sides, shambling forward with outstretched, flailing arms. In the growing light of the day, their burned and ghastly features were clearly visible.

With a curse, Sarfael drew Mavreen’s sword from his scabbard. As much as he relished striking down the undead, the dawn was filling a little too quickly with problems. He still needed to get that box away from Montimort.

The black unicorn horn that formed the sword’s twisted hilt was cool and comforting under his hand. He had killed the wicked beast while Mavreen dispatched its rider, the first of many Thayan agents that they had destroyed along the Sword Coast.

With Mavreen’s name like a blessing on his lips, Sarfael waded into the undead attackers, striking left and right without pause, taking their heads from their shoulders. His whirling blade cut deep with every stroke.

Behind him, Elyne shouted orders, drawing her students close around her, taking down more than one zombie at time with spinning sweeps of her sword.

Parnadiz and Charinyn wedged Montimort between them. Following Elyne’s orders, they began to hustle him down the hill toward the city, even as Sarfael and Elyne cut a path open for them.

The ash zombies targeted the younger Nashers first. Luckily, they were as slow as Elyne’s students were quick, but the trail of ash each left in its wake created a fog almost as thick as the mist swirling at the base of the hill. The fighters coughed, and hacked, and sneezed, and struck, all in mad confusion.

The other Nashers fought as bravely, but poorer weapons and less training hampered many.

Arlon Bladeshaper charged without regard for his safety into the thick of the fight. He pulled little Virchez from a heap of the undead, lifting the wounded man onto his own broad shoulders and bellowing for them to head for the city.

In the mist, the zombies fell back, only to suddenly reappear from the side or harass them from the rear.

Sarfael realized they were being driven like sheep nipped at the heels by undead dogs. But where? He tried to step aside, to cut them a new road out of the crowd of harassing corpses, but the numbers were too great. And the creatures seemed to have his measure. Whenever he attacked, they faded back and turned their blows upon the others.

With raging frustration, Sarfael tried to engage the zombies, to force them into facing his blade. But still the others drew the bulk of the attack. He could hear their cries echoing in the night air. The night became a shambles, as terrible as that night when he chased Mavreen’s corpse into its final grave.

Elyne flashed by him. Her bright braid a pennant to rally the others to her side, her cries sounded above the calls of the others. Sarfael whirled to one side to drive down a creature about to flank her, but Elyne whipped around and she saved herself.

“Help the others,” she spoke as calmly as she called the moves in her school. “Go now, I’m fine.”

The Nashers stumbled on, until they reached the river. Arlon fought like three men, with sword, fist, and, in one memorable moment that even earned a shout of praise from Sarfael, butting straight into a crowd of attackers with his hard head.

The dead pressed all around them, forcing them back into the warm flowing waters of Neverwinter’s namesake river. Across the water, so close and yet so tantalizingly far, the city’s buildings began to glow with lit lanterns and torches, as the people woke to a new day.

Many of the Nashers were down, exhausted, wounded, dropping from the effort of continuous fighting amidst the undead ash.

Crimson light bloodied the mist and the undead drew back. Sarfael slashed and hacked at the far edge of the fight, still trying to push a path through the zombies to let the Nashers escape, when the Red Wizard appeared.

Sarfael spotted him first and, with a shout of warning, tried to drive through the crowd of undead to reach the figure draped in scarlet robes. The undead gathered around their master, moving as his hands indicated, pressing the Nashers away from Montimort as the Red Wizard advanced.

Screaming, furious to see that ancient enemy so close and yet so unreachable, Sarfael literally climbed up and over the bodies of the undead, scrambling to reach the man.

Before him, the ash zombies separated Montimort from his protectors and dragged him toward the Red Wizard. Parnadiz and Charinyn were tumbled aside.

“No!” Montimort screamed as he struggled to stay on his feet and hold onto the box. With a flick of the Red Wizard’s fingers, a dozen zombies fell upon Montimort, dragging him to their master.

Elyne, like Sarfael, lunged for the boy. She cut the leg off one of his attackers but as the creature fell, it fastened brutal teeth on Montimort’s arm.

With a scream, the boy dropped the box.

The Red Wizard reached out one long, ink-stained hand and grabbed it before it hit the ground.

Too far away, Sarfael thought, even as he leaped over the undead. Too far away. So it had been the night that Mavreen died. Too far away, and too slow, to save her before she fell. The cries of the others faded behind him as he made one last effort to reach his goal.

The Red Wizard turned his disguised face to Sarfael, his dark eyes gleaming through the slits of a black mask. He raised his hands and mist boiled out of the river, flowing up the banks and blinding them all.

In the fog, Sarfael stumbled over a wounded Nasher. Blind as the rest, he pushed forward, trying to find the Red Wizard.

The sun rose, breaking free of the mist. The light sparkled upon the placid river. And only wounded Nashers lay huddled on the bank.

The undead, the Red Wizard, and the box were gone.

“We were betrayed,” shouted Arlon Bladeshaper. He was propped up on a makeshift bed in the Nashers’ meeting room. His wounded head was bandaged and Sarfael considered it a shame that the ash zombie hadn’t managed to bite through Arlon’s vocal cords.

Instead his roar rose above the groans of the other wounded.

“Oh, be quiet,” said Elyne in an uncanny echo of Sarfael’s thoughts. She was stitching the deep bite on Montimort’s arm. The boy’s eyes were screwed shut, but he made no sound.

Sarfael sat slumped on the floor, his back against the wall, trying to fight down the angry bile. Just a few steps closer and he could have unmasked the Red Wizard. Just a few steps closer and he could have killed the man.

“How did they know where to find us?” Arlon yelled. He pounded his fist on the bed, upending a bowl filled with bloody water and rags, sending it spilling to the floor. “Somebody told them that we would be on Upland Rise. Somebody told them about the crown. It was no random attack. They came directly for us, they snatched the box, and then they retreated. It was all carefully planned.”