Ed Greenwood - All Shadows Fled

He gave her a fierce smile in answer. Then his jaw dropped. "By the gods, look!" he bellowed, pointing. Storm turned in time to see Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr advance another pace through the ranks of Zhentilar. Fighting in unison, standing close together in a human arrowhead, they were dealing death with furious speed.

"The Rangers Three," Storm said, watching her pupils in admiration.

The hesitant gangliness she'd seen all too often the day she'd fought Belkram and Itharr at the farmhouse was gone. Now they moved like dancers, deft and quick. Sharantyr was the key. Her smooth style had drawn the two Harpers into a team. Storm began to believe their survival in the castle of the Malaugrym was more than good fortune bolstered by the aid of Mystra and Elminster. She shook her head in pleased admiration and threw herself into the battle once more, coming up alongside the Rangers Three in their bloody foray into the Zhent ranks.

The Rider charge had cleared space enough to fight, and the easy killing was done. Fresh Zhents were pressing forward for their first chance to fight, and there seemed no end to them.

They'd struck at Shadowdale from the west, and from the north. Some fell magic had wrought a great explosion and fire westward, hard by the Twisted Tower. There was fighting all over the dale, and the day might still be lost-but this welcome, unexpected aid had come from Mistledale, from whence she'd expected only more blackhelms.

"Azuth be with us," she breathed, feeling fresh sorrow at the thought that Mystra was no more.

Storm swept her notched long sword up to strike aside a reaching halberd. Catching hold of it as the man rushed helplessly forward, she pulled, sprawling him to the turf in front of her. A dalesman stabbed the Zhent in the face before he could rise, and from somewhere near at hand Storm heard the deep laughter of Bronn Selgard, the smith. Dove must be rallying the last folk from the inn to join this push, to drive the Zhents back into the trees.

There was a ringing sound as the great iron-headed hammer Bronn wielded crashed down on some unfortunate Zhent's helm. The winded Rangers Three began to fall back. A spell hurled bodies in all directions, tearing a breach in the wall of corpses behind her.

Storm turned, frowning-creating a breach for the Zhents to pour through? What simpleton had birthed such a plan? — and then laughed aloud in delight.

"For Shadowdale!" came the roar from beyond the wall. Warriors in full plate armor rode through the breach, lances gleaming. At their head, three figures rode abreast: Florin; Mourngrym, lord of Shadowdale; and Shaerl, his lady.

"'Ware!" Storm yelled to the Rangers Three, waving them aside.

Dove sprang acrobatically across the path of the charging horses, somersaulted in a clanking of protesting armor, and fetched up beside Storm. Just then, the lances of the charging dalefolk came down, crashing into the massed Zhentilar in a great screaming of men and horses and tortured metal.

As first, the horses were slowed by the sheer weight of blackhelms standing against them. The mounted armsmen of the tower spurred out and around them, striking at the foe on either side. When the last horseman had charged, the Zhent lines had fallen back a good twenty paces-a distance marked by a carpet of black-armored fallen.

The dale riders pulled back to spare their horses from Zhent blades, and a cheer went up from the weary farmers and merchants who'd held the wall of dead so long against the forefront of the Zhent army.

A little space opened up between the defenders and the army of Zhentil Keep; Dove stared across it and hissed, "Oh, for some arrows…"

"All gone, hours ago," Storm told her, and they embraced wearily, eyes on the foe. Both sides had paused to catch breath, it seemed, staring at each other across the fallen, but making no move to attack.

"Gods, look how many there are," Shaerl murmured. "Can we hold them until sunset?"

"We must," Mourngrym replied shortly, looking around at the dead. "And dark'll bring the wolves and wild dogs out to feed, too."

"Well fought, you three," Storm called to Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr, who'd sat down together on some dead Zhentilar, rubbing at aching shoulders and bruised forearms.

"Of course," Itharr replied. "After all, you taught us."

Storm chuckled. "To dance with your blade, aye, a little-but fighting as one is your own doing."

"They're coming again," Dove said, striding forward.

" 'Ware, all!"

She swung her sword in wide, wild arcs to loosen stiffening muscles, and set herself to meet the Zhentilar attack; a cautious affair this time, with two or three blackhelms moving against each defender.

"This could be bad," Belkram murmured.

Sharantyr sighed. "Just try to stay alive… I need you both."

"You do?" Itharr asked, adopting Torm's manner of mock astonishment.

"I do," Sharantyr growled back at him. "We've got those Malaugrym to catch, remember?"

"Gods," Belkram cursed as he caught a hard-swung Zhent blade on his own and was driven a pace back. "Do Elminster's little tasks never end?"

"Where is Elminster, anyway?" Itharr panted, slashing a staggering Zhent across the face and bringing his blade up into the throat of the blackhelm fencing with Sharantyr.

"Off saving some other corner of the Realms, no doubt," Belkram said, driving his foe back with a few solid swings.

"I don't care about other corners of the Realms," Torm called to them, "only the one I'm in."

"An essentially selfish philosophy," Dove scolded him.

"But one that all lesser mortals must needs cling to, if they want to cling to life," Torm returned archly. He threw the blade in his hand into one eye of a snarling Zhent, who was charging in beside the one he was fighting. The man crashed down, and the thief leapt high to avoid being knocked over. His Zhent opponent wasn't so nimble, and toppled sideways, whereupon Hammerhand Bucko, the wagonmaker of the dale, calmly crushed the man's head with a sledgehammer.

"Thank you," Torm told him politely.

After gaping at him for a moment in amazement, Hammerhand grinned.

A trumpet rang out, the Zhents pressed forward, and the defenders of Shadowdale became all too busy to talk.

A tortured scream topped the fray as Nelyssa's mount reared up, three blades in its belly, and went down. The paladin threw herself clear at the last moment. Only some desperate bladework by Storm and Dove, sparks dancing from their furiously plied blades, kept the captain of the Riders alive until she could find her feet and fight on.

Kuthe grunted in pain and went down, a spear through him, and a moment later the Rider beside him fell, transfixed by three Zhent blades.

"Too many of them!" Merith snarled in frustration, swinging two swords in deadly, whirling unison. "What price sundown now?"

"There's too many! We can't hold them!" Illistyl shouted, swinging a sword awkwardly.

"We must hold them!" Mourngrym snarled back at her from the heart of a knot of Zhents.

"Where in the name of the Seven Dancing Gods is the Old Mage?" Storm raged as she carved her way to the lord of Shadowdale. "Especially now that we need him-for once."

"The temple," a wounded priest of Lathander gasped from behind her. "He stood alone there-or with a woman, some said-against Bane himself!"

Storm turned and stared at the rising column of black smoke that marked the distant temple. "No," she whispered. "Oh, no." She leapt clear of the fray, scant inches ahead of a Zhent blade, and sprinted away across the heaped dead.

Sharantyr turned, hacked through a Zhent blackhelm twice her size, and saw Storm spring into the saddle of a dale war horse. It leapt into a full gallop like an arrow shot from a bow, heading west.

Though Shar whirled back to face another foe, she still saw Storm's anguished face in her mind. No one should look like that. Nothing should ever happen in Faerun to make the Bard of Shadowdale look like that.