Troy Denning: The Siege

The throw missed, of course, but it distracted the Shadovar long enough for Ruha to pull her own jambiya. She grabbed the laces of the calf's hood and held it beside her for the half second it took the shadow warrior to close. Ruha came up beneath his guard and opened him from groin to ribs. She was mildly surprised to see that the stuff spilling out of him looked much the same as that coming out of the Bedine.

"May Elah smile on you," Sa'ar gasped, his good arm thrown over the veserab's back, supporting him. "How many times have you saved my life, now?"

"Too many times for one sheikh," Ruha said, pulling him to his feet. She took his curved amarat horn and pressed it into his good hand. "Now blow your horn and scatter your warriors. Veserabs are no good to dead men."

Sa'ar thrust the horn away. "They are my veserabs now," he said, "and no man steals from Sa'ar, Sheikh of the Mahwa." Ruha let her chin sink. "You are a fool, Sheikh."

"Almost certainly," Sa'ar said, pushing the calf's head toward her. "Now help me lace this up, before the battle turns against us again." "Again?"

Ruha looked around and saw that while the battle was continuing to rage, the Shadovar were now being assailed by magic and iron whenever they drew near a Bedine. She glanced up the slopes of the wadi and saw Hhormun standing atop a boulder, his aba tossed aside somewhere to reveal the black battle cloak of a Cormyrean War Wizard. He was wielding two wands at once, hurling blazing nuggets of fire or crackling forks of lightning whenever a Shadovar dared emerge from the murk to attack. Flanking him were two full ranks of Purple Dragons, loading and firing their iron crossbows by turn, while a smaller ring of three wizards and two dozen dragoneers stood by staring into the murk, attacking any shadow that so much as flickered.

"The fool!" Ruha hissed. "Does he think no one will see him? Or that the Most High will think the iron bolts came from Bedine crossbows?"

"I do not know what he thinks," Sa'ar said, "only that he is a man of his word. Now, will you help me or not, witch?"

After a quick glance around to ensure they were under no imminent threat of attack, Ruha helped him lace the hood. By the time she finished, Caladnei was standing at the upper end of the battlefield, waving the Bedine survivors up the wadi.

"Come along, and quickly!" The Cormyrean's gaze was fixed on the sky above the lake, where Ruha's sandstorm was still raging. "Be quick about it."

Ruha pushed Sa'ar and the reins of his three veserab calves into the arms of a group of stunned-looking warriors, then turned in the direction Caladnei was facing and saw a large company of veserab riders approaching from the north, flying high above her sandstorm. They were still too distant for her to tell much more than that there were several hundred of them, but she would have bet her veil that a force of that size was being led by a Prince of Shade.

Hhormun and his dragoneers began an orderly withdrawal toward Caladnei-and Ruha was not at all sorry to see the Shadovar survivors concentrating their efforts on the Cormyreans instead of Sa'ar and his Mahwa. The shadow lords were being more careful now, emerging from the murk just long enough to fling a shadow bolt through a warrior's knee or hamstring a wizard, clearly attempting to delay their retreat until the veserab company arrived.

Ruha ran up the wadi and joined Caladnei, who was busily spraying magic into the hillside shadows in an attempt to help her struggling companions. With her attack magic all but exhausted, Ruha prepared a sand dragon spell, but held it in reserve in case Caladnei irritated the Shadovar enough to draw an attack.

Between the wizardess's attacks, Ruha said, "Had Hhormun been waiting here with the rest of Sa'ar's warriors, the Mahwa might have lost fewer lives."

"Or we all might have lost more," Caladnei said. "This way, it was the Shadovar who were surprised, not us."

"And you had a chance to watch them fight." Ruha did not bother to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

Caladnei sprayed a pair of Shadovar with some sort of green ray Ruha was not familiar with, reducing both warriors to smoky wisps and opening the way for Hhormun’s battered company to join them in the bottom of the wadi.

She cocked her brow and glanced at Ruha. "We had a chance to watch them fight, but it was their idea to steal the veserabs."

"True-and you took advantage." Ruha was fighting to keep from yelling. The story was an old one, the berrani from outside Anauroch entering the desert and using the nomads for their own purposes. "Sa'ar would never have attempted such a thing without Cormyrean magic."

"It sounds to me like we took advantage of each other." Caladnei shrugged and pointed up the wadi, where Sa'ar and his warriors were leading their new veserabs into the teleport circle that would carry them to safety-at least temporarily. "I don't see the sheikh complaining."

Hhormun and the rest of the Cormyrean scouts arrived, with half a dozen Shadovar close on their heels. Caladnei took out two with one of her green rays, then Hhormun and another wizard killed three more. The last warrior glanced over his shoulder and, finding the veserab company still too distant to aid him, began to run for the nearest shadow. When no one else started a spell, Ruha scraped a handful of sand off the ground and started hers-only to be interrupted when Hhormun brought his arm down across her wrists.

"Let him go," he said. "He's not hurting anybody now."

"Hurting anybody?" Ruha gasped. "He's seen your wizard's cloak. He'll run straight to the Most High and confirm that we're a scouting party from Cormyr."

"Will he?" A faint smile came to Hhormun’s bearded lips, and he turned up the wadi. "Then we had better hurry to our next campsite, hadn't we?"

Ruha's jaw fell behind her veil. She stood there staring after the old wizard until Caladnei took her arm.

"Come along," the Cormyrean woman said. "The point has been made. Vangerdahast wouldn't be happy if you stayed behind to confirm it… not happy at all."

Rivalen had battled three phaerimm at once, toe to thorn and with no chance to call for help. He had dallied with twin succubae and awakened to find them-well, he didn't want to relive that again. He had fought demons- bare-handed, by Shadow-and been the one who flew away. And never, not in eight-hundred years-not even when he gave his spirit over to the shadowstuff-not once had he been frightened. Not like this.

"How?" the Most High asked. His voice was calm, gentle-even reasonable-in that terrible tone it assumed just before he condemned someone to an eternity of wandering the Barrens of Doom and Despair. "Can someone please explain this?"

They were looking down at the camp of the Harper witch and her Cormyrean scouts. Not scrying it through the world-window, mind you, but looking straight down on it from the Most High's personal observation balcony in the Palace Most High. Staring down through the shadow mists at an imminently defensible camp, located in a maze of canyons so narrow a veserab's wings would touch both sides. A maze of canyons flooded by magic light with no particular source, where the few shadows that did exist were guarded by a squad of sentries armed with both magic and steel. A maze of canyons where the Shadovar would have to fight their way in like common ore foot soldiers, and a maze of canyons with plenty of room for more Cormyreans… and Sembians… and Dalesmen… and the Hidden One only knew who else, all determined to deny the lands of lost Netheril to the Shadovar.

The witch could not see them, of course. Certainly, her Bedine vassals had reported to her the stream of veserabs that constantly dropped into the lake there, and no doubt remarked on the dark storm cloud that never seemed to leave the area, but she could not see Shade Enclave. There were still the shadow mists and the thousands of feet above ground and, not least of all, the Most High's magic, but Rivalen was not so sure. "Rivalen?"