Mark Sehestedt - The fall of Highwatch

The shafts were of a dark brown wood. Shallow grooves had been etched lengthwise down the shaft. Called 'wind sleeves," they supposedly kept the shaft from warping. The fletching was the dark gray and brown feathers of pheasant. Nar arrows. Creel or Qu'ima.

Not a nightmare then. Real. Nar were attacking Highwatch.

Hweilan pushed herself to her feet and looked around. Three bodies were soldiers. Men of the Highwatch guard. But the rest were servants-older men and women in thick homespun clothes. Hweilan looked away, not wanting to see their faces, afraid she might recognize one.

A man stood up from behind a bush next to the path. His dark hair pulled back in a topknot. Clothes of animal hide and furs. His face impassive, a mask, almost of boredom. But his eyes were hard, and his breath steamed in long plumes.

"You were right," he said in Nar, "someone was coming down the path."

"Fresh little doe, isn't she?" said another voice from behind her. "Good thing we lingered after all."

Hweilan whirled. Another man stepped out of the brush on the other side of the path. Each man held a bow, and a sword hung from their belts. They came at her. Not hurrying. Nice and easy. Obviously not wanting to spook her, but utterly confident.

From behind her, Hweilan could hear Oruk blundering down the path.

The two Nar-both Creel by their accents-glanced that way.

"Your friend comes?" the first one said, obviously struggling over the Damaran words.

Hweilan tightened the grip on her knife. She didn't brandish it. No need to provoke them.

"Let me pass," she said in Nar. "I-" She almost said, I am the High Warden's granddaughter, but instinct stopped her at the last moment. "I serve the High Warden. Let me pass, and I will not remember your faces."

The Nar's brows rose as she spoke in perfect Nar, but he laughed. "Remember all you want," he said. "Vandalar feeds the crows."

Hweilan felt as if she'd just been punched in the stomach.

The sounds of Oruk's approach were very close now. She could hear his ragged breathing as well as his footsteps.

The other two Nar were only a few paces away now. They had dismissed the bow she held, unstrung as it was. But both eyed her knife.

"Drop the blade," said one. He had an arrow fitted on the string of his bow. He pulled a little tension into the string. "Drop and we have no trouble."

"Stop! Argalath wants her alive!"

The two Nar looked up the path, where Oruk, red-faced and panting, was stumbling toward them.

Hweilan ran. The distraction gave her a head start.

"Stop her!"

She jumped over a corpse in the path, and when she came down, her boot slipped on the uneven, frosty ground. She stumbled And it saved her life. An arrow hissed past, so close that she felt it tug loose a few stray strands of hair.

"Alive, you whoreson! Argalath wants her alive!"

Hweilan regained her balance and ran on. She could hear the men right behind her.

"Stop! No!" Oruk screamed.

Pain erupted from the back of Hweilan's skull.

The next thing of which she was aware was voices.

"It was a fowling arrow," said a man in Nar. "No point. I always keep one handy for birds and pretty girls."

"Still might have cracked her skull," said Oruk. "She dies, Argalath will kill you."

The voices were close. Hweilan tried to open her eyes. Her left wouldn't open at all. It hurt to open her right. She realized half her face was planted on the ground, and her hair had fallen across the other half of her face, some of it right across her eyelid.

She felt a hand against her throat. "She's not dead."

Full awareness seeped back in. She was lying on the path, one hand-the one that had held the bow-outstretched. The other, the one still holding the knife, was under her. It was a blessed miracle she hadn't fallen on the blade.

"Find something to tie her," said Oruk. "She took Jatara's eye and I chased the little kujend over half the damned mountain."

"She took Jatara's eye?" one of the men asked.

"Gouged it right out," said Oruk.

The voice nearest her laughed and said, "I would not want-"

Hweilan rolled away from her pinned arm and brought her blade around in a fierce swipe. Her hair still covered her face, and she forsook a good aim for speed. The Nar screamed and jumped back, the tip of the knife slicing through his arm.

"Get her!" said Oruk, who was standing only a few feet away, the other Nar by his side. "Don't let her-"

An arrow struck him in the neck. It hit with such force that Hweilan heard the snap! of breaking bone. Oruk went down. The Nar beside him reached for his sword, then his eyes widened at the sight of something behind Hweilan, and he decided on flight rather than fight. He turned and made it all of two steps before an arrow hit him in the back. Screaming, he fell facedown into the brush.

The man Hweilan had cut was scrambling away, trying to put distance between them as he struggled to his feet.

Hweilan pushed herself to her feet, intending to run the final distance to the fortress, but when she looked up she found herself facing another Nar. He held a thick horn bow in front of him-Hweilan could hear it creaking with tension-and an arrow against his cheek. Blood covered the man-a spattering over his face, but shining wet gore, almost black, from his fists almost to his shoulders. His topknot was awry, and strands of hair made thick by sweat and blood draped his face. His eyes shone with a fury Hweilan had seen only in cornered beasts. There was nothing human in that gaze.

But then she recognized the face.

Scith.

"Hweilan, down!" he said.

She dived to the side of the path. She heard the twang of Scith's bow and the flight of the arrow over her, followed by the hard slap sound of the shaft striking flesh and bone. Men were screaming, but her heart beat so loudly in her ears that the sounds of dying men seemed thick and far away.

She lay at the base of a thicket, thick with green, waxy leaves and wire-strong branches. She looked up to see Scith walking calmly past her. He dropped the bow on the path and drew his knife. Hweilan knew that blade well. Scith's hunting knife. Made of black iron, its single edge honed razor sharp, with it Scith could gut and dress a swiftstag in moments.

Several paces away, the Nar Hweilan had cut was trying to crawl away, but the arrow protruding from his back seemed to be keeping his legs from working properly. Scith didn't hesitate or increase his pace. He walked steadily, patient and sure.

Just before he reached the man, he turned and looked at Hweilan. "You should look away now."

She didn't.

Vandalar feeds the crows.

That had been the man who said it.

Hweilan watched the whole thing. Before it was over, she was smiling.

What is this place, my lord?" Boran spoke in a reverent whisper as they passed through the stone arch and into the open air of the holy place. Something about it seemed to call for soft voices.

The other men left their torches on sconces just inside the arch, but the snow on the ground outside reflected the star and moonlight, so that even without torches they could take in the entire scene. They stood on a great shelf of rock. Where it met the wall of the mountain behind them, it was broad as the fortress's inner bailey, but it narrowed to a point a stone's throw away before ending in a sharp precipice. The rock wall behind them showed many additions-elegant borders and runes carved in the dwarf fashion, Dethek runes praising Torm the Loyal Fury, and over the door itself a graven image of an open gauntlet. All of it displayed master craftsmanship.

Most of the area beyond was empty space, open to wind and sky. Guric could see how its starkness appealed to Soran and the man's understanding of proper worship. But in the middle was a stone altar, about waist high, and before it a wide basin set in the ground, now filled with snow. Argalath stood there, a half dozen of his acolytes around him.