R. Salvatore - The Ancient

“We have to help them!” Cormack cried, tugging Bransen back from the ledge. He scrambled to his feet, as Bransen did behind him, and started for the Alpinadorans.

“That is Badden,” Milkeila mouthed in horror-filled understanding.

Bransen grabbed Cormack by the shoulder, tugging him about. “The castle,” he said.

“We have to help them!” Cormack implored.

“We help them by taking the castle,” Bransen replied. “It is the source, the conduit, of Badden’s power.”

Cormack glanced back at the desperate fight to the north, but desperate acquiescence was in his eyes as he turned back to Bransen.

“Go on! Go on!” Bransen shouted to the powries, for he saw that the way was clear. “To the castle doors, for all our sakes!”

But few powries heeded that call, entranced by the allure of bright giant blood, and with still more behemoths to be tripped up and slaughtered. And the hesitancy of the behemoths-obviously they had fought the tough little powries before-only made the dwarves hungrier.

“Mcwigik!” Cormack called, and the dwarf skidded to a stop and turned to face the humans. “To the castle!” Cormack yelled, pointing emphatically that way.

Mcwigik put on a sour look, but he did stab out his arm to stop Pergwick from running by. Cormack nodded and started off, Milkeila and Bransen close behind. By the time they crossed the glacier to the ice ramp leading into the castle, Mcwigik and his three cohorts trailed in close pursuit.

A strange sense of urgency came over Bransen, then, and he overtook Cormack, moving from a trot to a sprint for the front of the large castle. He looked all about as he ran, though his path was straight. Were Brother Jond and Olconna still alive?

How much he suddenly cared about the pair and the other prisoners surprised Bransen, and he silently cursed himself for his hesitance back on the path. How could he have considered turning aside? He lowered his head and ran on faster, right to the base of the ice ramp that led up through the carved towerlike guardhouses that flanked the opening to the castle’s bailey. But there, right at the base of the ramp, he skidded to a stop, and he quickly put his arm out to block Cormack from running by him.

“It is warded,” he explained.

“How do you know?”

Bransen shook his head, but did not otherwise answer. He fell within himself, finding the line of his chi and willfully extending that life energy down to the ground beneath him. He felt the power there, clearly, and discordant with the teeming magic that had constructed and now maintained this castle.

“He says that it is trapped,” Cormack said to Milkeila when she came up beside them, the four dwarves huffing and puffing close behind.

Milkeila nodded her agreement almost immediately. Her magic was quite similar to that of the Samhaists, both drawing their energies from the power of the world beneath their feet. She stepped up tentatively and began chanting and rattling her claw and tooth necklace.

She nodded again and looked back to Cormack. “Our adversary has collected the muted countering energies to his construction together in this one place,” she explained. “It is a powerful ward.”

“Can you defeat it?” Cormack asked.

“Or can ye bleed it?” asked Mcwigik, and Cormack looked at him curiously, and all the more curiously when he noted Milkeila nodding and smiling.

The shaman tentatively walked up the ramp, rattling her necklace before her as if it served as a guard to the release of Samhaist magic. As she neared the opening to the castle bailey, she began to softly chant while jiggling her necklace with one hand and running her other hand in the air right near the doorjamb without touching it. Immediately the gleaming ice began to sweat and drip, and little flames seemed to dance within the ice itself.

Bransen felt it all profoundly. He understood Milkeila’s counter; she was calling to the ward in measured volume, bringing it forth in bits and pieces to release the pressure. He nodded as he came to understand the trapped flames in the doorjamb, designed to burst forth with tremendous energy if any crossed through without the appropriate magical commands.

As his understanding of both the ward and Milkeila’s apparent answer to it crystallized, Bransen joined in the effort, channeling his chi to tease out pieces of the warding magic. Now the jamb was sweating all about so profusely that a steady drip fell from the overhead ice beam like a moderate rain.

“Yach, but ye’re to drop the whole thing!” Mcwigik grumbled.

“Exactly what the trap was designed to do,” Bransen explained. “But Milkeila and I have diffused it enough so that…” With a grin back at the dwarf, the Highwayman darted ahead past Milkeila through the opening.

Flames burst forth all around him, a sudden and sharp release of energy, but nowhere near what it would have been initially.

“The explosion would have taken down the front wall,” Milkeila explained, leading the others through the puddles and the portal to join Bransen. And not a moment too soon, for they found their friend already engaged with another contingent of the stubborn and pesky trolls.

The first spear thrown his way had become Bransen’s weapon as he sprinted right into the midst of the creatures, who quickly formed a semicircle about him. Holding the light spear in his left hand only, Bransen thrust it out to the left, and as he did, he hooked its back end behind his hip. Using that leverage, he swept the spear across in front of him, catching it in a reverse grip with his right hand. He kept the spear head moving left to right, as if he meant to put the thing right around his back, but instead rolled it in his fingers, deftly flipping it to a forehand grip with his right before stabbing it out that way. The troll on that flank, taking the bait that the spear would fast disappear behind the man, had just lifted its club and begun its charge when the thrusting spear pierced its chest.

Bransen bent his arm at the elbow powerfully, sending his hand straight up, and he flipped the spear back across his shoulders. He caught it with an underhand grip with his left and subtly altered the angle of momentum, rolling it completely around to stab out in front of him, again left to right. He loosened his grip, letting the spear slide forth as if in a throw, but caught it firmly lower on the handle with his left and grasped it at midpoint with his right, then stabbed diagonally out to his right more powerfully, retracted, reangled and stabbed straight ahead, then again, turning his hips to put it out right of his position in three short and devastating thrusts.

Three trolls fell away. The others of the group fell back on their heels, confused and frightened, and just as Bransen’s friends rushed past him, overwhelming the lot of the trolls. Only an unlucky turn, a broken spear hooking at a bad angle, caused a wound on any of the companions, catching Pergwick painfully in the hip.

The dwarf shrugged off any attention, though, and matched the pace of the others as they charged across the courtyard to the castle’s inner door. Again Bransen took the lead, and again he thought to filter out his sensitivity to magic to seek out wards. But the door slid aside and out jumped a man dressed in Samhaist robes and holding a short bronze sword. For a brief instant, Bransen thought it to be Ancient Badden, and he instinctively pulled up.

That proved a fortunate delay, as the Samhaist sent a gout of flames out through his hand to engulf his sword blade and came forward with a series of mighty sweeps, extending those flames out before him.

Mcwigik ambled by Bransen and nearly right into them, before finally stopping with a shout of surprise. He shouted again when Bransen leaped atop him, then sprang from the dwarf’s sturdy frame, soaring high and far, lifting his chi as he went to carry him far above the expected mortal boundaries. He threw his spear at the man as he went, but the Samhaist was appropriately warded against such missiles and it did not penetrate.