Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Splattered with the blood of the dead guardsman, his eyes wide and blazing with maddened fury, Hornfel swung his sword high for a double-handed blow.

Kelida screamed.

“Friend!” Stanach roared, “Hornfel! Friend!”

It was not Stanach’s bellowed assurance that convinced Hornfel that he was not an enemy. It was the mere fact that while roaring “friend” Stanach proved his claim by slicing the arm from a Theiwar lunging for the thane’s back with a deadly shortsword and, on the back swing, opening the belly of another of Realgar’s warriors.

Hornfel bared his teeth in a warrior’s welcoming grin. Aye, this was a friend. So was the broad-chested human protecting Stanach’s back. The blade of his sword was crimsoned with blood. The light in his eyes shone like guyll fyr .

Stanach looked wildly around the great hall. He searched the place like a wolf caught in a canyon by hunters. Like the wolf, he wanted a way out of the trap, and that want made every muscle quiver. When he found the way, the bolt hole, his eyes lit.

The Guard of Watch had driven Realgar’s Theiwar, for a moment, away from Hornfel. In doing so, they had left him unguarded by none but these two.

“Who holds the gatehouse?” Hauk yelled.

“No one.” Hornfel drew a long breath and looked down at the Daewar guard who had died defending his life. “It’s where we were trying to make for when Realgar attacked.”

The young man shrugged and grinned, the grin oddly out of place and chilling. “Let’s go, then. Stanach?”

Stanach nodded, still checking the great hall as though searching for someone. Hornfel heard him curse low under his breath. Stanach elbowed his companion in the back and pointed with his blood-stained, bandaged right hand.

A human girl, with blood smeared on her hands and a face as pale as Solinari, stood with her back to one of the tall support columns. She fought off three black and silver liveried dwarves with a dagger and, when the dagger missed its mark as it often seemed to do, with vicious kicks. The girl was outnumbered and could not hold out much longer against her attackers.

“Hauk! There’s Kelida! Get her and make for the gatehouse!”

Stanach hefted his sword in his left hand for a better grip and nodded once to his thane. “I’ve got your back, Hornfel.”

Stanach was the only defense he would have, but Hornfel thought it would be enough. He ran for the gatehouse.

Piper explored the boundaries of his netherworld as often as he could and found, each time, that he was able to extend himself a little farther than the time before. It was not so much a matter of being able to go farther as it was a matter of being able to know farther. He was bounded by no sense of dimension now, no forward or back, no up or down. He could hear what his companions could hear and more; he could hear the thoughts of those around him.

It was how he became aware that, though they thought they were, Lavim, Tyorl, and the rangers were not alone in the defile. The soaring rock walls of the narrow defile formed a perfect channel for the smoke, a chamber to carry and magnify the roar and snap of the fire raging along the sides of the mountain below and above them. Tyorl cursed bitterly.

The air was already thick with smoke, heavy and black, reeking of burning, clogging his lungs. Tears streamed down his face as the smoke burned his eyes raw.

Tyorl wondered if Piper were still reading his mind, then laughed mirthlessly. Finn would say it was better to wonder if he were out of his mind for depending upon the guide work of a ghost.

Somewhere ahead, unseen but known by their deep, wracking coughs, Kembal and Finn ran scout. Lavim, following behind, made no sound but for a light wheezing.

Tyorl did not like the sound of that reedy wheezing. When he turned to check on the kender’s progress, he knew at once that Lavim was not going to make it to the end of this defile without help.

Tyorl caught his arm to stop and steady him. He went down on his heels beside Lavim. “We’ve no time to rest, Lavim. Let me help you.”

Lavim shook his head. “No,” he gasped, “I’m fine, Tyorl, really, I am.”

He was nothing like “fine.” The soot blackening his face did not hide its grayish pallor, nor did the smoke-stung tears disguise the dullness of his eyes. The dirty, weighted air seemed to get only so far into his lungs before he coughed it out again.

“Lavim, please.” He took the old kender’s shoulders in a gentle but firm grip. “Please. I don’t have time to argue. Now, climb up. Piggyback it will have to be until we can find our way to better air.”

Lavim shook his head, his cracked, dry lips thinned to a tight line of both stubbornness and wounded pride. “I can make it, Tyorl. I—”

Something cut loose inside Tyorl and it snapped painfully hard, like a whip lashing.

“Don’t argue!”

In that moment, he did not see Lavim, stunned to silence and staring at him with wide green eyes. He saw the faces of all the people who had become lost to him, snatched away by the cold hands of death and war. Hauk and Kelida.

The companions he’d fought beside in the spring, dead now and only raw, naked bones fleshed by nothing but his memories.

Young Lehr who had challenged the black dragon and died for it. Mule-stubborn Stanach!

Aye, and the mage Piper.

I walk with ghosts!

“No more!” he shouted, his voice cracking hard in his dry throat. He saw Lavim flinch and hardly understood why, so caught was he in the tide of fear and grief washing through him. “Listen to me, Lavim! No more!”

Tyorl saw his white-knuckled grip on the kender’s shoulders and realized dimly that it must surely hurt. Though he tried to relax his grasp, he could not. He did not know how to do anything but what he was doing: hold the kender in such a grip that not even death could snatch him away. Lavim squirmed, and then, with a sure and fine instinct, held still. He reached up and covered the elf’s hands with his own. Nodding slowly, as though suddenly he understood something, Lavim found a smile.

“All right, Tyorl. All right. I guess I could use a rest. Piggyback it is. But we’d better hurry or we’ll lose Finn.”

His arms around Tyorl’s neck, his legs around his waist, Lavim tried to settle his weight as evenly as he could. Probably, he thought, I’m not really very heavy.

He’s thinking you weigh about as much as a half-starved child, Lavim.

“Aye, well, the part about being half-starved is right.”

Tyorl looked around. “What?”

“Piper says we’re almost there.”

I did not. But you’re right, we are. You can tell him for me that I haven’t lost my mind, or my way. Just another mile down the defile and we’ll be at Northgate.

“Just another mile, Tyorl. I can—”

And don’t offer to walk. Helping you is about the only thing he can do now to make any difference. So he thinks. Let him help.

“I can really use the rest, thanks.” Lavim sighed. “Piper says to tell you that he hasn’t lost his mind, or his way.”

He felt the elf’s surprise in an involuntary hitching of his breath. When he spoke, Tyorl’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“I wouldn’t mind if he wanted to stop reading my thoughts.”

“Sometimes,” Lavim said, “I know what you mean.”

Piper wasn’t quiet long. Lavim had no more than settled into the uncomfortable rhythm of Tyorl’s gait—like a three-legged mountain pony who limps on one of ’em, he thought—when Piper interrupted his thoughts.

Dragon!

“Dragon!” Lavim yelped.

“Dragon,” Tyorl demanded, “where?”

On the mountain!