The Sword Never Sleeps tkomd-3

by Ed Greenwood

  He reeled in his saddle, fighting to find breath enough to shout hoarsely, "Spread out, ride hard, and get down!"

  Around him the Knights' horses were snorting and bucking, Pennae a gasping heap in the road dust under their dancing hooves.

  The volley of a dozen or more arrows sleeted out of the trees, sending two of the horses down to join Pennae. Another bolted with Doust shouting and tugging vainly at it to stop-until he fell off. The rest reared, spilling their riders, and fled.

  The Knights found themselves wallowing in the dust of the Moonsea Ride in the company of two very large and pain-wracked horses, who were wildly rolling, writhing, and kicking.

  "Holy naed!" Semoor swore, skidding his chin along rather stony mud as an iron-shod hoof lashed the air just above his head. "Down on my tluining face eating dirt with some tluiner trying to kill me again!"

  "You sound surprised," Islif grunted, rolling hard away from the horses in the opposite direction from where the arrows had come. "Really, holynose, you should be getting used to it by now!"

  Florin staggered to his feet, clutching at the arrow standing out of his shoulder. His arm felt on fire, and he couldn't feel the hand at the end of it at all, even when he clenched his fingers into a fist. The shaft had struck his chest and glanced along the armor over his heart to go in under the edge of his shoulder plates. The fire seemed to grow hotter. He winced. At least it wasn't his sword arm.

  Taking a few steps, as if he could walk away from the pain, he snarled defiance at the trees, hoping the sudden lack of arrows meant that the unseen archers had run out of them.

  It seemed he was right, judging by the armed men who answered his snarl by bursting out of the trees with swords and daggers drawn and nary a bow in sight. Much good that it would do him.

  "Up!" Florin barked to his fellow Knights. "Up and together!" He spared not a glance for them, his eyes never leaving the grim faces of the men charging at him. They were all in well-worn fighting leathers adorned with no hint of badges or house colors. Outlaws-or men trying to seem outlaws.

  Movement to right and left; the ranger shot swift glances in both directions and saw Islif clambering to her feet, her sword singing out, and Doust limping back to rejoin the Knights, mace in hand.

  From her knees, Jhessail snapped out a battlestrike, sending magical missiles streaking at the ambushers in a hungry swarm of glowing blue darts. Men stiffened and cursed as they were struck- Cormyreans, by their accents-but none fell or fled. There were more than twelve of them… a score or so.

  Florin wrestled with the arrow in his shoulder, trying to snap off its shaft before an outlaw could reach him and grab hold of it, butHe was out of time. Swords came swinging at him in a steely rain.

  He ducked away, parrying furiously, and heard ringing steel and Islif grunting as she did when putting real might behind a slash. More clanging and clashing of swords, then a shout of pain-an outlaw-and Jhessail unleashing another battlestrike. Semoor was casting something, too, calling on Lathander for aid in smiting.

  Smiting was something Florin had to take care of himself. His blade bit deep into the side of a screaming outlaw's face, lodging in bone, and he couldn't-couldn'tThe swords that thrust into him then, under the edges of armor plates low on his side and high on his neck, burned like fire and chilled like a deluge of icy water.

  Florin staggered back, dragging the man he'd slain with him- but the weight of that toppling body snatched his sword from his hand, leaving him with nothing to parry a grinning outlaw's wicked roundhouse slash.

  "Die!" another outlaw shouted, hacking with the dagger Florin was trying to snatch out of his fingers. "For Cormyr and Yellander! Die!"

  Those words echoed strangely around a rising, pounding dark flood that seemed to race through his ears, wash through his head, and back out to blind him as grinning men closed in, and fire and ice lashed Florin again… and again…

  Not far away, Jhessail screamed as a hurled sword spun at her face. She ducked, and it tumbled through her hair, slicing open her cheek a,nd catching fast in the tree behind her, still tangled in her hair.

  Clawing at the enemy steel to get it away from her eyes, she saw Islif beset by six outlaws. One staggered and went down, sobbing and spraying blood-but was followed by several of Islif's armor plates that went flying aside as she reeled and then toppled, two swords buried in her.

  Islif down, a bare breath after Florin's fall…

  Muttering words that sounded more like curses than prayers, Doust clawed aside a sword and bounced his mace off the face of the outlaw wielding it, hard.

  That face exploded into a burst of teeth and gore. Doust slammed his mace into the throat beneath it before whirling to meet a one-eyed outlaw who'd come leaping from the fallen Islif to hunt red-haired spellhurlers.

  Almost casually the outlaw hacked Doust aside, her lifelong friend crumpling and spitting blood, and came right for Jhessail, swinging back his sword to chop-Nothing at all, as Semoor swung away from busily battering an outlaw to the ground to bash in one side of the one-eyed outlaw's head. The man crashed to the ground, dashed senseless, his arms and legs jerking like fish flapping when pulled out of a river.

  "Over here!" Semoor panted at Doust, who was still doubled up, one bloody hand clutching his stomach. "Over to Jhess, here, to stand over her, so she can either rescue us all with some bright spell or other… or we can at least die together. Tluining Vangerdahast! I'll bet he's behind this! Where's that Dragon patrol that was riding at our heels? Hey?"

  J

  Doust nodded but managed only a groan by way of reply, as Jhessail grimly clutched the sword that had arrived in her hair. She had no spell left that could deliver them from so many foes. Dark and dripping blood, her two friends loomed above her as they came together, back to back.

  They were standing guard over her, for the last few breaths any of them were likely to take. Around them, on the dusty Moonsea Ride, their ambushers closed in.

  Not hurrying now, the outlaws-or whoever they were-formed an unbroken ring around the last three Knights before slowly, in unison, striding closer.

  White-faced, Jhessail stared at them. They looked back at her, showing their teeth in grim, unfriendly smiles.

  Then with slow care, they closed in, cruel grins widening.

  "Know any holy spells that'd be really useful about now?" Semoor shouted desperately over his shoulder.

  "No!" Doust shouted back. "Do you?"

  They stepped apart long enough to turn and stare at each other, as if some divine deliverance might be found written across the face of one of them for the other to discover.

  Jhessail looked helplessly up at them, clutching the heavy and unfamiliar sword she so hoped she'd not have to try to use. They were going to die. Here, a few breaths from now. This wasn't some bardic ballad, where an improbable rescue would burst upon them all.

  She could see that same realization in the faces of her two friends, as they peered at each other, found no up-any-sleeve escape… and let all hope drain out of their eyes.

  "Tluin!" they snarled, in emphatic unison, and spun around to slam shoulders against each other once more. Waving their maces and staring at the battle around with empty, despairing faces, they prepared to die.

  Telgarth Boarblade slipped through the study door, glided to a halt in front of his employer, and bowed, saying nothing. Aside from his eyes, asking an eager, wordless question as to how he could tender service, his face was an impassive mask. Rhallogant Caladanter might be an unobservant fool, but from time to time rather more sharp-witted folk had been known to visit him.

  Boarblade already knew why he had been summoned and Caladanter's intentions regarding him, but he let nothing of that show in his expression or manner. Letting one's guard drop or getting careless had meant death long before he'd ever come to Cormyr and let the foolish young Caladanter heir "discover" him.

  Caladanter was reclining in his favorite chair, one glossy-booted leg up on a footstool carved into
quite a good likeness of a snarling panther. The decanter beside it was already almost empty, and the ring-dripping hand that waved that huge goblet so jauntily trembled visibly. Drunken sot.

  "Boarblade," Rhallogant greeted him almost jovially, leaning forward like a bad actor broadly overplaying a sly conspirator. "I've a task for you. A dangerous task. A secret task."

  "Lord?" Boarblade murmured, taking a step closer to signify that he heeded his employer's lust for secrecy, and bending forward to show how eager he was to hear the great secret that might be imparted.

  "I need you to kill a man."

  Chapter 2

  What Traitors are up to …And if it should come to pass, between dragonslayings Or late nights of downing fiery oceans of strong drink In the hungrily enfolding arms of too-willing wenches, That we for once have time to stop and use our wits, Let there then be no shortage of matters to ponder.

  In Cormyr, there never is; two things, at least, They never tire of considering:

  Whose bed lusty King Azoun will conquer next And what these traitors, or those, Are up to since this morn.

  Sharanralee of Everlund My Years with Blade and Harp Published in the Year of the Lion

  Kill a man, indeed.

  If Caladanter had meant those words to shock his most trusted bodyguard, they failed to do so. Little wonder. This was not the first time he had ordered such a deed. Boarblade merely nodded and waited.

  "You are familiar with Lord Eldarton Feathergate. His usefulness to me is ended. Go to Feathergate, slay him in a way that will notIeaA all the Wizards of War in the realm right back here, get away unseen, and return here promptly. The customary reward will be waiting for you."

  Telgarth Boarblade had been able to control every muscle of his face for years. It was no work at all to keep the sneer off it now. Customary reward, indeed.

  Telgarth Boarblade knew the reward Caladanter intended him to receive upon his return wasn't the usual satchel of gold coins but a hail of arrows from a dozen waiting archers, whose work would leave no one alive who knew of Rhallogant Caladanter's treasonous intentions but Caladanter himself.

  "And you would trust such a fool as yourself?" Boarblade murmured, in mild rebuke. "The rest of us are not the gaps in your armor, Lord."

  Rhallogant Caladanter blinked at his bodyguard in disbelief. "Hey? Quoth you-?"

  "Lord Caladanter," Boarblade said firmly, "the time has come for you to know one of my secrets."

  The young nobleman was staring at him as if he had several heads, and he was going pale. Good.

  "I am a wizard," the Zhent announced in a low voice, taking a step closer to Caladanter-who flinched as if his bodyguard had drawn a sword with a menacing flourish, instead of spreading his empty hands reassuringly, " but not a war wizard. Rather, I spy on the Wizards of War for the royal family. I serve the Obarskyrs."

  Boarblade held up one hand in a "bide easy" gesture and added, "Yet the king does not hold your little plot against you. Rather, he sees it as your love of our fair land and anger at what is being done to it goading you into trying to do something to aid Cormyr. The king is saddened that like so many highborn of your age, you have been so misled by the villainous Vangerdahast as to think the royal family of Cormyr your foe. Not at all! The Obarskyrs consider themselves the prisoners of the Royal Magician and his sinister Wizards of War and want to make common cause with dissatisfied nobles against the scheming mages who have ruled the Forest Kingdom for far too long. The king has need of you, Lord Rhallogant Caladanter, and intends you for high rank at Court and much wealth and power, when the fell power of Vangerdahast is broken!"

  Rhallogant Caladanter responded with impressive alacrity. Unfortunately, the only action he took was to drop his mouth open and gulp several times, like a hungry bullfrog too clumsy to catch flies buzzing around his tongue.

  When it became obvious the now white-faced noble was unable to find anything intelligible to say, Boarblade continued.

  "For years, I have been spying on the war wizards for the royal family. I know they are the true traitors in Cormyr, who have oppressed all highborn in the realm, letting the Obarskyrs take the blame-and goading angry lords into treason that Vangerdahast then uses as pretexts for further hampering the rights of all highborn. You know this too, if you think about it. Have the war wizards not recently suffered scandal after scandal, all involving self-interested traitors in their ranks?"

  Boarblade paused to let Caladanter nod. The frightened young noble managed to do so. Eagerly and repeatedly he nodded, like some sort of string-pull toy, excited hope now joining the terror that had shone so starkly in his eyes.

  By Bane and the deft hand of Manshoon, this weakling couldn't be trusted to aid the Brotherhood, even out of abject fear! So no hint of the Zhentarim must ever enter his head.

  Boarblade pressed on. "Saying or doing anything against the Obarskyrs will only get you dead-unpleasantly, painfully, and shamefully so. And consider: Why have you contemplated disloyalty to the Dragon Throne? Not out of personal hatred for a royal family you have barely met, surely. No, you schemed purely to avenge slights done to the highborn of our Forest Kingdom and to wrest what power has been taken from nobles back into noble hands. Yes?"

  Caladanter found his voice at last. "Y-yes!" he almost shouted, and then clapped a hand over his mouth in fresh fear, looking beseechingly at his bodyguard for acceptance.

  Boarblade gave it to him, smiling the warm smile of an admiring friend. Young Lord Caladanter actually sighed in relief-as the lying Zhentarim thrust the collar that would enthrall him around the foolish lordling's neck and tightened it, hard and fast.

  "So instead of marching yourself sttaight to a needless execution that will end the Caladanter line in disgrace, why not win back power for nobles and the Dragon Throne for the Obarskyrs and us all by working with me in my little scheme? A plot that has King Azoun's personal approval? I intend to eliminate a poisonous few Wizards of War, discredit the lot of them, and weaken their stranglehold on the throat of fair Cormyr. When King Azoun can truly rule from the Dragon Throne once more, he will need loyal officers and courtiers-and he knows he can find none better than the nobles of Cormyr. Not those with the longest, proudest lineages, nor yet those with the most coin to flash. Rather, he will look to those who aided him in the dangerous times when the shadow of Vangerdahast loomed over the land. To them he will grant power and high station and confirm the high regard all Cormyreans will hold for such brave men. You, Lord Rhallogant Caladanter, can be such a one."

  His master blinked at him, downed most of his oversized goblet in one great gulp that left him reeling and blinking away tears, and gasped, "M-me?"

  Boarblade nodded. "I have seen it in you, these seasons we've spent together. I know you can be among the foremost lords of Cormyr." He leaned closer to Caladanter and made his voice fierce with belief. "I know you deserve it!"

  "I–Ido?"

  "You do," Boarblade decreed firmly, "and the time has come to prove it. Not to me, Lord; I already know your true worth. To the king, whose hopes rest in you, and who so long ago sent me here in hopes you would take me into your service, and so set you on the path that has led you here, this day."

  Was it Oghma he should pray to for forgiveness, for wallowing so grandly in every last cliche'? Or Deneir? Both, Boarblade decided, and for that matter Milil and a few more gods; they must all be snorting at this tripe he was talking.

  But hold, the young lordling was finding his feet at last. Rather unsteadily. "C-command me," he gasped, eyes shining. "How can I best serve Cormyr?".

  "Spare Feathergate and keep me close at hand henceforth. Take to bed and get some sleep; if you're too excited for slumber to come easily, have a drink or two. You must be alert and rested three mornings hence, when King Azoun's next orders will come to me."

  "Done," Caladanter agreed, waving his goblet with a wild flourish that almost overbalanced him into a stumbling run into the nearest study wall.

  Recovering, he
gave Boarblade a wide smile, strode to the door that led into his bedchamber, and more or less fell through the opening, sketching a fanciful salute.

  Idiot noble.

  Boarblade watched the door slam and then listened to a faint series of crashes that marked the drunken lordling's progress toward his distant and grandiose four-poster.

  "That went rather well," he told the snarling panther and settled himself into his master's favorite chair.

  He cast another of the mind-ptying spells the Lord Manshoon had taught him, which he used so often to spy on Caladanter's thoughts-shallow, boastful, and self-serving, most of them-to make sure his inspired young master wasn't hurrying to arrange the slaying of his hired assassin or to contact a Wizard of War.

  Then he relaxed, allowing himself a sigh of his own. Young Rhallogant wasn't-instead, as expected, he was hurrying to drink himself into a stupor.

  "Stout fellow," Boarblade murmured aloud, glancing idly around the study as he wondered what mischief he could most profitably pursue once his master was blind drunk and snoring. The rushing thoughts he was spying on grew both wilder and more confused as all that wine took hold.

  Boarblade's gaze settled on a magnificent gilded map of Cormyr that he'd admired before. Grant young Rhallogant one thing: he had an impeccable taste in maps.

  Boarblade clasped his hands together and stroked his chin with them. If he could just keep this now-leashed lordling from doing something so stone cold stupid as to draw Vangerdahast's attention to him, he could do a lot of damage to the Wizards of War.

  And hasten the day when he could cast the spell that would bring him, in the depths of his own mind, face-to-face with the coldly approving smile of Lord Manshoon as he reported, "I have done it, Lord. The wizards of Cormyr are subverted, and their realm awaits your covert rule."

  Not that he-unlike some nobles he could name, this one and others far older, who should know much, much better-was impatient fool enough to expect that day to come soon. No. Patience and slow, deft deeds and more patience. Step by careful step, until the destination becomes inevitable. Those who boldly leap tend to topple, hard and fast and fatally.