Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  Sabran and Mhegras eyed each other coldly, then said, more or less at the same moment, “Well? Why didn’t you strike at them?”

  Narm and Shandril had been standing only paces away in the confined space of their wagon, with no barrier nor body between to stop magic from cutting them down—and neither weaver nor furrier had lifted a finger. The two younglings had departed unscathed.

  “Now was not the right time for anything but slaying,” Sabran said coldly, “and whilst a possibility of capture remains, we must strive for that greater goal.”

  “You were afraid,” Mhegras sneered. “Capture, my left rump-cheek!”

  “Oh, say you so?” the priest of Bane replied cuttingly, extending his calm and steady hand. “Just whose fingers are trembling, wildtongue?”

  Mhegras stared down at his own hand … and discovered, to his horror, that it was anything but steady. Rage rose in him like fast-kindled flame but died when he lifted his furious gaze and met Sabran’s cold and waiting eyes. A faint glow of already risen magic was dancing in the priest’s palm.

  The wagons were thundering along at a speed that set them rocking and bouncing at every rut and pothole on the road—and there were a lot of ruts and potholes on the Trade Way. Narbuth’s arms grew so numbed that Narm and Shandril took turns relieving him as the ready-wagon crashed and rattled on, rocks and trees racing by at breakneck speed.

  “The horses won’t be able to manage this for much longer!” Narm shouted in Shandril’s ear, as the wagon rushed down into a little rivulet that ran across the road, reins and harness momentarily curling and whipping about crazily. The wheels slipped and slid, the horses dug in, and the harness stretched singing-tight as the four snorting beasts hauled on up the next slope.

  “Tell Voldovan that, not me!” Shan cried back, as they crested a ridge and saw a dozen more ridges beyond, the ribbon of road climbing over each in succession. A distant dust cloud told of travelers—probably wagons—coming south, but the Way had largely been theirs alone thus far this day. This was not a good sign, Narm and Shandril had gathered, from the expressions and muttered comments of the veteran guards and merchants.

  As the view stretched out before them and the wagon started to gain speed in what was sure to become a breakneck plunge down the ridgeside, an even less auspicious sign made itself apparent: long, dark crossbow quarrels—the heavy war-bolts that could take down horses as readily as men—snarled and hummed out of the greenery on both sides of the road. Narm took Shandril by the shoulders and flung her through the top-flap, back into the wagon, cursing as a quarrel sliced through his leathers, laying his back bare.

  “ ’Slike being slapped with a burning brand,” he gasped, falling into the rocking darkness atop Shandril. One of their horses promptly screamed.

  “Gods!” the young mage spat, trying to turn. Shandril looked past him—in time to see Narbuth take a quarrel in the face. The drover’s head exploded in a burst of blood and brains ere the force of the striking shaft snatched him off the wagon, out of sight.

  Shandril’s mouth tightened as she dragged Narm down to the floorboards, which promptly rapped them both hard on their chins as the wagon bounded over a particularly large pothole. “I can’t burn down every tree between here and Waterdeep,” she snapped, “and I don’t dare try. Every time I call on my fire ’tis stronger, wilder … harder to control. Narm, what are we going to do?”

  Her husband gave her a helpless smile. “Well,” he said brightly, “uh …”

  As so often happens to those who dally, Faerûn decided things for them. There was a sudden chaos of meaty, wagon-shaking thuds, a horrible wet spraying sound, and their wagon suddenly tilted.

  Shan wrapped herself around Narm with a little scream as the world turned upside down several times.

  Wood was shrieking and splintering all around them as a lot of heavy things wreathed in scratchy hay fell on them, one after another, and the wagon rolled. The boards of the walls and floor shuddered, bulged, buckled, and twisted. There was a deafening crash that sent things flying or tumbling all over the shattered wagon, another unearthly scream … and silence.

  Silence soon filled by shouts and wagon rumblings and more screams, punctuated by the hissing and humming of crossbow bolts very close by. Narm muttered something wordless and tried to shift himself from under his lady and seemingly dozens of coffers and haybales and other unidentified but sharp items.

  Shandril clutched at him and hissed, “Lie still. For now we play dead and wait. Let someone else be hero—and crossbow target—for a change.”

  Narm opened his mouth to protest, stared into her fierce gaze, and nodded.

  There were more loud and ground-shaking crashes. Drovers were dragged past spewing steady streams of heartfelt curses ere the rumblings of moving wagons died away. Voldovan’s caravan was coming to a halt—right in the closing jaws of whichever wolves were firing all of those crossbows from the trees.

  Narm heaved, trying to move from under something that was numbing his left leg. “Lie still!” Shandril snarled into his ear.

  “Then get that chest or whatever it is off my foot,” her husband snarled right back at her. “I’m all wet down that leg, too. Am I bleeding?”

  Shan shifted atop him, twisting around, and he felt her hands running gently along his leg, exploring …

  Someone crashed through branches and rustling leaves very close by, someone else followed, breathing heavily, and from farther off came the clang of sword on sword—fast, furious hacking that soon ended with a despairing cry and gurgling sounds.

  The hum and zip of crossbow bolts slackened, and the crashings of running feet and singing of swords upon swords swiftly rose to an everpresent din on all sides of the upturned ready-wagon.

  Narm felt the heavy thing pinning his ankle thrust aside and quickly pulled his foot away. Shandril crawled back up him again in the tumbled gloom, and murmured into his chest, “Just water. A cask split—’tis all wet, back there.”

  “What if someone puts a torch to all of this? We’ve got to—”

  “We’ve got to lie still, love lord of mine. If flames do come, I can pull them into me and so both quench them and warm my spellfire. We’re in what passes for a ditch, and by the sounds of it there are plenty of other crashed wagons. Now, quiet. We’re dead, remember?”

  “You make it hard to bear in mind,” Narm told her with a smile, as Shan wormed her way into his arms and made herself comfortable. They lay together and listened to the sounds of men dying all around them.

  “Whose wagon’s this?” an unfamiliar voice gasped suddenly, startlingly close.

  “Voldovan’s—one of his ready-wagons. Hmmph! I guess the fire-witch wasn’t such a world-searing menace after all.”

  “This was hers? Gods! Thender told us half Faerûn is after her!”

  “Not any more. Not unless they’re the sort of crazed robe-wearers who hunt folk down after they’re dead, to twist them into unlife to menace us all for an extra lingering lifetime or two! There’s Voldovan—see? All the bolts’ll be flying his way, now. Come on! Back to …”

  The voice faded so swiftly that the sounds of frantically sprinting men drowned out the rest of the words.

  Narm and Shandril had scarcely relaxed and started to breathe normally again when someone else, breathing hard, ran up and more or less fell into the far end of the wagon, where the chests and casks were tumbled into a wall of splintered, riven confusion. Someone else arrived almost on top of the hard-breathing man—who growled out an angry curse.

  “Bones of the dead, Brasker, don’t do that! I almost cut my hand off getting this blade around at you, to say nothing of what I would’ve done to you if I’d managed it!”

  “Stop your whining,” a heavier voice replied sourly. “They’re putting quarrels through everything that moves out there … and in case you’ve failed to notice, those’re the big ones! Hit by one of those, and you’ll be greeting the gods straightaway, not lying around cursing that this wag
on’s somehow yours. As I recall, this was the one the spellfire wench was riding.”

  “Have you seen her, since this—?”

  “No, and if one of those blackswords have killed her on us, Gorthrimmon’s going to be less than pleased. Take her alive, he said, at all costs.”

  “What does the Cult want with one slip of a lass, anyway? So she knows a fire spell or two. Haven’t we got mages enough already to fight Luskan to a standstill or scour out Darkhold if they’re ever foolish enough to want to die screaming in spell-battle?”

  “This spellfire, Holvan, is something special. It can cleave spells so fast it wipes the sneer off an archmage’s face and makes him tremble! Whoever grabs it’ll be able to slaughter the Red Wizards himself, chase the Blackstaff into hiding, and melt down old Elminster and the Seven Sisters, too!”

  “Gods above,” Holvan whispered. “So they expect us to take her?”

  “No, they expect us to die trying—along with the other Followers we don’t know about, who’re also along on this caravan. As I see it, we’ll do best to find out who the Zhents have sent along in these wagons and slit a few throats without getting caught at it! ’Tis going to end in spell-battle, see if it doesn’t, and the fewer competitors around to hamper us of the Cult in taking her down, the better! I hear a Cult wizard called Lharass has found some ancient spell or other that can chain mages with their own magic! I wonder if this Shandril can be held by chains of her own spellfire?”

  “I like the sound of this less and less,” Holvan muttered. “Whatever happened to putting daggers in merchants’ backs and taking their coins to the nearest Lord of the Cult, for him to gather and present to some dread wyrm, while we trot safely off and find us some more merchants?”

  “The world changed, Holvan. It always does. I prefer the old simple ways, too, but somehow the rulers and flying wizards of the Realms forgot to ask my opinion. They always do.”

  “The bolts’ve stopped, Brasker; should we—?”

  “Bide just a bit. I’d be less than pleased to offer myself as the only target still standing, if they’re just lying low … no, there’s Voldovan coming back, and he’s talking to that fool Nargalarr, the pot-seller. It must be over. Back to our wagon!”

  “Shouldn’t we—?”

  “No! Brigands love to fall back and wait for everyone to get into the road and start tramping around talking about their great valor and who got away from them—then rake all the chattering heroes with another volley. So we run fast and low from wagon to wagon back to our own, and nowhere else! If one of the guard wants to talk, he can do it running after us! Come on!”

  There was a brief scrambling, a thud of boots, then relative calm.

  “Brasker and Holvan,” Shandril murmured. “Remember those names.”

  “Done, love,” Narm whispered. “I’m beginning to think every third merchant in this caravan is after us!”

  Whatever reply Shandril might have made was lost in a sudden cacophony of shouts, screams, humming bolts, and the thudding of running feet—followed swiftly by a deafening chorus of clanging, singing steel. Brasker, it seemed, had been right. They heard Voldovan roaring something, and—

  “In here!” someone hissed, and coffers were flung aside in the upturned chaos of the wagon. “Hurry!”

  A chest fell heavily, an already riven cask groaned, and suddenly the tangle of coffers at Narm’s feet were thrust aside, and a face peered in at them. A stranger’s face with a drawn and bloody sword beside it, and another unfamiliar face at its shoulder. “This’ll do,” one of the men said, not yet seeing the young couple lying motionless ahead of his boots. “There’s space enough to hide back here. We can—ho!”

  The brigand’s blade drew back as he saw Narm and Shandril, ready to stab—and his companion shouldered aside an untidy heap of coffers, and joined him in staring.

  “Well, well, two lovebirds,” the first brigand said in delight, as his blade swept down. “Greet you the gods together!”

  Narm raised a hand to cast a hasty spell—but Shandril’s spellfire was swifter. The man’s blade melted to nothing ere it could touch them, and his head followed, leaving a wavering, headless thing of ashes. Wide-eyed, the second brigand hacked desperately at the deadly lass lying at his feet, blade flashing down …

  “Sar tha,” Narm said crisply, his fingers spread. Magic roared out of him in a fistlike thrust of force that smashed brigands, coffers, wagonboards and all before it, so that there was suddenly nothing but air beyond their feet.

  Air filled with the broken, tumbling fragments of coffers and blades and brigands.

  Narm and Shandril sprang up together and ran to the opening Narm’s magic had smashed through the end of the wagon … in time to see the debris he’d sent flying bounce, tumble, and roll to various small halts on a scarred road.

  Right beside a pair of worn and rather familiar boots. Boots that were still on the widely planted feet of—yes—Orthil Voldovan, who stood with his hands on his hips. He held a bloody sword in both of those hands, and a grim and ragged group of guards had gathered behind his shoulders.

  He looked at the young couple standing in the shattered end of the wagon, and they looked back at him, wisps of spellfire still licking up like tiny flames from Shandril’s fingers.

  “Well met,” the caravan master said sarcastically. “I was wondering where ye’d gotten to. In case ye haven’t noticed, we’re fighting a small war out here!”

  Shandril stared at him, then down at something writhing and flopping on the ground behind one of the guards. Peering at it, she strode out of the ruined wagon and right past Voldovan, never even noticing the hard look he gave her, nor his slow pivot on one boot heel to give her the full weight of his glaring disapproval as she hastened past. Narm trotted after her, trying an apologetic smile on Master Orthil. It was ignored.

  The flopping thing proved to be Beldimarr, half-sitting on the road with crossbow quarrels standing out of his left arm and leg. The latter wouldn’t hold him, and he was dragging himself along on knuckles and knees, his left arm pinned to his side by the heavy warbolt, with dark red blood streaming down over his battered armor. In one hand was clenched his belt flask, and in the other, a dagger. He was trying to get to Arauntar.

  Shandril got there first, but she might as well not have existed as far as the two grizzled old guards were concerned. “Our pact,” Arauntar gasped, foaming blood running from his mouth with each word. “Keep it!”

  The senior guard resembled a gigantic, copiously bleeding hedgehog. He lay groaning in the road-mud in a small lake of his own blood, transfixed by almost a dozen crossbow quarrels. All he seemed able to move were the trembling fingers of one hand, and his head. He glared at Shandril as she knelt between him and the struggling Beldimarr, and gasped, “Get back! Gods damn you, lass!”

  “What pact?” Shandril snapped. “What’re you doing, Beldimarr?”

  The guards drew in close around her, and one reached down a hand to her shoulder to pluck her back—but Narm caught that reaching arm, shaking his head … and with a look of faint surprise at himself for doing so, the guard drew his hand back.

  Beldimarr gave Shandril a glare every bit as furious as Arauntar’s, and snarled, “What we all do in this trade, lass. As agreed aforetime between us, I’ll give my friend a last pleasure—” he lifted the flask as far as he could, and then came down on that hand again with a grunt of pain “—an’ then send him beyond pain, to the gods!” He lifted his dagger. “Now get out o’ the way! He’s died for you, lass. Now, let him go!”

  “No!” Shandril snapped. “Narm, Voldovan, keep everyone back!”

  “What?” the caravan master growled. “What crazed—”

  “Do it,” Narm said quietly. “Trust her. I’m alive now because she did this for me.”

  The guards threw him startled looks, and more than one pair of eyes swiftly narrowed. “Is this some sort of fire-witch magic?” one of them snapped.

  Shandril looked up. “Ye
s! Please watch, but do nothing to stay me—and perhaps I’ll be nigh the next time, when you need it!”

  In the startled silence that followed her words the maid of Highmoon looked from Beldimarr to Arauntar and back again and murmured, “Please, both of you, trust me.”

  Beldimarr shrugged and jerked his head toward his stricken friend. Shandril turned to the dying Harper and asked, “Arauntar, do you want to live?”

  “Not in this much pain,” he snarled back, and then groaned out a huge gout of blood and whimpered, “ ’Course I do!”

  “Beldimarr, Voldovan,” Shandril snapped, “lift him a little off the ground, as gently as you can. I need to get under him.”

  “Under—?” Trading doubtful looks, the two men gingerly laid hold of Arauntar’s armpits and ribs, reaching awkwardly around the many quarrels, and then shifted him a handsbreadth into the air.

  The guard roared with pain, a cry that collapsed into sobbing as Shandril threw herself down into the blood, on her back, and wormed her way under Arauntar as if she was a lover embracing him. “Right,” she gasped, struggling for breath. “Let him down, and let go of him. Now, get back!”

  11

  SOME STRANGE SORT OF SWORD

  Some of us fight with swords, and some with nimble tongues or poison or coins. Oh, aye, and some of us blast Faerûn around us with spells, or call down dragons, or set roofs afire. When you think right down through things, we’re all just shaping different sorts of swords to cut our ways through life. Some measure success by the amount of blood they leave as their trail—and some by how little they manage to spill.

  Elvryn Auraunt, Sage of Everlund

  Sword of Ink, Boots of Fancy: A Sage’s Tale

  Year of the Stag

  Narm reached in quickly as the groaning guard was let back down and wiped Arauntar’s lips with his pouch-kerchief. The cloth came away dark and dripping with blood.