“This will be our final duel,” Walker assured him. “You will pay for all you have done.”
“I’m sure I will,” Meris replied. “We’ve looked forward to this duel—you and I both.” He rolled the sword over in the air, and its mithral surface glinted almost gold in the torchlight. “But I have the advantage, my friend.”
In response, Walker held up his bandaged left hand, upon the fourth finger of which gleamed his silver wolf ring. Its single sapphire eye sparkled.
Meris shrugged, conceding the point.
“I’ll just have to make sure I cut your hand off before I kill you this time,” he mocked.
Now it was Walker’s turn to shrug, but he did not move a muscle. His focus remained upon Meris, this man who had taken all Walker valued in life—things he had never known, and things he had thought lost before but had only truly gone now.
Such was his focus upon Meris that Walker was completely surprised when the door behind him shook under a mighty blow and muffled shouts penetrated the wood. He lunged, startled, but Meris batted his sword out of the way and leaped to the side.
The scout slashed out with a counter—a blow Walker dodged—and his wince of pain told Walker that the healing potion had not taken full effect yet. Walker took full advantage, slamming his sword into the shatterspike with a ringing blow. The long sword snapped against the shatterspike’s edge, sheering off with a scream, but the damage had been done. With a curse, Meris let the mithral blade fall from his shaking fingers. The scout dived for it, but Walker flung the broken blade at him, and it sank into the carpet a pace from Meris’s hand. Scrambling away from the weapons, Meris fled down the hallway, shouting for the guards as he went.
Walker slipped a dagger out into his hand and pulled back, but another blow on the door jarred his focus and the blade ended up in a wall a foot from Meris’s fleeing head. Before the ghostwalker could draw another knife, the scout vanished around a corner toward the door to Greyt’s manor.
Stifling a curse, Walker turned back to the vibrating door. The sounds of fierce fighting came from behind the locked portal, deep within the manor. A blunt object pounded upon the locked portal, and a long crack had appeared through the door. Taking up the shatterspike, Walker readied his lunge.
The door splintered, cracked, and flew off its hinges. Walker leaped out …
And stopped. His mouth dropped open and his sword point fell with it.
“I told you I could have picked the….” Derst was saying. Then he saw the ghostwalker. “Oh.”
“Walker!” shouted Arya as she threw herself into his arms.
The ghostwalker was dumbfounded and his mind blanked for the next few moments. All he knew was that he was holding Arya and kissing her and, somehow, that was all that mattered.
Bars and Derst tried to fill the silence with chat.
“You know, Bars,” said Derst, who hovered at the paladin’s side, picking at his light tunic. “I’ll be we could have found and donned our armor in the time it takes the two of them to say ‘well met.’”
“Speak for yourself, Sir Goldtook,” Bars replied. “You’re the one who wears hunting leathers. I’m the one with the metal plates. Perhaps if you were my acting squire—”
“Forget it!” spat Derst. “You remember the first and last time I helped you put on your armor. Never again!”
“‘Never again?’ Why so?”
“You almost crushed me when you needed a chair!” argued Derst.
“Squires often do much in the line of duty,” shrugged Bars.
“I suppose sponge bathes, for example?”
“Only if you’re a lass in mail—er, sorry Arya,” Bars mumbled, his face turning bright red.
But the lady knight had not even noticed. Instead, she was holding Walker as though he might slip away at any moment.
“Ahem,” Derst said, clearing his throat. “We’re still here.”
Walker and Arya, remembering themselves at last, pulled apart and turned. Though she had moved to the side, Arya still held his hand tightly, a warm touch that threatened to swallow Walker’s focus.
The sounds of battle were still coming from beneath the manor. Bars and Derst had freed the other prisoners, who even now fought Greyt family rangers underground.
The three knights were covered with sweat and grime, clad in simple tunics and leggings rather than armor, and speckled here and there with blood—none of it apparently theirs. Their borrowed and improvised weapons (Derst’s being a dagger, leather thong, and flask) were in sorry need of repair. All three seemed tired, weak, and totally unprepared for a fight except for the grim expressions they wore—looks that would cause the most hardened warrior to wince.
In perfect shape to wade into battle.
Walker nodded. “Well met,” he said.
“Well met indeed,” said Bars, extending his hand. “Arya’s told us much about you. Well, not really that much … Well, aye, nothing. Um … Well met.” He trailed off and left his arm out for Walker to take.
Walker looked down at the extended arm and took it, to his great surprise.
Derst shook Walker hand. “I thought you’d be taller,” he mumbled.
“I’m glad you got to meet,” said Arya. “Especially since we’re probably all going to meet Kelemvor in his underworld soon.”
Walker needed no words to explain what they were about to do. He merely pointed.
“Bah!” exclaimed Derst. “You’re always the pessimist, Arya.”
“Aye, how many rangers can Meris have?” rumbled Bars. “A dozen? Two? Babe’s play!”
“Easier than poking a chest full of goblins with a rapier,” agreed Derst. “And besides—are they the legendary Knights in Silver? No. We are.” He paused. “The legendary.”
“Right,” agreed Bars. “The Knights in Silver have never been defeated on the field of battle, and for good reason. Each of us is worth twenty of them!”
Arya, none-too-confident, looked at Walker for support, but the ghostwalker only smiled. She rolled her eyes.
“Men,” she said.
“Aye,” agreed Derst. Then, after a pause, he looked at Walker. “So—what’s our plan?”
Walker turned and looked down the darkened hallway. He bent and slowly retrieved the discarded shatterspike sword.
“The front entrance?” Bars said, bemused. “Smells like an ambush.”
“Bah! Meris would never expect us to be so stupid as to go out the front!” put in Derst with a laugh.
Then, when no one laughed along with him, his face grew serious once more.
“We’re not, are we?” he asked, looking to each one for a reply.
None were forthcoming.
The ghostwalker peered at each of the knights. Then, without a word, he began walking resolutely down the hallway.
A smile lit on Bars’s face.
“I like that plan!” he said. He hurried behind Walker.
Derst and Arya looked at each other, both equally stumped.
“Well, I suppose there’s always my foolproof backup plan,” said Derst. Arya arched an eyebrow.
“Proof against you, you mean?” Arya asked.
“You know me,” Derst said with a shrug. He indicated the hallway with an open hand, and followed Arya when she ran after Walker.
When they arrived at the closed double doors, Walker held up a hand to stop them. He turned to address the three knights, who shared his determination. They drew steel.
“We do not know how many rangers await,” said Walker. “I will go first.”
“Suit yourself,” Derst whistled. He hid behind a small table. “I’m comfortable, being alive and everything.”
Bars nodded, pressing himself into the corner between the door and the wall.
Arya was not as yielding. She stood next to Walker, stubbornly clinging to his arm. When he looked over at her, her eyes were firm. “I’m coming with you,” she said.
“This is the only way,” Walker replied calmly but firmly.
>
“But, Walker, I have to tell you—”
His steely gaze cut her off and told her Walker would brook no argument.
Biting her lip, Arya took Walker’s hand and squeezed it.
“Be wary,” she said.
Walker nodded, squeezing her hand back to show he understood. Then Arya took up her place opposite Bars.
The ghostwalker closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. His focus returned, dampening the hot rage to a cool fury, shuffling it behind icy walls of control. Deep in his dark resolve once more, Walker opened his eyes, prepared.
Sheathing the shatterspike, Walker stepped to the doors, pulled them open, and walked out, arms wide open …
Into a hail of arrows.
CHAPTER 22
30 Tarsakh
Arrows from two dozen bows shot for him, arrows seeking to turn Walker into a human forest. The ambushing rangers were fully confident the battle was over before it had begun, for there was no way Walker could dodge or deflect so many arrows. The arrows shot right through him and slammed into the open doors, carpeted floor, and walls inside Greyt’s manor, and more than a few bristled from the end table behind which Derst hid. Arya stifled a scream, covering her mouth. Bars and Derst looked at one another, shocked.
Walker just shook his head. It was all just as he had expected.
As the rangers, standing in a rough line in the middle of the plaza, looked down at their bows as though the weapons had betrayed them somehow, Walker raised his head and continued to stride forward. As he came, they realized they could see through his body; he was translucent, like a ghost.
More than a few of the twenty-four rangers gasped in terror, seeing the vengeful spirit of folk legend, and their limbs shook. The others, old and hardened veterans all, gazed at Walker in doubt and disbelief.
The two dozen men stood in front of the Whistling Stag, which rested across the way from Greyt’s manor. Walker nodded. That must have been where Meris had fled.
“I am the Spirit of Vengeance,” said Walker. His matter-of-fact words were soft, but they projected throughout the square loudly enough to reach all their ears. “I am the son of the Ghostly Lady of the Dark Woods, who brought the fires of heaven upon Quaervarr a century past. I was born and live in darkness, I breathe retribution, and I sleep to the screams of the damned. I fear no living thing, man or woman.”
He paused, waiting while all that sank into his foes, but he need not have bothered. The rangers were trembling.
“I have slain your champions, and one alone awaits me,” he continued. “My fight is with Meris Wayfarer, not with you. I offer you this one chance to throw down your weapons and to quit Quaervarr and the Moonwood forever.”
Many of the guardsmen looked hesitant and afraid, but the reminder of Meris, their new lord, seemed to snap them out of it. Not that they knew loyalty, but as much as they feared the black specter before them, they feared the cruelty of Meris Wayfarer more. After all, one man could not defeat two dozen men, no matter his power. No ranger threw down his arms—indeed, many fitted more arrows to the string or drew swords.
“Then it seems I have no choice,” said Walker, slowly drawing the shatterspike and continuing to walk toward them, “but to kill you all.”
Half the rangers replied by aiming for Walker once more, and half tightened their grip on their weapons.
The ghostwalker made no sign of changing his calm walk until the first ranger, two short swords in his hands, lunged at him, screaming the name of the late Lord Singer.
Walker whirled, his blade out and dancing in the breeze. It cleaved one sword in two then snapped against the man’s arm, sending him away screaming. A second ranger thrust a long sword at Walker from the other side, a blow that was deflected with perfect timing. The ghostwalker brought the sword up high, then threw the ranger off and continued walking, as though the man had never attacked. This ranger looked at his sword, saw that it was still whole, and swung at Walker’s back. At the same moment, the dozen rangers with bows drawn fired upon the ghostwalker.
Unfortunately for the rangers flanking Walker, the arrows passed through the ghostwalker’s head and chest as through mist and found resting spots in their bodies.
Screaming, the rangers tumbled down, even as Walker broke into a run toward the bowmen, who now scrambled to set arrows to bowstrings. As he went, he leaped bodily through a ranger who chopped two axes down through nothing and ended up on the ground, confused.
“He’s an illusion!” shouted one of the rangers. “He’s not even really—”
Then Walker brought his blade down into the man’s mocking smile and ended his words.
Even as the rangers milled around in confusion and terror, Walker flew into a dance of death, his sword weaving back and forth, deflecting and shattering weapons even as arrows and swords passed through him. Though his body had no substance, his shatterspike—shimmering and almost translucent—still cut with just as much deadliness as it always had. Only his blade could bridge the gap between worlds and inflict pain in either.
Ironically, Walker carried the only weapon in the plaza that could touch him as a ghost.
Rarely did the shatterspike cleave flesh, though—most of the wounds that set rangers grunting, cursing, or falling were the result of the rangers’ own weapons. Arrows flew through the battle without guidance, sailing through Walker’s ghostly form to find ranger flesh instead.
Walker brought the shatterspike whirling in a glittering semicircle, shearing two raised blades in half and cutting a bowstring neatly on the back swing. Before the bowman could even drop his ruined weapon, Walker slashed him across the face and sent him down into the mud. It was only his second kill.
As though at random, Walker danced through the crowd, leaping around and through rangers, his shatterspike flashing, dropping weapons and men. He cut bowstrings, cleaved apart bows, and sliced quivers in two.
After a few moments, when the rangers were largely panicked, mostly disarmed, and completely disorganized, Walker smiled. “Go forth,” he whispered on the wind, even as he sheathed his blade.
With that, he turned and ran toward the Whistling Stag. Many turned to give chase, hefting what weapons they could—belt daggers, hatchets, and the like—but then they heard new shouts.
“Forth the Nightingale!” came a mighty cry, shared by three throats, from behind them.
Most of the rangers turned, just in time to see three Knights in Silver, stripped to gray tunics and breeches, charge into the fray, weapons hungry for Greyt ranger blood. And the rangers had no bows or swords with which to cut them down.
Meanwhile, Walker sprang toward the Stag and vanished through the closed door, passing through the wood like a ghost.
The three Knights in Silver swept upon the confused rangers like a trio of giants, hacking and crushing left and right. Four rangers went down in the initial rush—Bars having taken down two himself—and the knights’ courage did much to shake the rangers’ crumbling resolve.
In the first confused moments of battle, Derst disarmed two men of their backup weapons and was dancing around a third, his improvised chain-dagger creating havoc for the ranger as he tried to cleave the wiry knight in two with a mighty war axe. An overhead chop was sidestepped, a withering cross ducked, and a reversal hit nothing but air as Derst rolled and stuck the dagger in the man’s side. The man yelped and staggered forward, but the dagger was firmly lodged between ribs and brigandine plating. The ranger turned, but his motion only pulled Derst to the side—in time to dodge the falling axe.
Meanwhile, Bars worked furiously to hold off four rangers, his mismatched maces dancing and flashing like lightning. Though he could not launch a counter, the huge paladin put up a stunning defense, where he picked off every thrust, slash, and jab his opponents launched. Every time, they recoiled from the attack shaking their sword arms, which rung with the force of Bars’s parries. Growling, Bars kept his duel at a standstill.
Fighting three men, Arya, not as nimble or a
s strong as her respective companions, more than made up for it in ferocity and cunning. She parried aside one ranger and immediately shield rushed the second, catching him off guard. She discarded her shield, which she had only held, not strapped on, and he had to fumble it out of the way with a clumsy downward cross of his two short swords.
The Nightingale shield fell to the dust, but Arya followed through and slammed her left fist then her left elbow into his face. The man staggered and collapsed backward, and Arya brought her sword back around just in time to parry the attack of a third ranger. She locked blades with him, then hooked a foot around his ankle and sent him staggering into the man she had left behind.
With a shout to the Lord Singer, the man on the ground slashed her across the front of the shin with his blade, but it was a weak blow, driven mostly by panic and not by skill.
Arya gritted her teeth against the pain and brought her sword plunging down into his chest. The man screamed and lay still.
“No mercy!” she shouted, slashing back around to deflect another seeking sword. The feral rage in her scream sent two rangers staggering back, doubtful looks on their faces.
By this time, two other rangers had closed on Derst’s duel and were slashing and thrusting, but they only nearly hit the axe-wielder. The roguish knight kept dodging their blows, running in two low circles around the ranger with the axe, weaving the lanyard of his makeshift chain-dagger as he went. Finally, with the man fully wrapped, Derst slid past one of the swordsmen, put both hands on the thick lanyard, and yanked for all he was worth. The lanyard pulled tight around the man’s legs, ruining his balance, and one ranger staggered into the other, sending both down in a jumble of limbs.
“Hail, lass!” shouted Derst as he leaped over another thrust, freed his lanyard, and kicked out, catching the ranger in the face.
“‘Arya,’ Derst!” the lady knight snapped back. She parried a slash and punched the man in the face as though with a shield. Her fist had much less effect, but it was enough to send him reeling back. “It’s Arya! You want to be ‘lad?’”
Ghostwalker Page 25
