The Shattered Mask s-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  She cut at his leading leg, and he parried. She tried to dart around him, but he jumped in front of her and nearly landed a whistling slash at her face. All the wlule, she could hear his friends' footsteps thudding closer.

  Then Thamalon sprang from the darkness. He'd evidently bested the ruffian who'd engaged him, and now he rushed at Shamur's opponent from the side. The bravo tried to turn and defend himself, but was a split second too slow. Thamalon's bloody long sword plunged into his neck.

  The dead man started to fall, the Uskevren lord yanked his weapon free, and he and Shamur ran out of the clearing and toward the trees, into what had now become a black and freezing winter night.

  *****

  Garris Quinn, a fleshy, sallow rogue with a pair of kid gloves tucked foppishly through the band of his copotain hat, watched flabbergasted as the nobles disappeared into the woods with several of the men under his command in hot pursuit. His slack-jawed expression turned sheepish and wary when he turned to look at Master. "I guess they took the lads by surprise," he said.

  "I guess they did," said Bileworm, leering. Actually, he thought, Garris had no reason to be afraid. No matter how vexed Master was, he wouldn't waste time chastising this lout and his underlings for their incompetence. Not while Shamur and Thamalon were running loose.

  And the familiar was right, for Master merely sighed and said, "Two of your fellows will stay near me to serve as my bodyguards. Someone must also return to the men we left with the horses and warn them to be on the lookout. Everyone else will help flush and kill our quarry. In an organized fashion, if you please."

  Garris scurried off to see that the wizard's orders were carried out. "Organized or not," Bileworm said, "in the woods, in the night, our friends have at least a slim chance of escaping."

  "That's why I intend to arrange for reinforcements," Master said, "reinforcements who see well in the dark, and will materialize ahead of Thamalon and Shamur and cut them off."

  The wizard thrust the ferule of his staff into the frozen ground as easily as if it had been soft sand. Then, having freed both hands, he produced a tiny leather bag and a stub of candle from one of the hidden pockets in his cloak, held them high, and whispered an incantation.

  Another voice, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, hissed a response, and power crackled through the air. A blue flame flared upward from the candle wick, and violet light pulsed from the mouth of the sack. An instant later, bursts of soft purple radiance flickered off in the distance among the trees.

  Her heart pounding and the breath burning in her lungs, Shamur ran. In the clearing, dueling, her skirts hadn't especially troubled her, but now they seemed to snag on every fallen branch or patch of brush.

  Even so, with her longer legs, she was keeping pace with Thamalon, and moving far more quietly as well. To her thief s ears, his every stride seemed excruciatingly loud, and she feared they'd never shake their pursuers off their trail.

  Somewhere behind them, a voice cried out in pain. Shamur suspected that one of the bravos had tripped or run into a low-hanging branch as he plunged headlong through the darkness. A mishap, she knew, that could just as easily have befallen her or Thamalon, with fatal consequences.

  At her back, other voices babbled, the sound receding as she fled. Perhaps the rogue who'd hurt himself had been at the head of the pack, and his accident had delayed everyone else. At any rate, she didn't hear them thumping along at her heels anymore, and thanks to the tangle of branches overhead, patches of the ground beneath were free of snow, which ought to prevent the bullies from following her or Thamalon's tracks. The two nobles changed direction one more time, and then she gestured to a hollow in the ground behind the broad trunk of an ancient oak. They crouched down in the depression to catch their breath.

  As soon as she stopped moving, the cold bit into her body, and she wistfully thought of her cloak left back in the glade. She felt as if she'd left most of her strength back there as well, squandered in the protracted duel.

  Bloody from the wounds she'd given him, panting and shivering at the same time, Thamalon didn't seem to be in any better shape than she was, but he gave her a smile. "When I said I wished we could spend more time together," he whispered, "this wasn't precisely what I had in mind."

  She grinned. "Shall we try for the horses?"

  He shook his head. "Our friend in the mask will be expecting us to do that."

  "You're right. Well, now that we've shaken them off our tails, they'll have to spread out to hunt us. We could hunt them as well."

  "I certainly wouldn't mind seeing Master Moon's blood on my blade, or that of his agents, either, but still, that strategy seems a little chancy."

  She grimaced. "I suppose so. They have magic on their side, and if just one of them got off a shout, he could bring the whole band down on our heads. Besides, you don't know how to creep up on someone silently."

  "I'll have you know," he said indignantly, "that I'm a first-rate stalker. I mastered the art hunting small game around Storl Oak when I was a boy."

  "If you say so," Shamur said. "I suppose our best course is simply to put more distance between our pursuers and ourselves. Perhaps eventually work our way out of the woods and back to Rauthauvyr's Road."

  "Agreed." He looked up at the stars floating above the canopy of bare branches, taking his bearings. "Let's head northeast."

  "All right." They took a last cautious look about, then rose to their feet. At that moment, points of purple light winked at various points in the forest.

  "Oh, joy," Shamur said, "the wizard has decided to use his spells on us."

  "Be careful," Thamalon replied. "Mystra only knows what sort of effect he's conjured."

  Go teach your grandmother to turn a spindle, she thought sourly. She'd been contending with hostile spell-casters before he was born.

  They skulked through the trees, and she had to concede that Thamalon could move fairly quietly when he wasn't running flat out. Her teeth began to chatter, and she clenched her jaw to stop the noise.

  Soon she heard the wizard's henchmen moving around her, bawling to one another, cursing, and crashing through the brush. Shamur smiled, for she wanted the bravos to make a commotion. That way, she'd know where they were.

  Unfortunately, something else was moving as stealthily as she was. So stealthily, in fact, that she had no warning of its presence until she and Thamalon crept right up to a lightning-blasted beech with a blackened crevice running down its trunk. Then she caught a foul stench, and heard a scratching sound. An ochre, six-legged rat the size of a dog exploded from the crack.

  Shamur swung her sword at the ugly thing, but it dodged the blade and rushed at her ankle, its huge, stained incisors poised to take her foot off. She kicked it away, and it squealed and scuttled at her again.

  She sidestepped, thrust, and this time caught it behind the shoulder, her point plunging all the way through its body to pin it to the ground. Convulsing, it screamed until Thamalon struck its head off.

  "It's an osquip," he said, "and not native to these woods."

  "I know," she said, "the magician summoned it, and thanks to its screeching, everyone knows where we are. Run!"

  They dashed on, and a stitch started throbbing in her side. Another osquip scuttled out from under a bush right in front of her, and she had to leap over it to avoid a collision. She whirled, swinging her broadsword, her aim a matter of pure instinct, and split the beast's muzzle precisely between its beady eyes, dispatching it.

  Thamalon cursed. Shamur turned to see one of the ruffians emerge from the trees to their left. The rogue's eyes widened as he beheld the fugitives. He was going to shout and pinpoint their location yet again, and there was no way she could get to him in time.

  Thamalon dropped the long sword, reached into his sleeve, whipped out a throwing knife, and hurled it, all in one smooth blur of motion. The rogue made a choking sound and collapsed with the weapon buried in his breast.

  "I… didn't know you could throw
knives," Shamur wheezed, her side still aching fiercely.

  "I suppose you don't approve of spouses keeping secrets from one another," he replied, his labored breathing all but masking the sarcasm in his tone. He picked up his sword and lurched into motion. Biting back a groan, she stumbled after him.

  Violet light pulsed among the trees, and then again a minute later. Shamur had hoped their principal adversary was a wizard of modest talents, who could cast such a summoning only once, but plainly, that wasn't the case. Evidently he could augment his forces repeatedly, until he had sufficient minions to comb every inch of the benighted woods and overwhelm anyone they found there. The odds against her and Thamalon were even longer than she'd first imagined.

  She hoped they'd traveled far enough from the spot where the osquip had squealed that they could stop running and resume skulking. The relentless, driving pace had become agonizing. She started to slow down, and then a bubble of purple phosphorescence appeared, swelled, and vanished directly in front of her. It left in its place a hulking lizard man, its scaly tail lashing and its forked tongue flickering from its jaws. The reptilian creature had a club studded with sharp bits of stone in one clawed hand and a crude wicker shield in the other.

  As one, Shamur and Thamalon rushed it, hoping to dispatch it before it could take any sort of action. But the lizard man hopped sideways, interposing the noblewoman's body between her husband and itself, and caught her first attack on its shield. Hissing, it struck back, and she ducked the blow.

  Thamalon darted around the lizard man and cut at its back. Pivoting, its tail sweeping past Shamur's feet, the creature roared and blocked the blow with its shield.

  As it struck at Thamalon, who avoided the blow by jumping back, Shamur cut at its midsection, plunging the broadsword deep into its flesh.

  The lizard man collapsed into a drift of dry, brown oak leaves, but Shamur could take no pleasure in the victory, for she knew that its bellowing and the crash of blades on the wicker shield had revealed their whereabouts yet again. She could hear the hunters calling to one another as they moved in from every side.

  She suspected that she and Thamalon would never escape. They might as well make a stand here, while they still had a bit of strength left, and see how many of their attackers they could slay before they were cut down in their turn. But that would be tantamount to giving up, and so she started to run instead.

  Thamalon grabbed her by the arm. "This way," he said, pointing with the gory tip of his long sword to indicate a slightly different direction. She didn't see why he thought his choice was any better, but it didn't seem to be any worse, either, and there was scarcely time for discussion. So she nodded and let him lead the way.

  Another osquip, this one eight-legged, scuttled from the shadows. Thamalon cut at it, missed, his blade jarring on the frozen earth, and the huge rat darted at his leg. He snatched his foot back, and then Shamur hacked her broadsword down into the creature's spine. The osquip fell and lay screeching like a damned soul.

  As Shamur lifted her broadsword to administer the coup de grace, a crossbow bolt streaked out of the night, narrowly missed Thamalon, and crunched into the bole of an oak. There was no point in silencing the osquip if other foes were already close enough to snipe at them, so she and Thamalon simply fled, leaving the beast to writhe and shriek on the ground.

  "Just… a little… farther," Thamalon gasped Shamur couldn't imagine how he could find the breath to run and try to encourage her at the same time. She also had no idea what he was talking about, but after twenty more stumbling, excruciating strides, she found out.

  Suddenly, she and Thamalon plunged from the trees into a large clearing. Perhaps ancient enchantments prevented the surrounding woods from encroaching on the space, for at its center rose the dark shape of a small ruined fortress. Shamur realized that her husband had been heading in the castle's direction all along, so they could take refuge inside if it turned out to be necessary.

  Sadly, it was necessary. Their enemies were closing in, and they were too spent to run much farther. The fortress was a better redoubt than she could have expected to find, even though its crumbling sandstone ramparts could do no more than delay the defenders' inevitable annihilation, and that only if the fugitives could reach the interior alive.

  Thamalon led her toward a gate in the castle's north wall. Crossbows clacked. The quarrels thrummed through the dark but missed their marks.

  Suddenly a pair of lizard men seemed to pounce from nowhere; exhausted as she was, dashing at breakneck speed, Shamur hadn't noticed their approach. The one that attacked her bore no weapons, but it raked at her chest with claws sharp as any dagger. She recoiled, and the creature's talons merely shredded her gown and tore away the silver and sapphire brooch Tamlin had given her on her birthday.

  The lizard man lunged at her again, clawed hands raised, fanged jaws gaping, but not before she came on guard. Exploiting the superior reach the broadsword afforded her, she thrust at the reptile's throat, then instantly stepped back and prepared to parry, perceiving even as she did so that she wouldn't actually need to defend. Blood spurted from the lizard man's throat. It clutched at the wound, then sprawled at her feet.

  She pivoted and saw that Thamalon had just dispatched the other lizard man. His foe had carried a battle-axe and a sturdy, leather-covered target, and the nobleman hesitated over the shield as if wondering whether he could afford the time to pull it from the creature's arm and take it for himself. Then two rogues emerged from the trees, and Thamalon cursed, whirled, and ran up the motte on which the ruin sat. Shamur followed.

  The fortress gate had once been comprised of two leaves. The one on the left had fallen from its hinges, and the nobles had to run over it to get inside. Their footsteps boomed on the planks.

  Shamur and Thamalon flung themselves behind the leaf that was still standing, shielded at last, if only for the moment, from flying quarrels. Panting, soaked in perspiration despite the chill night air, leaning heavily on the gate, the blonde woman peered about the snowy courtyard.

  As she'd already inferred from viewing its exterior, the fortress had no donjon. Instead, rows of humbler structures, several with collapsed roofs, stood along the walls, where they'd no doubt served as a barracks, kitchen, dining hall, stable, storerooms, smithy, shrine, and every other facility such an outpost required. A wagon with the front wheels missing sat up on a trestle in the far corner of the yard.

  There seemed to be no superior defensive position farther inside. They might as well fight here, at the gate. At least that way, she wouldn't have to stagger any farther.

  Thamalon peered out at the clearing. "They're coming," he wheezed, "and I need you to hold them." He turned and trotted away.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded. "There's nowhere better to go, and I need you here!"

  If he heard, he evidently grudged the time to reply, for he just kept going, and then she heard footsteps crunching in the snow beyond the entrance. She peeked around the gate.

  She didn't see as many foes as she'd expected. Perhaps some of the bravos and conjured creatures were still making their way through the woods. Moreover, the bullies were hanging back at the verge of the clearing, seemingly happy to let the wizard's inhuman minions risk their lives to take the common quarry.

  Still, a sufficiency of the conjured servitors were hurrying across the snow to do precisely that. A couple had already reached the base of the mound.

  Shamur's throat was parched. Wishing for a drink of water, some scrap of relief to ease her plight if only for an instant, she forced herself to stand without support and lifted her broadsword from where it trailed on the ground. The notched, wet blade was heavy in her hand.

  An osquip swarmed through the gate, and she killed it. In the moment it took to free the broadsword from the carcass, a lizard man leaped through the opening. She parried the first thrust of its spear, and had her riposte deflected in its turn. Shifting back and forth, they traded attacks until she finally dispa
tched it with a cut to the head.

  As it fell, she realized she was now standing unshielded in the castle entrance. She dodged to the side, and a pair of crossbow bolts whizzed through the space where she'd just been standing.

  "Thamalon!" she croaked. No one answered.

  Then she smelled an acrid odor, and an instant later, a dark horror scuttled through the gate. Its shape superficially resembled that of a centaur, with a human's head, arms, and torso set atop a hard-shelled, eight-legged body. A segmented tail, ten feet long and culminating in a curved stinger, lashed about behind it.

  Shamur cut at the spot where a human would have a navel, just above the point where skin gave way to chitin. Its blank yellow eyes flaring, the manscorpion lashed a clawed hand down to block the blow, sacrificing one of its three fingers to stop what would otherwise have been a mortal stroke.

  The creature hissed and threatened her with its unmanned hand. It was attempting to distract her, she suspected, from the true attack, and sure enough, an instant later, its tail whipped up over its body, lashing its stinger down at her head.

  She scrambled backward, and the stinger scored the earth. The manscorpion scuttled forward, taking some of the ground she'd given up and clearing the narrow entrance for a second such creature to hurry through.

  Shamur felt a surge of despair. Exhausted as she was, how could she fight both of them by herself? Where was Thamalon? Then one manscorpion scuttled right, the other to the left, maneuvering to catch their quarry between them, and she had no more time for doubt or questions.

  She darted to the left, outflanking the wounded tlincalli, as she recalled the name, and putting it between herself and its companion. Bellowing, she charged, and the manscorpion's sting whipped at her in a horizontal arc. Without breaking stride, she blocked the attack with her broadsword, vaulted onto the creature's back, then leaped at the second abomination.

  Still circling to engage its prey, the unwounded tlincalli had doubtless assumed it could not be attacked until it completed the maneuver. Now, suddenly, death was flying at it through the air. Crying out in alarm, it raised its hands to fend Shamur off, but it was an instant too slow. Knowing that no fighter can use his strength to best effect when his feet aren't planted, she hacked with all her might. Her broadsword bit deep into the tlincalli's hairless brow.