Hand of Fire ss-3

by Ed Greenwood

  Arauntar came creaking along through the brush with a wickedly curved sword in one hand and a handbow-gun in the other, all grim business now, moving up and down the widening ring of guards. He gave Narm and Shandril a nod of approval because they'd heeded his earlier order to stay close together ("So pr'haps two dolts can serve as one fumbling guardsword") and passed on into the treegloom-to be followed, a few moments later, by Beldimarr.

  Narm nearly choked in fear at the sudden, silent appearance of the second Harper, but Beldimarr gave him a calm nod, stepped around Shandril without saying anything, and stooped to duck under the fronds of a huge fern.

  Then he froze as a low, blatting horn-call rose out of the woods ahead. "Trouble," he snapped, whirling back to Narm and Shandril. "Fall back straight that way, until you can see the wagons, an' then hold there until Orthil or one of us tells you different-or something you need to fight comes right at you!"

  Without another word Beldimarr whirled back under the fern again and was gone. Narm and Shandril exchanged glances, then did as they'd been told, casting fearful glances around at the forest as they went. It seemed alive with snapping sounds and rustlings, now, but that could just be all the guards on the move, and not a foe.

  Or it could be a lot of foes moving in as one.

  After what seemed like a very long time, Orthil Voldovan came striding through' the trees to Narm and Shandril. "Either of ye driven horses harnessed to a wagon before?" he barked.

  He didn't wait for them to shake their heads but whirled around again, waving at them curtly to accompany him.

  They had to run to keep up with the caravan master as he strode along through underbrush and through branches, obviously not caring if he was heard a hundred miles off or broke every bough that dared to hang in his path. They climbed a little tree-cloaked ridge and plunged down into a wooded hollow beyond it, where a grim ring of guards was standing looking down at something in their midst.

  Someone was dead.

  The guards parted as Voldovan stamped up to them, and he whirled to glare at Shandril and take'her by the arm, to point down and ask, "Ye didn't have anything to do with this, now, did ye?"

  Storstil would never grimace at Narbuth's babblings again. The drover lay huddled over a long, gnarled tree root where he'd obviously sat down to relieve himself, a smokeweed pouch and a broken clay pipe beside him, his distinctive red-trimmed, dun-hued tunic strewn with spilled smokeweed. His head was missing-burnt right away to a scattering of ash.

  Narm swallowed and turned swiftly away, to walk a few blind steps through the trees. Shandril went white, swayed in Orthil's grip, then managed to say faintly, "No. No, Orthil, I did not."

  The caravan master sighed. "So Arauntar said-good it was for ye that he went from the two of ye on to Pelgryn and then Thorst before finding… this. Better for ye that Pel and Thorst were always between here and where ye were sent- and saw ye not."

  He turned away, and said over his shoulder, "Leave him for the wolves-after ye search him, Beldimarr, to make sure our Storstil wasn't carrying any secrets that might have made someone slay him. Bring boots, belt, all pouches and weapons, as usual. Thorst, ye're a drover now."

  Thorst looked up at Shandril sharply, as if measuring her as a foe in a rocking, pitching wagon, then spat into the dead leaves and nodded without saying anything,

  "With me," Voldovan ordered Narm and Shandril, as he turned to stamp back toward the wagons.

  Other guards fell in around them, and they'd gone perhaps twenty paces together when the caravan master said suddenly, "I don't like it. I don't like it at all. We always lose a few on this run-clients who stray from their wagons at night to rut or empty their innards or have little covert trade-meetings that go wrong, and sometimes even a few in bright daylight, fighting off raids… but one of our own, like this, on our first stop…"

  He shook his head and turned, hard-eyed, to glare at Shandril, then at Narm. He said bluntly, "Don't be a curse on me, now. This run's hard enough without deaths at every stop. Though I know what ye can do if 'tis needful, I also know what the lads'll do to ye if there're more slayings with no slayers before us… or if the killings go on."

  They were almost at the wagons when a drover came running out of the camp to meet them, eyes a little wild. "Spells in one of the wagons, Orthil! Two dead, at least, and 'tis still burning-folk in the wagons around all shouting that they saw this man run off into the woods or that one, or five come in, or a dozen devils dancing about with tails a-waving!"

  Voldovan quickened his pace into a run. Narm and Shandril, with all the other guards, stayed with him.

  As they came out into the sunlight and a sea of frightened faces, the caravan master looked back at Narm and Shandril again. "Don't curse me," he said in a voice of dark promise. "I'm warning ye."

  "Orthil," one of the guards snarled from right behind Narm. "What shall we do with these two?"

  Voldovan waved a dismissive hand the size of a shovel. "Nothing," he snapped, "for now."

  Wild Rides

  After the bear and the behir we come to the brigand. Vermin, the lot of them! Almost as black and strangling a plague upon honest trade as marauding ores in summer, or wolves in winter-or caravan-masters any day of the year.

  Srusstakur Thond, Master Mapmaker, Know and Vanquish Thy Foe, Year of the Saddle

  "One wizard I know about," Orthil Voldovan snapped, "but he was with me-with all of us, and plenty of us watching him suspiciously, too. I ask all of my clients if anyone knows spells or has a wand along, and they all stare at me like so many moon-faced, innocent sheep, and I know three or four of them at least are lying. Mayhap a dozen-or all of them! We've no time to spare for searches and hot words and beating truth out of anyone, but if this goes on, we'll make time. Right now, we must be at Face Crag by nightfall, or the dark'll catch us strung out along the road in the Blackrocks, and it won't matter who slaughtered who in a wagon, because we'll have ores and goblins and probably ghouls, too, clawing and hacking and stabbing at us as they please, up and down the wagon line! Move, you motherless jacks! Whip the beasts, and if any wagon lags, pass it by and keep on!"

  The caravan master waved at the road ahead, his gesture vicious with anger, and guards spurred away obediently. Voldovan raised his eyes to Shandril and said grimly, "I didn't gather the lads here because ye needed to hear, but because I wanted them all to know ye heard. Take great care, for thy own safety, that this wagon slows not and that nothing ill befalls Thorst here."

  "Voldovan," Shandril said with a sigh, "I want to go on living as much as you do. I mean no one in the world any ill, so long as they leave me alone. I get so tired of folk not believing that."

  "Tired enough to cook them where they stand, hey? Well, we may need ye to do just that to someone ere we make Waterdeep-but mind ye warn me first, and don't go blasting folk down whenever I'm looking elsewhere." The caravan master turned his own horse away, and Shandril sighed, felt the weight of someone else's cold gaze, and looked down-right into the eyes of Thorst.

  "The Master told us you were some sort of fire-mage," he whispered, his glare dark with anger, "and you look like a little lass who should be in a kitchen somewhere, or washing out chambers in an inn. You've no spellbooks along, no wand I've seen, so what are you, really?"

  He shifted his hand on the reins so the cloak on his lap fell away-to reveal what he held in his other hand: another small bowgun, loaded with a wicked bolt that was pointed right into her face.

  "I'm not trying to slay you," he added, "yet. I'm trying to stop you doing to me what happened to Storstil."

  Shandril kept very still. "I," she said, more calmly than she felt, "can call up a very powerful fire-magic that I can't quite control. I can't tell you much more than that, because I don't know much more than that. I'm on my way to Water-deep to try to find out. The Zhentarim and some other folk are after me because they want this magic, but so far as I know, none of them know I'm here, along on this caravan. I don't want to use any
magic that I don't have to, in case someone recognizes it and thereby learns that I'm here- and I certainly haven't used any of my fire on that wagon or on Storstil or anyone else since I made that deal with Orthil in the Tankard in front of all of you."

  Thorst frowned. "That makes me suspicious, too," he said. "Why did he settle for the paltry passage fee you offered?"

  "If I answered that," Shandril said, "I'd be guessing. You'd best ask Orthil himself." She looked up at the sky, and added innocently, "Perhaps he was overwhelmed by my beauty."

  Thorst snorted, and gave her an unlovely grin. "I like you, Lady Mysterious. At least you don't shriek or come the high-and-mighty indignance, like most of the wenches who buy passage with us." He turned the little crossbow away from her, carefully unloaded its dart, and added, "Right, then. Just don't be sending any scorching my way."

  "You have my promise on that, Thorst," the unlikely looking guard replied formally, startling the drover into peering up at her again.

  "I hope we make this camping place Voldovan's so frantic to reach, in time," she added, as the wagon crashed over a particularly violent array of bumps and potholes.

  "Lady," he agreed from beside her feet, "so do I!"

  Blue radiance whirled and flashed around her. Sharantyr calmly crouched, and stepped forward with blade raised and ready, all in one smooth motion.

  Then the blue light was gone, and the paler light of normal day was around her. The woman in leathers whom Torm was pleased to call "our lady ranger" was standing in wild, trampled grass on an unfamiliar hilltop.

  A height crowded with tall, dark standing stones. She swiftly drew close to one and froze to listen and peer intently, letting a long time pass as she made sure of her surroundings.

  Then Sharantyr glided softly forward to where she could look around her sheltering stone, and froze again, only her eyes moving. This shadow, and that… no. Nothing.

  Thankfully-unless someone or something was managing to keep very quiet and still amid this faintest ghost of a breeze-the hilltop seemed free of lurking folk or beasts. Save for one, of course: one Knight of Myth Drannor, her blade in her hand and a tiny carved skull still clutched in her fingertips.

  Sharantyr stowed the carving in a belt-pouch, but kept her war-steel ready as she looked about, studying the ground now, for tracks. This might be Tsarn Tombs, if she was nigh Scornubel… or then again, it might be some place she'd never heard of, north of that lawless caravan city.

  Probably Tsarn, though; it seemed right. On all sides rose wilderland hills beyond number, those to the north-she always knew when she was looking north-crowned by trees. Mountains rose in the far distance, most to the northeast but a few peaks even farther off to the northwest. A wagon road ran close by her hilltop, on the west, running slightly west of north to east of south. A river, probably the Chionthar, glimmered back sunlight in the distant northwest, beyond the road.

  Small rocks and pebbles underfoot had been scuffed by boots recently. There was much trampling in the grass around the larger stones, some of it fresh, and… she peered about at old, broken tombs that lay open in the tall grass, and smiled thinly at the painted message borne by one tall, leaning marker stone: "Beware: The Dead Walk."

  They do, indeed, all too often… ah!

  She'd found what she'd been seeking: the trail of two humans afoot, walking side by side and passing this way recently. They'd departed the hilltop northward, down into a little valley carved by a brook… and unless her land-reading had quite departed her, that brook probably found its way down to the road.

  If anything was hunting lone lady rangers in these back-lands, it'd probably seen her on the heights for more than long enough to decide how best to stalk her. Sharantyr kept her blade out and her other hand hovering above the little pouch of spell-gems Lhaeo had given her as she went.

  The Scribe of Shadowdale had given her something else, too. He'd evidently spent his time well over tea with Tessaril, during her rare visits to acquaint Shaerl and Mourngrym of Cormyrean news and policies. His instructions on whom to speak with in Scornubel and how to contact them had been quite specific.

  His warnings about the dangers of the City on the Chionthar had been just as blunt and exhaustive-and far, far more numerous. Sharantyr was almost looking forward to viewing a city-sized den of energetic thieves and trying to figure out why they hadn't erupted with knives in alleys some night and all slain each other, years ago Up from behind a boulder ahead of her a figure rose. A crossbow cracked, and the figure ducked down again-just as a second man sprouted from behind another rock, farther off, and did the same thing. Sharantyr let fall her blade and put her finger through the slit in the outside of Lhaeo's little pouch to awaken the lone gem that rode in the outer compartment there.

  She was just in time. The first hasty bolt burned past her upper arm, ripping away leather as it went, but the second whistled straight into her throat-and harmlessly on through it, as if she'd been made of smoke. Sharantyr unwound the cord from around her midriff and shook it out into a loose coil, letting one stone-weighted end hang from her hand. A deadly little obsidian knife rode in a gorget-sheath down the back of her neck, under her hair, but this little throwing-maiden seemed more useful now. Almost as useful as a personal ironguard enchantment.

  Sharantyr strode on toward the first boulder without breaking stride, hoping there weren't too many brigands- and that their ranks didn't sport anyone who could work magic. Not that it was likely that a mage of power would be starving over travel-scraps out in the wilderlands when cities were full of folk who'd pay well for castings of minor magics, but…

  She was perhaps three long strides away from the rock when the brigand rose up again and hurled a dagger into her face. There was a momentary, feathering blur as it sliced deep into her eye-or rather, whirled through her head as if she weren't there, after its point found no eye nor socket. Her ears rang with his curses as he hastily drew a rather rusty curved sword and commenced hacking at her.

  Sharantyr dropped her stonemaiden to the ground, letting only a small length of it trail from one hand held out as far as she could behind her-with his blade passing freely through her body, he could sever the cord all too easily, and then she'd be reduced to punching, kicking, gouging, and hair-pulling.

  That curved blade sliced through her breast-forth and back, forth and back, veering up to cleave her nose and jaw on the third swing, and taking out her throat on the fourth. Sharantyr smiled sweetly and kept coming.

  "A ghost!" her assailant wailed, going pale. "A haunt!" He whirled to flee-and Sharantyr swung the stonemaiden as hard as she could, almost throwing it. Along the cord she felt the solid jar of the blow-and the sickening yielding of his head that followed, ere he toppled silently to the grass, and bounced. Her stonemaiden sent a spattering of blood and brains on toward the second rock, and the ranger followed them, still smiling.

  "Helve, you idiot!" the brigand there was roaring, as he rose and his crossbow cracked again. "Never turn your back in a fray-not even on a lone wench!"

  He was a good shot. The bolt blinded her momentarily as it flashed through her right eye-and kept on going.

  "Mask preserve me, Tymora save me-Shar defend me!" the second brigand swore, forced to believe what he'd been able to dismiss as clumsiness on the part of his fellow outlaw up until now. He gaped at Sharantyr as her smile widened and she sauntered toward him, hiding her trailing stonemaiden once more.

  True to his own advice, this brigand backed away, never turning his eyes from her for an instant as he snatched his sword and dagger out-and tripped over some loose stones behind him, to fall headlong with a ragged cry. Sharantyr was over his rock in a bound, stonemaiden up in both hands to strike in either direction, depending on who else might be lurking.

  There was a third brigand, and a fourth, but they were far enough away that she managed to strike the frantically rolling and kicking second brigand senseless before they reached her. A blade she didn't feel tore through her, but the
fists holding its hilt drove up under her ribs as hard as the thrust itself. If she hadn't leaped into the air to rob their impact of its smashing force, some of those ribs might well have broken.

  From the height of her leap Sharantyr dashed the maiden's stones across the man's snarling face, and he ceased to be a concern-at about the same time as the fourth brigand reached her, slicing the air like a madman as he came with a sword almost as long as her legs. Snarling and sweating he hacked at her-back and forth and back, his slaying steel a blur.

  Sharantyr was forced to drop her maiden to avoid having its cords severed a dozen times over. Then she sat down and kicked out, seeking to drive his own legs from under him and send him crashing down-but he was too large and strong to do more than hop awkwardly aside and regain his balance, still hacking furiously.

  Sharantyr sighed as she watched sharp steel blaze its way back and forth through her leather-clad breast-after all, this magic wouldn't last forever, and… ah, well. The old ways were old because they so often worked.

  Buckles could hold leather very well, but the enchantment made her fingers pass through them. Though she couldn't undo them, she could unlace leathern thongs, enough to lay bare most of the curving flesh The brigand's eyes widened, his sword-swings slowed- and Sharantyr bent, snatched up her maiden, and struck him hard across the face with its trailing stone. With a roar of pain, he staggered away, and this time, the whirling cords took his ankles from under him with brutal speed. There were rocks jutting from the ground beneath his head where he bounced, and it was a loosely lolling, groaning brigand from whom she retrieved her weapon, ere she glanced all around and decided there were no more foes to fell.