Swords of Dragonfire

by Greenwood, Ed

  The wizards followed in smooth haste; Andabral, Torthym, Larlammitur, Alsketh, Cordorve, and the least battle-experienced, Yassandra, last.

  At least, that was the intended order. Yassandra, bringing up the rear, smiled crookedly at the shimmering blue portal in front of her—and whirled away from it to head across the ground floor of the Oldcoats Inn.

  Toward the cellars.

  “It is good,” the dead, purple lips of Lathalance mumbled, before Old Ghost billowed out of him to tower over Horaundoon. And smile.

  Behind the two wraithlike spirits, as they raced out into Halfhap, the Zhentarim’s abandoned body lolled limply in the chair at the center of his rented inn room.

  Old Ghost and Horaundoon scudded along alleyways and over rooftops like one wisp of smoke chasing another, eager to possess local Zhentarim and draw them into the fray at Oldcoats.

  It seemed the mageling Tantarlus hadn’t thought about chimneys when casting wards around his home, so two unwelcome—but utterly unnoticed—guests curled like lazy smoke along the bottom of tapestries as he yelled excitedly to the mouth inset into the center of his corner table, “This is a Bane-bestowed chance to slaughter many war wizards! Send as many of the Brotherhood as you can through my portal!”

  “All right, Tantarlus,” the mouth said, “you needn’t shout. Some of your fellow magelings—those you trained with at the Citadel—will shortly be arriving in your parlor. They will need to be directed to the inn. See to it.”

  The mouth closed and faded into dark, carved immobility. Tantarlus covered it reverently with the cloth that customarily concealed it, put the oil lamp back in its usual place atop that cloth—and stiffened as Old Ghost plunged into him, possessing him with far greater care than Horaundoon had used on the war wizards.

  But then, Old Ghost had no intention of burning out this useful host yet. He turned to Horaundoon. “Keep hidden from the arriving magelings,” he ordered. “They will be all too eager to blast anything that interests them.”

  “And you are?”

  “Off through the portal in the other direction, to Zhentil Keep. Where Tantarlus of the Zhentarim will eloquently exaggerate this skirmish into something that demands an even larger response.”

  “Will they listen to a mere mageling, stationed as local eyes in Halfhap?”

  “Yes, if that mageling speaks forcefully enough of great magic to be gained, a chance to break the strength of the local war wizards, seize control of Halfhap, butcher the Purple Dragon garrison, and provoke Cormyr into sending forth an army that can then be blasted at will.”

  Dauntless glared at the streets and hovels of Halfhap as if they personally affronted him—and would serve all Faerûn better if they were hurled down before the next nightfall. Weary and stubble-chinned, he was sore from riding through the night, and not even snarling at the gate-guards until they openly cowered had given him any satisfaction.

  At least they’d reluctantly imparted the information that the Knights of Myth Drannor had reached Halfhap and been directed to the Oldcoats Inn, though Dauntless had felt the silent contempt of his five picked Purple Dragons, boring into his back, all the while he’d bullied the two guards.

  He was beyond caring. He just wanted to arrest the Knights, clap them in the dungeons of the Halfhap keeps, and get some sleep. They could be questioned as to the whereabouts of Lord Duskur Ebonhawk’s belongings—a lot of coin, in a cloth-of-gold-covered metal purse with the black hawkhead family badge on its clasps—later. Now, Halfhap wasn’t that big, so this sagging black-painted dump before him had to be the Oldcoats Inn.

  A man and two maids were standing together on its front steps. The wenches were dressed alike, with matching vests over their gowns—inn staff. By his manner, the man was their master, and had the look of an innkeeper, though less stout than most.

  Dauntless halted his tired mount in front of them, and looked down from his saddle at the man. “Is this the Oldcoats Inn? And are you master here?”

  The man looked up at him expressionlessly. “I am, and this the Oldcoats Inn. Fitting lodgings for Dragons of the Realm. Ondal Maelrin, at your service.”

  Dauntless didn’t bother to nod. “You have adventurers staying here who call themselves the Knights of Myth Drannor, I believe?”

  The innkeeper shrugged. “We have guests, yes. I haven’t heard that grand title before, no. You can examine my lodging ledger, of course.”

  Dauntless glowered. Maelrin stared back at him.

  “Well,” the ornrion snapped, “get it, man! The duty of all good citizens is to obey Dragons and officers of the Crown without hesitation or dispute!”

  Maelrin’s eyes went cold, and he snapped right back, “You’re mistaken, soldier! I have this from the lips of the King himself: the duty of all good citizens are to watch those who govern them like hungry hawks, and to defend whoever needs defending!”

  “His Majesty was a young lad when he said that; an adventurer!”

  “So he’s changed the brain in his head since then, has he? I must have missed that proclamation!”

  Dauntless snarled in wordless anger and swung himself down from his saddle, pretending not to hear a lone snicker from the five Dragons at his back. Wincing, he strode stiffly past the innkeeper.

  Who said, without turning his head, “Ledger’s on a table at the bottom of the cellar stairs. They descend from the center of the common room, which you’ll be standing in when you pass through the front doors.”

  Without replying, Dauntless and his five men stalked into the inn.

  Maelrin turned to smile frostily at their backs ere murmuring to the maids, “Time to get up there and plunder the Knights’ belongings, lasses. Then out the back and gone. They’ll soon be hurling spells that’ll blow this place into the sky even before it gets burned to the ground!”

  Chapter 13

  DAUNTLESS GOES A-BRAWLING

  Oh, I am proud to be a Dragon loud

  There is no higher calling

  We swagger along, villains a-trawling

  And merchants and maids a-mauling

  But be ever so bad, there’s nothing we do

  To blacken the Crown, to match the rue

  Of high nobles who start a-bawling

  When Dauntless goes a-brawling.

  from Dauntless Goes A-Brawling

  street-song of the Purple Dragons

  in Arabel (composer anonymous),

  popular circa the Year of the Spur

  Yassandra Durstable went down the stairs like a gloating shadow, the blue-green fire of the two wands in her hands still crawling away from her in a deadly, staggering wave of struggling crossbowmen dying on their feet. The only living war wizard she’d seen in the cellars had gone down into a silent heap of protruding bones in her first wand-burst, but these magnificent brutes were still fighting her magic, clawing at the air as it rode them and cursing their inevitable doom.

  She’d blasted them all from behind, of course. Why tempt the gods to hand any foe a chance?

  Now the last crossbowman was down, and with him the last dying flames of wandfire, leaving but one sound ahead of her in this dark and cool cellar. From the only light here in the cellars, a little way down the room, came the faint sizzling of cooking flesh.

  One of the war wizards—and she couldn’t see all of their corpses; some could well be very much alive, and lurking in other cellar chambers ahead of her—had blasted a Zhentilar warrior with a spell that had left his body burning like a hearthfire.

  A fire in a hearth that had a good chimney—it made very little smoke but a lot of racing, flickering flames. The corpse-light wouldn’t last long. Smiling grimly, Yassandra advanced past him cautiously, wanting to get out of the view of anyone standing at the top of the cellar stairs with a wand or a crossbow, before she cast light magic of her own.

  Doom fell on her—hard—without the slightest warning.

  Pennae swung down on the war wizard from above and behind, arms trembling from the strain of bra
cing herself between two rusty hooks. She hurled herself out of the inky darkness in the lee of a ceiling-beam and scissored her legs viciously around the wizard’s head, swinging hard to the left and kicking upward as she did so.

  Yassandra’s neck broke with a horrible wet crunch—and Pennae put all her might into a frantic shifting of herself forward, so as to pass over the lolling head and down on the wizard’s arms from above, rather than ending up with her feet pointing at the ceiling, head-downward with the dying woman toppling back over onto her.

  She had to gain control of those wands—had to!

  Pennae was still clawing at the air and a swinging beam-hook for balance when Yassandra sobbed the words that set off the wands, blasting the ceiling above with more blue-green fire.

  “Tluin,” Pennae announced calmly, as the spraying magic shook the dying body under her, driving it back just enough that she could overtop Yassandra and reach down the war wizard’s failing, spasming arms.

  Hopefully before hungry blue-green fire thoroughly cleaned Pennae’s teeth—and throat, and her gizzard and whatnots beyond it too—for her.

  Dauntless and his Dragons were halfway across the deserted common room, swords singing out of scabbards and striding hard, when the floor to the angry ornrion’s right, just behind him, burst upward in a splintering roar and flood of blue-green flames.

  Shattered floorboards erupted in a deadly spray, hurling two Purple Dragons bodily up into the ceiling above.

  With a roar almost as loud as the wandfire, Dauntless launched himself at the cellar stairs in a furious rush, the three remaining Purple Dragons right behind him. They were pounding down the steps even before the bloody, broken remains of their two comrades peeled free of the riven ceiling and fell wetly onto impaling splinters below.

  Pennae struck the wands out of Yassandra’s weak hands as they fell, and the wandfire abruptly stopped.

  They hit the floor together, hard, the war wizard’s body slamming down atop the wands, and out of long habit Pennae slashed Yassandra’s throat open; for who knew what sort of spells a war wizard might have, to snatch herself back from the sword-edge of death? Mute mages hurled fewer spells.

  Fearful and angry shouts rang out, deeper in the cellars—and no wonder; a sleeping man could have heard every instant of the wandfire! Pennae rolled hastily over to lie still among the bodies, dragging the dead war wizard atop her.

  Feigning death was wisest until she knew who held sway down here. There! In the flickering corpse-light she could see a few crossbowmen coming cautiously into the room from somewhere deeper in the cellars, peering around with their poisoned-quarrel-loaded bows held ready.

  Some jagged shards of wood fell from the torn ceiling, and a startled bowman fired a quarrel at their noise. It flashed past Pennae and down the room, thudding hard into an unseen wall … a wall of thick, damp wood, by the sound of that strike.

  Heavy boots suddenly thudded across the ceiling overhead, moving in a hurry, and came charging down the cellar stairs.

  Suddenly all the crossbowmen were firing.

  Crossbow quarrels came leaping up out of the darkness as Dauntless and his Dragons plunged down the stairs; the ornrion scarcely had time to curse and fling up one armored forearm to shield his face before the swordcaptain beside him blurted out a sudden, wet snarl and fell over backward, a quarrel in his face.

  Thrumming viciously, quarrels slammed into Dauntless, twice—thrice—if they’d been longbows, he’d be full of arrows already and likely dead. Another of his Dragons grunted, behind him; staggered but not transfixed by a striking quarrel.

  “Down!” Dauntless roared, “In the name of the King!”

  These foes would have to be taken down before they could reload and fire again; if there were more with loaded crossbows ready, it’d be just too bad for an ornrion called Dauntless.

  Wherefore he flung himself recklessly down into the darkness, caring nothing for footing or dignity, sword reaching out. The crossbowmen would have to crank their windlasses like madmen to recock their crossbows, a noisy task that took time no matter how strong and fast they were, and then slap quarrels into firing-channels.

  They knew they hadn’t time enough, and flung down their crossbows to claw out daggers and short swords, even as the ornrion hurled himself off the stair to crash bodily into two of them and bear them to the cellar floor, bouncing hard.

  “Murderers!” he roared. “In the name of the king, Azoun the Purple Dragon, I—urrkk!”

  The punch across his throat temporarily silenced Dauntless, but the man who dealt it started dying an instant later, when the ornrion drove a dagger into his eye with brutal ruthlessness and rolled hard to his left, fully onto the second crossbowman he’d borne to the floor. By then, the other crossbowmen were coming for him with swords and daggers drawn. His Dragons rushed past to meet him.

  “Aye,” a crossbowman snarled, “that’s just what we’ve been doing: murdering war wizards! And we should have no trouble at all with a few Purple Dragons!”

  Then blade was clanging on blade, and the hollowness of that boast was swiftly apparent. The crossbowmen were fast and mean—but the Dragons were veterans of many an Arabellan alley-brawl, trained to work together in battle. They were bigger, stronger, and far more heavily armored. One Dragon grunted in disgusted pain as a sword slid through the leathers covering the joint above his left forearm, but that slight wound was the only harm the three soldiers suffered before the crossbowmen broke and ran, leaving four of their fellows dead.

  Dauntless pounded after them, barking a command over his shoulder that left the wounded Dragon tarrying to slice all the bowstrings he could see. The ornrion caught another crossbowman before the staggering man could get out of the room with the stair, hewing him down from behind and trampling him without slowing.

  The crossbowmen fled right at—and through—an apparently solid stretch of dark, cobwebbed stone wall. Dauntless plunged after them, right on their heels and hacking the air wildly on all sides to try to foil any slayers waiting for him.

  There was a moment of tingling darkness as he passed through the illusory magic that cloaked the unseen doorway, and then he was in a lamplit room where startled crossbowmen fought desperately against other, hard-faced men with better swords and daggers, who’d been … yes, plundering the bodies of dead war wizards!

  “You dare?” Dauntless bellowed, smashing his way right through a hapless crossbowman to get at the nearest of these new foes.

  “Ha!” that man laughed, striking aside the ornrion’s sword with the ease of a veteran swordsman. “Of course we dare! We dare anything for the glory of the Brotherhood! Zhentarim triumphant!”

  One of the crossbowmen kicked the man’s feet out from under him and stabbed him brutally as he toppled. Dauntless rewarded the slayer with a slash that half-severed his head and left it lolling as the dying man let out a wet, burbling squeal and collapsed atop the Zhent he’d just slain.

  Dauntless ducked under the wild slash of a halberd—what sort of fool tried to swing such a weapon, in cramped chambers like these?—as Zhents and the crossbowmen—and whom did they serve, hey?—enthusiastically killed each other all around him. He saw one of his Dragons lay open the halberd-wielder’s throat with a mighty, off-balance slash, and snarled, “Try to take one of the idiots who used the crossbows on us alive! I need some answers!”

  “Commanded,” First Sword Brauthen Haernhar growled in the usual Purple Dragon acknowledgment that an order had been heard and understood. He kicked a Zhent hard enough in the cods to lift the man off his feet, into a helpless plunge forward onto the Dragon’s waiting blade.

  The crossbowmen were all dead now, killed with swift ease by Zhents who were obviously disciplined, well-trained warriors. They must be Zhentilar at work here without their customary armor and spears, so as to avoid raising an alarm that would bring Baron Thomdor riding hard into Halfhap with several hundred mounted Dragons at his shoulders.

  Which meant that what
ever the fate of Lord Duskur Ebonhawk’s plundered riches or the Knights of Myth Drannor, and regardless of Lady Lord Lhal’s orders, Ornrion Taltar Dahauntul must survive this fray and get alive back to Arabel or to a moot with one of Baron Thomdor’s patrols, so the Warden of the Eastern Marches swiftly learned of these Zhents. If the Zhentarim were in Halfhap, then they were in Arabel, too, or soon planning to be … and if ever Arabel fell to the Black Brotherhood, all northeastern Cormyr would become a lawless battlefield of marauding monsters unleashed by Zhents, orc and goblin hireswords let loose on every steading and hamlet, and all—

  A Zhent lunge came within a shrieking bladewidth of finding the gap in his armor—and Dauntless found himself forced to lean into that lunge, almost embracing the steel seeking to slay him, as he parried a teeth-jarringly hard cut to the side of his helm, and needed room to interpose his own sword or risk decapitation.

  He managed to avoid both blades somehow, reeling back out of that tangle of swords in time to see First Sword Brauthen coughing his way to the floor with a sword in his guts, clawing at it vainly and desperately as the Zhent wielding it laughed in triumph.

  He should turn and flee, alone now in this room of Zhentilar, but Brauthen deserved to be avenged—for what good is a glittering kingdom, if it lifts no finger to help or seek justice for every man who dies for it?—and he was damned before the gods if he’d turn away when it was so easy, with Brauthen grappling the Zhent’s blade, to spring to the side and slash open that laughing face as he did so.

  So Dauntless killed that man, and the next, winning himself time to flee and turned—to discover the illusion of solid wall was in force on this side of the hidden doorway too!

  He could not be sure where it was, and the blades reaching for him even now would give him no time for any sort of a search.

  Then Swordcaptain Darasko Starmarlee, whom he’d left behind, wounded, to disable crossbows, burst suddenly through seemingly solid stone gaping in astonishment, with blade held high—but not high enough to properly parry the vicious swing from the Zhent who’d been charging to block off the ornrion’s escape.