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His victim screamed and thrashed, trying to turn and hack but pinioned on Hawk's blade… Hawkril shoved and twisted his steel as he thrust forward, trying to keep the man off-balance.
The cortahar screamed again, far more feebly, and dropped his sword, stumbling-and then something flashed in the mist, the knight's head jerked back, and Craer gri
"Tolerated, I'd term it," Hawkril growled, "but let's use your word. 'Tis more flippant, and that's fitting, hey?"
"Indeed. Come on!"
The armaragor hastened to follow Craer, off around one side of a turret looming up in the mists. Its massive walls sported frequent tall, narrow slit windows, all firmly shuttered with covers made of vertical rows of overlapping shields. The door Hawkril could see was also sheaDied in old shields, hammered flat and nailed together.
"As quiet as you know how," Craer murmured, "get up yon ladder onto the ba
In careful silence Hawkril did as he was told. They reached the small ba
The air was briefly full of the angry hum and thrum of dozens of bows. The bowmen inside the turret must be moving with smooth precision, firing in pairs and then diving aside to let the next pair stand by the door, pair after pair.
Their reward was at least two groans from the mist, as they shot down their unseen fellow cortahars. Most of the shafts cracked off stones or whistled down over the moat to thump to earth as deadly offerings from the clear night sky.
Behind the twang of strings, thudding of boots, and hissing of arrows, the two overdukes could hear an angry, rising chant: Serpent-priests casting a spell, probably to banish the mist.
A bright and evil green radiance spun forth like spiraling tentacles from the door below when the chant ended. Those tentacles started to bleed smoke almost immediately, but mist fell away at their touch, and in a trice the moonlit battlements were clear once more.
Clear-and strewn with pools and smears of blood, most of them adorned with sprawled, motionless cortahars.
Out from behind a merlon ducked a lone figure-Embra, in a tattered and bloodstained but glowing gown, holding the Dwaer to her breast.
"Parley!" she called. "Lord Stornbridge, let's talk! There's-"
Bows twanged and two shafts sped through the Lady of Jewels, vanishing as if they'd never been fired. Another pair of arrows followed-as Hawkril, raging up to his feet atop the turret despite Craer's frantic clawings, saw she must be an illusion, and sank down again, breathing heavily.
"Spare your arrows," Embra cried. "I come for peace, not more bloodshed! Already you've slain most of my fellows, and-"
The ball of raging flame that burst out to consume her roared along the battlements as far as the next tower, where the changing course of the walls left nothing beneath the fire but air-so it plunged down to the moat below, a fall that ended in a hissing that briefly drowned out all other sound except Craer's snarl of "Keep still!" in Hawkril's ear.
The armaragor did just that. Together, the two waited for those in the turret to emerge or send forth more magic.
Instead, the turret shuddered under the sudden impact of a spell from the other direction, that flung fire past the overdukes. Startled shouts from below told Craer and Hawkril that the magic, whatever it was, was both unexpected by the Storn defenders and that it had destroyed or flung open the metal doors and shutters, handing sounds made inside the turret to the passing night breezes.
The response was predictable: another furious volley of arrows along battlements that-as far as Craer and Hawkril could see-were occupied only by a few openmouDied Storn cortahars on wallguard duty. The few who survived that hail of warshafts vanished in the heart of another ball of flames.
"We're wearing them down until they fall asleep, or we the of old age, is that it?" Hawk whispered.
Craer gri
Hawkril smiled. "My arm's long enough to reach down and throw yon assemblage to the floor inside the turret. The glass has to break, hey?"
Craer's answering grin was fierce as he handed over his contraption. "I can't admit that. Professional procurer's secret, this."
Hawkril's snort was eloquent, as he leaned over-and threw. "Close your eyes!" Craer snapped.
Someone snarling orders inside the turret broke off and screamed, "Down! Get-"
And the night exploded into bright white light. Hawkril waited for the turret top to heave upward or shatter under them… but instead, all of the turret's occupants began screaming.
" 'Tis only blindflash," Craer hissed. "Time to get down there and thin Storn ranks. The best way's to guide them out the doors with lots of 'This way, my lord' stuff. If they're cortahars, just keep going and tip them over into the moat. Snake-priests we slay right away, and Lord Stornbridge we save in case Embra wants to use magic on him. Oh-and watch out for priests turning themselves into snakes and slithering away. One of them just told another to try that magic."
Hawkril smiled and started down the ladder.
"Ambelter," the Baron Pheli
The Spellmaster halted abruptly in his swift striding across the dimly lit main cavern of their shared lair, his mind full of something complicated and as yet incomplete called "the Sword of Spells." Putting such thoughts away with an inward sigh, he swung around. "At what, my good Baron?" he asked politely.
"Scheming and meeting with folk and casting spells and manipulating events all over Aglirta and not involving me in the slightest, or telling me a single thing. We have agreement on this, remember? I am not a piece of furniture."
Ingryl Ambelter forebore to make the obvious reply linking baronial usefulness and immobile items of furniture. Instead, he came forward into the light of the window he'd tu
Pheli
"Point taken," the Spellmaster agreed gravely. "Well, then, here's what I've been thinking about-thinking, mind, more than doing. Thus far, I've met with failure in all attempts to sway the Bowdragons into action. Much of my present scurrying, as you put it, involves trying to discover how to move them into aiding us-or if the powers of these remaining elders are feeble enough that we can abandon attempts to bother. Can we wrest their spellbooks and enchanted items from them, and have done-or is that the swift way into another feud, and more peril?"