Avatar - Tantras Part 17

The thief's features turned as hard as stone. "Am I your second-in-command?"

Tyzack flinched. "What has that to do with anything? You will be treated exactly the same as any other Zhentilar."

"You're wrong," Cyric snapped. "As second-in-command, it's my duty to see that your policies are followed to the letter when you are not present to enforce them."

The dark eyes of the Zhentish leader narrowed.

"Willingale was staying far too close to the main body," Cyric continued, pointing toward the soldier as he spoke. "He is not a Scorpion and does not know your views about serving as point man for the Zhentilar." The thief paused and smiled. "Of course, we both know that if Willingale was close enough for our men to see him too clearly - which he was - then he was far too close to be an effective scout. Slater and I informed him of his error." Again the thief paused. This time, however, he turned to look at the Zhentish woman. "That's when he pointed out the strange light on the horizon - right, Slater?"

Ren leaned close to the company's leader and whispered something in his ear. "What strange light?" Tyzack asked as soon as Ren had finished speaking to him. "What's causing it?"

Cyric forced a look of bewilderment onto his face. "We don't know," the thief said. He related what he and Slater had seen - and their personal views of the situation - to Tyzack. "I instructed Willingale to hold his position until you caught up with him."

The black-haired Zhentish leader ran a hand through his tangled hair and grinned a wolfish smile. "All right," he muttered, motioning to Ren. "Let's bring the company to a halt. It may be nothing, but someone is going to have to investigate before we can ride any farther."

The Zhentish leader then turned to the hawk-nosed thief. "Cyric, since you seem to have unlimited amounts of initiative today, the task of discovering the nature of the strange light goes to you... and Ren. Slater will remain with me. Your climbing skills may come in handy. Scale that southern rise and follow its path until you can tell what's producing the light."

Cyric's heart skipped a beat as he stared into Ren's narrow face. The man's eyes were cold, emotionless. Ren stared back at Cyric as if the thief were a corpse that didn't have the sense to lie down and allow itself to be buried. In short, Tyzack's orders were a death sentence, and both Cyric and Ren knew it.

"Be careful up there. With all the gaps and rifts, it would be a shame if either of you had an accident," Tyzack said, still grinning evilly. Ren nodded and gestured for Cyric to lead the way.

"Of course," Cyric said cheerfully, pretending that the Zhentish leader's orders had no particular significance. Yet, as the thief kicked the sides of his mount and prodded the beast forward, he growled, "Good-bye, Tyzack... Slater."

Ren followed close behind the thief, and the two men were no more than a hundred feet away from the Zhentish column when Tyzack and Slater both screamed. Cyric turned, confused... until he saw the shining, diamond-shaped sliver of steel approaching from the east, tumbling end-over-end as it pierced the air, heading directly toward the main body of Zhentilar - toward Slater and Tyzack.

The hawk-nosed thief drew his dagger and tossed the weapon in one fluid motion. Cyric's knife sailed through the air and pa.s.sed the deadly shard, which was only slightly larger than the dagger itself, an instant too soon. The flechette continued on. Suddenly the sound of metal striking metal echoed through the air. Although it was a small sound, very high-pitched, Cyric started as he heard it.

Ren had tossed one of his own daggers and deflected the steel shard from its path. Slater and Tyzack were safe.

The thief forced his body to relax as he focused his attention on Ren. The Zhentilar was, quite possibly, Cyric's equal with a blade, and that knowledge made the thief thankful that they had been temporarily recalled from their "mission." Cyric knew that it was up to him to make the reprieve permanent.

His original plan had been to kill Ren on the skeletal ridge, then escape over the southern side of the rise and head for the Ashaba. But without a horse or supplies, his chances for survival were slim. Should Tyzack turn vengeful and order just a few Zhentish soldiers to track him down, his chances were downright dismal. And returning to the advance with Ren dead would have been out of the question, too. Tyzack would have executed Cyric on the spot. So, since the mission to the ridge was a no-win situation, the thief knew that he had to find a way to turn the current situation in his favor.

Slater stared at the ground six feet before her, where the two-foot-long sliver of steel had fallen. She looked at Cyric and saw the frustration in his face, then turned to Ren and said, "My thanks."

"I am here to serve," the blond Zhentilar replied, his voice low and scratchy.

Tyzack was staring off at the horizon. "What was that?" he asked, visibly shaken.

Ren leaped from his mount and reached down to grab both his dagger and the diamond-shaped metal shard. The blond man picked up his knife, but there was a hissing sound the moment Ren's hand touched the steel sliver. The Zhentilar drew back, holding his right hand in his left.

"d.a.m.n!" he growled. "The sliver burns!"

"There must be a sorcerer involved," Tyzack hissed as he tried to regain his composure. "I see no one near, and nothing could have thrown that shard all the way from the rise. It's simply too far away."

The thief instinctively thought of Midnight , then chided himself for the foolish thought. The mage would never be stupid enough to confront a three-hundred-man regiment of Zhentilar. Then a thought occurred to the thief. "If it was a mage, it might explain the light in the distance," Cyric noted aloud.

Suddenly a shadow pa.s.sed over the Zhentish forces, and an audible gasp erupted from the troops. As Cyric looked up, his hand moving onto the hilt of his dagger, the thief saw a swirling ma.s.s of glittering light hovering above them Squinting, Cyric realized that, although he was looking full into the sun, a curtain of steel fragments hung in the sky, blocking his view. Sparks of light refracted from the myriad surfaces of a storm cloud formed from metal shards.

"What is that?" Tyzack cried, his voice cracking. The Zhentish leader reached over and clawed at Slater's shoulder, trying to get her attention. The warrior shrunk away from Tyzack's touch as she controlled an urge to grasp the man's hand, yank him from his mount, and cut his throat as he fell.

Instead, Slater yelled, "Don't touch me!" and shoved Tyzack's hand away.

"Tyzack!" Ren murmured, disquiet showing in his ragged voice. "What are your orders?"

A single shard fell from the heavens like a drop of water dripping from the tip of an icicle that had begun to melt. Tyzack tore his gaze from the skies and covered the back of his head with his arms, then he thrust his face into the mane of his horse. From a hundred feet behind the black-haired leader, there was a scream.

"It got Sykes in the leg!" someone shouted.

Some of the Zhentish soldiers had begun to break ranks, scattering across the flat, open field. "There's nowhere to hide!" someone screamed, and a ripple of panicked cries arose from the troops.

Cyric watched the leader of the Zhentilar quake and moan in fear. "Ren's right!" the hawk-nosed thief growled as Tyzack slowly raised his head. Contempt for the coward raged within Cyric as he cried, "You must give an order!"

Tyzack was about to speak when another shard fell from the sky, this one sailing toward the front of the advance, where the Scorpions had gathered. Praxis was struck in the shoulder by the sliver of metal, and he howled in agony as the sharp tip exited the back of his arm.

"I'm - I'm burning!" Praxis screamed as a grayish black mist rose from the wound. The soldier tried to pluck out the shard, but the effort only caused him greater pain.

Cyric and Ren turned to face the rest of the Zhentish army. Both men shouted for calm, then looked at Tyzack, waiting for the man to speak. Discord was spreading through the ranks, and individual leaders were trying to take control of the individual factions within the force.

"We're... dead!" Tyzack whispered as he stared at the heavens. "There is no place to go!"

Cyric forced his horse over alongside Tyzack's. He grabbed the black-haired man by the collar and shook him hard. "Don't say that!" the thief hissed. "You'll lose control of the men." Cyric was surprised to see that Ren didn't make a move to stop him.

"The blades!" Tyzack cried. "There are so many of them, and they're getting bigger! Look!"

Looking toward the sky, Cyric saw that the ma.s.s of shining silver blades was slowly descending.

"Ride!" Tyzack muttered, his voice as soft as a child's.

A half-dozen shards dropped from the sky like ripe apples from a tree. Those Zhentilar that had shields now struggled to free them from their hacks or their saddles. Screams went up from the rear and center of the advance.

Cyric looked to Slater. "What did he say?"

Ren glared at the thief. "Tyzack said to ride! We must reach the shelter of the southern rise before the shards drop from the sky!" The blond fighter kicked his horse into motion, and a large group of soldiers followed him.

The rain of metal shards increased, as if the bottom of the huge, invisible box that had been holding them were torn open, allowing the flechettes to plummet to the ground. Screams sounded from throughout the ranks. Handfuls of Zhentilar were struck down, dead or gravely wounded.

"Ride!" Tyzack screamed as if he had suddenly realized the danger. The black-haired man kicked at the sides of his mount, propelling the beast forward.

In seconds, Cyric found himself racing toward the auburn, skeletal ridge. The shadow caused by the cloud of knives was deepening, and it seemed to be following the Zhentish army. The cries of the Zhentilar who were struck down by the shards filled the air, their shrill screeches cutting through the dull roar made by hundreds of galloping horses.

The Zhentilar are at my back, Cyric mused. Then suddenly his amus.e.m.e.nt turned to fear. He felt exposed and very much alone at the front of the horde of charging soldiers. The thief's shoulders tightened, and he strained to listen for any mount that was closing on him, knowing that at any moment the rain of steel from above could end all of his problems.

The thief focused on the ridge, even though he thought their flight was useless. Then one of the rifts leading off from the skeletal hills beckoned, growing larger, its night-black shadow opening wide in front of the soldiers like the maw of a hungry animal. More and more Zhentish riders were struck by the shards. The lucky ones were killed outright. The unlucky ones fell from their horses and were trampled beneath the hooves of their comrades' mounts.

Slater was still riding near Cyric when they finally reached the mouth of the rift, where Ren and a majority of the Zhentish that had followed him had taken refuge. The soldiers' abandoned horses raced around, frantically trying to avoid the burning pieces of metal. From the number of horses either wounded or riderless at the end of the rift, Cyric judged that a hundred men had already taken refuge inside it.

But inside the ten-foot-wide gap, the Zhentish were faring no better than those still out on the plain. "This is absurd!" Cyric cried. Then a flechette smashed into his horse's neck, and the mount tossed the thief onto the ground. Luckily for the thief, however, he was close enough to the rift that the riders behind him had slowed their pace enough to avoid trampling him. Still, Cyric was momentarily shaken by the fall.

Before the thief could utter a word of protest, Slater grabbed him by the arm, and they were forced into the dark, cool rift by the flood of soldiers desperately crowding into the opening. Once in the rift, Cyric grabbed a rough wooden shield from a trampled body and raised it over his head. Slater, taller than the thief, had to crouch slightly to remain beneath its cover. The warm, smelly crush of bodies surrounded the thief and the warrior, and Cyric cursed loudly whenever he was b.u.mped or pushed.

"They're not using their heads!" the thief yelled to Slater, who cowered next to him, listening to the frantic cries of the Zhentish and the hiss of falling shards. Above the Zhentilar, the rain of shards continued. The walls of the rift helped to slow the metal fragments; many struck the rock first, then tumbled with decreased momentum toward the soldiers, burning them but not killing them. But many knives still fell directly into the ranks, and the screams of the dying filled the rift with horrible echoes.

"Use your shields!" Cyric screamed, then Slater joined him in the cry, trying to make their voices heard above the din. A dozen soldiers immediately surrounded the thief, looking to him for orders, their eyes wide and frightened. But Cyric's words seemed to slice through the chaos as surely as the sharp edge of a blade through unarmored flesh. "Use your shields! If you don't have a shield, crawl under a corpse!"

More soldiers turned to Cyric and obeyed his commands.

"Interlock the shields, then -" Cyric screamed as a burning metal shard pierced his shield, striking his arm. There was a hiss, and the hawk-nosed man felt his flesh burning. He gritted his teeth and turned to Slater. "Anchor the shield, I've been hit."

The Zhentish woman complied with Cyric's commands. As the thief pulled his arm away from the shield - and the shard that still hissed at its center - a group of nearly fifty soldiers with shields closed ranks around the thief, near the center of the rift.

"Give the tallest men the shields!" Cyric yelled, holding his hand over the blackened wound. "Those without shields, stay low, under the protection!"

The shards continued to fall, but now the sound of shields being struck echoed through the cavern, drowning out the moans of the wounded and replacing the screams of the dying. Of course, occasionally the steel slivers found the meaty forearms on the undersides of the shields, but no one complained.

Cyric tore part of his shirt and wrapped a hasty bandage around his arm. "Forget the pain!" he cried. "At least you aren't dead!" Then he moved between the huddled men as best as he could to give orders to another segment of the frightened troops, Slater always at his side. "Those of you on the ground, help the wounded. Forget the dead; they can't be helped! Keep those shields up if you want to stay alive!" Cyric yelled, slapping some men on the back, encouraging others as he moved through the ranks.

Cyric's plan was working. Throughout the rift, more than one hundred Zhentilar with shields huddled under the network of protection.

At one point, as Cyric sat resting while Slater rebandaged his wound, she asked Cyric how he had thought of having the men use their shields as one instead of separately.

The thief smiled, or at least came as close to smiling as he had since the deadly rain had begun. "Storming a castle once... long ago. It's called 'forming a tortoise,'" the thief said. "It keeps your troops from getting slaughtered when the enemy decides to drop oil on your head or have their archers fire a rain of arrows at you." He looked up at the men holding the shields over him. "It's really quite simple."

"Cyric!" a low, throaty voice called from the huddled soldiers.

The thief spun and saw Ren crawling toward him, without a shield, his shirt torn and b.l.o.o.d.y from a number of small wounds.

"Tyzack's dead," the blond soldier rumbled. "He froze when death looked him in the eye, the coward."

Both men stood and stared at each other for a while, waiting for the storm to pa.s.s. Eventually the steady thump of shards. .h.i.tting the shields lessened, then stopped altogether. The hiss of the still-warm fragments singeing the shields remained, as did the murmurs of the men and the cries of the wounded. Many of the men holding shields had begun to lower them, but Cyric shouted for them to hold their shields up until he gave orders to the contrary.

The thief turned back to Ren. "If Tyzack's dead -," Cyric began, his brow furrowed.

"Then you're our leader now," Ren said and bowed his head slightly. "I live to serve."

The thief's head was swimming. Cyric quickly considered turning command over to someone else, but that would almost certainly turn out to be Ren, and that would most likely mean Cyric's death. As usual, the hawk-nosed man was sure that he wasn't being given a choice. "But who do you serve, Ren?"

Ren frowned. "As I said, I live to serve. You saved the men. You should lead them." The blond man paused and ran a hand across his dirty, blood-smeared face. "There is no reason to fear me... for now, anyway."

The thief ignored the last comment. "Show me Tyzack's body," Cyric said quietly.

The two men maneuvered some distance through the shield bearers. Finally Ren pointed toward a dead man lying ten feet beyond the last Zhentilar with a shield. Although darkness was now descending, Cyric could see that a metal shard had pierced Tyzack's chest, very near his heart. And the thief noticed something else: Tyzack's throat had been cut. The shards would not have been so efficient, Cyric thought as he turned to stare at Ren.

The thief stepped out from beneath the shields and looked up at the empty sky. Metal fragments lay on the ground all around him, some still red hot. Ren followed Cyric out from under the sh.e.l.l of shields and joined the new leader of the two hundred or so Zhentish soldiers that had survived the rain of death.

'"Tell me," the thief rumbled as Ren came to his side, "what secret did Tyzack bear that was so horrible he had you kill to protect it?"

The blond man paused for a moment and looked down at Tyzack's body. "Lately he'd become frantic that someone would discover what he'd done a long time ago at a small temple to Bane north of here." The guard looked up at Cyric. "Tyzack was hot-blooded and idealistic in his younger days, and he foolishly decided to revolt against the Black Network because they wouldn't accept him as a cleric. He raided a temple and slaughtered the young Zhentarim who had been sequestered there. If anyone from the Zhentarim ever found out -"

"It would mean his head," the thief concluded. Then Cyric laughed. "Tyzack was a fool! What he did might actually have put him in good stead with some of the powers in Zhentil Keep."

The soldier frowned and lowered his eyes. Cyric smiled and whispered, "I've done far worse than Tyzack ever dreamed of, Ren. But you won't have to protect my secrets. I take care of that myself." The blond man's frown deepened, and the thief turned away from him. "We'll wait another twenty minutes. It should be safe to send out scouts by then."

Cyric paused and looked down at Tyzack's body. "And then you can announce me as your new leader," the hawk-nosed man said proudly and walked back to rejoin the ranks of his men.

X.

THE ESCAPE.

There's someone here to see you," Varden said softly as he walked into the small room where Midnight and her allies were hidden.

Midnight turned from her spellbook, which was braced upon a splintering crate, and looked to the figures standing in the safe house door.

"Kelemvor!" Midnight gasped as she watched the fighter step into the amber light of the single small lantern that lit the room. The mage rose so quickly that she nearly knocked her book to the floor.

"You look like h.e.l.l," Midnight said, glancing at the leg irons the fighter still wore. Her lips trembled as she tried to smile. "How did you -"

But as the green-eyed fighter moved toward the mage. Varden stepped in front of him. As the fighter watched, three other members of the resistance - the old man and old woman who owned the safe house, and a rough-looking Sembian soldier-moved to block the room's exits.

"I escaped from one set of captors into the arms of another, it seems. May I sit down?" Kelemvor asked, gesturing with his fingers toward a vacant chair beside the raven-haired mage. Midnight nodded and studied the fighter as he walked to the chair in a series of short steps that might have seemed comical were it not for the severity of his condition. By the flickering light from the lantern, Midnight could see the scars, cuts, bruises, and burns that lined Kelemvor's body. His clothing had become rags, and Midnight was reminded of the first time she had admitted her feelings for the fighter, in the corridors of Castle Kilgrave. Kelemvor had not looked much better then.

The fighter's hands trembled as he muttered, "I haven't eaten in days. If I'm going to he tortured, can I at least have something to eat first?"

The old woman moved past Varden and Adon to the door. "I need to check on Gratus anyway," she croaked and left the room.

"How do you think he found us?" the craggy Sembian soldier said to Varden.

Looking up sharply, Kelemvor glared at the gruff soldier. "You can ask me if you want to know something about that," the fighter snarled. "I overheard my guards mention this place as a possible safe house. They didn't think I was going to survive, and they talked in front of me as if I wasn't even there, just as you are doing."

The others in the room, including Adon, silently stared at Kelemvor, wondering just how much of what the fighter said was the truth. Midnight , however, had no such problems with her former lover's story. "Are we going to get these chains off him?" the mage cried as she looked around the room at her other allies.

"We can't do that," the old man mumbled, running a hand over his bald head.

"He's right, Midnight . What proof do we have -," Varden began to add.

Midnight stood up and glowered at Varden. "What proof do you need? Kelemvor is our ally... my friend." The mage paused for a moment and her voice sank into a growl. "And if you don't release him, I will."

"But he came directly from Bane's garrison," the old man said. "He could have led the Zhentilar right to us!"

The cursed fighter bowed his head and sighed. "I wouldn't have to lead them here. They know where you are," Kelemvor mumbled.

The old man shook his head and looked around the room. "Then why haven't they attacked us?" he asked sarcastically. "We're still here, aren't we?"

"Listen to me," Midnight said coldly before the fighter could speak. "I want the chains removed, and I want food brought here. Immediately. Or I'll cast a spell that will raze this entire building."

There was a moment of silence, then the old man stood and muttered, "You win, mage. We'll do as you ask. But I will not have you threaten me again. I don't take well to threats... particularly from those who have sought asylum with me."