Nelyssa's face was unmarked, but bone-white; she looked very like the young lass Florin had known so long ago… but her eyes were dark and sightless. The ranger stared into them as he sank down beside her and let out a long, shuddering sigh of grief. Was this madness of strife going to claim all the best hearts and minds before it was done?
"I need your sword, noble Falconhand," said a voice as rough and sharp as the skin of its owner. Margrueth of the Harpers laid her hand on Florin's own. The ranger looked up at her, finding it suddenly hard to drag his eyes away from Nelyssa's frozen face.
When he did, he was shocked at what he saw. The fire of life had gone out of the Harper sorceress, too. She was gray to the lips, and her skin was sunken and shriveled so that it seemed a skull thinly draped with flesh. Only the eyes told him the feisty Margrueth still lived, eyes dancing like two lively dark flames. "You will aid me in this, Knight. I must have your oath on it."
"My oath?" Weary and sad as he was, Florin still found that he could be startled. He looked around at the wondering farmers and the grim-faced Harpers, leaving him alone with the living woman and the dead one. They looked back at him. His oath. Whatever for?
And then, because she was old Margrueth and she was a Harper-and because he was Florin Falconhand-he turned to meet those wise old eyes. Holding her gaze, he lifted his voice to say clearly, "In Mielikki's name and mine own, I, Florin Falconhand, born of Cormyr, Lord of Shadowdale and Knight of Myth Drannor, promise on my honor to aid you, Margrueth, on this day and on this field, as you would command me."
"Nicely done," Margrueth said with a smile. "Now this is what I'll have you do-and swiftly, for the spells I wove today burned much life from me… I'd not live to see sunset whatever befell. Know for your own comfort that I act freely in this, and my wits are mine own."
She laid herself down, wheezing a little, atop Nelyssa's body, face to face, "Count four breaths, noble Florin, and plunge your blade into my back. Mind that it goes right through me, and into the lass beneath-and that you hold it thus for a breath, no more. Do this." And with that order, she put her lips to the paladin's mouth.
Florin stared down at her, swallowed, and then said hurriedly, in the two breaths left to him, "You shall be remembered with honor, Margrueth!"
As he'd been bid, he brought his blade down in a clean thrust, right through the old sorceress, and into Nelyssa beneath, where her armor was all riven away down her front. Margrueth jerked once under his steel, and blue-white light, like many tiny lightnings, crackled and danced around the joined lips of the two women.
Florin drew his blade out carefully. For a moment, the same radiance clung to its suddenly shining length. It looked as bright and sharp as it was when new, the scrapes and nicks of battle gone from it.
Yet more wondrous far was what befell where it had been. Margrueth's body was twisting and contracting into a thing of curling smoke, to the accompaniment of one last, dry chuckle.
That sound faded, and Nelyssa's revealed body stirred, color returned to her face, and a light came into her dark eyes. She slowly sat up.
"Florin?" she asked softly as the Harpers and farmers around cried out in wonder, gasped, or wept, "Have I slept? Is the day won-or lost?"
And Florin Falconhand cast aside his blade and knelt to take her in his arms. "Won for some, Captain… won for Mistledale. And yet lost for others, lost forever. Margrueth traded her life for yours."
The captain of the Riders turned pale. "No!"
"Aye, Nelyssa," Florin said gently, "you must know this, and hear the truth. She chose freely, and worked a magic I did not know, binding me under oath. Mine was the blade that took her life, and gave it to you. She was at the end of her life, drained by this battle… and brought you back to us."
The paladin of Chauntea flung her arms around him and wept.
"Hmmph," Torm said to Rathan as they trudged across the field, taking up the best weapons and tossing them on a farmer's sledge to bear back to Ashabenford, "women never do that to me. My arms await-see? Here they are, two of them, and fairly well matched to each other, too-and do ladies sob their sorrows away into my breast? No! Is it the cut of his chin, d'you think? The wave in his hair? His strong, manly bearing? Those gleaming teeth?"
"All of those," his friend agreed. "Now give me a hand with this halberd-three dead ones draped over it, look ye; three-and take comfort in the fact that ye've probably been in almost as many strange beds as he has… an' that ye're better far at stealing things."
"Umm," Torm agreed, looking again at the woman in Florin's arms. His eyes fell to the dark, sticky puddle of blood they shared, and he swallowed. So much blood…
"When we get back to the Six Shields," he told Rathan fiercely, "I'm going to get very drunk!"
"Oh? Don't forget that ye lost the bet with Sylune! We won the battle, so ye have to wear the scanties ye were putting on her, an' go sit in the window!"
"But she's… dead. You won't hold me to-"
"Oh, but I will," Rathan said softly. "In memory of her, ye will sit in that window this night, if I have to break thy limbs to get the fripperies onto ye."
Torm tore a gorget free of a Zhentilar who'd not be needing it anymore, and flung it with a clatter onto the sledge. "I'm going to get very very drunk!" he said fiercely, "first."
"Hmm," Rathan said, lifting a body into the air with one hand to pluck daggers free with the other, "that'll make the dressing an amusing affair. May I watch?"
"He'll be too drunk to stop anyone from watching," one buzzard commented to the other, shifting a little on a low, bare branch as a nearby farmer gave them a dirty look, bent to pick up a fallen bow, and then shrugged and turned away, knowing he couldn't hit the tree, let alone two watchful carrion birds.
"Faerun certainly affords more entertainment than Shadowhome," Bralatar said, remembering the battle as he looked out over the ravaged field.
"And because the peril to and consequences for us are the less, one can really enjoy it," Lorgyn replied, watching Merith and Jhessail embrace, and Illistyl, after a moment, turn and look around the battlefield for Torm.
"I cannot understand the thinking of Yinthrim, to throw life and all the unfolding chances of this world away just to try to avenge kin who may well have plotted his own death, had they lived."
"Atari, yes," Lorgyn agreed, "would always plunge into battle, given the slightest of excuses, but such folly is unusual for Yinthrim." He looked at the site of the tent where the two Malaugrym had perished the night before-now a trampled sward strewn with sprawled bodies. He shrugged. "I guess battle hunger overtook them."
"Battle hunger? Attacking three sleeping humans is something done out of 'battle hunger'?" Bralatar had a fine, showy grasp of sarcastic incredulity when something aroused him to it. He shifted on the branch, fluttering his feathers in irritation. "Admit they liked to slay folk, and fatally misjudged the fervor of these mortals, and have done with it. Two fewer fools to breed will make our house that much the stronger."
"A phrase fit for a speech of any Shadowmaster High," Lorgyn acknowledged, bowing his head. "So when, in your judgment, would it be best that we make our strike against the three who dared to intrude into Shadowhome, and slay so many Malaugrym?''
"When those three rangers are much older, and we've seen far more of this world-or at least, not now," Bralatar replied with his usual sharp humor. "Those two maids over there-Jhessail and Illistyl, if I heard aright-still have spells left. And who knows how many of those Harpers are mages? I'm not descending into the midst of a battlefield where one old man called down a god not long ago!"
"And the Lord of Battles at that," Lorgyn agreed. "Now is not a good time."
"'Now' is never a good time," Bralatar said dryly.