There was a ringing sound as the great iron-headed hammer Bronn wielded crashed down on some unfortunate Zhent's helm. The winded Rangers Three began to fall back. A spell hurled bodies in all directions, tearing a breach in the wall of corpses behind her.
Storm turned, frowning-creating a breach for the Zhents to pour through? What simpleton had birthed such a plan? — and then laughed aloud in delight.
"For Shadowdale!" came the roar from beyond the wall. Warriors in full plate armor rode through the breach, lances gleaming. At their head, three figures rode abreast: Florin; Mourngrym, lord of Shadowdale; and Shaerl, his lady.
"'Ware!" Storm yelled to the Rangers Three, waving them aside.
Dove sprang acrobatically across the path of the charging horses, somersaulted in a clanking of protesting armor, and fetched up beside Storm. Just then, the lances of the charging dalefolk came down, crashing into the massed Zhentilar in a great screaming of men and horses and tortured metal.
As first, the horses were slowed by the sheer weight of blackhelms standing against them. The mounted armsmen of the tower spurred out and around them, striking at the foe on either side. When the last horseman had charged, the Zhent lines had fallen back a good twenty paces-a distance marked by a carpet of black-armored fallen.
The dale riders pulled back to spare their horses from Zhent blades, and a cheer went up from the weary farmers and merchants who'd held the wall of dead so long against the forefront of the Zhent army.
A little space opened up between the defenders and the army of Zhentil Keep; Dove stared across it and hissed, "Oh, for some arrows…"
"All gone, hours ago," Storm told her, and they embraced wearily, eyes on the foe. Both sides had paused to catch breath, it seemed, staring at each other across the fallen, but making no move to attack.
"Gods, look how many there are," Shaerl murmured. "Can we hold them until sunset?"
"We must," Mourngrym replied shortly, looking around at the dead. "And dark'll bring the wolves and wild dogs out to feed, too."
"Well fought, you three," Storm called to Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr, who'd sat down together on some dead Zhentilar, rubbing at aching shoulders and bruised forearms.
"Of course," Itharr replied. "After all, you taught us."
Storm chuckled. "To dance with your blade, aye, a little-but fighting as one is your own doing."
"They're coming again," Dove said, striding forward.
" 'Ware, all!"
She swung her sword in wide, wild arcs to loosen stiffening muscles, and set herself to meet the Zhentilar attack; a cautious affair this time, with two or three blackhelms moving against each defender.
"This could be bad," Belkram murmured.
Sharantyr sighed. "Just try to stay alive… I need you both."
"You do?" Itharr asked, adopting Torm's manner of mock astonishment.
"I do," Sharantyr growled back at him. "We've got those Malaugrym to catch, remember?"
"Gods," Belkram cursed as he caught a hard-swung Zhent blade on his own and was driven a pace back. "Do Elminster's little tasks never end?"
"Where is Elminster, anyway?" Itharr panted, slashing a staggering Zhent across the face and bringing his blade up into the throat of the blackhelm fencing with Sharantyr.
"Off saving some other corner of the Realms, no doubt," Belkram said, driving his foe back with a few solid swings.
"I don't care about other corners of the Realms," Torm called to them, "only the one I'm in."
"An essentially selfish philosophy," Dove scolded him.
"But one that all lesser mortals must needs cling to, if they want to cling to life," Torm returned archly. He threw the blade in his hand into one eye of a snarling Zhent, who was charging in beside the one he was fighting. The man crashed down, and the thief leapt high to avoid being knocked over. His Zhent opponent wasn't so nimble, and toppled sideways, whereupon Hammerhand Bucko, the wagonmaker of the dale, calmly crushed the man's head with a sledgehammer.
"Thank you," Torm told him politely.
After gaping at him for a moment in amazement, Hammerhand grinned.
A trumpet rang out, the Zhents pressed forward, and the defenders of Shadowdale became all too busy to talk.
A tortured scream topped the fray as Nelyssa's mount reared up, three blades in its belly, and went down. The paladin threw herself clear at the last moment. Only some desperate bladework by Storm and Dove, sparks dancing from their furiously plied blades, kept the captain of the Riders alive until she could find her feet and fight on.
Kuthe grunted in pain and went down, a spear through him, and a moment later the Rider beside him fell, transfixed by three Zhent blades.
"Too many of them!" Merith snarled in frustration, swinging two swords in deadly, whirling unison. "What price sundown now?"
"There's too many! We can't hold them!" Illistyl shouted, swinging a sword awkwardly.
"We must hold them!" Mourngrym snarled back at her from the heart of a knot of Zhents.
"Where in the name of the Seven Dancing Gods is the Old Mage?" Storm raged as she carved her way to the lord of Shadowdale. "Especially now that we need him-for once."
"The temple," a wounded priest of Lathander gasped from behind her. "He stood alone there-or with a woman, some said-against Bane himself!"
Storm turned and stared at the rising column of black smoke that marked the distant temple. "No," she whispered. "Oh, no." She leapt clear of the fray, scant inches ahead of a Zhent blade, and sprinted away across the heaped dead.
Sharantyr turned, hacked through a Zhent blackhelm twice her size, and saw Storm spring into the saddle of a dale war horse. It leapt into a full gallop like an arrow shot from a bow, heading west.
Though Shar whirled back to face another foe, she still saw Storm's anguished face in her mind. No one should look like that. Nothing should ever happen in Faerun to make the Bard of Shadowdale look like that.
She parried the Zhentilar blade and spun away to run after Storm's racing dapple gray, heedless of the heaped dead.
Uncertainly, Belkram turned to follow, but Itharr shouted in alarm.
"Look you!" He pointed the other way, east beyond Krag Pool, where new plumes of smoke were rising through the green leaves of the trees.
"Gods," Shaerl gasped, her face white, as she stared east into the blazing forest. "The Zhents have fired the wood! The dale may become our pyre yet!"
The defenders of Shadowdale, too few and too weary to fight a blaze, stared at the quickening flames in horror.
"Now," Dove said firmly, " 'tis time!" She held up the blade she bore and called, "Eanamorrath!"
Lighting leapt from its suddenly blazing length, crackling along the line of blackhelms to strike the blade Lord Florin wielded. His sword flashed. Florin hissed at the shock of the bolt surging through the weapon, and then the lightning leapt back, sinking back into Dove's blade as if it were an errant phantom returning home.
In its wake lay a blackened path of dead Zhentilar, sprawled wherever the bolt had danced, and the air was sharp with the smell of the strike that had felled them. The surviving Zhent warriors drew back in disarray, leaving the defenders alone with the dead.
"Florin!" Itharr shouted. "Lord Florin!"
The Shield of Shadowdale turned his head.
Itharr called, "We must pray to Mielikki for a downpour!"
"But if all the gods are cast down and powerless…" a Rider leaning on his sword nearby said.
"No! He's right!" Illistyl snapped. "Mielikki and Eldath dwell in Faerun; their power is sourced here. Shaerl! Is your maid, Jenna, anywhere about?"
"I–I sent her to help Jhaele tend the wounded at the Old Skull," Shaerl said doubtfully, wiping sweat and tangled hair out of her eyes. "Why?"