A dragonman stepped out of the mad whirl, thrusting at the warrior's heart with an oaken spear as thick as a man's arm. The Vaasan brought his sword up to block and slashed through the shaft as though it were a twig, then smiled darkly, opened his attacker across the chest, and waded after more victims.
His success inspired another warrior to snatch one of the weapons, and a woman in the shelter grabbed one to defend her children from an approaching dragonman. They killed their first enemies and underwent transformations similar to the first sword-taker, then they, too, began to cut a swath through the attacking saurians. A dozen dragonmen leaped into the air, angling for the rack of deadly swords. They were met by a like number of Vaasans, all pulling weapons off the hangers and putting them to good use.
Bodvar appeared at Melegaunt's side, nearly losing his hand when he made the mistake of grabbing the wizard's shoulder without warning.
"Stop them!"
"How?" Melegaunt caught a battering wing on his shoulder, then lopped it off and slashed his attacker across the back of the knees. "The choice is theirs. They would rather live than die."
"Not live in your service!" Bodvar objected. "You arranged this."
"Not arranged." Melegaunt pointed his palm behind the angry Vaasan's head and blasted a would-be attacker with a shadow bolt. "You give me too much credit."
"And you do not give me enough." Bodvar stepped close, and Melegaunt felt the tip of a sword pressed to his back. "Release my clan."
Melegaunt glared at the chieftain. "At the moment, Bodvar, you have worse enemies than me." Relying on his shadow armor to protect him, he reached back and snapped the steel sword with his bare hand. "If you want them released, do it yourself. All you need do is persuade them to set aside their swords."
Melegaunt shoved the chieftain away and turned back to the battle. With most of the glass swords now in hand, the Vaasans seemed to have matters well under control. The dragonmen were being forced steadily away from the shelters, and even when they attempted to use their wings to slip over the defenders, they were met with a flurry of flashing shadow. Finally, they gave up trying and took wing-at least those who could.
Dozens of wounded saurians remained behind with wings too shredded or broken to lift them yet still strong enough to fight-and ferocious enough to do it well. The Vaasans quickly set to work on them, herding them into a tight ball and driving them toward the cliffs on the east side of the work site. Seeing that only one sword remained, Melegaunt left them to their work and quietly went to the rack and slipped the last sword into his empty scabbard-and that was when Bodvar choose to assert himself again.
"My warriors, look at each other!" he called. "See what Melegaunt's devil weapons have done to you?"
Melegaunt groaned and shook his head in resignation. Were Bodvar not so stubborn and sure of himself, the wizard supposed, he would not be worth the trouble in the first place. He turned to find the chieftain and his loyal wife standing behind their warriors, Idona holding a cloak loaded with an armful of steel swords, which Bodvar was trying none too successfully to press into his clansmen's hands.
"Finish the battle with your own weapons," he said.
One of the sword-takers-Melegaunt thought it was the first-scowled. "Why would we do that?" He hefted his darksword and said, "These are better."
"Better?"
Bodvar lunged for the sword-and was dropped to the ground by a solid elbow to the face. This one belongs to me," the warrior said.
"Does it?" Idona dumped the steel swords on the ground. "Or do you belong to it?"
She glared over her shoulder with a look that sent a cold shiver down Melegaunt's spine then grabbed her husband beneath his arms.
"Come, Bodvar." She pulled him to his feet and turned to leave. "We are Moor Eagles no more."
"Leaving?" gasped the warrior who had struck Bodvar. He looked at his darksword a moment, then, as a discontented murmur began to build among his fellows, lowered the weapon. "Wait."
Melegaunt cursed Idona for an ungrateful shrew, and fumbling in his thoughts for some way to salvage the situation, started forward. As usual, it was the dragonmen who saved him. All at once, they burst into action, hurling themselves at the distracted Vaasans. The first sword-taker and another warrior fell instantly, and the work site erupted into a maelstrom of violence even more confused and ferocious than the first. Melegaunt saw a pair of saurians springing in Bodvar's direction and took the first out with a bolt of shadow, but the second was too quick. This one bowled the chieftain over on the run and lashed out for Idona, then a half-dozen other melees drifted between Melegaunt and the young wife, and he lost her.
He rushed forward swinging sword and spraying shadow, but the battle was as mad and confused as it was quick. Before he could find Bodvar again, he had to slay two dragonmen and use a spell of shadow-grabbing to keep from being dashed lifeless on the rocks at the base of his own cliff.
When Melegaunt did find the chieftain, he wished he had not been so quick to save himself. Bodvar was standing in the midst of a bloody pile of Vaasans and dragonmen, holding two broken swords of steel and searching the carnage around with a look of utter terror on his face.
"Idona?"
Bodvar found a female leg kicking at the ground from beneath a dead dragonman and used a boot to roll the white-scaled corpse away, but it turned out that the leg belonged to the mother who had grabbed one of the swords to defend her children.
He turned away from her without comment and called again, "Idona?"
"There," rasped someone. "They've got her." Melegaunt spun toward the speaker and found a pallid-faced sword-bearer pointing across the work site to a small knot of fleeing dragonmen. They were just starting down the trail toward the boulder walk, each one with a limp Vaasan body slung over its shoulders. The last body in line was that of Bodvar's young wife, her throat ripped out and her head dangling by the spine alone, her blue eyes somehow still locked on Melegaunt's face.
"No!" Melegaunt gasped. He laid a hand on Bodvar's shoulder. “I’m sorry, Bodvar. Sorry beyond words."
"Why? You have what you came for." Bodvar reached down to Melegaunt's scabbard and drew the last dark-sword, then turned to start after his dead wife. "You have your twenty souls."
Liar's Game
Jessica Beaven
The Year of the Starfall (1300 DR)
At the edge of a city in Faerun, a sewer main empties into the swamp. The light reaching inside gives way quickly; any who enter must proceed by touch. Deeper, the sewage grows thicker. It sucks at one's calves. Deeper still, and the refuse is dry. The procession from wet to dry challenges the very imperative that water must flow downward. And yet the sewers go even deeper. Debris has come to rest here: a shoe with a foot decaying in it; a head wedged against a pipe protruding from the floor; worse.
With no heavenly bodies to mark its passing, time loses meaning. A drip falls, then fades into the past, dripping forever in its moment.
The pipes give way to catacombs. Sounds of weeping fill the close air.
From one corridor, light issues; it seeps from the walls. Shifting animal forms inhabit this hall. Bars and wire hold them in, stripe their features. Some of the creatures look normal-cats shivering in shelved cages, mongrels drooping, even a lion cramped in a forward-sloping cell, its hide pressed into the bars.