His face was grim and white, but he drew his blade and came to meet the woman in bloodstained leathers. Her eyes met his like two daggers, but she swayed, and her left arm hung limp, his quarrel standing out of her shoulder.
"Just what," he snarled, "brings you here, maid?" His blade leapt at her throat. Long hair parted at its passing.
"Death," she said softly, parrying. Their blades met fingerwidths away from her throat. Steel snarled on steel, but her blade held and his was forced away. "Yours."
She triggered the wand still clutched in her nerveless left hand, whispering the word that awakened its greater power.
There was a burst of white light, and the warrior screamed. Sharantyr saw him reel back. A startled Wolf's face gaped at them both from outside the wall, at the head of the rope. She leapt forward with the last of her strength and brought her blade down on that tight-stretched cord.
Strands parted and flew, and frantic scramblings came from just below her. Then the rope was gone, and two throats were crying vainly to the passing air. Their songs of fear ended very suddenly in thudding sounds.
Sharantyr sank to her knees there by the turret door and looked about with dull eyes, fighting waves of pain. The Wolf she'd struck with the wand lay fallen beside her. She made sure of his death with her blade, then her gaze fell on his belt.
A metal vial shone there amid the blood. With sudden urgency she tugged it free, snarling. On hands and knees, she set off on the long crawl back along the battlements.
The vial bore a rune she knew. The magical drink it held would heal, if it could be trusted with magic going wild. Gods, but she needed it!
The old man needed it more, the man whose life was more important than any other in the Realms, the man she'd come here to protect.
Sharantyr crawled grimly back along the battlements, using her blade where life yet lurked amid her fallen foes, and tearing free six more vials as she went.
She was half blind from helpless tears of pain when she turned the corner, crawling feebly to where Elminster sat in his blood. "Tymora," she sobbed aloud, "let me be in time."
Then Tymora, or someone else listening with dark humor, rolled darkness over her like a great black cloak, and she sank into it and was gone.
"We've the gods to thank that they aren't still raining quarrels down on us!" an exhausted Itharr said, leaning wearily against a heap of corpses, notched and battered blade in hand.
"More likely we've Elminster to thank," Belkram replied, looking back across the forecourt. Quarrels stood up from fallen, silent men, wooden doors and framing, and cracks in the flagstones like a thicket of leaning weeds. "They left off rather suddenly, and there's been no rush from above."
Itharr squinted up at what he could see of the battlements-not much from here. Then he shot another long look at the slit windows around the courtyard, expecting quarrels to leap out of them at any moment.
The two winded Harpers lay resting with half a dozen men of the dale, all who could still stand and swing a sword after the bloodbath desperate Wolves had made of the forecourt. Many dalefolk had crawled or been dragged away out of the keep. Those still able to fight had no good idea of how many Wolves were left in the castle. They agreed that no members of Longspear's council had been seen elsewhere in the dale. Most or all were probably within these walls.
There was also at least one mage of power, Hcarla Bellwind, as well as the hated Angruin Stormcloak, who'd hurled death in the marketplace and then fled. The dale-folk couldn't think of any place but here, his seat of power, that he could have gone when his magic took him away.
Unless Wolves were roaming the battlements above, none remained alive outside the stone walls of the High Castle. Itharr and Belkram had led the men of the dale doggedly through a hail of death to hack down the line of Wolves defending the courtyard. None of them still stood, but the castle servants had loosed the war-horses, milk cows, and goats to mill about the courtyards, making charging or even staying together impossible.
The two Harpers and the men they led were too weary to do more than watch the roaming animals for a while. They lay, moving only their eyes, amid the bodies of those they'd slain. Their roving gazes kept watch for any emerging foes, but also searched out water, good weapons, and-
"Hey!" Belkram leaned forward. "Over there." He slid down the flank of the still-warm dead horse he'd been propped against, rolled onto his knees, and clambered over bodies until he reached a certain belt. He tugged, worked at leather thongs for a moment, and came back to them with a metal vial in his hand.
"Healing quaff?" Itharr asked.
Belkram nodded and held it out to Gedaern, the most badly hurt daleman. "Just a swallow, now," he cautioned.
The white-faced, sweating man drank carefully, holding the vial in both hands. Then he closed his eyes and let his hands fall slowly into his lap as the liquid worked its way down.
When the old shopkeeper opened his eyes a deep breath later, he looked at Belkram. "Let's be at them again," he said with a wolfish grin. "I want to see all of them dead or driven out by nightfall."
He passed the vial on as similar bloodthirsty smiles answered him.
"Well," Itharr said, looking around, "what's the best way to get in without getting ourselves quickly killed? They'll be waiting."
The oldest man laughed suddenly, a short bark hoarse from long disuse. "I know the best place! Aye-the bolt hole!"
"Bolt hole?"
"Aye," the old man said. "I helped old Lhassar fill it in with stones, when I was a lad. It's where the jakes all drained out before they dug the deep cesspool."
Belkram rolled his eyes. "I might have known we'd end up climbing through dung before this was over." He waited until hearty, rather wild laughter had risen and died, and then asked, "So where is this?"
The old man pointed at an inner corner of the courtyard. "Over there."
Itharr raised his eyebrows. "The jakes drained into the-ne'er mind. I'm just right glad I didn't dwell here then." He rose, amid answering laughter, and swung his arms about to loosen his stiffening shoulders. "Let's to war again, then," he said quietly.
Belkram got up. "Aye. For the dale, men, and freedom!"
"For the dale, and freedom!" they roared back, and plunged grandly in amid the cows.
Itharr rolled his eyes. "I hope Storm has no magic to be watching us now," he murmured as he and Belkram dodged and trotted amid anxious, milling animals.
"Why not?" Belkram replied. "This is going to look splendid, in a breath or two, when we chase all these horses out of here so the Wolves can't flee on them!"
In reply, Itharr rolled his eyes again.
Ylyndaera Mulmar turned, eyes flashing. "Well, watch over me, then! You'll have to do it on the run, though, because I'm going after my father! He needs me. I know it. I… I can feel it."
She looked toward the castle, unseen through a solid wall of Ulraea's shop, and spun fiercely back to face the shop mistress, eyes flaming, hair whirling about her shoulders. "Are you with me, Ulraea?" The dagger gleamed in her hand as she mounted to the window, where the shutters still hung in ruins from Irreph's handling.
Ulraea spread her hands helplessly and sighed. She went to a nearby table, took up a new, gleaming cleaver, and tugged the price tag from it with sudden impatience. She slashed the air with it a few times, her ample bosom shaking, and sighed again.
"At least, child," she said reprovingly, beckoning with the gleaming steel in her hand, "if you must die a hero, let us leave by the door, hey, and not my window."
Daera's sudden smile was dazzling.
"What? Where?" The words were out of Sharantyr's mouth before she knew she was saying them. Gentle hands were cradling her head and stroking her hair.