Danica dodged and dived, and deflected one thrust aside, though she gashed her arm in the process, and finally wound up in full retreat.
“Flee!” Elbereth cried, struggling futilely with his tight bonds. He rolled and kicked, and pulled his arms until they bled, but the stubborn ropes would not relax their painful grip.
Danica was glad that Tiennek continued his pursuit of her. The barbarian could have turned around and easily finished Elbereth before she ever got close enough to interfere.
“He will die after I have defeated you,” Tiennek explained, as if he had read her thoughts. “After he has watched. After I have taken you!”
Elbereth’s groan brought another smile to the cruel barbarian’s lips.
Tiennek charged again, but Danica was not caught off her guard. She lifted a foot, as if to kick straight out at her attacker, but kicked to the side instead, snapping the large tent’s center support. The roof drooped in around them, defeating Tiennek’s attack.
The barbarian thrashed around to get the drooping skins high enough in case Danica charged him, but the young woman was not to be seen.
“A worthy chase!” Tiennek howled, refusing to be intimidated. “And a prize worth catching.” He stalked off, pushing the hide roof from his path.
Danica easily could have slipped away and out of the collapsed tent, but that would have left Elbereth helpless. The barbarian, fearless and thinking the fight no contest, was making no secret of his whereabouts. And Danica, desperate for something to equalize the lopsided contest, determined to use that against him.
“Ye got that one!” Ivan bellowed, pointing to a fleeing orc.
Pikel stepped out from behind a tree, right into the orc’s path. Holding his club in both hands by its slender, tapered end, the dwarf leaned into a swing that blasted right through the miserable creature’s blocking arm and hit its head with enough force to snap its scrawny neck.
“Oo oi!” the happy dwarf squealed to his brother.
“Behind ye,” Ivan replied, and Pikel spun, crunching an orc’s head between his flying club and the tree.
Bellowing advice to his brother did nothing to hinder Ivan’s own ferocious attacks. He stood atop the felled ogre’s back, chopping at the orogs and orcs encircling him. The ogre wasn’t quite dead yet, and every time it groaned or stirred a bit, Ivan made a point of stomping hard on the back of the monster’s fat head.
Sheer viciousness replaced finesse as the dwarf held several monsters at bay with deadly chops of his mighty axe. One orc managed to get up on the ogre behind Ivan, clubbing the dwarf solidly on the back of his head.
Ivan laughed at it then sent it flying away with a cut that drove one side of his double-bladed axe halfway through the creature’s ribcage.
Tiennek stopped his thrashing and shouting and stalked slowly, easing the fallen roof out of his way. “I am not a weakling fighter of civilized lands,” he said. “I am Kura-winther!”
He sensed a bit of movement, a shift in the fallen tent, off to the side, and he took one small step that way. He raised one hand up high so that the roof would not sag, and bent as low as he could.
He saw Danica’s legs under the low skins a few feet away. The game was over, Tiennek decided, knowing that he was needed in the battle outside.
“I know your tricks!” he cried, and he heaved at the roof and charged Danica’s way, sword leading. Tiennek grinned with the knowledge that his long reach would give the woman no opportunity to parry or counter.
What confident Tiennek didn’t know was that Danica had grabbed the broken bottom half of the center pole, a crude spear that was longer than his sword.
Tiennek’s eyes widened in disbelief as he impaled himself on Danica’s set weapon.
“Some of my tricks, perhaps,” the woman said, showing no remorse for the man’s demise. She drove the pole deeper and twisted it.
Elbereth’s sword fell from Tiennek’s outstretched arm. The net in his other hand hung loosely. He dropped to his knees, and Danica released her grip.
The spear propped Tiennek up, supported him in that kneeling position, and the tent roof descended over him, a fitting death shroud.
Danica didn’t hesitate. Poor Elbereth, sitting blindly in the back of the collapsed tent, would simply have to wait. The young woman got her bearings and crawled and scrambled her way into the open air.
Morning had dawned and orogs and orcs were scattering and howling in chaos, with the exception of one group putting up a fair fight against the Bouldershoulder brothers, who stood back-to-back atop the felled ogre. Cadderly was off to the other side, still being pulled along by the orc.
Danica ran after her love then skidded to a stop as the wizard appeared beside the tent Tiennek had used. The woman made several gestures, held something Danica could not discern in one outstretched hand, and uttered a triggering incantation.
Danica’s instincts sent her diving between two trees just as the wizard’s lightning bolt went off. The blast split one of the small trees and rebounded into the other, scorching it just above the sprawled woman’s head. Danica was up and running in an instant, but soon, too, came the wizard’s second spell.
Sticky filaments filled the air, descending around Danica and catching hold of the trees, the shrubs, anything at all, to form a thick web. Danica scrambled every which way, using her speed and agility to stay one step ahead of the quickly forming trap.
Then she was clear of the tangle, though a bit to the side of her original course, and the wizard was not so far away. She heard a flap of wings, but saw nothing. The imp became visible right in her path, and its barbed tail shot at her shoulder.
The wound was minor, just a scratch, but the sudden tingling numbness and the burn in Danica’s arm told her that the imp had indeed poisoned her. She slumped back against a tree, the creature hovering in front of her, smiling wickedly and wagging his tail as though it meant to lash at her again.
Cadderly’s thrill at seeing Ivan and Pikel unexpectedly rushing to his aid was tempered by the fact that the dwarves were fully engaged and would not have the opportunity to prevent the orc from getting him to Dorigen. The creature’s grip on Cadderly’s arm was unrelenting, though the monster was looking more at its comrades’ fight than to its prisoner.
“No one but me.…” Cadderly muttered under his breath. He saw an opportunity to pull away as the orc released its grasp for just an instant.
But it passed without Cadderly mustering the courage to make the attempt. He heard a blast to the side and saw Dorigen loosing some thunderous wizardry, though at what target he could not discern.
Another chance presented itself when they neared the fire. Cadderly rose to the test. He stumbled and dropped at the orc’s feet, groaning and feigning injury. When the startled creature reached for him, Cadderly swung his legs inside the orc’s, hooked it behind the knees, and heaved with all his strength. The startled orc tumbled headlong past him. Not a pretty maneuver, perhaps, but effective—and even more so since the campfire burned low just a few feet away. Sparks flew when the orc hit the embers. It came up shrieking and screaming, smacking at the sparks that had caught hold on its clothing.
Cadderly struggled to his feet and dived against the creature’s back, knocking it into the fire once again. The orc came up on the other side, running away and paying no more heed to the young scholar.
“Well done, lad!” Cadderly heard Ivan cry, and he turned just in time to see the dwarf cleave an orog nearly in half with a mighty overhead chop. Cadderly was feeling good about his trickery, but for all he’d accomplished, he still found himself in the middle of a battlefield, unarmed, with his wrists bound behind his back. He scooted off to the quietest side and fell for cover behind a water trough.
Danica turned her thoughts inward, and personified the poison as a tiny, devilish thing biting her shoulder. Her muscles became her tools, flexing and tightening, turning to drive the insinuating intruder back toward the wound.
The poison devil was
a stubborn one, gnawing and burning, but Danica possessed determination far beyond that of an ordinary human. Her muscles worked intricately, shifting the poison to one side then back an inch. She pictured the open wound as a doorway, and working relentlessly, finally drove the fiend through.
Waves of dizziness rolled over her when she opened her eyes. She saw the imp again, still wagging its deadly tail, but wearing an expression that was considerably less cocksure. Danica followed the creature’s surprised gaze to her own shoulder, to the black liquid that had poured from her wound to roll down her arm.
The imp’s tail whipped back and shot forward, but Danica’s attack, a straight-ahead punch, came quicker, sending the hovering imp spinning head over heels.
Danica moved to give chase, but had to brace herself against a tree for a moment to stop from falling over. She saw the wizard scoop up the stunned imp and begin casting yet another spell. The woman held her closed fist out toward the monk, an onyx ring clearly visible on one finger.
Danica forced herself forward, ignored the dizziness, and focused on reaching the wizard.
The woman uttered a few quick incantations and a shimmering blue light appeared in front of her, and she and the imp stepped through and were gone.
The six remaining orogs had no desire to continue their combat with the brutal dwarves. They took flight together, Ivan and Pikel right on their heels. The monsters took to the trees as soon as they crossed the clearing, figuring that the armored dwarves would have a harder time climbing.
Ivan and Pikel stopped at the trunk. Pikel hopped about, trying to reach a branch to pull himself up, but Ivan had another course in mind. He dropped the head of his great axe between his feet, spit into both his hands, then took up the weapon and stalked in for the trunk.
“Uh-uh,” Pikel, the would-be druid, growled, wagging his head and throwing his short arms wide around the precious trunk.
“What? Have ye gone bats?” Ivan cried. “There’s damned big orcs up there, me brother. Damned big!”
“Uh-uh.” There was no compromise in Pikel’s tone.
The discussion was resolved a heartbeat later, when Cadderly spotted a shimmering field of blue in the distance and saw Dorigen step out and begin casting a spell toward the camp.
“ ’Ware the wizard!” the young scholar cried.
Pikel just managed to reply, “Eh?” before the spell went off, engulfing the tree, and the dwarves, in a ball of flame.
Cadderly leaped up from the trough and rushed over.
Pikel emerged from the carnage first, his clothes and face blackened with soot and his beard singed and sticking wildly every which way. Ivan came up behind him in a state of similar dishevelment. Worse off were the orogs, toasted in the branches of the leafless, charred tree.
“Boom!” the druid-minded dwarf said. Ivan toppled face down in the dirt.
Cadderly started for him, but Pikel stopped the young scholar with an outstretched hand, pointing back toward the large tent at the rear of the compound, and to Danica, stumbling out of the brush.
Cadderly ran to her side while Pikel saw to his brother.
Danica’s face seemed too pale, too delicate, and Cadderly nearly screamed in rage. Danica assured him that she was all right—or that she would be—but then she collapsed against him and seemed on the verge of losing consciousness.
Riddled with guilt, the young scholar wondered how in the Nine Hells he had gotten her into such an awful setting, into the middle of a war.
FOURTEEN
REVELATIONS AND RELUCTANT ALLIES
Cadderly saw the black liquid oozing from Danica’s wound and grew doubly concerned. He had seen the imp’s sting fell Pikel, and the dwarf would have died if it hadn’t been for a druid’s healing magic. How could a human survive a poison potent enough to overpower a dwarf?
Danica’s arm continued to twitch, and still more of the evil substance flowed out, mixing with her blood. Her breathing came slower, alarming Cadderly until he realized she was using a technique to keep herself calm. Then she opened her eyes and smiled at him, and he knew, though didn’t understand how, that she would be all right.
“A wicked sting,” she whispered. “And the burn.…”
“I know,” Cadderly replied. “Rest easily. The battle is won.”
Danica’s eyes looked past Cadderly and she couldn’t suppress a chuckle. Cadderly turned and saw Ivan and Pikel, both covered head to toe in soot, rushing around the camp, searching the bodies of dead monsters.
Danica sat up, took a deep breath, and shook her head vigorously. “The poison is no more,” she announced, her voice suddenly solid again. “I have defeated it, forced it from my body.”
Cadderly couldn’t begin to express his amazement. He shook his head slowly and made a mental note to question Danica on how she had overcome the deadly substance. But that would wait for another, more peaceful time. Cadderly had other concerns.
“Dorigen got away,” he said. Danica nodded and began working at the bindings on his wrists.
“You do not understand,” Cadderly continued, building himself into a minor fit of frenzy. “She has my crossbow. The weapon has fallen into the hands of an enemy!”
Danica didn’t seem overly concerned. “We’re alive, and free again,” she said. “That’s all that matters. If you get into a fight again, you’ll find a way to win without that weapon.”
Danica’s confidence in his ingenuity touched Cadderly, but she had missed his point. It wasn’t for himself that he was frightened.
“She has the crossbow,” he said again. “And the explosive darts.”
“How many?”
Cadderly thought for a moment, trying to recall all those he had used and all the ones he had continued to make during his stay in Shilmista.
“Six, I believe,” he said then he sighed with relief as he remembered another important point. “But she doesn’t have the flask containing more of the potion. I left that back at the elven camp.”
“Then fear not,” Danica said, still not understanding his concern.
“Fear not?” Cadderly echoed, as though his worries should be plain to see. “She has it—don’t you understand the implications? Dorigen could copy the design, unleash a new …” He stopped, unable to penetrate the frown on Danica’s face. She pointed behind him and he looked again over his shoulder.
Not even the dwarves were there. Cadderly didn’t understand.
“The tree,” Danica explained. “Look at the tree.”
Cadderly did as instructed. The proud elm, just moments before lush and vibrant in its late summer colors, remained only a charred and blackened skeleton. Small fires burned in several nooks. Waves of rising heat distorted the air above and around the tree. Heaped, blackened forms of the dead orogs seemed to meld together with the dark limbs.
“Do you believe that a wizard who could wreak such sudden and terrible destruction would be impressed by your tiny crossbow?” Danica reasoned. “In her eyes, would the bow be worth the expense?”
“Dorigen raised it against you,” Cadderly argued, but he knew before Danica even scowled at him that the wizard had threatened her with the bow only to further weaken Cadderly’s resolve.
“Your bow is a fine weapon,” Danica said, “but one that a wizard of … Dorigen’s? … power does not need.”
Cadderly couldn’t argue against that logic, but he was not comforted. Whatever the outcome, he couldn’t ignore the fact that a weapon he had designed might be used against an innocent, perhaps even against someone close to him.
Again the crossbow was a symbol of the insanity around him, the rushing violence that he could not control and from which he could not hide.
The haul was a bit meager by Ivan’s standards, and the stubborn dwarf refused to yield until he had searched every inch of the camp. He sent Pikel to a tent across the way while he moved to the collapsed one that Cadderly and Danica had exited.
He slapped at the fallen skins with his free hand and used hi
s axe to hold enough of the roof up so that a monster wouldn’t crash into him. He came upon a big human’s body first, still kneeling, propped by the crude spear
“I bet that hurt,” Ivan said, seeing the gruesome wound. He didn’t know whether the man had been friend or foe, so he didn’t go out of his way to search the body. Ivan did scoop up the fine sword that lay beside the dead man’s hand, though, muttering, “Ye won’t be needin’ this,” almost apologetically as he pressed farther under the fallen canopy.
“Another one,” the dwarf said in surprise, nearly stepping on another prone form. “And still alive,” he added when the wounded creature snarled and wriggled away.
Ivan’s expression turned sour when he saw it was an elf, not an orc, but his disdain didn’t outdo the antipathy plainly exhibited on the elf’s face.
“You have my sword,” the elf said, staring hard into the dwarf’s dark eyes.
Ivan looked down to his belt. “So I do!” he replied, making no move toward the sword or the elf.
The elf waited as patiently as he could for a long moment then said, his voice trembling with anger, “I am still bound.”
Ivan looked at him long and hard, finally bobbing his hairy head. “So ye are!” the dwarf agreed, and he walked away.
He nearly bumped into Cadderly and Danica back outside the tent.
“Where’s Elbereth?” Cadderly asked, surprised that Ivan had come out alone.
“What’s an Elbereth?” the dwarf asked in reply.
Cadderly wasn’t in the mood for bantering. “Ivan!” he shouted.
The dwarf’s eyes widened, two shining orbs in the middle of his blackened face. “That’s a fine ‘well met,’ ye ungrateful—”
“All of our thanks,” Danica interrupted, relieved to see the dwarf but also wanting to calm the increasingly volatile scholar. She stepped over and threw a huge hug around the dirty dwarf, even kissing him on his hairy cheek—and leaving a clean spot in the soot.