Temple Hill

Forgotten Realms

The Cities: Temple Hill

By Drew Karpyshyn

Alturiak, 1370 DR

Corin felt them before he saw them, felt them just as sure as he had felt the coming storm that had been raining down on them for the last hour. After a year of working for Igland’s White Shields, escorting dozens upon dozens of caravans between Elversult and Iriabor, he had developed a sixth sense for these things.

Thunder broke overhead, and lightning illuminated the landscape for a brief second. Corin saw nothing out of the ordinary, but still he knew. He held up a clenched fist and pulled his mount up short. Behind him the other nine members of the White Shield Company did the same. Corin wasn’t their official leader, but the others in the company respected him for his skill with a blade and his composure in the heat of battle. Despite his youth, they knew to trust his instincts; that was why Igland had him riding point.

The passenger coach that the Shields surrounded ground to a halt as well, and the door flew open. Fhazail’s fat form rolled out from the carriage, a broad umbrella spread above to keep the downpour from ruining his fashionable courtier’s clothes.

“What’s going on here?” he wheezed to Igland, Captain of the White Shields.

“Something’s not right,” Igland answered. “Get back inside before the trouble hits.”

Fhazail peered about, his beady eyes squinting through the storm. “I don’t see anything except rain clouds. Are you telling me you’re afraid of a little thunder and lightning?”

“Bandits,” Corin said in a low voice. “Nearby. They’ll hit us any minute.”

“Impossible!” Fhazail sputtered, his jowls quivering. “How could you know that?” Turning from Corin, he addressed the captain, nervously twisting one of the heavy gold rings on his right hand, rotating the gemstone set into the face completely around his sausagelike finger. “You told me a small group of armed soldiers wouldn’t attract attention, you promised we’d be safe if we went with your company!” His eyes narrowed even farther as he cast suspicious glances at the armed men surrounding him. “I could have hired fifty soldiers to protect Lord Harlaran’s son, but you convinced me to use your small company instead!”

It was untrue, of course. Fhazail had chosen the White Shields because they were a fraction of the cost of hiring a full merchant escort. Corin suspected the steward had informed Lord Harlaran that he was hiring a virtual army to escort his son, then pocketed the difference. The gaudy jewelry on his right hand was matched by equally ostentatious, and expensive, rings on his right.

“Captain,” Fhazail added in a softer voice, “did you betray me?”

Igland’s reply was stiff and cold. “The White Shields are not traitors.”

“Everyone’s a traitor for the right price,” Fhazail returned, rubbing his double chin and eyeing Corin in particular.

Igland ignored the insinuation. “There’s always bandits

on the Trader Road, Corin just has a sixth sense for when they will attack.”

Corin returned Fhazail’s glare and said, “They probably don’t even know who the boy’s father is—kidnapping and ransom are likely the last things on their minds. They’d attack just for those bands of gold around your fingers, and the satisfaction of slitting our throats.”

Fhazail was about to reply when a single arrow buried itself in the soft earth just inches from his feet. He stared down in surprise, then scampered back into the coach as several more shot into the wooden roof of the carriage. Suddenly the dark sky was filled with missiles launched from the hidden bandits’ bows, falling down on Corin and the others like the rain that had drenched them for the past hour. The driver of the coach leaped down from his unprotected seat and squeezed his way inside the carriage over the protests of Fhazail. Rain was one thing, a storm of arrows was quite another.

Most of the arrows landed harmlessly on the ground. Some would have fallen on the men and their mounts as they closed ranks, but they threw up their painted broad shields, for which they were named, over their heads to catch the deadly projectiles. The few that made it past the soldiers’ shield canopy bounced harmlessly off their mailed shirts.

Moments later a second volley landed with similar ineffective results. The bandits attacked, a ragtag collection of twenty or so humans on foot, with the odd ore and goblin thrown in for good measure. They appeared all at once, pouring out from behind the hillocks and mounds that lined the road, screaming with battle lust as they formed a disorganized horde in the middle of the Trader Road.

Corin knew the arrows had been merely a decoy, a chance for the robbers to close the distance between themselves and the caravan, negating the chance of a wizard wiping out the whole band with a single spell of mass destruction. However, there were no wizards in Igland’s company. His men preferred the honest strength of forged steel and a well-trained sword arm.

As a single unit Igland’s men charged forward through the downpour, lowering their heavy lances in unison. Their mounts splashed through the puddles in the road, churning up great clods of mud in their wake. Foolishly the bandits kept rushing head on, gathered in a tight little group in the center of the road as if they wanted to be ground under the heavy hooves of the war-horses.

Corin braced his lance in the stirrup and with his free hand wiped the rain from his forehead. He relished the coming slaughter—for slaughter it would be. Most of their foes would be trampled beneath the initial charge, the survivors would be run down by the riders even as they fled back into the hills. It was almost too simple.

Through the darkness of the storm and the torrential rains none of them ever saw the trip wires stretched across the road. The front runners went down, the horses flipping and twisting as the ropes entangled their legs, the riders tossed from their mounts to land with stunning force on the road before them, their heavy lances torn from their grasp and sent hurtling through the air. The second rank was too close behind them to pull up, and another set of snares sent them tumbling to the soaked earth in a chaotic mass of beasts and men sliding through the mud. The weight of their armor dragged the soldiers down, momentarily pinning them to the ground, unable to evade the final rank of riders, unhorsing them as well and spreading the carnage through all of Igland’s company. The rhythmic thunder of charging hooves disintegrated into the cacophony of crashing armor, neighing horses, and screaming men.

Corin was thrown from his horse, miraculously landing uninjured in the soft mud. But even as he tried to roll to the side he was swept up in the chaos, carried along by the force of the charge, swallowed up by the rolling, crashing herd of dying men and animals. Limbs were crushed and skulls were trampled or kicked in by the iron shoes of the fallen horses; the mounts shrieked neighs of terror and pain as leg bones splintered and were ground to dust by the onslaught of their own mass and momentum.

The soldiers lay strewn about the road. Several bodies were mangled, limbs jutting out at unnatural angles, compound fractures protruding through skin or bulging obscenely beneath their mailed suits of armor. The horses lay beside their masters, kicking and thrashing in blind agony, as lethal to their owners now as they had been to their enemies in glorious battles of the past.

Corin crawled clear of the fallen men and writhing mounts and rose hastily to his feet. He had suffered no worse than bumps and bruises, though he had lost both his shield and lance in the fall. Somehow his sword was still in its scabbard, strapped to his side. Through the rain he noticed several other forms struggle to their feet, maybe half a dozen in all, to face the coming assault.

Corin didn’t even have time to draw his weapon before the bandits fell on them. A goblin charged at him, waving a cruel looking short sword above his head. Corin lunged forward, colliding with his onrushing assailant and catching his attacker by surprise. On the wet ground footing was unsure, and the goblin bowled Corin over. As he fell Corin grabbed his attacker in a bear hug, dragging his startled adversary down with him. They struggled together, rolling through the muck as Corin tried to use his size and strength to gain the upper hand. The goblin stabbed with short, ineffective strokes, unable to put

enough force into the blows to pierce Corin’s armor in such close quarters.

A second goblin raced over to join in the fray, eager to strike a blow, looking for a clear shot at Corin.. Corin made sure that shot never came, twisting and turning so that the first goblin’s body was always between himself and this new opponent. The second goblin danced around the pair as they wrestled in the mud, slipping and sliding as he waited for an opening. Finally he gave up and began hacking indiscriminately at the tangled pair.

The first goblin screamed as his companion’s blade bit deep into his back, severing the spinal cord. In one smooth motion Corin, still lying beneath the twitching body of his opponent, wrenched the short sword free from the now paralyzed hand of his first attacker and used it to slash at the unprotected leg of the second goblin hovering over them. The sword bit deep into the flesh, slicing through the tendon. With a howl the goblin collapsed on the ground, bringing his exposed throat within range of Corin’s next blow. Corin did not miss.

He then rolled the paralyzed first goblin off him and dispatched his now helpless enemy with a single blow. He scrambled to his feet and pulled out his own long sword, quickly surveying the battle scene. Several figures were moving cautiously through the fallen bodies of the horses and soldiers. Ores, likely, looking to finish off the wounded and steal some small trinket from the dead that they could keep hidden from the rest of the gang. Several more robbers had surrounded the carriage, preventing any chance of escape for the driver, Fhazail and the nobleman’s young son.

Corin’s brothers-in-arms, the four that were still standing, were on the defensive. They stood on the far side of the road, back to back in a small circle, swords weaving tight patterns in the air as they held their enemies

momentarily at bay. Through the gloom of the storm Corin could make out several fallen bandits at the feet of his friends, and he recognized the distinctive armor of Igland among the four still standing. His companions faced overwhelming odds, completely surrounded by at least a dozen armed opponents who were only waiting for the reinforcements to finish their looting of Corin’s fallen comrades before they moved in.

Corin sprinted across the road, his feet skidding across the wet earth, brandishing his blade above his head and screaming his battle lust to the broiling thunderclouds overhead. Several of the bandits spun to meet Corin’s charge, turning their backs on the four soldiers in the middle of the pack. The soldiers acted instinctively, moving as one—the result of years of training and drills— attacking the suddenly exposed backs of their opponents.

Before the rest of the bandits could even react, four of their number lay dead or dying, and the soldiers had broken free of the confining circle. A second later Corin joined the battle, and the bandits found themselves being pressed on two fronts. With a single command from Igland the White Shields took the offensive.

Corin waded through the rabble of poorly equipped bandits, easily parrying the unskilled slashes and swipes of their rusty swords and returning them with lethally effective cuts and thrusts of his own finely wrought weapon. He carved a swath through his opponents, mowing them down like so much grain at the harvest, then turned for another pass.

In his peripheral vision he noticed his companions wreaking similar havoc on their incompetent foes. The bandits—disorganized, untrained cowards at heart— scattered beneath the fury of the White Shields’ wrath. Corin took a step after them, but pulled up short when he heard Igland’s voice shouting above the storm.

“Let them go, Corin! We have to protect the boy.”

Corin turned his attention back to the carriage. The horses had been unhitched, leaving the carriage stranded in the road. The coach driver lay face down on the ground, motionless. Corin could make out the fleshy mountain of Fhazail through the carriage window, and another figure as well. It was too large to be Lord Harlaran’s son, Corin assumed it was one of the robbers. He prayed the bandit was just tying Fhazail and the boy up, and not slitting their throats.

A half-dozen men stood near the coach, prepared for battle. From the way they held their weapons Corin could tell these were not the untrained fodder he had just dispatched with such ease, but experienced mercenaries. A second later the men were joined by four figures slinking in from the darkness—the ores had finished their looting, and were now ready to fight.

“Ten against five,” Igland muttered. “I like our chances.”

There was no mad rush forward this time. Both parties knew a foolish mistake would mean certain death. The White Shields advanced slowly in a loose formation, the bandits spreading out as they approached. Igland barked a command, and Corin and one of the other soldiers slid back a step to guard against anyone trying to flank them.

For a brief second they faced each other—highway robbers and hired guards, buffeted by the howling wind and driving rain of the raging tempest.

From the carriage Fhazail’s voice called out in a blubbery whine, “The leader tells me that if you throw down your weapons they’ll let us all live. All they want is to ransom the boy. They don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Igland gave a contemptuous laugh. “Even you aren’t gullible enough to believe that, are you Fhazail? The only

one they care about is the boy. The rest of us are nothing but dragon meat to them. This ends in one of two ways, with their deaths or ours.”

There was nothing more to say, the battle began. Igland’s men pressed forward, maintaining their loose formation. The bandits held their ground, but Corin could already tell they weren’t used to fighting as a unit. Though outnumbering their foes, the bandits weren’t able to coordinate their efforts. They took turns engaging the soldiers, attacking, thrusting and parrying before falling back to allow another man to move in for a pass.