Villains by Necessity (28 page)

"The Ballad of Tirsat Lam" as being of good cheer and with a nice sort of marching rhythm. With calloused fingers striking notes from the strings, he began to sing:

Long ago in the land of Phrin Roamed the Seeker, Tirsat Lam, His heart was light though his boots were thin The wandering warrior, Tirsat Lam.

The others seemed to cheer up a bit, lifting their feet with more enthusiasm. "Not bad, centaur," acknowledged Kaylana. "You might possibly have made a bard, back in the old days."

"What's a bard?" asked Robin, pausing in his singing while his fingers carried on through the refrain. Kaylana looked a little surprised and sad, and shook her head.

"Perhaps I shall tell you later. In the meantime, please continue."

"Aye, do that," added Arcie, hopping from tussock to tussock in an effort to keep out of the deeper puddles.

Robin blushed a little, and went on.

He had come from the War at Galor At the ancient Hippogryph's lair When the trumpets sang of valor Tirsat Lam was surely there.

"That's very interesting how you did that," interrupted Sam. "One can almost hear the trumpets blowing in the distance."

"I ..." began Robin, but abruptly the party froze.

Robin's fingers fumbled and the last notes of the harp died away, replaced by a distant sound-the call of a hunting horn drifting softly across the Fens, answered a moment later by another, closer.

"Fight or flight?" asked Kaylana, tersely. "I make it about three horses and some dogs, going to be here in a few minutes. The dogs have our scent. And I cannot do anything with the dogs ... they sound to me like Feyhounds, creatures of Elven-bred stock immune to my powers."

"Fight," opted Sam, flipping out a pair of daggers.

"Well enough," muttered Arcie, climbing out of a pothole and unhooking his morning star.

"There isn't much choice," decided Valerie. Blackmail silently unsheathed his sword, and stood ready. A moment later a crash of hurtling figures broke out of the misty shadows, and the renegades had to fight for their lives.

Sam dodged a whistling sword blow that would have separated his head from his shoulders and looked up at a figure in warrior's gear, wearing a green and gold tabard over his chain mail and under his fringed vest. The fellow grunted as his sword missed and jerked a curved hunting horn to his lips. Sam flickered, and the form fell with a slow gurgle, a pair of vertical slits in his neck.

Kaylana had lost her wooden shield in the flood, and was now almost the unfortunate recipient of a hefty whack to the side of the head with a mace from what looked to be an enthusiastic woodsman-priest of some sort, followers of the hunters' deity Artelis. She jumped back, the mace barely missing, and fell with a splash into a pool. A cry of

"I got one!" rang out. Kaylana shook her head in the water, then noticed something squirming underneath her fingertips. She could feel her staff channeling natural energy safely away from her as it touched her. With a grip of her staff and a faint whispered word, her hand closed on it.

Arcie danced around another fellow trying to hit him, sending the man's horse spinning in circles. The armored warrior cursed. Arcie abruptly yelped and leaped away as three white, red-eared hounds lunged at him. The warrior turned and found himself confronting a huge, darkarmored figure wielding a massive sword. The sword whistled through the air, and he fell off his horse in avoiding the blow.

Valerie looked over to where the Barigan stood at bay.

Her eyes narrowed in anger. She remembered Feyhounds, the vicious white tracking and hunting dogs of the people who had destroyed her life. Her dark-clawed hand lashed out with a crackle of power, her voice hissing words of magic. Arcie whopped one of the dogs on the side of the head with his morning star, and then stared in shock as all three burst into brilliant flame, yelping and running about.

Meanwhile, in a lightning motion Kaylana threw the large, smooth shock-worm she had found at her attacker, who was dismounting, preparing to come finish her off. It wrapped around his neck like a wriggling scarf, discharging several thousand volts of sky-fire into his body. He gave a gurgling shriek and fell, twitching, purple sparks flashing over his chain mail.

Sam saw the last warrior faced off with Blackmail, the two circling each other, blades clashing and clanging. He whipped out a dagger, and as he threw it a large dog, somewhat on fire, crashed into the back of his knees, spoiling his aim. He fell face first into the mud and had to contend with snarling, snapping jaws as the maddened beast tore at him.

"Ha!" cried the last man, as the silent knight closed on him. "You may kill me, but you'll all perish in the firestorm I shall unleash with my magical crystal ..." He grabbed for the rune-inscribed pouch that had held it, and scrabbled at where it should have been. As the great black sword descended, his last sight was of a grinning Barigan sitting on a tuffet behind the dark knight, holding the pouch aloft and waving it slightly.

There was a snap and hiss and Sam shoved the hound into a puddle, breaking its neck as he did so, and then tense silence reigned, broken only by the drum of horses' hooves retreating. Three men and three hounds lay scattered about. Sam saw Blackmail wiping off his sword, Kaylana emerging from a pool, rubbing her head, Valerie dusting her hands off with a faint smile, Arcie tucking a pouch into his belt... and Robin standing stricken, some distance off, stock still and white as a snowbank in the moonlight. Sam coughed.

"All right... does anyone have a seven-inch piece of steel inside them that doesn't belong there?" he asked apologetically.

There was a chorus of confused no's, except for Robin.

"You just killed all those people..." the minstrel quavered.

Sam walked up to him, beckoning Kaylana to follow.

He looked up at the centaur with a tolerant smile. "Never seen battle before, have you?"

The centaur shook his head.

"I thought not ... well, if you'd been in here doing your share, I don't think you'd have caught this so easily ... and you might have noticed if you had."

Robin looked down to where the assassin was gently tapping his equine chest. An ebony-hilted dagger set with a piece of camelian was stuck sideways in the thick muscle there, letting a slow trickle of blood slide down his foreleg. Robin trembled all over, his ears pinned back, and then his large brown eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed into a dead faint. His heavy body fell with a soggy noise into the muddy marsh.

Kaylana rushed to remove the dagger and pack the wound with healing herbs. "Poison?" she asked tersely.

"No ..." replied Sam softly. "Just scared of his own blood, I think."

"You knew you'd hit one of us?" Valerie asked, coming up and inspecting the fallen centaur. Sam nodded and looked away. He thought he saw torches in the distance.

"I never miss."

"Aye come on," scoffed Arcie. "That's just yer advertizmints."

"Really," said Sam. "I may not always hit what I aim at, when I fire or throw a weapon ... but I always hit something. Always."

"Inborn magic, perhaps," commented Valerie, her voice still showing disbelief. "Were your parents magically talented?" Sam shook his head slightly, not answering, as old wounds stung. He coughed roughly.

Robin's eyes fluttered, and he tried to roll to his feet.

He got to his knees and shook his head. Sam looked down at him.

"Sorry," the assassin said. Robin goggled at him. Sam walked away, saying, "We'd better get a move on ... these people's friends will be here soon, I think ... I can hear the horns." He coughed again. His jerkin was torn, scorched, and bloodstained by his grapple with the hound.

Kaylana looked around the party; wounded from battle, still sore from the bruising in the Ford, coming on sickening from the air of the Fens.

"We may not survive another attack," she said slowly.

"We must move away from here, quietly and without trace. Valerie, if you can summon a magical fog, I can hide our tracks from their hounds."

The searching men of the Verdant Company looked at each other in puzzlement as a slow, oily fog began to drift through the night. The hounds wandered in circles, confused, and the calls of the horns grew fainter and fewer as the strange fog muffled the noise.

In the fog, a battered string of renegades headed northeast.

The men of the Verdant Company lit lanterns and held them aloft so that they could see the way, not wishing to stumble into a ditch or bog or pool. It was this that proved their undoing, however.

The three men in group D were becoming uneasy.

"This place is creepy," said the healer of Artelis, whose fellow brothers had served the Verdant Company as long as it had existed. Though his faith in his goddess was strong, the Fens seemed literally godsforsaken, and his eyes darted about nervously. The woodsman in the group nodded.

"Yes it is ... Fenwick didn't take this fog into account when he sent us out... I think we'd better find some of the others and form larger groups."

"Good idea," said the warrior, and raised his horn to his lips. The sound pealed out and then died away. There was no reply. The light of the lanterns attracted flickering, midge-like insects, and all was quiet but for the snuffling of the hounds and the soggy sounds of the horses' hooves in the mud.

"Ho! Look there!" exclaimed the woodsman in delight, pointing to their left. The others turned, and saw three dim, flickering lights, softly yellow, close together but far away, surely the lanterns of three of their companions in another group.

"What a relief," sighed the warrior, and they turned their horses toward the distant lights, riding at a brisk trot to reach the safety and security of companionship.

The dogs whimpered slightly, and the horses seemed less willing to follow the lights, but the riders ignored them.

They barely had time to gasp in terror as the ground suddenly fell away beneath them, plunging them into an inky morass of quicksand, kin to the quick-mud but much worse, for in the liquid muddy sand one could feel slimy things moving against one's skin. As they floundered, a clawed hand lunged up from the muck, gripping a man's face and pulling it down. There was the flash of crocodile teeth. The lights, hovering and dancing over the pool, flashed down like large, eerie fireflies to feed.

They drained away the fading life essences of the dying men, leaving them shriveled and pale, stricken faces wide in frozen terror.

All across the marsh, lights real and imagined flickered, and death once more stalked the Fens.

"What's that?" asked Arcie, peering at a dim light bobbing in the distance. Valerie looked up and turned away quickly.

"Ignore it, Barigan."

"But..."

"Don't look at it!" snapped Valerie, stepping in front of him. She looked up at the others. "Don't any of you look at them. I'm not certain how, but there are darker things than we afoot tonight. If you see those lights, ignore them, do not look at them, and above all do not follow them!"

Sam was glancing about, trying to keep an eye on the lights without looking at them. Valerie's fog boiled around him. "They look like lanterns."

"What are they?" asked Robin, on his feet now and moving, but shaky.

"In the Underrealms, we called themfihilin... here I think they are called Willowisp. Very, very dangerous."

Valerie moved on, holding her robes up so as not to get them too muddy. The raven on her shoulder closed its eyes and ruffled its feathers against the chill of the fog.

The rest followed. The lights did not approach to be inspected, and the party did not seek them out.

"It will be dawn soon. Sir Fenwick." Towser sat on his horse and looked about the glooming fog. He pulled his green robes tight and arranged the hood over his closecropped brown hair.

Sir Fenwick halted his horse a moment. The warrior scout Jeffries, Towser, and a healer named Mella who rode with them all stopped as well. They had ceased to sound the horns, finding them useless in the fog. They stood on a lumpy hill, looked down into the plain of the Fens, and saw something that gave their hearts the cour age of battle.

Straggling across the open space was a line of figures on foot, with one horse? No, a centaur. And coming up to them from behind in a haphazard sort of way, was an other party of three, with lanterns lit. With silent exalta tion Fenwick raised his horn and sounded the charge. His party raced down the hill as the other group of mounted men galloped forward, and they met in the middle of the dark figures.

The renegades had of course heard the horns and the hoofbeats, and thus were not totally unprepared for the attack. The horses of Fenwick's party skidded and col lided as they reached the bottom of the hill, a powerful blast of the Druid's power almost knocking them over as they tried to obey her and retreat. They splashed into a ditch at the foot of the hill, on top of the three flounder ing hounds. Two of the men, Fenwick not being one of them, were unhorsed. Upon the group approaching be hind them, Valerie, drawing on her magic powers, threw a spell of slumber. The three horses fell unconscious in mid-stride; They awoke again almost instantly, but not before spilling their riders and crashing down upon the suddenly somnolent hounds. Fenwick spurred his horse and met a well-aimed morning star with his kneecap. He slashed down in fury, the sword Truelight gleaming like frozen lightning, and something yelped.

Towser, meanwhile, had quickly gotten to his feet and cast a spell. A plume of light shot into the air and burst with a flare, illuminating the scene in garish gold light.

Valerie cringed away, blinded. Two of the hounds lunged at her, teeth snapping, and she shouted another spell that sent them yipping as black darts buzzed about them. The Feyhounds snapped and growled, trying to bite her in between the attacks. Nightshade croaked loudly at them, slashing at tender muzzles with his beak while he shielded his mistress from the light as best he could with his wings.

Sudden searing pain shot through Towser's chest, and he fell, eyes glazing. Sam wheeled from the fallen mage with his dagger still dripping and saw Fenwick's horse rearing, about to come down on a small huddled figure on the moss. He threw the dagger without thinking. It spun through the air and clipped the horse's tail, making the animal lunge forward and over the prone Barigan. At that moment, the other woodsman sprang behind him, and Sam dodged away, still getting a slash on the leg from the fellow's drawn sword. He cursed and kicked the man into a deep puddle, then ran to Arcie.