picked up his knife, but there was a hissing sound the moment Ren's hand touched the steel sliver. The Zhentilar drew back, holding
his right hand in his left.
"Damn!" he growled. "The sliver burns!"
"There must be a sorcerer involved," Tyzack hissed as he tried to regain his composure. "I see no one near, and nothing could
have thrown that shard all the way from the rise. It's simply too far away."
The thief instinctively thought of Midnight, then chided himself for the foolish thought. The mage would never be stupid enough
to confront a three-hundred-man regiment of Zhentilar. Then a thought occurred to the thief. "If it was a mage, it might explain the
light in the distance," Cyric noted aloud.
Suddenly a shadow passed over the Zhentish forces, and an audible gasp erupted from the troops. As Cyric looked up, his
hand moving onto the hilt of his dagger, the thief saw a swirling mass of glittering light hovering above them Squinting, Cyric realized
that, although he was looking full into the sun, a curtain of steel fragments hung in the sky, blocking his view. Sparks of light refracted
from the myriad surfaces of a storm cloud formed from metal shards.
"What is that?" Tyzack cried, his voice cracking. The Zhentish leader reached over and clawed at Slater's shoulder, trying to get
her attention. The warrior shrunk away from Tyzack's touch as she controlled an urge to grasp the man's hand, yank him from his
mount, and cut his throat as he fell.
Instead, Slater yelled, "Don't touch me!" and shoved Tyzack's hand away.
"Tyzack!" Ren murmured, disquiet showing in his ragged voice. "What are your orders?"
A single shard fell from the heavens like a drop of water dripping from the tip of an icicle that had begun to melt. Tyzack tore his
gaze from the skies and covered the back of his head with his arms, then he thrust his face into the mane of his horse. From a
hundred feet behind the black-haired leader, there was a scream.
"It got Sykes in the leg!" someone shouted.
Some of the Zhentish soldiers had begun to break ranks, scattering across the flat, open field. "There's nowhere to hide!"
someone screamed, and a ripple of panicked cries arose from the troops.
Cyric watched the leader of the Zhentilar quake and moan in fear. "Ren's right!" the hawk-nosed thief growled as Tyzack slowly
raised his head. Contempt for the coward raged within Cyric as he cried, "You must give an order!"
Tyzack was about to speak when another shard fell from the sky, this one sailing toward the front of the advance, where the
Scorpions had gathered. Praxis was struck in the shoulder by the sliver of metal, and he howled in agony as the sharp tip exited the
back of his arm.
"I'm - I'm burning!" Praxis screamed as a grayish black mist rose from the wound. The soldier tried to pluck out the shard, but
the effort only caused him greater pain.
Cyric and Ren turned to face the rest of the Zhentish army. Both men shouted for calm, then looked at Tyzack, waiting for the
man to speak. Discord was spreading through the ranks, and individual leaders were trying to take control of the individual factions
within the force.
"We're... dead!" Tyzack whispered as he stared at the heavens. "There is no place to go!"
Cyric forced his horse over alongside Tyzack's. He grabbed the black-haired man by the collar and shook him hard. "Don't say
that!" the thief hissed. "You'll lose control of the men." Cyric was surprised to see that Ren didn't make a move to stop him.
"The blades!" Tyzack cried. "There are so many of them, and they're getting bigger! Look!"
Looking toward the sky, Cyric saw that the mass of shining silver blades was slowly descending.
"Ride!" Tyzack muttered, his voice as soft as a child's.
A half-dozen shards dropped from the sky like ripe apples from a tree. Those Zhentilar that had shields now struggled to free
them from their hacks or their saddles. Screams went up from the rear and center of the advance.
Cyric looked to Slater. "What did he say?"
Ren glared at the thief. "Tyzack said to ride! We must reach the shelter of the southern rise before the shards drop from the
sky!" The blond fighter kicked his horse into motion, and a large group of soldiers followed him.
The rain of metal shards increased, as if the bottom of the huge, invisible box that had been holding them were torn open,
allowing the flechettes to plummet to the ground. Screams sounded from throughout the ranks. Handfuls of Zhentilar were struck
down, dead or gravely wounded.
"Ride!" Tyzack screamed as if he had suddenly realized the danger. The black-haired man kicked at the sides of his mount,
propelling the beast forward.
In seconds, Cyric found himself racing toward the auburn, skeletal ridge. The shadow caused by the cloud of knives was
deepening, and it seemed to be following the Zhentish army. The cries of the Zhentilar who were struck down by the shards filled the
air, their shrill screeches cutting through the dull roar made by hundreds of galloping horses.
The Zhentilar are at my back, Cyric mused. Then suddenly his amusement turned to fear. He felt exposed and very much alone
at the front of the horde of charging soldiers. The thief's shoulders tightened, and he strained to listen for any mount that was closing
on him, knowing that at any moment the rain of steel from above could end all of his problems.
The thief focused on the ridge, even though he thought their flight was useless. Then one of the rifts leading off from the skeletal
hills beckoned, growing larger, its night-black shadow opening wide in front of the soldiers like the maw of a hungry animal. More and
more Zhentish riders were struck by the shards. The lucky ones were killed outright. The unlucky ones fell from their horses and were
trampled beneath the hooves of their comrades' mounts.
Slater was still riding near Cyric when they finally reached the mouth of the rift, where Ren and a majority of the Zhentish that
had followed him had taken refuge. The soldiers' abandoned horses raced around, frantically trying to avoid the burning pieces of
metal. From the number of horses either wounded or riderless at the end of the rift, Cyric judged that a hundred men had already
taken refuge inside it.
But inside the ten-foot-wide gap, the Zhentish were faring no better than those still out on the plain. "This is absurd!" Cyric cried.
Then a flechette smashed into his horse's neck, and the mount tossed the thief onto the ground. Luckily for the thief, however, he was
close enough to the rift that the riders behind him had slowed their pace enough to avoid trampling him. Still, Cyric was momentarily
shaken by the fall.
Before the thief could utter a word of protest, Slater grabbed him by the arm, and they were forced into the dark, cool rift by the
flood of soldiers desperately crowding into the opening. Once in the rift, Cyric grabbed a rough wooden shield from a trampled body
and raised it over his head. Slater, taller than the thief, had to crouch slightly to remain beneath its cover. The warm, smelly crush of
bodies surrounded the thief and the warrior, and Cyric cursed loudly whenever he was bumped or pushed.
"They're not using their heads!" the thief yelled to Slater, who cowered next to him, listening to the frantic cries of the Zhentish
and the hiss of falling shards. Above the Zhentilar, the rain of shards continued. The walls of the rift helped to slow the metal
fragments; many struck the rock first, then tumbled with decreased momentum toward the soldiers, burning them but not killing them.
But many knives still fell directly into the ranks, and the screams of the dying filled the rift with horrible echoes.
"Use your shields!" Cyric screamed, then Slater joined him in the cry, trying to make their voices heard above the din. A dozen
soldiers immediately surrounded the thief, looking to him for orders, their eyes wide and frightened. But Cyric's words seemed to slice
through the chaos as surely as the sharp edge of a blade through unarmored flesh. "Use your shields! If you don't have a shield,
crawl under a corpse!"
More soldiers turned to Cyric and obeyed his commands.
"Interlock the shields, then -" Cyric screamed as a burning metal shard pierced his shield, striking his arm. There was a hiss,
and the hawk-nosed man felt his flesh burning. He gritted his teeth and turned to Slater. "Anchor the shield, I've been hit."
The Zhentish woman complied with Cyric's commands. As the thief pulled his arm away from the shield - and the shard that still
hissed at its center - a group of nearly fifty soldiers with shields closed ranks around the thief, near the center of the rift.
"Give the tallest men the shields!" Cyric yelled, holding his hand over the blackened wound. "Those without shields, stay low,
under the protection!"
The shards continued to fall, but now the sound of shields being struck echoed through the cavern, drowning out the moans of
the wounded and replacing the screams of the dying. Of course, occasionally the steel slivers found the meaty forearms on the
undersides of the shields, but no one complained.
Cyric tore part of his shirt and wrapped a hasty bandage around his arm. "Forget the pain!" he cried. "At least you aren't dead!"
Then he moved between the huddled men as best as he could to give orders to another segment of the frightened troops, Slater
always at his side. "Those of you on the ground, help the wounded. Forget the dead; they can't be helped! Keep those shields up if
you want to stay alive!" Cyric yelled, slapping some men on the back, encouraging others as he moved through the ranks.
Cyric's plan was working. Throughout the rift, more than one hundred Zhentilar with shields huddled under the network of
protection.
At one point, as Cyric sat resting while Slater rebandaged his wound, she asked Cyric how he had thought of having the men
use their shields as one instead of separately.
The thief smiled, or at least came as close to smiling as he had since the deadly rain had begun. "Storming a castle once... long
ago. It's called 'forming a tortoise,'" the thief said. "It keeps your troops from getting slaughtered when the enemy decides to drop oil
on your head or have their archers fire a rain of arrows at you." He looked up at the men holding the shields over him. "It's really quite
simple."
"Cyric!" a low, throaty voice called from the huddled soldiers.
The thief spun and saw Ren crawling toward him, without a shield, his shirt torn and bloody from a number of small wounds.
"Tyzack's dead," the blond soldier rumbled. "He froze when death looked him in the eye, the coward."
Both men stood and stared at each other for a while, waiting for the storm to pass. Eventually the steady thump of shards hitting
the shields lessened, then stopped altogether. The hiss of the still-warm fragments singeing the shields remained, as did the
murmurs of the men and the cries of the wounded. Many of the men holding shields had begun to lower them, but Cyric shouted for
them to hold their shields up until he gave orders to the contrary.
The thief turned back to Ren. "If Tyzack's dead -," Cyric began, his brow furrowed.
"Then you're our leader now," Ren said and bowed his head slightly. "I live to serve."
The thief's head was swimming. Cyric quickly considered turning command over to someone else, but that would almost
certainly turn out to be Ren, and that would most likely mean Cyric's death. As usual, the hawk-nosed man was sure that he wasn't
being given a choice. "But who do you serve, Ren?"
Ren frowned. "As I said, I live to serve. You saved the men. You should lead them." The blond man paused and ran a hand
across his dirty, blood-smeared face. "There is no reason to fear me... for now, anyway."
The thief ignored the last comment. "Show me Tyzack's body," Cyric said quietly.
The two men maneuvered some distance through the shield bearers. Finally Ren pointed toward a dead man lying ten feet
beyond the last Zhentilar with a shield. Although darkness was now descending, Cyric could see that a metal shard had pierced
Tyzack's chest, very near his heart. And the thief noticed something else: Tyzack's throat had been cut. The shards would not have
been so efficient, Cyric thought as he turned to stare at Ren.
The thief stepped out from beneath the shields and looked up at the empty sky. Metal fragments lay on the ground all around
him, some still red hot. Ren followed Cyric out from under the shell of shields and joined the new leader of the two hundred or so
Zhentish soldiers that had survived the rain of death.
'"Tell me," the thief rumbled as Ren came to his side, "what secret did Tyzack bear that was so horrible he had you kill to protect
it?"
The blond man paused for a moment and looked down at Tyzack's body. "Lately he'd become frantic that someone would
discover what he'd done a long time ago at a small temple to Bane north of here." The guard looked up at Cyric. "Tyzack was hotblooded
and idealistic in his younger days, and he foolishly decided to revolt against the Black Network because they wouldn't accept
him as a cleric. He raided a temple and slaughtered the young Zhentarim who had been sequestered there. If anyone from the
Zhentarim ever found out -"
"It would mean his head," the thief concluded. Then Cyric laughed. "Tyzack was a fool! What he did might actually have put him
in good stead with some of the powers in Zhentil Keep."
The soldier frowned and lowered his eyes. Cyric smiled and whispered, "I've done far worse than Tyzack ever dreamed of, Ren.
But you won't have to protect my secrets. I take care of that myself." The blond man's frown deepened, and the thief turned away
from him. "We'll wait another twenty minutes. It should be safe to send out scouts by then."
