Drew Karpyshyn - The Cities Series 02 - Temple Hill (Forgotten Realms)

Temple Hill

A Book in The Cities Series

A Forgotten Realms Novel

By Drew Karpyshyn

Proofread and formatted by BW-SciFi

Ebook version 1.0

Release Date: April, 17th, 2009

Dedication

For my wife Jen. You are my love, my world.

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 iskidnapping 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 orc 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 slaughterfor 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.