Part II

The broad shouldered warrior stalked through the gates of Harrogath carrying an inert, armored body over his shoulder. His own dented armor, charred shield, and absent helm marked him as a survivor, not necessarily a victor, of the battle raging on the Arreat Plateau. Qual Khek, the silver bearded chief-man-at-arms of Harrogath, looked up as the man strode past with an air of grim resignation. The warrior looked past Qual Khek with the "thousand pace stare" so common to soldiers fresh from battle; the old man's usually gruff greeting was left hanging on his lower lip. As the warrior mounted the steps up toward Malah's house, Qual Khek noticed that the wounded man, Ashef, sported a bandaged head and a long, red jagged hole in the back of his chain mail shirt.

"Bloody desert trained pikemen are worthless in mountain warfare," he muttered under his breath. "That damned fool of a southerner should have stayed home and eaten fish and maggot paste for the rest of his life." Shaking his head, Qual Khek sat and returned to honing his belt knife on a old sharpening stone.

The Warrior reached the top of the long stairway and crossed the small plaza to Malah's house. Knocking on the door with his foot, he called out in a voice hoarse with emotion.

"Malah, I need your help!! Ashef is being called by the Reaper; I would save him if I could." He knelt down, laying the wounded man on the ground as the door opened.

The old woman, Malah, emerged and bent over the wounded man, quickly inspecting Ashef's head with probing fingers. With a nod, she motioned for the body to be turned over. The hiss of her indrawn breath when she saw the large hole in the chain mail shirt, and the pulped flesh and blood, was not confidence inspiring.

"Biondi, I can do little to save your friend, but shall at least try," she murmured as she pulled a small green phial from her apron. "Bring him inside and lay him on that straw pallet, on his stomach." Biondi complied, gently lifting his friend and following Malah back into her home.

"There," she pointed to the corner opposite the doorway. "Turn his head to the left side, to keep pressure off the wound. Then leave me. I do not work well with Warriors peering over my shoulder." She glanced up at him with a wry smile, hoping her explanation would not set off the usual histrionics she got from the foreign mercenaries battling to save Harrogath from Baal.

Biondi met her eyes, nodded curtly, and walked from her house into the gray afternoon. He set out promptly across the plaza to the eastern set of stairs that led down toward Larzuk's smithy. His gait betrayed his own wounds, as did the slow trickle of blood running down his right leg.

The smith looked up as Biondi paused in the doorway, awaiting permission to enter. With a faint nod, Larzuk acknowledged his presence and went back to his grinding wheel, putting the edge on a great battle axe's blade. The grating of the wheel preempted conversation, so Biondi sat down on a water barrel and began to remove his battered armor. It took a few minutes to remove all of the plates, buckles and joints, but eventually the armor lay in a heap at his feet. Standing, he reached his hand into the barrel and splashed his face with the luke warm liquid, wiping the water off with his torn right sleeve.

Larzuk looked up from his grinding with a slight smile on his face.

"Hey, Buono, this is not a bath house. If you want to get clean, go to Anya's house and pay the fee for a proper steam bath. Her aunt will be more than happy to bathe you for a slight additional fee, of course, if you are so inclined."

Biondi stared at him without humor.

"I did not come here for a bath, nor for your jokes, Lar. I came to see if you can repair my armor, or do anything about this."

Removing his scabbard from his sword belt, he upended it and caught two halves of a broken sword as they fell toward the floor.

"My great-granduncle's sword shattered in the cold against a stone skinned monster-- some immense demon wielding a whip and summoning exploding beasts." He gestured to his sword shards with his scabbard, briefly at a loss for words. "I cannot believe the temper of the blade failed me in battle. One of those exploding demons did for Ashef. My shield saved me, and an axe buried between the hellspawn's eyes ended the problem. It took my helmet filled with flaming oil flung into a crowd to finally stem their attack. My crown was cloven by a hellspawn so long ago I forget what it felt like. I suppose it was a crown of fools . . ." He sighed wearily. "I need another weapon if I am to return to battle. My spear broke off in the guts of a great crush beast."

Larzuk stopped grinding.

"The sword of Karlan the Quick, broken?" His voice quavered. "What deviltry is this? That was one of the finest blades I have ever seen." He stepped forward and took the two halves of the bastard sword, as if to confirm by feel what his eyes had seen. Biondi sat back down on the barrel, oblivious to the thickening trail of blood seeping down his leg.

"Some demon imp or sorcerer seems to have hexed it, Larzuk. I felt the spirit of the blade flee as it broke across the whip demon's shank. The shine left the blade like a shooting star winking out, and I swear I saw a bright flash shoot up into the sky." He paused to remember the pain of that moment, when his soul was wrenched by the sound and feel of his sword snapping in two with a sharp metallic twang. "I suspect that the blade could be mended, but not restored." A tear rolled down his left cheek, and his voice choked with emotion. "Larzuk, I hope you can tell me I am wrong, but my heart warns me that I have failed. Karlan cannot be avenged by a broken sword. His spirit still awaits justice."

Larzuk took a few steps over to his work bench, and then picked up a long, narrow u-shaped piece of metal with a handle attached to the base of the "u." Closing his eyes, and holding the sword's lower shard by the base of the handle, he struck it lightly with the u-shaped tool and then held it next to his ear. He repeated the procedure three times with each half of the sword.

He turned to Biondi, his face grim.

"I fear that the quickened spirit been lost from the blade." He paused, to let that sink in. "It will take a summoning to bind the spirit back to the metal, and I doubt that anyone with such lore still lives in Harrogath. Baal's return has ripped the heart out of our spiritual leadership, and even Nihlathak has lost faith in the old ways and powers." He sighed. "You will need another sword until a star chart can be made that leads us to Karlan's spirit, which I am certain is no longer bound to the blade. These are two pieces of well forged metal, and nothing more."

Biondi nodded slowly, acknowledging what his heart had felt was true ever since the battle. He slumped on the barrel, his eyes closed, his right hand reaching down to feel the pain that was beginning to remind him of his bleeding right thigh.

Larzuk interrupted his reverie.

"Where are the others? Where are the seven who you rescued from their own folly in the Foothills? The foreigners who you led on the rescue mission and the defeat of Shenk the Demon Overseer: Where are they?"

Biondi opened his eyes. He stared at Larzuk with an empty expression.

"Burned and beaten, or dismembered by exploding demons. I cannot save fools from themselves, or from the chances of battle."

He paused, his eyes unfocusing as he called the roll of the dead.

"Harun the Axe fell to the flames of demons mounted on Crush Beasts while he hewed a legion of demons. I don't think he ever knew he was on fire till he fell. Felatri of the Golden Bow died in a blast of cold when an imp demon succumbed to a dire wolf bite to the throat. Luporo Redmane and his dire wolves fell to a torrent of catapult stones when they paused behind a wall to regroup, though I urged him to press on. Blanco the Albino blew up, with his golem and his skeletons, in a swarm of exploding demons. Tanya the Black was bludgeoned to death by a host of Ice Spawn after she got trapped in a corner, killing Crush Beasts I told her to ignore. Amber of the raven hair blew up when she teleported into a pack of exploding demons: it damn near did for me, did that blast, and it blew down a gate. Those brave fools simply could not keep tactical integrity; they could not fight as a team, no matter how I tried to guide them. I cannot understand how they lived past the age of suckling from their mothers' breasts, but I mourn them none the less. A brave heart is a terrible thing to lose." He shook his head, then bowed forward. Kissing his fist, he then held it to his heart in the time honored salute to the fallen.

Larzuk bowed his head, and copied the salute seven times, saying each name softly under his breath.

"This is a blow most cruel," he said when he had finished. "With our warriors fighting deep in the Tundra, we had hoped the foreign mercenaries would help tip the balance against the counter attack on the Plateau. Who now defends the city?"

Biondi grinned with deadly satisfaction.

"Defends the city against what?" He reached down and pulled off his right boot, the better to examine his wound. Blood ran onto the floor, so he staunched the wound with a hastily torn rag from his tattered sleeve.

"Lar, there was not a demon left standing on the plateau when I left. The path from here to the mountains has been cleansed of hellspawn. The remaining demons guard the entrance to the tunnels under Mount Crystal. It was there that I turned back, hoping to save Ashef from Amber's folly and Harun's fate. I think no counter attack will come, as the demon's huts are all burned down, thanks to Amber, and the hell gates in the Highlands and on the Plateau have been shut. We achieved much before the debacle of that last skirmish." Pulling up his leggings and removing the strip of cloth that had served as a field dressing, he considered the red gash in his right thigh, midway from hip to knee.

Larzuk noted the running wound as well, and abruptly strode over to the forge. Picking up a pair of iron tongs, he pulled out a length of red hot steel and held it up, looking from the steel to the wound and back.

"Are you ready for a quick healing, or will you go to Malah for stitching on that leg?" he asked.

Biondi looked up with a fierce grin.

"Burn it, seal it, and heal it. Steel may cure what hellspawn has wrought." The Warriors of Westmarch had an adage for everything, thought Larzuk to himself, even for field dressing a wound.

Biondi leaned back as Larzuk removed the cloth around the deep gash on his thigh. His breath whistled in through his teeth as the red hot steel met flesh and the aroma of charred meat permeated the air of the smithy. Standing quickly, he thrust his leg into the water barrel, looking at Larzuk with hard eyes.

"Quench it like a blade, Lar, and it will emerge stronger."

He pulled his leg out of the barrel and limped toward the door. Picking up his back pack, he motioned to his battered armor and looked at Larzuk with raised eyebrows. Larzuk nodded, then raised three fingers to indicate how many days it would take to repair the damage. Biondi turned and headed down the street to the cooking fire that Cain had started earlier in the day.

The pain in his leg did not lessen as he walked down the street, but his mind parked it in a small compartment and turned its attention to his stomach, which had been growling for most of a day. Reaching into his pack, he pulled the white rabbit out and broke its neck with a quick twist of his left wrist. He unsheathed his belt knife and began skinning and gutting the rabbit, by feel, as he walked toward the fire. By the time he arrived at the fire and picked up a stick, he had field stripped the carcass. He reached down to the rosemary bush that had grown fuller in his absence, and tore off two sprigs, stuffing them into the abdominal cavity. He then thrust the rabbit onto his hickory skewer, set it over the fire, and sat down on the ground to once again cook rabbit for dinner.

Cain wandered over, noting the return of the taciturn warrior who had lead the charge and broken the siege of Harrogath He stood before the fire, gazing down on the broad shouldered man who now tended his spitted charge with intense focus.

"So, friend, back to eating rabbits again, is it? I thought you might like a little change in fare now that you are making progress with your quest. I have a lovely kettle of barley and bean stew heating, if you would like a bowl." He winked as he finished, since Biondi was fully aware that the town had been on a barley and bean ration for weeks.

Biondi looked up at the old man and shook his head.

"One step forward, two steps back, Cain. My great-granduncle's sword is broken and my little squad of heroes is slain. I am no closer to success than I was when you last played chess against Nihlathak. Speaking of that curmudgeon, where is he these days?"

Cain squatted down, holding his staff erect.

"Nihlathak left us a few days ago, and I do not expect to see him return. It seems he has betrayed Harrogath to Baal, though I am not quite sure how. He took Anya with him, which shut down the bath house. I suppose that is not the kind of good news you were expecting from me."

Biondi winced as he shifted his weight and gave Cain a look of infinite sufferance.

"Cain, I can draw my own bath, and Anya didn't give me the time of day. Nihlathak can't have done any more damage than Bul Katha's children have done to themselves by hiding their little secret to the detriment of the entire world. So perhaps you can tell me something useful, or at least keep your peace while I prepare my dinner. I can't say I am in the mood for chatter any more than I crave a bowl of beans and barley."

Cain pulled a small scroll from his belt and unrolled it.

"Would it interest you to know that Drognan is convinced that he has located Azurewrath? The Crystalline Sword?"

Biondi stared at Cain in amazement.

"Where is Drognan now?" he asked, unable to contain his excitement. "Such a blade would be a huge boon to the forces of the Light."

Cain nodded to a small area in the main square, covered with runic inscriptions.

"Use the Horadric Portals, and I can direct you to Drognan in Lut Gholein. However, I just got this information today, and I fear it is perishable, since the sword is apparently in the possession of a Spear Cat clan. They tend to be nomadic, at best."

Biondi nodded his head, and looked levelly at Cain.

"I will be ready to travel as soon as I have finished my dinner." Cain stood up, replaced the scroll in his belt pouch, and headed in the direction of Malah's house.

Forward to Part III >>