Imoen Winthrop saw Skie Silvershield walk out of a bandit hut covered in blood.
"I learned who killed my brother," she said to Imoen. "I killed him. I remember something else too. I remember telling that Shank fell into his knife in the priests' hut, just before Gorion left with me. I lied. Shank didn't fall into his knife. He fell into my knife. He fell into my knife forty-seven times."
Imoen was, perhaps, shocked. But Imoen knew what she wanted to do. She pushed Skie Silvershield back into the hut and told her to hide the body and to secure the door. Then she went to tell Garrick to start the bandit camp plan. Then she found Shar-Teel and then she talked to Edwin. When she had given up trying to find Viconia, she went to her part in the plan. She waited for Taurgosz Tenhammer to come out of his hut and with her tattered cloak she told him that Ardenor Crush had said that he was tired of the human orders and wanted to take over the bandit camp. Then Imoen found Viconia and Taurgosz went to hunt the hobgoblins.
Venkt, Britik, Raemon, and Hakt were meeting in Tazok's tent, as usual. It was possible to quietly climb to the roof of it. There were traps and mage's wards protecting it. But the mage's wards were not very different to those outside a bedroom a long time ago. Then it was possible to slit a small hole through the hut's roof. Because it was dark, they saw no sudden light to alert them to it.
The goal was to surprise them. The wizard should be the most dangerous. Skie Silvershield dived from the roof for his throat first. His skin turned pale and hard, but it was important to keep attacking. In the fight, she pulled him back rolling around on the floor with him and the first arrow fired went into his back. The enchanted sword managed to open his throat into a second smile. His body caught two more arrows, and the edge of Raemon's sword. It was important to get away from Raemon. Skie Silvershield skidded back across the floor under the gnoll's legs.
Be broken. Be broken.
Britik the gnoll did not wear much armour. Skie Silvershield's hands turned red and she did to him what other people did to her. It only took a second and then he could not move. She slit open his femoral artery so that he could bleed to death and tried to run away. An arrow hit and she fell.
Then the door finally broke open and Shar-Teel and Viconia rushed in. It was a plan to surprise the bandit leaders. Viconia's hands glowed with dark light as she commanded the hobgoblin archer down. Shar-Teel fenced against Raemon, much stronger than he.
The arrow had only glanced off Skie after all and it was not as bad as it had looked. Or was that simply an excuse for the power? She got up again and attacked the hobgoblin while he was down. Shar-Teel defeated Raemon and then they made sure the frozen gnoll was dead.
Outside of course the camp was wild and in chaos. Edwin the conjurer and Imoen the transmuter cast spells to affect everyone. Green clouds and a lot of running around and screaming. Hobgoblins fought humans and humans fought everyone. It was important to protect the spellcasters, so Shar-Teel charged forward. Skie went to back her up. Viconia called a small cloud of magical fog to confuse everything in Shar's name.
Shar-Teel did most of the fighting. The main duty was to watch her back and stab anyone who got too close. With the fog and the spells helping, it was possible to defeat a few hobgoblins and the lesser bandits. There were hardly any Black Talons yet, as the Black Talons were fighting Ardenor Crush on the west side of the camp. Killing was much easier than expected.
His name was Knott, and he was trying to fight with a torch, against Viconia's fog in the darkness. Skie fought him while he kept calling her 'Lu' and asking, why. The torch fell, and when he overbalanced she was able to kill him. The huts started to burn.
In Tazok's tent there were papers and maps, and the fire was claiming it. Skie hurried to break in and find them. A chest, a trap; Sique and Vairvon had taught a lot about disarming traps. There was smoke everywhere, in her throat and stopping her breath. The entryway was entirely alight. Skie quickly gathered the papers into her pouch and prepared to leave via the window. But there were also the prisoners. She crawled to open the area where they were imprisoned and both bound: a human and an elf. It was important to only free them quickly and let them make their own way out if they could. She cut the elf's bonds first, and he saw her face.
"You!" he said, knowing her. "Dhaeraow; ndenginaer. I have heard your voice outside my prison. Dark-hearted inyahuan."
The elvish meaning for two of those terms, betrayer, murderer, the third unknown. Kivan took up Raemon's sword and attacked, as fiercely as though he was a thing shaped from the flames that surrounded him. Skie ran away from him out the window. She did not attempt to make him understand.
Kivan pursued her. Tazok's hut collapsed behind them in hot ash. The human prisoner was dead and his skeleton lay under there after he was burned. Skie yelled Tazok's name, but Tazok was at the bandits' other site and Kivan might have known it as well. The execution of the prisoners was delayed by Tazok's own instruction; they were his personal prisoners, and it was possible he had gloated to them of their fate.
Kivan's sword swept the darkness; Skie lost a hank of hair and gained a wound across the back of her neck. She ran on, toward where few fights were. The bandits guarding the gnoll punishment cave had left to defend against the others. She had not thought of the plan she enacted until she happened to be running in the right place, but she did it. She ran briefly into the gnolls' cave, and called, "Food's ready for you just outside!" Some of them tried to attack her after being in the cave for so long, but she had had to dodge them before, and she was able to fade into the shadows of the trees and circle back to fight with the others. She did not see what happened to Kivan and the twenty gnolls around him. Ardenor Crush and Taurgosz Tenhammer lay dead together.
Shar-Teel was still fighting, in a clump of blades and movement before lines of poisoned, sleeping bandits. Only the two wizards stood behind her now. Skie did not see Viconia near them, and had not seen Garrick for some time, but she did not think about him at that time.
Greywolf was fighting. Almost as well as Shar-Teel; Imoen's arrows helped her in the battle, but Shar-Teel was amidst the crush of bandits and hobgoblins, surrounded, a stern gate between the bandits and weak wizards. Greywolf's enchanted blade sliced silver ribbons from her platemail.
Skie gathered the shadows about her. There was one hobgoblin archer, smearing what was under his nails upon an arrow, to try to shoot into that crowd; she went for the throat. A young and weak hobgoblin. A quick death. Then there was the battle remaining.
It's easy, Shar-Teel says, to hit one's own (wo)men, if you're a large crowd without discipline. Skie found it simple enough to duck into that fight, weaving amidst the bandits. Perhaps some believed she was one of their own, or perhaps the blood covered her darkly.
That's when I stepped outta the shadows and gave a nice shouldertap right between the armourjoints.
There was no weakness in Greywolf's blade or his sword arm, but there was weakness in Greywolf's armour. The term, 'shouldertap', is a non-literal thieves' euphemism for a backstab, or rather any kind of surreptitious attack. There is no requirement that it must involve either shoulders or back. Greywolf's studded leather was pierced in the groin. A lot of blood.
Shar-Teel charged, free of that magical blade. Skie helped her; struck at bandits attempting to attack Shar-Teel from behind, stabbed out to finish those Shar-Teel no longer wished to dance with. It wasn't hard, that time, to remember the lessons. She was still covered in blood. The two of them danced on.
Broken.
At some point, the attacks ceased. The ground was welcoming; impossible to go further, necessary to sit amidst the corpses. Smoke stained the air, the fire blazing too close.
Viconia deVir approached, weaving amongst the bodies like a dark and graceful ghoul taking her feast, singing words in the underworld language of her people. Her right hand bore aloft an ebon disc, black and shining as though bathed in wet ink, stealing tendrils of light from its surrounds. In her left she held a dagger, black-hilted, stained in blood upon its dull grey blade.
"Shar," she invoked; the priestess silenced forever the moans of a dying bandit. Her prayer carried upon the wind, shifting to her next sacrifice.
"Where's Garrick?" I said.
—
Note: Chicago, 'Cell Block Tango': "He was crazy, and he kept on screaming, 'You've been screwing the milkman.' And then he ran into my knife... he ran into my knife ten times."