Oath of Vigilance

by James Wyatt

  “When have I ever had a plan?”

  “You sound like Shara,” Uldane said with a grin that quickly dissolved into a scowl.

  Roghar walked a few paces in silence, confident that if the halfling wanted to talk about whatever was bothering him, he would. Uldane could generally be counted on to speak up in any circumstance, even on the way to a battle that might be his last.

  “It’s like she just doesn’t care any more,” Uldane said at last. “I mean, she always enjoyed fighting, but after Jarren died she just got reckless. And you know nothing scares me, but I don’t like the feeling that my friend doesn’t care if I live or die—doesn’t even care if she dies. Jarren cared. Jarren cared for us both.”

  Roghar put a hand on Uldane’s shoulder as the halfling rubbed at his eye. “And the drow?”

  “He doesn’t give a damn. He doesn’t care about anything but himself. It’s like being with him is just another way for Shara to put herself in danger.”

  “You think she’s in real danger?”

  “Yes! I don’t think he’d pause a minute before turning on her if he thought he could save himself.”

  Roghar scratched his chin. “Shara told the soldiers on the bridge that he had saved her life, more than once.”

  “He helped us fight the demons, it’s true. But he’s just looking out for himself.”

  “Hm. I think that’s a little different than saying he himself is a danger to her.”

  Uldane shrugged. “I don’t see how.”

  “Well, Uldane, Shara’s heart was broken. And I think she blames herself for Vestapalk’s return when we all thought he was dead.”

  “So she’s punishing herself?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “That’s stupid. It’s like … like making a wound larger because it doesn’t hurt enough.”

  “People who are hurting sometimes do things that don’t make much sense.”

  “All you tall folk do things that don’t make sense, all the time. I guess it’s nothing new.”

  Roghar stopped walking. The straight and level road had come to an end, and ahead was the winding track leading down the bluffs to Lowtown and the Market Green. “Like leading a ragtag gang of militia into battle against a horde of demons?” he said.

  Uldane stepped to the very edge of the bluff and leaned over so far that Roghar felt a rush of vertigo on his behalf. “Exactly like that,” the halfling said. “Look, you can see some of the burning ones moving around down there.”

  “Do you see any on the trail down the bluff?” Roghar asked.

  “No sign of fire. But it was the nightmare ones that attacked us over on the west side. They’re not so easy to spot in this light.”

  “Right. They’re hard enough to spot right before they attack. Eyes and ears wide open as we head down, then. We’ve got to spot them before they attack the soldiers behind us.”

  Uldane and Tempest both nodded, their attention focused over the edge of the cliff.

  Roghar turned to face his little army again. The numbers had swelled further, to more than he could quickly count, and he felt a surge of gratitude that made his chest ache. “Warriors of Fallcrest!” he called. A chorus of cheers, louder than anything he’d heard back at the inn, answered him. “We march into enemy territory,” he said. “But we’re not going to find massed lines of demon soldiers waiting for us—they don’t fight that way. They’ll send little squads to harry us, to bite at our flanks and nip at our heels. That means we need to be as nimble as they are. If there’s too many of them and too few of you, fall back and find help. There’s no disgrace in it.”

  He let his eyes range over his troops. He saw nods of understanding, faces set in determination as soldiers steeled themselves for battle, and a few of them taking nips from little flasks of liquid courage. The early rays of sunlight gleamed on their steel caps and spearheads, resting like the favor of the gods on each of them.

  “On to victory!” he shouted.

  “Victory!” came a cheer in response.

  Roghar lifted his glowing sword over his head and started down the trail, Uldane and Tempest close behind him and a surge of desperately eager soldiers pressing him on.

  The cliff that divided Fallcrest in two offered a sheer drop of more than two hundred feet in the center of town. The track made use of natural ledges and dwarf-cut switchbacks to provide a path a wagon could follow, albeit slowly and very carefully—especially on the turns. It was only barely wide enough for a wagon, and every time a wagon started the descent a runner would hurry to the bottom to make sure a different wagon didn’t start up at the same time. But even that arrangement was better than what the other two roads that traversed the bluffs offered—riders and small carts could navigate them, but wagons were out of the question. That made Market Street the best option for his soldiers, but still not a great option.

  Roghar tried to listen for any sign of an ambush, but the soldiers behind him made an unbelievable amount of noise. Wayward footsteps sent trickles of gravel down the cliffside around him, and even the whispers of more than two dozen men added up to a constant low murmur that made him despair of hearing anything else.

  “Up ahead!” Uldane said suddenly. He pointed to a narrow stretch of the trail, where the cliff edge was marked with red warning banners. Roghar knew that at least one wagon had slipped over the edge there and plummeted down, killing several people and as many horses. It was a logical place for an ambush.

  He followed Uldane’s pointing finger and tried to make out what the halfling had seen, but his eyes showed him no sign of danger.

  “I see it,” Tempest said. “One of the nightmare demons.”

  “More than one,” Uldane said. “Look up the bluff from the road.”

  Roghar looked up and spotted at least some of the demons Uldane saw—three or four of the shadowy demons, lurking among the scrub trees that clung to the bluffs. “Well done, Uldane. Let’s get them!”

  His sword blazing like the sun, Roghar charged forward. As he neared the point where he’d spotted the demons, he called on Bahamut’s power, and a gust of wind like a swooping angel lifted him off the ground and set him down in the midst of the demons on the bluff. One foot slipped as he landed, and for a moment he feared he was about to tumble down the cliff, but he got his feet under him again and stood his ground as three shadowy figures surged toward him.

  “You killed us,” one of the figures said, no longer a demon of shadow and Voidharrow but a soldier just like the ones behind him, clad in leather and clutching a spear. The man’s eyes were dead and his flesh gone gray, but he moved with all the speed of the living. The other two figures took on similar shapes, and they reached for him with their dead hands, whispering words of condemnation.

  “You led us to our doom,” one said.

  “Foolhardy,” said another.

  The ground beneath Roghar’s feet began to rumble, matching the pounding of his heart. His mind knew that these demons could prey on his fears and turn them against him, but when faced with his deepest terrors given flesh, he found it nearly impossible to listen to that part of his mind. He glanced around and saw gravel tumbling down the bluffs, and he realized what the rumbling meant.

  A landslide would obliterate his entire, pathetic army in one blow.

  “You did this to us,” a dead soldier said, clawing at his eyes.

  Roghar whirled his sword around him in a wide circle, trailing light like a comet. Steel and radiance bit into the walking corpses that threatened him and they recoiled, allowing their true demonic faces to show through for a moment.

  “Hurry!” he yelled to the soldiers behind him. “Landslide!”

  The demons in their dead-soldier guises closed around him again, and the rumbling of the earth grew louder. His sword exploded in light as he slammed the blade into the middle demon’s shoulder, cutting through red crystal and shadowy flesh until nothing remained but dust. He spun to face the two remaining demons and roared his triumph, punctuat
ing his roar with a blast of dragonfire from his mouth. As he conquered his fear their faces with their haunting eyes melted away—and he realized with a start that the rumbling of the earth stopped as well.

  There was no landslide—it was just another weapon of the demons, playing on his fears.

  But it might have been their most effective weapon yet. In his fear, he had shouted an order to his soldiers that had instilled the same fear in them. Fear could turn an army of soldiers into a panicked mob in an instant, and a glance behind him confirmed that his warning had done exactly that.

  “Halt!” he shouted, but he had no confidence that his voice would be heard over the tumult of the panicking soldiers. And before he could do anything more, the other two demons redoubled their assault.

  “I’ve heard a lot of lies and excuses in my career,” one demon said, taking on the appearance of the commander on the bridge and glaring at Roghar, “but never so bold a lie from a paladin of Bahamut.”

  The other stood back and seemed to grow. Its face was a mirror of Roghar’s own, and great leathery wings spread from its shoulders.

  “Kuyutha,” he murmured, awe and fear seizing control of his thoughts. Kuyutha was an exarch of Bahamut, a dragonborn who had been a paladin like him in life, but ascended to his god’s right hand. Dragonborn revered Kuyutha as Bahamut’s particular emissary to them, who had shepherded the scattered clans after the fall of the empire of Arkhosia centuries ago. He was said to train the bravest and purest dragonborn paladins personally, in his halls in the celestial mountains.

  “You have failed Bahamut,” the exarch said. “I share our god’s disappointment.”

  Roghar glanced between the two figures expressing their condemnation, and he knew the exarch’s words were true. He was a failure as a paladin, a disappointment to Bahamut and a mockery of all his god’s ideals. He fell to his knees and bowed his head, feeling unworthy even to look at Kuyutha. The commander stepped closer and drew a sword, as if to carry out a sentence of execution.

  “For Fallcrest!” came a shout from somewhere behind him.

  “For Bahamut, and for glory!” more voices cried.

  Roghar looked up just as the commander swung his sword at Roghar’s neck. A reflex brought his shield up to block the blow, and he sprang to his feet.

  A wave of soldiers was about to break around him. As he stared, trying to remember what was happening, the first soldiers reached the commander, hacking him with swords and prodding him with spears. He made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a roar and changed, his human face transforming into a blank, alien visage of leathery black skin and red crystal.

  Roghar spun to face Kuyutha—or rather, the demon that had adopted Kuyutha’s visage and presumed to speak with his voice. “Blasphemy!” he spat. “You dare to speak with the voice of my god!”

  “You are the one putting words in your god’s mouth,” the demon whispered.

  Roghar’s sword flared with divine light as he drove its point through the demon’s gut. Kuyutha’s face faded as the demon crumbled into dust and ash. “For Bahamut,” he muttered, looking down at the scarlet residue left in its wake.

  A cheer erupted from the soldiers as the other demon fell under their blows. Roghar turned to survey the scene. Tempest and Uldane had led an assault on the demons on the other side of the road, and they stood in the midst of another clump of cheering soldiers.

  “Our first victory is won!” Roghar shouted, and another round of cheers erupted from the soldiers. Four demons, he thought. How many more do we have to face?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Albanon stared at the Vast Gate as Kri pulled at him, peering through the billowing blackness at the dry landscape that had appeared in the archway. He thought he saw a tiny speck in the crystal blue sky beyond the gate, but it was too far to be of help.

  I have to face Kri on my own, he thought.

  An effortless gesture sent a bolt of arcane force hurtling at Kri—a weak attack, but it was all he could manage as his spine creaked and popped, sending waves of agony through his body. The bolt glanced off Kri’s shoulder, but it was enough to make the grip of the slimy black tentacles weaken just slightly. Albanon used that moment to slash with his dagger at the tendril that held his neck. It relinquished its hold and he dangled from his ankles again, gasping for air.

  “Why do you struggle?” Kri mused. His voice had grown larger—deeper and stronger, and with a resonance that defied the acoustics of the stone chamber, as if he were speaking in some other space. “Do you not see the power I wield? I am the exarch of Tharizdun, the extension of his reach into this pathetic world. You cannot resist me.”

  “And yet I do,” Albanon said, slashing at the tentacles that held his feet. Other tendrils batted at his arms, deflecting his blows.

  “Because all mortals are born to futility. Mortal life itself is a futile exercise, a vain struggle against an inevitable doom.”

  Albanon stretched out the fingers of one hand and engulfed Kri in a roaring blast of fire even as more tendrils coiled around his legs and arms. Kri roared in pain, but this time his grip didn’t falter. A thick tentacle wrapped around Albanon’s waist and squeezed, forcing the breath from his lungs.

  A distant sound like the baying of many hounds wafted through the Vast Gate. Albanon roared with the last breath in his chest, and a clap of thunder erupted between him and Kri, drowning out the sound from the gate. The force of the blast pushed Kri backward and knocked away the tendrils that held Albanon, sending him sprawling onto the floor near the gate.

  Please hurry, Albanon thought, willing his thoughts to travel through the gate.

  “What are you doing?” Kri said. “You’re waiting for something, trying to buy time. What feeble hope are you clinging to?”

  “I can beat you,” Albanon said through gritted teeth, climbing slowly to his feet.

  Kri laughed. “I admit that your power has grown since you left that fool Moorin’s tutelage,” he said. “And the shattering of your mind seems to have expanded your power even more. But you have no idea what you’re facing.”

  “Moorin was no fool,” Albanon said.

  “He held you back, kept you from the full extent of your power.”

  “He trained me in the responsible use of my power. He gave me all the tools I needed to make use of it, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.”

  “Oh, you’ve found it in your heart to forgive the old man, have you? How touching, in the last moments before your own death. And in the same room where he met his grisly end, no less.”

  That gave Albanon an idea. He glanced around the room again, his eyes darting over the arcane pattern formed by Moorin’s blood.

  “What are you doing?” Kri demanded. A thick tendril of inky blackness darted at his head, but Albanon ducked it and slid a few steps to his right.

  Formulas danced through his mind and lightning shot from his fingertips. He saw Kri recoil, but the lightning coursed all around him, tracing the eldritch lines in the chamber, forming a net of deadly power that surrounded him.

  “No!” Kri screamed. His flesh seared and some of the inky substance that formed his lower body burned away to greasy smoke as the lightning net closed around him. But he raised his arm and swept it in a wide arc, trailing darkness behind it. As the darkness spread it stifled Albanon’s lightning and extinguished the fire.

  “I will not suffer any further indignity at your hands, whelp,” Kri growled, surging closer to Albanon on his liquid mass of tentacles. He raised his arms over his head—and paused.

  The baying of hounds had grown much louder, and Kri hesitated as he looked around to find its source. His eyes settled on the Vast Gate and he frowned.

  “Your father’s demesne,” Kri said. He made a dismissive gesture that hurled Albanon out of his path, and he slid over to the gate. “Thought to call for help, did you? So that’s what you were waiting for.”

  As Kri lifted his hands to the Vast Gate, Albanon sent another bolt
of force hurtling into him, delaying him just an instant—and just enough. As Kri reeled back from the arcane attack, the first hound leaped through the gate and sank its teeth into Kri’s arm.

  The hounds of the fey hunts were no ordinary dogs. Their pelts naturally manifested patterns of arcane power, whorls and lines of lighter or darker hue than the surrounding fur. Their eyes glowed like emeralds lit by fire from within, and bright green flames licked from their mouths as they barked and yelped, launching themselves at their quarry. These hounds had held their own against the demons at the Whitethorn Spire, and they showed no fear as they navigated the writhing mass of tentacles that had taken the place of Kri’s legs.

  Immeral was the first eladrin to follow the hounds through the gate, his slender sword shining with eldritch light that sliced through the darkness even as his blade bit into Kri’s flesh. Another half dozen fey knights appeared through the portal and took up positions surrounding their foe.

  “This changes nothing,” Kri said. A slimy tentacle yanked one of the fey hounds off him and hurled it against the wall as another tendril batted Immeral away. “You have summoned this hunt to its doom.” His tentacles were everywhere, batting at hounds and coiling around the ankles of knights, weaving in the air and emitting their constant stream of dark vapors.

  Albanon felt his head spinning again, his grip on his thoughts slipping and madness threatening to claim him again. Kri was no longer human, and what he had become was … it seemed impossible, like something from a nightmare or a lunatic’s visions. Albanon caught himself counting tentacles instead of casting spells, marveling at the fractal division of what seemed like coherent liquid strands, and tried to force his mind back to the threat Kri posed—both to him and to the allies he had summoned to help him.

  “You still hear the call of the Chained God, Albanon,” Kri said, staring into his eyes. Even from across the room, his gaze was intense, and it amplified Albanon’s sense of vertigo. “Heed it. Release yourself to it.”

  Albanon felt himself falling, and the room dissolved around him. Instead of stone and mortar, he saw the tower as endless expanses of crystalline structures. The Vast Gate was a hole in space, and the Feywild beyond disappeared from view. The eladrin and their hounds were blobs of amorphous flesh and glowing spheres of magic and soul, coexistent but not united. He himself was much the same, except that his magic swirled around him in great glowing arcs, like comets hurtling through the void of space.