The Crown and the Sword tros-2

by Douglas Niles

  He took her by the arms and looked at her closely. “I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. “I didn’t expect it-didn’t dare hope for it. But I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I helped you start this war,” she said simply. “The least I can do is be here to finish it.”

  “They’re going to come at me with a whole army of Salamis on horseback, eh?” Ankhar said with a chuckle. He was addressing Captain Blackgaard, who sat astride his black stallion next to his army commander. “Perhaps they forgot what your pikes did to them on the bank of the Vingaard, eh?”

  Blackgaard narrowed his eyes, studying the long line of armored riders, their lance tips raised so they sparkled in the new sunlight of the day. “I am not so sure about that, my lord. The Solamnics are stubborn, to a fault, but they are not fools. I doubt they will ever forget the crossing of the Vingaard River. However, I agree, we need to deploy our pikes in the front line.”

  The human captain gave the necessary orders, and his crack troops with their long weapons moved out in front of Ankhar’s army. They deployed in their three-rank formation, standing at rest-the butts of their pikes resting on the ground for the time being-while they awaited developments. They would be able to raise their weapons to form their impenetrable line on a moment’s notice, far more rapidly than the knights could cover the half mile or so of distance to confront them, even with their fastest charge.

  While waiting for the knights to make the first move, Ankhar turned to his stepmother, who as usual was close by his side. “Did you brew your tea for the Gray Robe?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “He has drunk it and is making his way here.”

  “You said that potion will kill him. He will not die today, will he?”

  Laka cackled. “It should have killed him already. I begin to think that the Thorn Knight has magic even mightier than my own. But no, my son, I do not think it will kill him-at least not today.”

  “And the wand? You have it?”

  She pulled back her cape, showing him the slender piece of wood tucked securely into her belt. “He says that it is better than the first one. And I will be ready when the time comes:” She opened her pouch and showed him the ruby box. The half-giant blinked, still surprised-despite his experience with the device-that such a small container could hold a force so terrible and awe inspiring.

  “My lord!” called Blackgaard, drawing Ankhar’s attention back to the enemy. “It seems the knights have begun to move.”

  “Aye, indeed,” grunted the half-giant. The vast ranks of armored riders had mounted now and were riding forward, their pace a measured walk. “And your pikes?”

  “See, there,” said the human captain with a nod. Indeed, the men with their long pole arms were taking up positions, hoisting the long shafts into a bristling, deadly fence. Three deep, they knelt, crouched, or stood, holding firm to the steel pikes with razor-sharp tips.

  “Good. Let the knights impale themselves,” Ankhar said with a belly-deep chuckle. He tried to suppress a small sense of disquiet, but the feeling wouldn’t quite go away: Why would the humans cling to a tactic that was so obviously bound to fail?

  “How about the back ranks?” he asked Eaglebeak and Spleenripper, who were standing nearby.

  “The archers are ready, lord.”

  “So, too, my footmen.”

  “And I have a thousand ogres, ready to advance when the enemy breaks,” Bloodgutter pledged, lumbering up to the command conference.

  To the rear, Rib Chewer’s lupine cavalry milled. Already mounted, the gobs clutched their reins and tried to hold their eager, hungry mounts under control. The half-giant knew that they would be slavering for blood by the time he gave the order.

  Surprisingly, Ankhar heard something like thunder booming from the direction of the Garnet Mountains. A deep rumble shook the air, a powerful sound he felt in the pit of his stomach as much as he heard it in his ears. He looked up toward the foothills with their snowy summits-the white peaks brilliantly outlined in the morning sun-beyond. However, there was not even a suggestion of a rain cloud in the pristine sky.

  Peering more closely, he saw something resembling a gray fog swirling around one of the near ridgetops-but that seemed more like the smoke from a grass fire than any gathering of moisture in the sky. The vapors billowed and churned along the crest. Definitely not a storm cloud, Ankhar told himself. When he looked to the sky again, puzzled, Ankhar could still not determine any suggestion of threatening weather.

  “Strange,” he murmured. “How can there be thunder without any clouds?”

  “I think we’re going to fall just a bit short,” Dram remarked, speaking almost conversationally to Sulfie. They peered through the thick smoke of the muzzle blast, watching the six balls from the first bombard volley soar through the air-they were still visible, though dwindling into the distance-plunging down toward the plain. His target was the long, unbroken formation of pikemen. The pikes extended for more than a mile, screening the entire front of Ankhar’s horde. Let’s see how those well-disciplined soldiers face up to a rain of unforgiving stone balls, Dram thought grimly.

  True to his prediction, the six spheres all thudded to the ground several hundred yards short of the enemy line. Several of them simply sank into the soft dirt and vanished, but three or four others bounced and rolled. Momentum carried them along with irresistible force, and they bowled through the line of pikemen like balls striking down ninepins. Even from a mile away, the dwarf and the gnome could see the shock effect of the missiles as the line of pikes wavered and a number of men were taken down.

  The Solamnic Knights still advanced slowly, lances and pennants aloft, armor gleaming in the sunlight. The great formation looked more like a parade than a charge, horses still proceeding at a walk nearly half a mile before the enemy lines. The Palanthian Legion was in the lead of the broad line, and the three columns of Sword, Rose, and Crown knights maintained a steady interval between each wing as they came behind.

  “Raise the elevation just a quarter turn,” the dwarf ordered, and his gunners complied by adjusting the massive screws set under the muzzles. The hill dwarves cranked the simple machines, and the barrels were raised almost imperceptibly.

  Even as the aim was being adjusted, other gunners swarmed over the wagons, swabbing out the barrels and loading in new casks of powder. Six of the burliest dwarves acted as the ball handlers, and each of these now lifted his heavy missile over his head and dropped it into the gaping black mouth of the bombard.

  “All right,” Dram said with relish. “Let’s try this again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY — FIVE

  SOUND OF THE GUNS

  Six perfect spheres of stone, each weighing well more than one hundred pounds, soared lazily through the air. From a distance they looked harmless, like a spray of pebbles tossed by a child. But as they neared, they grew in apparent size even as their flight remained deceptively lyrical. Ultimately the rocks crashed only a few dozen paces before the line of Blackgaard’s pikemen, striking with enough force to send tremors through the ground.

  One of the balls landed in a low, wet swale and simply vanished into the mud with an audible plop. The other five missiles struck harder patches, and they bounced and tumbled irresistibly forward. Momentum carried them onward, not at all lazily now, thumping and pounding the ground as they rolled. In scant moments they tore through the tightly packed ranks of human flesh and wooden shafts. Pikes splintered and snapped, bones shattered, and flesh was crushed by the irresistible mix of mass and momentum.

  Wherever they hit that line, the heavy balls simply burst through, following the trajectory imposed when they blasted out of the muzzles of the bombards a mile away on their mountain ridge. They came up against no obstacle that could obstruct them or even seriously impede their progress. Any stick or body in the way of the flying boulders was simply borne along as the balls blasted through the line and tumbled across the grass to settle at the rear. Thus, human heads, torsos, arms, legs, and sometimes
complete bodies, were blasted away, swept like grains of sand propelled by a broom, leaving a gory wake of body parts in the path of each of the five balls. The unbroken line of leveled pikes wavered as five distinct gaps were instantly carved in the previously unbroken formation.

  Most of the spherical missiles rolled far enough to end up between the large, dense blocks of Ankhar’s troops, assembled a hundred paces or more behind the pikes. One rolled in a seemingly gentle fashion up to a column of goblins. A gob raised a foot in a casual attempt to bring the ball to a stop as it approached, only to have both of his legs torn away by the shot’s weight and thrust. By the time the stone ball came to rest, in the middle of the column, a dozen more goblins were down with broken legs or crushed feet.

  Now another boom sounded from the ridgetop. Smoke tinged with angry yellow flame billowed from the six barrels, and six more balls exploded on their trajectory toward the distant line. There were slight variables between the paths of the two volleys-the kegs of black powder did not possess identical explosive force, and furthermore the heavy wagons had been jolted back by the recoil of the first round. When the hill dwarf gunners rolled them back into firing position, the barrels were not aimed exactly as before.

  The result was the shots of the second volley landed in slightly different places. Two were lost to soft ground, but the four that rumbled onward tore through the shaken line of pikemen in different areas. Before the men and their startled officers could even grasp what was happening to them, four additional holes had been punched through the line-the line that depended on unbroken integrity for its battlefield effectiveness.

  Now the horses of the Solamnic Knights picked up the pace of their advance. They trotted, the thunder of many thousands of hooves reverberating across the distance between the two armies. The gap was narrowing so the armored lancers were only a quarter mile away from the pikes. Still, they came in a measured, far from hasty charge.

  The thunder of the hoofbeats was nearly drowned out by the stunning explosive noise when the next volley blasted from the bombards. Officers in the line of pikemen had recovered their wits and were frantically ordering their men to fill in the gaps in the line. These efforts met with some success until the next, stronger volley ripped through.

  One of the shots took off the head of a veteran sergeant major just as he was trying to rearrange his men into some semblance of order. The corpse of the grizzled warrior fell, blood spouting from its neck, and a hundred men who had witnessed the decapitating blow dropped their pikes and fled to the rear. They left a wide gap in the center, and the men of the neighboring companies nervously shifted their eyes among that breach, the approaching horsemen, and the imagined safety far behind them.

  The guns belched again, their position clearly marked by the cloud of smoke that blossomed across the ridgetop. More balls ripped through the line, even as another volley boomed forth. Now the gray, churning smoke all but enveloped the ride and nothing else could be seen, except for the repeated flashes that burst through the cloud, bright as the fires of the Abyss.

  Then the battle began in earnest as the captains of the knights raised their lances, shouted their battle cries, and all their armored warriors spurred their heavy warhorses into a gallop.

  “What are they doing to us?” demanded Ankhar, watching in horror as dozens more of his pikemen were punched out of the line by a strange new power he still could not comprehend. He glared up at the smoke-shrouded ridge, certain that the explosive noises up there and the lethal destruction in front of him were related somehow. But aside from the flashes of flame, he could make out nothing within that murk.

  And he couldn’t understand what was happening!

  “Some kind of projectile weapon,” Hoarst speculated, his tone surprisingly dispassionate as he came up beside the army commander, giving Ankhar a start. “It’s launching those stones like it was a giant sling… or a tremendously powerful catapult. They’re flying a mile or more before they come down.”

  “Is it magic?” demanded the half-giant. “Can you fight it with spells?”

  Maddeningly, the Thorn Knight merely shrugged. “I don’t see how-not from here in any event. However, I came to speak with you about another important matter-the wand.”

  “What?” Ankhar was so distracted that he had to think for a moment to realize what the Thorn Knight was talking about. “Yes, my mother tells me it has been finished.”

  “Yes. I should be able to use it to command the elemental king… even better than before. We will have the monster to lead us in battle again.”

  “But I must have an army left for that to happen!” roared the half-giant. “Look at the line! You must go up there and try to destroy those… things!” ordered Ankhar until he was distracted by an even more immediate threat. “Damn them! Look, the knights!”

  The armored knights were bearing down on his army now at breakneck speed, riding shoulder to shoulder, heavy lances leveled. The pike line was a shambles. Many men had fallen, but even more of the troops had panicked and run. Huge gaps had opened up and the galloping knights poured through these openings. Once through, they curled around to the right and left, stabbing with lances, hacking with swords, and the footmen could not possibly wield their cumbersome weapons fast enough to defend themselves.

  The principle behind the pike formation was the uniform presentation of a line of the weapons. Once the line was ruptured, however, the individual pikeman was almost helpless against an enemy on horseback-a soldier wielding a twenty-foot shaft of wood with a steel blade on the end could do very little against a close, mobile opponent. And even if a lone man tried to hold a horse at bay with a pike, the knight could easily bash the tip of the ungainly weapon to one side or the other then ride in for the kill.

  And kill the Solamnics did, along the whole breadth of the once-formidable line. The horsemen trampled the pikemen. When they were too close to use their lances, the knights drew massive swords and cleaved the helpless pikemen. The horses kicked and reared, stomping on the men of the infantry, further smashing the crumbled line.

  At the same time, the thunderous assault continued and adjusted to the shifting battle. Now the balls flew over the heads of the knights and pikemen, thumping to the ground and rolling through the rear formations of Ankhar’s army. These were spread out enough so that many shots fell between the units, but whenever a tumbling ball crashed into a tightly packed column of warriors, it inflicted terrible carnage. Ankhar was shocked to see an ogre blasted in two by a hit in his belly, and he could only gape in horror as the same ball rolled on to knock down a dozen more of the brutish warriors.

  “Rib Chewer!” cried the half-giant, summoning his goblin warg rider. He pointed at the melee, where the last of the pikemen were frantically trying to form squares or circles to hold the swarming knights at bay. It already seemed a losing cause.

  “Attack the knights! Break up that charge!” ordered the army commander. “We need time!”

  “Yes, lord!” cried the venerable captain. He raced away atop his wolf, howling for the attention of his men.

  Soon a tide of savage cavalry was loping toward the front of the half-giant’s army.

  Once more the terrible weapons on the ridgetop roared, fire flashing through the clouds of smoke. Ankhar remembered his command to the Thorn Knight and turned to repeat the order. But Hoarst had disappeared.

  Dram was pacing up and down behind the line of bombards, encouraging his gunners and occasionally running forward far enough to watch the shots land. As he scurried back to the ammunition wagons, amidst the swirling smoke a flash of white caught his eye, and he veered toward the familiar, alabaster figure.

  “Lady Coryn!” he exclaimed, recognizing the white-robed wizard as she materialized to the rear of the cannons. She was holding her hands to her ears, and her face-like Dram’s and everyone else’s-was streaked with soot and sweat. Her robe, somehow, remained as white as a blanket of new-fallen snow. “What are you doing up here?”

&nbs
p; “Looking for trouble,” she replied after lowering her hands. “I have a feeling you’ve attracted Ankhar’s undivided attention.”

  The mountain dwarf grinned. “Yeah, they’re doing the job, aren’t they,” he said proudly, standing beside her as he watched the nearest bombards-the only two he could see because of the thick smoke-get loaded for their next shot.

  “Very impressive,” Coryn said.

  Dram had good cause to be pleased. The tubes were all holding up well. His armorers periodically tightened the clamps on the steel straps holding them together, and none had shown signs of failure. If anything, the steady firing was turning out to be harder on the wagons supporting the bombards than on the weapons themselves.

  “Cover your ears!” he warned, doing the same as the fuses were ignited.

  Moments later the massive weapons belched their lethal balls into the sky. At the same time, the heavy wagons jerked backward, as they had with each shot, rolling several dozen feet before stopping against the heavy chains that anchored them. Dozens of hill dwarves swarmed around each wagon, turning the great wheels by hand, laboriously pushing them forward into firing position.

  “Chief!” It was Sulfie, dashing through the smoke, looking for Dram.

  “Over here!” he bellowed.

  The diminutive gnome came trotting up to him, out of breath. She was covered from head to foot in soot and grime, looking as if she had tumbled into a coal pit. But her eyes were bright with excitement, and she flashed incongruously white teeth as she smiled momentarily.

  “Hello, Lady,” she said to Coryn. “Welcome to the battery!”

  “Hi, Sulfie. You and your brothers have made quite a contribution,” the white wizard replied.

  “Yes,” the gnome said, her expression showing melancholy for a moment. “I wish Carbo and Pete could be here to see this.”

  But then she remembered her news and frowned seriously. “We lost a wheel on Number Two!” she reported. “Broke it on the recoil.”