The Crown and the Sword tros-2

by Douglas Niles

  Hoarst and Ankhar continued to advance, the half-giant still wielding his wand. The monster continued to move, and in moments it was wading into the bulk of the Solamnic Army, those units that had been held in reserve behind the front and had been observing, frozen and horrified, the irresistible onslaught of the elemental king.

  Those valiant warriors-knowing they could do nothing against the monstrous presence-turned their backs and ran or put spurs to their steeds and galloped from the fight.

  Dram picked himself up. His ears were ringing; he was covered with soot. The clear stream he had been drinking from was now a muddy sludge, and the green meadow had blackened around him. He looked up the hill and saw that all the trees had been flattened by some terrible force, the ridgetop itself swept clear of everything.

  Groggily and in growing terror, he scrambled up the hill. He had to climb over the charred trunks of trees that had been knocked over to completely block the roadway that had been utterly clear when he descended a few moments earlier. Now the ridgetop was a hellish landscape, scoured clean of wagons, bombards, supplies-everything was simply gone.

  He saw bodies scattered around, blackened and broken. Sulfie was there, charred and lifeless; only her diminutive size allowed him to recognize her. Gently he rolled her over, his tears falling on the tiny, blackened corpse.

  “You deserved better, little gnome,” Dram said quietly. He thought of Jaymes, then, and it was not a friendly thought: his companion had used the three gnomes, taken their knowledge for his own purposes. One by one they had fallen in a cause that was not their own. As for Jaymes Markham, would he even take note of the sacrifices made in his name?

  Dram knew that he wouldn’t.

  There was a spot of whiteness in all the smoldering ruin. The Lady Coryn lay huddled in a ball, her white robe, somehow, still curiously unsullied. Dram knelt beside her, touched her, and gasped with surprise when the white wizard moaned.

  Somehow she was still alive. Her eyebrows had been burned away, her face and hands were burned red, but her flesh, wherever her robe had covered it, seemed all right.

  “Coryn-what happened?” Dram asked frantically. Her only reply was a low moan. He knelt, touched her hand, and her eyes flashed open. The cowl of her robe fell back, revealing that her black hair had not been burned. Somehow, the dwarf realized, she had cloaked herself in just enough protection to save her life in the midst of the blast.

  Again she moaned, looking at Dram, her tongue appearing between cracked and blistered lips.

  “Water! I’ve got to get you water!” he jumped up, looking around. There had been water wagons to the rear of each bombard, but those-like everything else on this ridgetop-had been blasted to oblivion.

  Weeping in frustration, he ran all the way back to the stream. He filled the small waterskin he carried with him and ran back to the wizard. Dram brought it up to Coryn’s lips, giving her a few drops.

  “Here,” he said. “Drink a little. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  But the smoke had cleared enough for him to look at the battlefield, and even as he spoke them, he knew the words were a lie.

  The four wings of the Army of Solamnia had fallen back before the irresistible monster. They had scattered from the field, troops simply trying to survive. The Army of the Rose was retreating to the north, while the Crowns and Swords were fleeing westward. There was little sense of formation or purpose-the men were terrified and wanted only to get away. The horsemen moved fastest, while the more heavily armed footmen threw away armor, equipment, even weapons in their haste. All of the army’s supply wagons were abandoned, and the wounded were left to fend for themselves.

  The Palanthians, on the south flank of the original position, were forced to withdraw into a valley of the Garnets, moving to higher ground, and it was this wing that the elemental king pursued. Jaymes rode past the creature as it swept through a rank of crossbowmen, the cyclonic winds of its lower limbs tossing the armored humans around like chaff in a strong wind. It seemed to be loping along with these troops, crossing over a ridge and crushing a wide path through a forest of pines then settling back to the valley floor.

  The lord marshal rode just ahead of the looming horror, sweeping into the valley where the legion had fled. He found General Weaver trying to organize a line of defense.

  “Stand, you wretches!” the officer ordered his terrified troops, who retained enough discipline that many of them actually obeyed the order. They fired arrows at the elemental, but those arrows vanished, without effect, against the massive torso. A small band of knights charged with lances, but the elemental’s winds tossed them back.

  “General!” shouted Jaymes, riding up to Weaver’s prancing stallion. “You’ll have to fall back; your men can’t fight this thing!”

  “Run? By Joli, I cannot, sir!” he protested. “By the Oath and the Measure, we must make our stand here!”

  “General!” barked Jaymes. “That’s an order-withdraw! Lead your men up into the mountains. Break them into small groups-see that as many survive as possible!”

  His sorrowful eyes showing his frustration, the Rose Knight obeyed his lord marshal, pulling his men back from the elemental and urging them higher into the mountain range. They scrambled over the rocky ground, some of them splashing up the streambed, others sprinting through the woods as fast. As if toying with them, the elemental king hesitated, pausing at the mouth of the valley. The grim, lofty face scanned its helpless targets.

  The men kept fleeing, completely abandoning all discipline, but the legion’s flight was thwarted a half mile away. The retreating troops rushed around a bend in the narrow valley and halted in consternation and panic. A sheer cliff rose directly before them, blocking any further progress into the mountains. Then the elemental king, his pursuit at an almost leisurely pace, came into view, striding resolutely forward.

  Jaymes turned to General Weaver.

  “We’ll stand here, my lord!” declared the general. “Est Sularus oth Mithas!”

  “Yes,” agreed the lord marshal bitterly. There was no way out of this place, and it seemed certain many thousands of brave men would pay for that reality with their lives.

  “Hey, Jaymes! Sir Lord Marshal! It’s me; I’m back!”

  Jaymes whirled in his saddle, his jaw dropping in amazement as Moptop Bristlebrow came scrambling right out of a nearby rock pile to stand on a boulder at the foot of the cliff. The kender waved cheerfully then looked around at the soldiers he had startled with his sudden appearance. “You guys are a little jumpy, aren’t you?” he asked.

  It was then that the elemental king uttered a thunderous roar that rolled up the valley, echoing between the cliffs and resounding through the air.

  Moptop hopped down off the rock and sauntered toward Jaymes. He waved nonchalantly at the monster looming into the air barely a mile away.

  “Oh, him again,” he said. “I guess I got here just in time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY — SEVEN

  THE MARCH OF THE ADAMITES

  For several breaths Jaymes Markham was utterly speechless. He simply stared at Moptop, stunned by the kender’s appearance on the battlefield. The pathfinder’s air of utter nonchalance was incongruous against the backdrop of death and mayhem, and it took the lord marshal an act of will to shake his head and convince himself that he was not imagining the bizarre scene as the kender ambled cheerfully down from the rocks toward the army commander.

  A glance over his shoulder showed Jaymes that the monster was pressing the advance, as if it sensed the helplessness of the trapped humans. Another bellow exploded from the elemental king, this one a thunderous convulsion that shook the ground and caused a small rockslide in the valley. The noise finally startled his tongue into action.

  “Moptop! What in the name of all the gods are you doing here? Where did you come from?” the lord marshal demanded when he finally regained the power of speech.

  The kender grinned happily. “Well, I found another path. But it’s
not like it looks-I mean, I didn’t just magically walk through the rocks, like we did at the Cleft Spires. I went back underground like you asked me to, and I had to look around for a really long time. But I found my way back out again!” He chucked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the tumble of large rocks at the base of the cliff. “See, there’s a cave down here, and I came out of the hole.”

  “Of course.” The lord marshal thought quickly. He looked up and saw the looming form of the elemental king, its black shape etched against the sky and two fiery eyes fixed upon the milling soldiers of the Palanthian Legion trapped here in this valley. They were hard up against the cliff. There were several thousand men in here, many hundreds of them on horseback. Brave and willing to fight to the last man, they were nevertheless incapable of battling the looming monster. Their only hope of survival was escape.

  Looking at the sheer cliff, the rock wall looming a hundred feet in the air, capped by a cruel overhang that would have prevented even a skilled climber from attaining the top, Jaymes could see there would be no further retreat on the ground. Even though the kender claimed to have found a cave at the base of that precipitous barrier somewhere within the great pile of large boulders, Jaymes couldn’t spy any opening.

  “You say there’s a cave in there. Is it large enough for these men to escape into it?” Even as he asked the question, he felt the looming presence of the giant elemental and knew it was a futile hope.

  Moptop confirmed that knowledge with his first words. “Not really-it’s pretty small and narrow. If they left these horses outside, they could go in there one at a time, I guess, if the cave wasn’t filled with adamites. But they pretty much block the whole thing up.”

  “Adamites?” Jaymes felt a flickering of hope. “So you found them? And they came with you?”

  “Yes-and you were right! They all followed me right along, the whole army of them, after I told them what you told me to say. They’re lined up down there right now. Here they come!”

  The lord marshal saw the proof emerging into view even as the kender spoke. Grayish white, the color of naked rock, the first of the stony warriors came out of the hidden cave to appear between a pair of large, square boulders. The stone-skinned warrior slid nimbly down the shelf to stand at attention on the floor of the valley. Another warrior came behind the first, and still another followed, both of them dropping to the ground to flank the first of the statuelike warriors.

  The file of adamites emerged from the cave in eerie silence, their heads capped by the antique, bristling helmets, each bearing a small round shield in its left hand and the stout, sturdy spear in its right. But they came quickly; in no time at all, there were more than a dozen standing there, and this rank took a step forward as still more emerged to fill out a second rank just behind the first. The second group marched to the side to take up a position beside the first, extending the front to some twenty-five warriors-and twenty-five sharp, sturdy spears-while more and more and more of them continued to climb out from the narrow cavern.

  “My lord!” cried General Weaver, approaching with his sword in his hand. He glared worriedly at the adamites as the first rank took another few steps away from the cliff wall to make room for yet more of their comrades. “Are we being attacked from behind, as well?”

  “No, General,” Jaymes replied, holding up his hand to dissuade nearby knights who had turned about to face these new arrivals, their weapons at the ready. “If I have guessed correctly, we’ve just been reinforced.”

  “What in the name of the gods are they?” Weaver said.

  “I don’t know if we can call them allies, but I do believe they’re the sworn enemies of that thing,” the marshal replied, pointing up at the elemental as the monster took another step closer. One of the cyclone legs kicked into a formation of legionnaires, knocking the men of Palanthas down like stacks of straw. Horses neighed shrilly, rearing and bucking. A volley of arrows flew from a company of archers, vanishing without effect against the great swath of the elemental king’s belly.

  The human troops closer to the adamites backed away to make room for the great, swelling block of troops, already numbering several hundred. Swordsmen muttered curses and exclamations, and archers raised their bows-holding their arrows-as more and more of these lifelike, but clearly stone, beings sprouted from the narrow cave. The adamites marched quickly, forming up in single-file ranks in an ever-expanding front around the concealed aperture at the foot of the cliff. There were hundreds of them now gathered and more still marching out of the tunnel. The front was a hundred paces long by now, and every yard of it was preceded by the wicked, spade-shaped spear points.

  “They hate that elemental,” Moptop explained, looking curiously up at the looming monster. “I think they want to catch it and take it back where it belongs.”

  Already the adamites were marching forward, ignoring the human warriors who scrambled and stumbled to get out of the way. The spears never wavered; the line did not bend, even as the magical warriors flowed around trees and rocks, splashed through the shallow stream that meandered through the valley floor. Moving away from the cliff, spears held level at shoulder height, they tromped steadily toward the massive elemental king.

  “How will they… oh, never mind,” Jaymes said. Spinning around, he barked at General Weaver. “Open your line all the way! Let them through without trouble!” he ordered.

  The soldiers of the Palanthian Legion pulled back hastily, more than willing to allow these weirdly unnatural warriors to pass without hindrance. The adamites continued their advance in a tightly packed formation bristling with spears, their feet stepping in cadence as they marched smoothly past the Palanthian troops and on toward the horrific giant. Marching with steady, exacting precision, their feet crunched over the ground in an increasingly audible rhythm.

  Stony spears extended, the adamites, numbering at least a thousand strong by this time, stretched across the valley floor. Lines from the rear marched to the sides, faced front again, and expanded the ranks with perfect discipline and formation. They continued to march forward, long spears extended, closing rapidly on the king of the elementals.

  As yet that awe-inspiring monster showed no fear of the new arrivals. Instead, the twin cyclones of its great legs kicked faster, and the monster waded heavily into the first rank of the adamites, uttering another bellow with enough force to break three or four shelves of rock loose from the overhanging wall of cliff.

  “It will crush them there; they can retreat no farther!” gloated Ankhar the half-giant as he and Hoarst hurried around the shoulder of the valley wall. The army commander gazed almost rapturously at the gigantic being as it closed on the trapped Solamnic army. The sheer wall with its lofty overhang formed the perfect trap. The milling humans, trapped against the steep, precipitous barrier, had lost all formation, showed none of the cohesion and discipline he had come to expect from the knights.

  “The whole army will die here!” he crowed.

  The half-giant and the Thorn Knight had hastened after the monster as it pursued the fleeing Solamnics, the pair moving far ahead of most of the army. Most of Ankhar’s troops were behind them, still reeling from the chaos of the battle, though several hundred of his goblin warg-riders had formed up and escorted the pair in their pursuit. Ankhar had insisted upon rushing ahead of the bulk of his troops, leaving even Laka, so he could see all that was going to transpire and revel in his ultimate triumph.

  “Hurry up!” he exhorted the wizard. “We will be witness to a great victory!”

  Only then did Ankhar notice that Hoarst, his face oddly impassive, wasn’t looking at the monster. His staring eyes were directed elsewhere.

  “What are those things?” asked the Thorn Knight, his voice unusually urgent and concerned.

  “What things? What are you talking about?”

  Hoarst seemed agitated, and this irritated Ankhar. Why could he not just relish this great moment, this historic success? But the human, ignoring his commander’s fro
wn of displeasure, turned and rushed to climb some rocks that had tumbled to the foot of the nearby valley wall.

  “Get up here; we can see better from a higher vantage,” urged the Thorn Knight in a peremptory tone.

  Ankhar scowled but followed the irritating man up the loose shelf of rocks. He stumbled and scuffed his hands trying to find solid purchase, and he wrenched his knee when one of the rocks yielded to his weight to tumble loosely down to the ground. Cursing, the half-giant hoisted himself to the ledge where Hoarst stood then turned around to look.

  He could clearly see the mass of enemy troops, fractured lines and broken companies huddled against the cliff that barred their progress up the valley. Some of the riders had dismounted and were holding their panic-stricken horses by the reins. It was clear they could find no escape, no route out of the valley save the one they had taken in retreat, and that path was now held by the massive presence of the king of the elementals.

  But there was another source of movement down in the valley, something Ankhar had to squint to see. It was like the rocky floor of the valley was slinking forward like a living carpet, a flood of ghostly gray stone spreading out to confront the king of the elementals, to block its path toward its human quarry. Squinting, the half-giant made out an array of spear tips-many hundreds of them-and, with a start, realized these new stone-colored arrivals bore the shapes of men.

  “What are they?” he demanded, annoyed by the postponement of slaughter, though still not overly worried about the outcome of the fight.

  “I don’t know,” the Thorn Knight replied curtly.

  “Strange warriors… and look, they attack the king,” the half giant grunted, amused. This would be good entertainment. He would watch these mysterious newcomers die.

  “Whatever they are, they don’t lack for courage,” the man noted.

  “Let them die bravely instead of cravenly, then,” snorted Ankhar. But his bravado had an element of bluster to it. After all, what were those things?