The History of Krynn: Vol IV

by Dragon Lance

  So, thought General Erghas. It is to be swords.

  He swung down from the saddle and smacked his mare on the rump, sending her away. Then he drew steel. Solamnus had sword in hand. Erghas tossed his helmet aside so that they were equally armored. It was just as well. Boarshead helmets were more harm than good in a close sword fight.

  He approached the fallen horse and the kneeling rider. Erghas regretted the provisions that forbade backstabs and slaying a man who was down. He regretted them if only because he could otherwise end this now. His every muscle demanded that he sit down. The regret was only momentary, though. Solamnus was nothing if not a soldier of honor. He deserved an honorable fight and an honorable death.

  “Ready for another go?” Erghas asked, his voice sounding more hearty than he felt.

  The commander rose to his feet. The man was imposingly tall. He turned slowly, his light-blue eyes all the more dazzling over blood-painted cheeks. Vinas nodded.

  “Clean your sword,” Erghas said. It was not a suggestion. “If I’ve got to die today, I don’t want to do it with horse blood in me.”

  Solamnus looked down at the crimson blade. He carefully drew the flat of it across the shoulder of his mount. After wiping both sides, he lifted the blade, showing it to be clean.

  “He was a good horse,” the commander said.

  “I imagine,” replied Erghas.

  He backed away to a wide spot of dry grass with solid footing. His feet planted in preparation. His knees and lower back ached, but he held the posture all the same. Solamnus arrived, saluted once more, and assumed a similar stance.

  The rebel lunged first, huge like a charging bull, sword poised to block or thrust. Erghas stepped into the charge. Steel clashed on steel. The weight behind that first lunge was deadly. Erghas deflected the sword and spun away, letting Solamnus barge past him. The blades scraped loose, each notched by its counterpart. Erghas made a weak backlash to the head. The man, though, was out of reach, stomping upon the grass and pivoting, teeth bared, for the next attack.

  It came from Erghas. He danced in lightly. His blade darted to the right, then shifted in tight beneath the man’s sword arm and nicked armor. Vinas was surprised by that move. He tried to fall back, to regroup. Erghas pressed, bringing the blade hammerlike onto one shoulder. The silver epaulet dented beneath the strike and slid sullenly off.

  Erghas disengaged, breathing hard, considering the next attack. The man had weight and speed, but he was not graceful with a sword. He’d learned to butcher with it, but never to finesse it, to be its lover. Erghas had him in that. A worse weakness, though, was the man’s heart. It was as large as a bam door, and just as red.

  No more time for thought, only retreat as Vinas pushed him back. The force of each strike, once again, was incredible, though the blows were sloppy. Erghas deflected each with a well-angled blade and much less energy. The commander would not relent, the attack would not cease. Erghas at last sidestepped the thrusts, once again letting Solamnus plunge past him.

  This time, Erghas’s whirling strike to the head caught flesh – but only just. The tip clipped Vinas’s earlobe and drew a thin line on it. Erghas remembered the weapon-smith’s words: “The tip is especially sharp. Strike with it, and the kill is sure.”

  Not when I strike the earlobe, he thought irritably.

  Solamnus whirled, pressing again. His blade flashed. Sparks flew where it struck. The rebel’s sword this time seemed a spell field around him. The razor edge was in three places at once, flinging Erghas’s blade aside.

  It was as though that tiny earlobe scratch had enraged Solamnus.

  Sword edges grated, rang, looped, crashed, hammered. At last, a shallow strike got through. The tip of the commander’s blade reached out of the cloud of steel. Erghas felt the jab like a bee sting. There was suddenly warm blood on his leg and on the sword tip before him.

  Erghas fell off a step as he sliced with his sword, driving Vinas back.

  He glanced down at the wound – shallow, not into gut, but it was bleeding. He would need to end this quickly, or the blood loss might prove lethal.

  Erghas looked toward his foe. The big man stood unevenly, as though he had been made dizzy by his own furious assault. He staggered a moment before lifting his sword and rushing the general.

  Erghas easily sidestepped this drunken charge and tripped Solamnus as he went by. The man flopped roughly to the ground, the wind knocked from him. He rolled over, panting, and struggled to his feet.

  Simple fatigue? Erghas wondered. Or injury? Having a horse roll over his head might have done it. When Solamnus charged again, Erghas stepped toward him, knocked his sword free, and stabbed him in the side.

  Vinas collapsed to the ground.

  What was happening? Erghas walked up to stand victorious over the panting man. The wound to the side couldn’t have done this, and certainly not the cut on the ear.

  Vinas Solamnus was not dead, judging by the spasms of his body, but neither would he be fighting anymore. Once again, Erghas regretted that he could not end his downed opponent’s misery

  Two squires were suddenly on the scene – a girl and a middle-aged man. They bore with them a noose, which they slipped around the commander’s head and tightened. Then, smiling to each other, the man and woman dragged the fallen Commander across the field, toward the gallows.

  Erghas stood, stunned, watching them go. He could sit down now. He should sit down now.

  Solamnus’s boots bounced roughly over tufts of grass. He was limp, his face red. Occasionally he gave out a gasp of pain when some stump or rock scraped across his body.

  Erghas walked slowly in the wake of the man, not even thinking to sheath his sword. He heard the rumble of the soldiers, all suddenly on their feet and rushing after him, toward the gibbet. In moments, they would pass Erghas. Still, walking was the only thing he could do.

  I’ve won, Erghas thought. I have won this war. His troops are now sworn to me. Those blue and white tabards flashing past – those are my people. Vingaard is defenseless.

  All of it rang emptily in his ears. There was something else here – a stumbling war-horse... an unmade commander?

  The two squires had reached the gibbet. They flung the end of the noose over the hangman’s arm and unceremoniously hoisted the commander aloft.

  Hanging, Erghas remembered vaguely, that’s what we said would happen to the loser.

  Erghas lurched up to the gallows. Only when he stood just beneath the uplifted figure did Erghas stop. He looked at the warrior, massive in his armor and hanging by his neck. The commander’s face was blue. His hands swelled with blood.

  I’ve won, Erghas repeated to himself. The thought only made him sick.

  “You’ve cut yourself, General,” said the squire with the hatchet-scar on his brow.

  Erghas looked down and saw that he had. The tip of his sword had jabbed the soft flesh just above his ankle.

  Then it all came together – the hatchet-scar, the tip that would surely kill, the horse that pranced in a hot rage just before falling —

  A similar rage was welling in Erghas. He lifted the sword that had poisoned Solamnus and then himself, and thrust it – tip and shaft – into the belly of the hatchet man.

  The assassin’s mouth became a red fountain.

  In a haze from the poison, Erghas saw his own foot lift to the man’s chest. He kicked the assassin off his sword and whirled.

  The female assassin began to scream. Steel intervened. Her head popped free of her body. The two fell grotesquely side by side.

  As the crowd recoiled from the mad general, Erghas launched himself for the gibbet and shimmied up the post. The soldiers flooded forward, grabbing for his heels. Already he was too high for them to reach. His sword flashed once more, severing the rope that held Solamnus in the air. The commander fell onto the uplifted hands of the confused crowd.

  “Don’t just gape!” shouted Erghas from above. The energy was suddenly leaving him. His limbs were turning t
o butter. He tossed his sword away. Just before he lost hold and fell, he cried, “Get a priest! We’ve been poisoned!”

  Meus Pater

  We were almost killed, both of us, Father. The assassins had been sent for me expressly – that was confirmed by the priests, who reached into death to interrogate them. If their poison had not accidentally infected Erghas as well, I would be dead now, and the rebellion over.

  These two – Hatchet-Head and Lissel – were the same two who killed you and tried to kill the emperor. Their latest employer was Empress Phrygia at Daltigoth.

  Though Erghas could easily have claimed victory, he said he was sick to death of defending a royal family as treacherous and weak as the Quislings. He threw his lot in with ours.

  Now, as we lie in adjacent infirmary cots, our colonels and lieutenants are melding our forces into one great army.

  Gaias, too, has sent word from Qualinesti. He will return in a month or so, bringing with him some pleasant additions to our armies.

  It will take time for Erghas and I to mend. Once we do, though, we will march to Thelgaard to speak with Maslas. I have a feeling he will want to join this party.

  There is much to do, and little time for all of it. Before the end of the year, I hope to be marching upon Daltigoth itself.

  XVII

  One Month Hence, 4 Corij, 1204 Age of Light

  Empress Phrygia glared at the floor beneath her pacing feet. Across the drawing room her husband sat, staring at her in bleak hopelessness.

  “I should have known better,” Phrygia raged. “Those buffoons couldn’t kill you. How could they ever kill Vinas Solamnus?”

  Emperor Emann looked up, hurt. “You speak as though he is a god.”

  “Isn’t he?” she growled. She stopped pacing and stood in the orange glare of the hearth fire. “Isn’t he? He leads a thousand men out the east road and returns with thirty thousand. He does not slay his enemies, but converts them. Don’t you see? He rules the heart of anyone he desires.”

  Emann had turned into a weak drunkard since the War of Ice Tears had begun, four years back. But the duller his eyes, the sharper his tongue. “He rules the hearts even of those he doesn’t desire.”

  “Get out!” snarled Phrygia. “Worthless lush. You have lost the empire already, an empire that couldn’t be lost by generation upon generation of your perverse, idiotic and inbred lineage. You lost it by giving it to a real man. Out!”

  When he was slow to respond, she snatched up a cut-crystal brandy bottle and hurled it at him. The emperor scurried away.

  Phrygia fingered the locket at her neck, summoning Caitiff. She ruled this empire now, letting her sot of a husband remain as a figurehead just to avoid the irritation of an overt coup.

  The mage – a foul gray cloud of ash and bone chips – arrived swiftly. He assembled himself and stood before the impatient empress.

  “My lady,” the skeleton said, bowing low, “what service —?”

  “Vinas Solamnus. His twenty-five thousand men are even now marching toward Daltigoth,” interrupted Phrygia.

  “Unpleasant,” noted the mage.

  “Worse than unpleasant. General Erghas not only surrendered to Solamnus, but actually joined the man. He adds three thousand to the total.”

  “Foul business.”

  “And Vinas’s second has marshaled a company of elven archers and dwarven sappers to break the Sword-sheath Scroll with Ergoth and join the march on our city.”

  “Deplorable.”

  She began again to pace. “What, then? What do we do? Solamnus has every available Ergothian soldier at his command, has won the sympathies of every peasant in the empire, and marches with elves, dwarves, and kender. Who could we even send against them?”

  The skeleton seemed to shrug. “How about an army of the dead?”

  “Yes,” Phrygia replied with quiet resolve. “Let the honored dead of Ergoth defend their empire.

  “It will take time,” the skeleton noted. “Time, and the talents of the best – and darkest – mages of the realm.”

  “Of course, dear Caitiff. Of course.”

  *

  Six Months Hence, 25 Phoenix, 1204 Age of Light

  Commander Vinas Solamnus had dealt with the likes of the empress enough times to know how she thought, what she would do next.

  So he wasn’t surprised by the undead. She raised the very warriors she had slain at Caergoth.

  For three weeks, Vinas’s army had been ready to march, but he had held them back, suspecting just this sort of shambling attack. He had waited for a solid ground freeze so that the graves would be sealed for the season.

  The empress was too canny for that, though. Word came to Daltigoth that Vinas and his Swordsheath Army – Vingaardians, Ergothians (including Maslas and his troops), kender, elves, and dwarves – were on their way south from their staging grounds at Solanthus. She then ordered every grave piled with wood and set ablaze.

  The ground thawed. The necromancers worked their foul arts. Phrygia’s ghastly armies rose from grave soil and ashes. Caergoth, itself a graveyard, burned on the western horizon that morning. Its hellish flames forged a second sun there.

  Silhouetted against that sun were atrocities of flesh and bone, rising and swelling. The ground sprouted them as thickly as a field sprouts com.

  Many were long dead. Time and worms had gnawed them to mere skeletons, rigid and hoary.

  Others were ancient dead. Their bones had been so masticated by flesh-eating earth that their bodies were merely mud puddles charged with flakes of bone and muscle. Men of clay They oozed up from the ground and formed putrid bodies of men and women, ogres and hobgoblins. At times, they merged with each other into titanic monstrosities – giants, hydras, remorhaz, dragons.

  Most, though were the recent dead. Pallid skin... eyes rippled or shrunk to raisins in decaying sockets... mud-caked clothing... skin splotched with lividity... the reek of rot... the roil of maggots hard at work. In most who died violently, the cause of death was writ on their wretched forms – immolated skulls, lacerated throats, cleft brains, punctured lungs, dangling viscera, slashed wrists, crushed pelvises, lopped-off legs.

  All of the dead erupted from the burning and wounded ground and began a furious march toward the army of Commander Solamnus.

  He was ready.

  Titus and his unit of priests led the forces of life. The chancellor, at the head of the wedge of holy men, lifted high a staff. The walking stick held no especial power, but the wielder certainly did.

  “Paladine, Father of Good, Master of Law, Dragon’s Lord – I call you today. I do not merely call upon you, merely invoke your aid, but I call you, evoke you to march with us now, strike with our arms, and lay the dead again to rest! Bless these weapons of ours. We raise them high to you!”

  On that command, the thirty thousand souls of Vinas’s army raised their swords and maces and clubs overhead. From a cerulean sky came a flash of lightning that rolled down like an uncoiling spring. With a shout of thunder, blue power struck that simple wooden staff of Titus’s. A sparkling wave of godfire flowed back from it. Wherever that wave struck an upraised weapon or fist, power engulfed it and scintillated along it and blessed it to strike the armies of death.

  Then, with a roar born in the instant of thunder, the army of Vinas Solamnus rushed to meet the onslaught of the dead.

  As the lines converged, priests raised aspergillums of holy water and whirled them overhead like bullroarers. The water flung a sacred mist around them.

  The first staggering wretch lunged toward Titus, but when the mist struck, it seared through pus and rot and bone.

  A tusked horror and three bow-legged hobgoblins were next to attack. Their claws and fangs reached out for soft necks. None landed a blow. Claws splintered on the holy cloud as though it were steel. Bones ground away into gray dust.

  Other priests hurled blasts of red power into the horrid fray. Each crimson bolt struck a corpse where its heart had once been, cooked whatever or
gan remained in its place, and dropped the dead body to death once more. If the power was not used up in consuming one creature, the bolt would arc to another, and another.

  Some of Titus’s priests were armed only with sacred texts. They strode fearlessly into battle, reading in a great, stentorian chorus. The dead dropped in heaps before them. With each word from each chanting mouth, a spirit sword emerged. These swords cut through the living without harm, but unmade the dead.

  Despite their blessings and fantastical powers, the priests were falling, too.

  A rapacious ooze had materialized beneath the holy cloud. It now took enormous shape – a twenty-armed kraken. The mud creature rose amid the ranks and absorbed a dozen acolytes. Their thrashing hands and feet jabbed from within the muscular body of the thing. In another moment, twelve more priests were gone, caught up in tentacular arms... then seventeen more.

  The warriors charging behind the beast hewed and hacked its awful limbs. With each strike of a blessed weapon, rotten flesh dropped to the ground and stayed there. With each attack of a normal weapon, the severed flesh slid, quicksilver quick, to join again with the main body.

  Priests turned on the creature. Some flung their half-full aspergillums at the grappling, man-eating beast. Where the pierced metal landed and seeped holy water, the creature was dissolved away. It shrieked and flailed, pinned to ground by the holy implements sinking through its flesh.

  Elsewhere, a pair of hobgoblin dead hammered priest heads into red pulps. The bodies mounded up around them – seven, eight, nine.

  A soldier snatched up the ceramic aspergillum of a fallen priest. He laved the water over his spear and hurled it at the hobgoblins. The spear bit through one maggot-riddled gut, tore out the creature’s back, and into the belly of the next one. They fought on, transfixed, though the spear hissed in their flesh and sent up white steam. In moments, it cut through their pelvises, and the two went down, hammers still swinging.