by Dragon Lance
Nearby, a clutch of skeletons – warriors with tattered armor that hung like tarnished bones on their shoulders – engaged Vinas. He fought afoot. Since Courage’s death, he’d not had the heart to ride another horse. Now he paid for it, pressed on all sides by the skeletal warriors.
With one great swipe, he leveled three of them. Their spines cracked like dry twigs, and they fell in piles of metal and bone. Four more surged in atop their remains.
Vinas jabbed. His sword jammed in an eye socket. Struggling to pull the blade free, he wrenched the skull from its neck. With no time to clear his blade, he flung the cranium around to knock the head from his other attacker.
A sword caught him between his shoulder and back plates. He whirled, dislodging the point of the blade and facing down three new skeletons. One held a sword tipped with blood – his blood.
That one first.
Vinas’s steel lanced out. His sword slid harmlessly between ribs. If the thing had had a heart, it would have been dead then. He twisted the blade. It caught in the ribs. Then, with one hand, he lifted the warrior over his head and smashed him down atop another undead monster. Both disintegrated.
Three more scrambled into the fray
I am the scorpion who will be pulled apart by a swarm of ants, thought Vinas.
His sword lashed into the cluster of skeletons. Now there were five, and now six, crowding-past each other to tangle their swords with his.
And then, none. The center pair were crushed beneath the golden breast of a descending griffon. The next two were skull-shattered by the griffon’s blessed talons. The final two were unmade by its wings. All this happened in a breath.
The six skeletons were replaced by Terraton, who flapped his massive wings out of reach of singing steel. Luccia’s beautiful face appeared over his shoulder.
She shouted to him, “Get on! We’ve found the necromancers controlling them!” Despite the stem rage on her features, she was, indeed, a beautiful sight.
Bounding up behind her, Vinas said, “I could kiss you!”
“Do,” she commanded.
As he complied, bending to her slender neck, she set heels to the eagle-lion’s flanks. Terraton launched them up into the roaring sky.
His wings surged. A flight of red-fletched arrows – Qualinesti standards – streaked narrowly past. They sank into a rising mound of animate mud and deflated it. Shrieking an imprecation at the elves, Terraton climbed higher. With each massive stroke of his wings, the fetid weight of death and battle slipped below.
Terraton banked above the treetops and flung himself along a frozen creek bed.
“Up there,” said Luccia, pointing.
Vinas looked. He first saw only flashes of gold as the rest of her twenty-five fliers dropped from the skies into formation beside her. Then, beyond the auric band, he saw a bald-topped knoll, rising just above the frost-glistening treetops. Upon the outcrop, black-robed figures swarmed. Their hands gesticulated downward, and fingers of magic rooted up the dead.
“Good work, Luce,” Vinas shouted, kissing her without warning or command. “What’s your plan?”
He felt her brief laugh but could not hear it for the wind. “Kill them.”
A blue-white bolt of lightning arced out from the knoll and danced along the treetops. The incandescent surge made its jagged way toward the riders.
“Up, Terraton!” cried Luccia, urging him higher. “Up!”
The griffon wasted no time. Terraton wrenched his way straight up. Had Luccia and Vinas not already been clinging tightly to the creature, they would have been flung away.
The other riders followed in tight formation. The wind from their combined wing movement battered the treetops. The blue bolt cracked deafeningly below them, and then shot upward.
In a mordant flash, the trailing griffon and rider were transfixed on the jagged shaft of power. For a moment, its wings were outlined in scintillating lightning. Then, rider and beast were gone. White smoke hung in their place, and then came a rain of black soot.
Vinas turned his eyes away. He felt a tightness in Luccia’s stomach – she was shouting something. “... have to go back to get our own wizards. We can’t get any closer.”
“No,” said Vinas. “Not enough time. Down. Take us down.”
“What? Into that spell storm?”
“There!” he said, pointing to a deadfall of large white boulders.
She knew immediately what he intended, and sent Terraton banking toward the spot.
Below, the wizards glared upward with dark satisfaction to see their foes turning in retreat.
A ring of treetops slid past. Terraton dropped into the rockfall. His talons raked over the embankment. He sought a certain size and weight of stone.
“This’ll help,” said Vinas.
He leapt off the griffon’s back and raced to a boulder. “What are you doing?” Luccia asked in disbelief. Terraton began to work it free. “The woods are full of wizards.”
“I’m just increasing Terraton’s payload by about fourteen stone. As to the wizards, we’ll see how many are left when we’re done.”
The boulder rocked a little. Vinas gave orders to Terraton. “Get. You’ve got stones to throw. I’ll do what I can down here.” He whacked the eagle-lion’s golden flank.
With a warning snarl, it leapt into the air, dragging the boulder in its talons. Luccia looked small and frustrated atop the griffon. Her face was hidden in a rush of shimmering wings as Terraton labored upward.
Vinas watched them disappear. He allowed himself a cocky smile and a brief prayer for her safety. Turning, he hurried across the rocky incline toward the summit of the hill. He clambered from the rockfall into a thick stand of pine. He reached a bald hilltop and, through the trees of a narrow valley, saw the necromancers moving on the adjacent hill.
Already, flecks of gold circled above the scene, out of spell reach. Already their white boulders hailed downward from the sky onto the heads of the wizards. Shouts and confused roars came from the mages.
“Good, but not enough,” Vinas said to himself.
He darted down between the trees, edging sideways to keep from slipping on the carpet of dry needles. At the bottom of the steep valley ran a small stream. He vaulted it and climbed up the hillside beyond.
Incantations and shouts sifted down from the hilltop. In moments, Vinas saw the black robes, white hands gesticulating in foul spells, red blood spattering the tree trunks – The mages were distracted by the assaults from above. They were too busy to notice one out-of-place man.
Vinas reached the hilltop and studied the spectacle.
Many sorcerers lay dead beneath shattered boulders. Many more contrived to chant, their hair standing wildly on end and their bones dancing weirdly around their feet. Some of these enchanters were long dead – liches with husk-dry flesh and rot-riddled fingers. Even as Vinas watched, a lich that had been crushed by a boulder struggled free, its body a mere jangle of bone fragments. In retribution, it conjured a fireball, which it sent roaring up into the welkin heights.
Vinas noticed six warlocks standing in a circle at the center of the clearing. From their upraised fingertips, a green-gray field of magic formed a vault. When a boulder plunged from the sky and cracked against this magical umbrella, the shield proved adamantine. The boulder splintered and fell in fragments to the ground. One large chunk, he noted with satisfaction, crashed atop an unwatchful sorcerer.
What is the shield protecting? Vinas wondered.
Then he saw it: an obsidian sphere held aloft by a tall pedestal. The orb emitted some sort of power, its invisible waves of energy pushing the robes of the six mages outward from it.
It’s powering their spells, Vinas realized, channeling or synchronizing them somehow. It is the heart of this undead army.
He glanced toward the sky, seeing another cascade of stones coming. The huge stones crushed several warlocks. This was his chance. No more stones would fall for the next several seconds.
He rose
and entered the chaotic circle. His sword remained scabbarded. He didn’t even make a swipe at the astonished warlocks. In five bold strides, he penetrated the inner ring of warlocks. In seven, he reached the pedestal, and gave it a mighty shove.
It tipped with slow, massive motion. The orb stuck obstinately atop the tipping tower. With unstoppable grace, the pillar and orb tilted and crashed to the ground.
The sphere imploded. With a blinding flash, it vanished. The mystical hole that remained sucked chunks of pillar and bone and flesh into it.
Vinas felt his robe whip around his legs, drawn toward the implosion. Even as he fell back, two more boulders cracked against the sorcerous vault overhead. The debris was drawn quickly and violently down into the vacuum.
The overhead shield faded and fizzled. Vinas was momentarily stunned. A stone struck near him and buried itself completely. Turning, Vinas lurched away.
Boulders and warlocks fell all around him. Hands flailed in hopeless final spells or in the last throes of terror.
As he walked in a daze, Vinas drew his sword and cleaved the head of a lich. The head fell away like the halves of a chopped cabbage. The dead thing, tumbleweed-light, rolled back toward the depthless hole.
By the time Vinas gained the first line of trees, the force of the hole had become a howling wind – four howling winds, converging from the corners of the world. He had to pull himself into the woods and struggle down the hillside as the trees tossed furiously.
It must be a gate to some evil place, some place of negative energies, he thought in the dim recesses of his consciousness. He clutched a tangle of roots and pulled himself down toward the misting stream. The Pit, perhaps, or the Infernal Realms – bottomless places in the Abyss. Perhaps, with one simple push, I’ve destroyed all of Ergoth. Destroyed it while trying to save it.
The ground grew wet. He looked down to see water running in rivulets uphill past him.
Hold on. Hold on, then. That was all there was to do as the world turned upside down and the sky drew him up to its inexorable brightness. Hold on.
Then with a shivering thunder-crack, it was done. The hillside seemed to shrug and sigh. The trees groaned tiredly as they ceased swaying. The rivulets that had flowed up now turned and trickled down his leggings. He tumbled, head over heels, into the slowly filling banks of the stream.
All the world emitted a long breath of relief. In that moment, Vinas knew the undead monsters were settling to putrid ruin atop their own footprints. He knew his army would live to fight again.
As if in confirmation of his thoughts, he heard the distant, ferocious roar of twenty-five thousand defiant throats.
*
Six Months Hence, 5 Corij, 1205 Age of Light
The army surrounded Daltigoth in a day. They marched unopposed. The emperor fielded not so much as a war dog on the plains around the city. It was like Vingaard all over again.
Except that this walled city was seventeen times the size of Vingaard. Despite its size, Emann had scrounged up enough guards to blacken the battlements.
“I didn’t think there were that many people in the city,” Gaias observed laconically. He stood with Commander Solamnus atop an observation platform.
Vinas said, “There aren’t.”
“What are you talking about?” asked the grizzled old warrior. “I see them with my own eyes.”
“More undead. Luccia’s scouts say so,” Vinas replied flatly. “Emann’s lost all his living warriors to our side.
Only the dead will defend him now.”
Both men spent some moments staring toward the city. It was truly a necropolis.
At last, Gaias broke the silence. “Commander, perhaps I should have asked this sooner, but how do we starve out an army of the dead?”
Meus Pater
Well, Father, I am laying siege to Daltigoth, our city, our home. How strange to return to these familiar walls, an enemy to all that raised me.
No, not to all. Not to you, Father.
It is time that Daltigoth got ‘sieged and sacked. I think we both know that. We also both know this will be no easy victory. My priests could, perhaps, turn one sixth of Emann’s undead army, while those left tear my men apart.
I hope only that you are not among those he raised.
XVIII
One Year Hence, 23 Corîj, 1206 Age of Light
“This note was recovered by a scout,” said Gaias. He stood at the mouth of Vinas’s tent.
“I said come in,” Vinas repeated. He was studying maps of Daltigoth. Seven black lines showed where sappers had burrowed to within fifty feet of the walls. Another year, and they would be under. As Gaias entered the tent, Vinas shook his head to clear his senses. “What do you mean, it was recovered?”
“It was tied to an arrow shot into no-man’s-land,” Gaias replied.
Vinas looked up, curiosity breaking through the grim mask he wore during this long, grueling siege. “The last time we got such a thing, it was an invitation to dinner.”
“This is no such hospitable gesture.” Gaias passed the wrinkled paper to his commander, who flattened it as best he could and held it up to lantern light. It read:
To the noble Commander Vinas Solamnus,
From the people of Daltigoth.
Greetings,
We thank you for your efforts on our behalf. We know you mean only to free us from the tyranny of Emperor Emann and Empress Phrygia. Even here, word reaches us of the freedom you have won for the rest of the empire.
But your siege does not kill Emann. It kills us. We are his hostages. The emperor keeps all the food in Daltigoth in the royal storehouses. Once our personal pantries were emptied, we began to starve. We can buy food only from black marketeers, who sell a loaf of bread for the price of a home, a cut of meat for the price of a man’s life. And whenever one of us dies, whether from starvation or from black marketeers or from the emperor’s diligence patrols, the body is raised by Emann’s necromancers to fight for him.
So, we implore you, end this siege. It only slays us and makes Emann’s army all the stronger.
Vinas looked up from the page, which rattled faintly in his trembling grasp. He breathed once deeply. “Gather up my advisors. Immediately.”
Gaias blinked. “You aren’t considering surrender?”
“No,” said the commander. His face held an iron-hard expression that verged on a smile. “I want to discuss the possibility of another bread war.”
*
One Week Hence, 1 Argon, 1206 Age of Light
It was deep night, just past second watch, when Commander Solamnus’s escalade forces landed beside the Ergothian Royal Granary.
The warriors arrived in squadrons of ten. Each squad was flown into position by five silent griffons draped in black, and therefore was invisible against the night sky. They had flown to great heights before passing over the city walls, and then spiraling downward in tight, dizzy circles. One by one, they came to land beside the granary.
As yet, no alarm had been sounded.
Before the strike teams and wagon teams set to ground in alleys below, the two roof squads descended. They had the unenviable task of landing on the gabled and iron-festooned roof of the granary and silencing the twenty guards there.
Vinas and Luccia were part of this crew. Beneath them, Terraton glided downward, a harsh black silhouette against the glowing windows of the city.
“Is your crossbow ready?” asked Vinas over Luccia’s shoulder.
“For the third time, yes,” she whispered.
“On the next circle, then,” he said.
She nodded, and lifted her crossbow to one side of the griffon. Vinas raised his to the other side. They steadied their weapons, waiting for the griffon to bank along the southern gables where they would land. First, of course, they would have to clear the landing spot.
“Now,” Vinas said quietly.
Two thrumming sounds followed as they triggered the crossbows. Bolts hissed away and thudded in quick succession into
victims. From shadowed nooks beside two of the gables, bodies tumbled limply onto the iron balustrade that sided the roof.
Terraton glided swiftly into the vacated position and clamped claws into place. Vinas and Luccia dismounted and crouched beside the panting beast. They listened for any other sounds – other guards falling, or the attack teams landing.
“Four more, six more...” – Vinas counted them – “that’s ten... there’s sixteen...” The cracks and groans and thuds made too much commotion, though.
“Alert! Invaders! Alert!” came a cry.
The warning was cut off by the shriek of a griffon as it landed with a heavy thump. More crossbows fired. The last guards stumbling from hiding went down screaming as they fell to the street.
“Go, Terraton,” Luccia said, slapping the beast’s flank. The griffon shrieked as it launched itself into the air.
So did the thirty-nine other eagle-lions. They took wing in a flight calculated to draw all eyes upward. Let them look at the pretty birds. Let them look away from the gray-garbed warriors converging around the granary.
Dying cries of surprise at the building’s base testified to the success of this tactic. After these sounds came the clatter of wagons rolling to the main doors.
“Let’s go,” said Luccia. She pulled the grating from the gable where they stood and uncoiled a rope down among the dark crates.
“Go ahead,” Vinas said. “I have already fought my bread war.”
“What are you talking about?” Luccia asked. Beyond her shoulder, the forms of other warriors slid down ropes into the granary. “We go together.”
“I have a score to settle,” said Vinas gravely.
“Then I go with you,” Luccia replied.
He set a hand on her shoulder, restraining her. “No. This is a personal matter, a fool’s errand.”
“Just as I said, we go togeth —”
“No, I order you to see this action through. I order you to survive this night and fly on out of here with the rest of the warriors.”