by Dragon Lance
Disgusted, Vixa let her head fall against the doorjamb. Immediately, she felt strange vibrations echoing through the cold stone. She pulled back in surprise, and the sensation went away. Vixa pressed an ear to the wall beside the cell door. The stones were vibrating. Was the entire garrison marching on the battlements? Perhaps a mighty storm lashed the fortress. In moments a sound broke the silence of the dungeon – the sound of running feet, growing louder.
Vixa pressed her face against the iron straps over the wicket. “Hello!” she called. “Who’s there? Let me out!”
Samcadaris rounded the far corner and raced toward her cell. She saw that he was dirty and spattered with blood.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“We’re under attack!” He threw back the bolt on her door. “An hour after sundown they came out of the river! Warriors, giants with blue skin, just as you said!”
“Has the fortress fallen?”
“No! Axarandes led a counterattack and saved the troops trapped outside the walls. They’ve taken Brackenost, though. The village is burning.”
She emerged from her cell. “Where’s Gundabyr? He must be freed.”
Samcadaris took her down the passage and around the corner. When Gundabyr was awakened and the situation explained to him, he got to his feet with a sigh, saying, “First they call us loonies, then they want us to fight for’em. I tell you, the luck’s still with us, and it’s —”
“All bad,” finished Vixa impatiently. “Captain, we need weapons.”
“You shall have them,” said Samcadaris. He led them down the passage and up the stairs, grabbing a torch as he went.
As they ran, the dwarf muttered, “I don’t s’pose there’s a decent axe around here. I can’t fight with these fancy elf weapons.”
They emerged in the ground floor chamber of the north tower, the fort’s armory. The torchlight was reflected by racks of pole weapons, swords, shields, and various other implements of battle. Shouts and the clangor of battle filtered through the thick stone walls.
“Help yourselves,” said the Silvanesti, stabbing the torch into a handy wall sconce. “I must return to the wall!”
Vixa chose a burnished bronze breastplate and helmet. There was no time to bother with greaves, vambraces, or the like. She tugged the helmet on and wriggled into the heavy cuirass. Gundabyr turned up his nose at the bronze armor – it was much too large for him anyway – and went straight to a rack of polearms. He took out a six-foot halberd and cut several feet of its shaft away. Now he had a large but serviceable hand axe.
“Let’s go!” Vixa shouted, hefting a borrowed sword.
“Right behind you, Princess.”
They dashed into the courtyard. The bailey was littered with wounded and dying Silvanesti. Long torches planted into the ground gave the scene an eerie, shifting illumination.
The walls teemed with fighting elves. Fires blazed on the far side of the walls, casting the parapets into sharp relief. Mixed in with the Silvanesti defenders were disturbing numbers of tall, blue-skinned Dargonesti. Now and then an elf toppled from the wall, trailing screams in the smoky air.
“The gate’s where the fight will be hardest,” Vixa shouted over the din. “That’s where I’m going!” She ran for the entrance, Gundabyr right behind. They had to weave through the piles of wounded and dead.
They reached the front gate just as the fight was turning in favor of the defenders. General Axarandes was there, directing his troops with cool efficiency. He had solidified the defense. Vixa and Gundabyr pitched in, helping to shove the massive oak doors shut. When Axarandes saw them, he simply nodded.
Locking bars, made from entire tree trunks, were slid into place to hold the portal secure. Axarandes called for water and bandages for the wounded. There were no healers in Thonbec. They were usually brought in from Brackenost to tend the garrison’s simple needs. Unfortunately, Brackenost had been conquered. The burning village brightly illuminated the eastern wall.
Vixa, Gundabyr, and the general climbed to the battlements. Vixa was furious that her warning had gone unheeded. Many of these deaths might have been prevented if only the Silvanesti had listened.
“After dark, the first of the enemy emerged from the river and seized the docks.” Axarandes said. “Half the garrison was outside the walls, patrolling or on relieved duty. Before the alarm could be raised, the enemy were in the streets of Brackenost. They have an incendiary liquid that is difficult to extinguish.”
“Gnomefire,” Gundabyr said ruefully. “I’m afraid I gave them that.”
“Captain Dannagel was in the village and mustered what warriors he could to resist the enemy attack. They came out of the river all along the bank, hundreds of them. Dannagel died defending the open gate. I brought his troops in, and only barely managed to keep the invaders out, as you saw for yourselves.”
The Qualinesti princess shook her head as she stared down at the burning village beyond the wall. Of course the Dargonesti had come from the river! She’d told the Silvanesti they were a water-breathing race. But she cast these resentments aside. The objective now had to be the defense of Thonbec and Silvanost.
“Have you sent word to the Speaker?” she asked. Axarandes shook his head, and she quickly added, “Silvanost is their objective, General, make no mistake. You must warn the Speaker of the Stars to prepare for the defense of the city.”
To her disbelief, he said, “You are too rash, lady. The enemy has not taken this fortress. In truth, now that their surprise attack has failed, I don’t see that we have much to fear. I regret my lack of faith in your warning, but we are prepared now. A force of ten thousand infantry cannot have a siege train of the size necessary to reduce Thonbec. They might as well return to the sea now and spare their own blood.”
“That’s an easy thing to say,” Gundabyr remarked. “But you don’t know these blueskins the way we do. Coryphene didn’t come all this way just to give up. Rest assured, he has some plan in mind for your fortress.”
Axarandes regarded them for a minute. His aquiline features glowed in the light from the burning city. “Very well,” he acquiesced. “A courier will be sent to Silvanost. Would you two like the job?”
Vixa’s response was prompt. “No, thank you, General. I doubt they’d believe us any more than you did.”
He nodded, turned away. Vixa and Gundabyr remained, watching the fire consume the last of Brackenost.
Chapter 18
THE FORTRESS DESTROYED
The night was not yet over.
After the fire in the village had burned itself out, bringing the darkness of a summer night back to the gray walls of Thonbec, Dargonesti crept out of the river again and massed on the riverbanks. Keen-eyed Silvanesti sentinels spotted them and sounded the call to arms on their trumpets.
First to the walls were the archers. The garrison of Thonbec consisted of fifteen hundred warriors, three hundred of whom were some of Silvanesti’s most skilled archers. Though night shrouded the lower slopes of the riverbank, the archers showered death on the attackers. Stung by the hail, a band of fifty Dargonesti tried to rush the gate. Only half made it to the top of the hill, and none made it to the gate. The survivors broke and fled back to the safety of the Thon-Thalas.
“Hurrah!” a young sentinel shouted from the parapet. “They can’t bear up under our arrows!”
“Not surprising,” Vixa said dryly. She was tired and cross, wanting to sleep but not daring to. “They’ve never faced arrows before.”
The sentinel said excitedly, “We should sortie and strike them! With a hundred swords we could —”
“— reduce the garrison by a hundred,” Samcadaris finished. “Back to your post, soldier.”
“The Dargonesti are just feeling out your defenses. They’ve never fought a land foe before,” Vixa explained.
Long after the moons set, mere hours before dawn, it became very quiet. Axarandes, fresh from a well-deserved rest, came to the battlements with the dispatch he’d
prepared for the Speaker of the Stars. He asked Vixa to read it, to check for factual errors regarding the might of the Dargonesti. She approved it all, and he sealed it in a deerskin wallet. Axarandes called for a courier, the fastest runner in Thonbec. The importance of his mission was explained to him, and the courier was lowered by rope over the east wall. Silently, he raced away from the fort, vanishing in the trees.
“I hope he makes it,” Vixa murmured.
“I’ll send a second courier in a few hours,” Axarandes assured her. “And another at midday. One of them will get through.”
A lookout atop the south tower sang out, “Turn out! Turn out! Something is happening in the river!”
All hands rushed to the west wall. By the time Vixa and Gundabyr reached the parapet the place was so crowded the dwarf couldn’t see anything but elven posteriors.
“What is it? What do you see, Princess?” he demanded.
Vixa wasn’t sure what she was seeing. The dark waters of the Thon-Thalas were rising. The surge was coming from the delta, not upstream. Water rose over the two stone docks, inundated the banks, and crept slowly up the hill toward the fortress.
A cold sensation settled in Vixa’s stomach. “General,” she whispered, “you’d better clear the walls.”
“Why? What sorcery is this?” he wanted to know.
“Just clear the walls!” she repeated.
The rising water writhed, and a gelatinous mass appeared on the surface. To the Silvanesti, it looked like a swarm of giant snakes emerging from the river. One of the snakes rose into the air, as high as the walls of Thonbec. The elves gaped. The snake – or rather the tentacle – was six feet thick and studded with bright yellow suckers. Though she had never seen this part of the monster, Vixa knew what it was.
“They’ve called up the kraken.”
Her whispered statement fell like a lightning bolt upon Gundabyr. “That does it,” he said flatly, then turned and ran.
More of the monster humped out of the water. The boneless kraken filled the river from bank to bank. Its terrible tentacles reached out of the river, grasping tree trunks for support. More and more of its whitish, translucent bulk spilled out of the water.
The archers, unbidden, peppered the kraken with arrows. They might as well have blown kisses. The wooden shafts made no impression on the slick, rubbery hide of the massive creature. A tentacle touched the foot of the fortress wall, coiled around it, retracted again. Another came, feeling the stonework with a delicacy strange for so massive a limb. A third arm grasped the rim of the high wall, bowling over a dozen Silvanesti warriors as an elf brushes ants from his sleeve.
Vixa couldn’t move. The dreadful sight kept her rooted to the spot, staring in horrified fascination. In the center of the monstrous mass of tentacles and flesh a single eye appeared, black as the Abyss and twice as wide as the gate of Thonbec. It glistened in the starlight, then she saw the immense organ swivel in her direction.
Five tentacles leapt up and grasped the parapet. Silvanesti attacked with sword and halberd, to no effect. The kraken’s limbs knotted, drawing the monster farther out of the water.
Axarandes was shouting orders. Oil was brought from the towers and dumped onto the monster’s grasping tentacles. Torches were cast. Though weak flames hissed, the sodden flesh of the kraken was nearly impossible to ignite.
They could smell the beast now. The fetid odor brought to Vixa’s mind her horrible first encounter with the kraken. She shuddered violently, and her terrified paralysis ended abruptly. Vixa grabbed the general.
“You can’t fight it like this! It’s too big, too powerful! Sound retreat, General! Save the garrison!” she shouted into his face.
Already, stones on the parapet were breaking off under the kraken’s grip. A half-dozen Silvanesti were crushed in one swipe as a tentacle thrashed against the south tower. The monster was halfway up the hill now, more of its arms reaching out to the fortress. Vixa ducked; limbs eight feet thick and two hundred feet long swept over their heads. Huge blocks of granite tumbled as the kraken tugged on the wall.
Axarandes gave the command. Trumpets sounded “Reform and retreat.” Silvanesti spilled off the wall and formed ranks on the far side.
Vixa searched for Gundabyr. The monster was raking the courtyard. Warriors tried to hold ranks, but the threat was too great. The disciplined Silvanesti soldiers broke and ran for their lives. Hundreds of elves raced for the landside wall, to squeeze through the smaller postern gate there.
Masonry fell around Vixa. She was nearly crushed by a four-ton wall block. The sky was growing brighter as dawn approached, and against this purple background she saw the south tower of Thonbec in the kraken’s grip. Screeching came from the giant suckers as they gripped the smooth stones. Then the grinding thunder of collapse sounded. The south tower slid into ruin before her astonished eyes.
The air was filled with dust, the pounding of toppling granite, the shrieks of injured and frightened elves. Vixa, shielding her nose and mouth from the flying dirt, ran for the postern gate, midway along the eastern wall. A tentacle lay in her path. Steeling herself, she clambered over it. It was cold and soft, like a mound of damp leather. It didn’t stir as she dropped down on the other side, but a gruesome sight met her eyes: arms and legs of crushed Silvanesti protruded from underneath. Vixa looked away and resumed running.
The postern was partially blocked by rubble. The Qualinesti princess wormed through a tangle of stones. An elf lay dead under a large fragment of the gate arch. Bending low to crawl by the obstruction, she recognized the dead Silvanesti. It was Kenthrin, one of the first three she and Gundabyr had met on the beach.
Vixa crawled through a small gap, tearing her clothes and scratching her face and hands on sharp edges. The postern gate was standing open. Staggering to her feet, she dashed through. Outside, all she could see were the backs of many Silvanesti, running for the woods. Gundabyr was nowhere to be found.
The kraken turned its attention to the north tower. As Vixa stumbled away, she saw the same merciless grip enfolding that stout structure, with the same terrible result. Balif’s great fortress, built with skill and care a thousand years earlier, crumbled under the monster’s assault.
Vixa reached the line of trees, paused for breath, and looked back. Dargonesti warriors, their heads and shoulders sheathed in damp, turbanlike cloths, were marching up the hill, giving the kraken a wide berth. When they caught up with fleeing Silvanesti, they struck them down without mercy. Grinding her teeth in anger, the Qualinesti princess shucked off her cuirass and helmet. Alone, she couldn’t save those who were dying. All she could try to do was save herself. The heavy armor would only slow her now.
The forest east of Thonbec was an old one, of large, widely spaced oaks and yews. The way was clear for rapid movement. Vixa ran until her lungs were bursting. When she could run no farther, she leaned against a broad yew tree and gasped for breath. Shame rose hot in her breast, shame for her panicked retreat and for the ignominious defeat.
In the distance, the eastern sky brightened behind a tall cloud of gray dust, rising from the ruins of Thonbec.
*
Gundabyr’s early flight from the wall had been prompted not only by fear, but by his practical nature as well. He knew the power of the kraken. He knew there was nothing for a fellow to do in the face of such power but be elsewhere. Vowing to live to fight another day, the dwarf had fled.
When he reached the postern gate, he looked back. The tentacles of the kraken were gripping the riverside wall. Gundabyr was torn for a moment, wanting to go back for Vixa yet wanting to put as much distance as possible between himself and that ocean-dwelling horror. He, like most dwarves, was a very poor swimmer because of his stocky body and heavy bones. The sight of the kraken had brought back all the old terror, when the monster had sunk his ship and he and Garnath had been captured.
The kraken’s tentacles swept the first elves from the battlement, and Gundabyr hesitated no longer. He ran down the east s
lope to the woods. The area was deserted. The Dargonesti hadn’t bothered to surround the landward side of Thonbec. They probably didn’t want to risk being cut off from the river.
Axe in hand, the dwarf plunged into the woods. His flight took him down this slope and up the next hill. As the eastern sky lightened to gold, he was forced to stop and catch his breath. On the bald crest of a hill, he turned to survey Thonbec. Nothing remained of the ancient fortress but an enormous mound of gray stone. A column of dust rose like smoke straight up in the still air. Real smoke from the sacked village of Brackenost made a thin plume next to the vast dust cloud.
Gundabyr leaned on his axe handle, chest heaving. He realized he couldn’t simply run away. He was too stubborn for that and, he had to admit it, he liked that young elf princess. She wasn’t nearly as stuck-up as most elves. Besides, if the Dargonesti were allowed to take over Silvanesti, no country on Krynn would be safe. He would have to go back. He had to find Vixa.
When his breathing came under control, he shouldered his weapon and started back down the hill. The return trip, not conducted at a blind run, was much slower. By the time Gundabyr reached the clearing where the east wall had stood, the morning sun was bathing the ruins of the fortress. There were no Dargonesti in sight. Many Silvanesti lay dead on the field, slain in flight by Dargonesti spears. He looked them over, thankful Vixa couldn’t be found among them.
The kraken was gone, presumably back into the sea, but its nasty smell still fouled the air. Gundabyr picked his way up the hill through the litter of broken stones and dead elves. He reached the top and could see a long distance in all directions. Nothing was stirring. No elves – of any nation – no sea monsters, not even any animals broke the unnatural quiet.
As the dwarf clambered down the north side of the ruins, all the while his mind was working. Where had the Dargonesti gone? They had taken the fort, or the kraken had, yet they’d left the site of their great victory.