As if he were the only man in the room, the determined thing came at the oversized Lord of Settsted. Its claws and teeth were about to find flesh, but Sir William brought his dagger down, and pinned the Widow Worm through its back to the wooden table. Its vicious, toothy maw snapped shut only a hair’s breadth from Lord Ellrich’s face. It lurched and scrabbled in place, its claws seeking purchase on the well used, but polished surface of the table board. It snapped, writhed, and twisted, still trying to get at the huge man, as if it had no other purpose than to sink its teeth into him. Its tail whipped around, and sent the remainder of a serving platter clattering to the floor, and managed to knock over the candelabra; but its thrashing was in vain. The old Weapon Master’s dagger held it fast.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The sound of someone beating heavily on the wooden door startled them all.
Sir William doused the overturned candles with what was left of his drink. Rosila came barging into the hall from the kitchen to see what the racket was about, saw the lizard flopping on the table, and screamed loudly. Her daughter, who had come in on her heels, fainted at the sight of the bloody thing.
Thump! Thump! Thump! at the door again.
This time, Captain Layson went to answer it. On his way, he attempted to bat the ash from his shirt, but only manage to smear it across the front.
“Kill it!” Lord Ellrich commanded as he raised his bulk from his seat.
The Widow Worm was still straining and snapping at him. He stumbled drunkenly backward and nearly fell over his chair. He wasn’t sure which was worse, the insistent swamp creature, or Rosila’s ear piercing shriek.
Sir William was still coherent enough to keep from pulling his dagger out of the writhing thing to stab it again. It wanted to get at his Lord too badly. Instead, he grabbed his empty goblet, and began pounding the creatures head. Blood, and pieces of wet goo-covered scales flew everywhere.
Rosila backed away, and fell backwards over her daughter. Captain Munst made an alert move, and managed to catch her before she went all the way down, but her screaming continued in loud, hysterical bursts. Sir William hammered away at the creature as Captain Layson opened the door, and let in a terrified looking, sweat-covered young soldier.
“Enough!” yelled Lord Ellrich.
Captain Munst recognized the boy and immediately began trying to ease Rosila’s ample body into his empty chair. This couldn’t be good news.
Sir William hadn’t heard his Lord, and was still pounding the lizard into the table. Its body was twitching now, and its hiss had become a gurgling, spewing sound.
“Enough!” Lord Ellrich roared it this time.
Everyone in the room froze in place. Sir William was a sight, with his bloody cup raised for another blow, his expression, a mixture of childish glee, and utter befuddlement. The newly arrived young soldier’s heavy panting, Rosila’s whimpering sobs, and the slow scratching of the dying lizard’s claws as they raked across the table, filled the sudden and relative silence.
The young soldier looked desperate to speak, but afraid to make a sound. One could only imagine how he was interpreting the scene before him. Captain Munst unceremoniously dropped Rosila into his chair, and stepped around.
“What is it?” he asked, with a tinge of fear in his voice. The boy, he knew, had come a very long way to bring whatever message he was carrying. “Tell us now!”
“They’ve come out of the marsh, Captain!” The words came like water, bursting through a breaking dam. “I’ve run all the way from the Mids. It was happening at Half Point when I passed, and now here. Dane, a rider from Last Post, has just come into the yard bearing the same news from the other end.” The young man gasped for another breath, before continuing. “They’re armed to the gills and coming in swarms. We haven’t the men left to stop them.”
“What in all the bloody hells are you saying boy?” Lord Ellrich asked.
Neither of his two captains waited for the answer. They were bolting out of the hall to assess the situation for themselves. Sir William understood that something was very wrong and waited, still frozen in place, with his cup held high over his head, for the young soldier to answer his Liege Lord.
“We’re under attack, milord,” the boy said, with tears pooling in his eyes. They were obviously tears of terror. “We’re being overrun by the Skeeks!”
“The Zard?” Lord Ellrich looked to Sir William stupidly.
The Weapon Master’s arm finally fell to his side, and his mouth formed a perfect “O.”
The Zardmen had been hunted to extinction in the days of Lord Ellrich’s grandfather. Or so they had thought. Sightings had been reported from time to time over the years, but they had been dismissed as hoaxes or mistakes. In all his life, in all of the treks into the marshes to hunt snapper, dactyl, and geka, during all the deeper excursions to hunt wibbin and skirlsnake, not one of his men, nor any of his father’s men, had ever produced a shred of evidence that the Zard still lived. Ellrich couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and neither could Sir William.
“Master William,” the boy went on, after wiping away his tears. “They number in the thousands, we should see to our Lord’s safety.”
Shaella looked down from the dragon’s back at the squat blocky shape of Settsted Stronghold with an expression of deep concentration, and purpose on her wind-raw face. Her satiny black cloak fluttered at the collar, and anywhere it wasn’t pinned between her shapely bottom and the dragon’s scaly hide. Her mind was clear and focused on her purpose. All thoughts of Gerard and Pael were pushed aside for the moment. She was invading Westland. She couldn’t afford to think about trivial matters. She was the Dragon Queen now, come to conquer Westland and make it her empire.
All along the river border, Shaella’s Zard army was attacking. The whole stretch of Westland was being overrun. The military outposts, and the cities and towns that sprouted up around them, were getting the worst of it. She had concentrated her forces in those heavily populated areas. They were the only places where enough people remained to put up any sort of organized resistance. Smaller groups of Zard were attacking the fishing villages, and it was her soldiers, riding on the backs of the big geka lizards, who were now patrolling the river roads. The metropolis of Southport would have to wait. She would use terror tactics to take hold of its people’s fears. That would have to work in Portsmouth to the north and Castleview at Lakeside as well.
“Nothing like a great big fire-breathing dragon to get the city folk in line,” she mused.
Between Claret and the savage breed giants she was about to let loose on the northern parts of Westland, she was sure that there would be very little resistance. Who could stop her? All the able-bodied men in the land were off with King Glendar. Westland would fall like wheat before a scythe.
When she was finished with Settsted, she had to fly to Locar, and then to Coldfrost. She couldn’t allow word of Westland’s demise to reach King Glendar, with enough time for him to pull out of Wildermont, and come home. She would use the half-breed giants to cut him and his army off soon, but she had to get Settsted out of the way first. It was the only place in Westland, save for Lakeside Castle, where a sizable group of trained soldiers remained.
The destruction of Settsted would be an example to the rest of the land. The fall of the much loved, and over-fed southern marsh lord, would be a blunt statement to those he had been sworn to protect. The message would be clear. Westland has fallen. You were never safe. Bow to your new Queen, or be roasted in a blast of dragon fire. Pledge your allegiance, or face slavery and torture, or a fate worse than death. The geka, after all, had to be fed.
The thrill and glory that Shaella had thought would accompany this moment was absent. So was the anger and passion she had felt in the dragon’s lair with her father. That night was intense, yes, but her mood and demeanor were cold and deliberate. Her actions and decisions seemed almost mechanical. Her emotion had been left up in Claret’s lair with the blackened stain that was once G
erard.
Mindlessly, and without feeling, she would take this kingdom, and squeeze the life out of it. She was too drained by the loss of her lover, to even savor the revenge she was taking out on King Glendar for stealing her father’s attention her entire life. She just didn’t care anymore.
The gluttonous Lord hadn’t shown himself on the walls yet, but his two old captains had. Time was running short. She had to make a calculated concession. Lord Ellrich was probably somewhere in the stronghold, shoveling food into his face. Shaella thought that he might be too fat to get himself up on to the wall anyway. What she had to do in Coldfrost couldn’t wait much longer.
Through the magical link of the collar, she commanded the dragon to destroy the stronghold. With barely a tweak of her huge wings, Claret started her dive towards the dark stone structure, drawing in a deep, billowing breath as she went.
Captain Layson sent half the men of the stronghold garrison, about a hundred of them, out to meet the attackers. The rest were scrambling up onto the walls with long bows and pikes.
Captain Munst had ordered the fire pits to be fueled and lit, and the tar pots to be brought out. The mile or so of town between the stronghold wall and the riverfront, was already half in flame. The men outside the walls were holding back the armed lizard-men, but barely.
“There are hundreds of them,” Captain Munst observed aloud. “And there are more of them riding on the backs of those geka. Why don’t they just rush the walls?”
“Probably too stupid,” Captain Layson spat. “They’re just Skeeks! They might…”
He was about to say more, but Captain Munst’s pointing finger and sudden wide-eyed gasp of breath, stopped him.
“No, they’re staying out of the way of that!” Munst’s tone was deflated. He knew then and there, beyond all doubt, that he would never see his wife and daughters again. All he could do was close his eyes and say a prayer for them.
“Gods,” was all Captain Layson could manage, before Claret’s flaming breath charred them, and the men around them, to smoldering husks.
Lord Ellrich, bodily pulled Sir William toward his office. The young soldier followed nervously. He was too afraid to put his hands on his Lord to help the Weapon Master stop him, even though his superior, Sir William, was ordering him to do so.
Sir William wanted Ellrich to go with him to the stables. There, they could gather enough men to escort Ellrich away from the fighting, but the Lord of Settsted wouldn’t hear of it. After glimpsing the burning town from one of the arrow slits in the long hall, he had only one thing on his mind. He remembered as clearly as if it had been an hour ago, Pael and King Glendar arguing for the soldiers of his border guard to be taken away. The wizard had a hand in this, Ellrich was sure of it. And if it was so, then all of Westland was in trouble.
He ordered both Sir William and the boy to get out, then changed his mind, and ordered the young soldier to follow him to his study. The Weapons Master was doing everything, short of physically assaulting his Lord, to try and get him to see a reason, but it was no use. Ellrich just dragged him along as if he were a child.
Once in the study, Lord Ellrich sent Sir William stumbling across the room with a heavy shove. Sir William slammed into the wall, and decided that he had tried as hard as he could. His Lord was determined to do whatever it was that he was about to do.
Lord Ellrich took a parchment and quill, and after clumsily spilling ink all over the stacks of unanswered petitions and reports on his desk, he began writing with furious intensity. He sanded the paper, and burned his hand lighting a wax candle in the torch flaming on the wall sconce. He showed no regard, not even a wince, as the flames licked, and blistered his knuckles. The room filled with the acrid smell of burnt hair. Lord Ellrich didn’t care. He blew the sand from the note, rolled it quickly into a scroll, and then blotted a globule of wax on it to seal it. After pressing his ring into the cooling stuff, he handed the scroll to the boy.
“You are to ride!”
He said it quickly, placing a hand on each of the young man’s shoulders for emphasis. They were eye to eye then, and the Lord’s order took on a deadly weight.
“Ride like the wind to Lakebottom, and give that to either Lady Trella, or my daughter, Lady Zasha. Do you understand? Lady Trella or Lady Zasha only!”
“Yes, milord,” the soldier answered dutifully. The idea that he was being ordered away from the slaughter taking place around him, the hope that he might not die this night, filled him with confidence.
“Stop for no man. Not even for the King himself!” Ellrich said sharply. “And take as many horses as you need to make it through without stopping. Now go!”
The boy didn’t hesitate. He was off in a flash of boot heels and elbows, leaving Lord Ellrich and Sir William alone in the room. A bright, orange blast of light suddenly shone through the shuttered window that overlooked the training yard. It was accompanied by an earth-shaking roar, which chilled both men to their core. There was no time to even think after that. The building shook, and pieces of the ceiling beams splintered downward. A huge piece of stone flooring came down on them from above, crushing both of them to death in an instant. The last sound either of them heard was Claret’s battle roar as she tore Settsted Stronghold to the ground.
Lord Ellrich would never know it, but the young soldier managed to get clear of the stronghold and the Zard army that was closing in around it. The horses he chose were fast, strong, and more importantly, they were rested. There was a good chance that he would manage to escape the two geka that were chasing him.
Chapter 34
The siege of the Redwolf’s mountain castle had lasted a week so far. According to the lists before him, King Jarrek knew that they could go another half a year or more. They had plenty of stores hidden away in the caverns. Considering that they had over three thousand soldiers behind the secondary wall, and nearly eight thousand other people that were waiting.
Women, children, nobles, and dignitaries, as well as the castle staff and personal servants were all inside the castle. It seemed amazing to him. What amazed King Jarrek even more, was that the castle folk spoke of the siege, as if it were an event, a ball, or a concert, or a mummers show. Even the lords and merchants, whose homes were being torched and looted just outside the secondary wall, seemed oblivious to the reality of the situation. They just didn’t understand. They were all certain that they were safe because the castle itself, in all of history, had never been taken. The first, second, and third baileys had fallen a few times during the bloody dark wars of Jarrek’s great, great-grandfather, but the castle’s innermost wall, known as the Gate, had never been breached. The fortress was designed to wait out a siege.
The castle was a city in itself, built into the side of the Wilder Mountains, thus the name Castlemont. Many of the people who lived there had never gone outside the outer walls in all of their lives. Day to day life inside the huge palace seemed almost normal to most of them, as if war wasn’t waiting just beyond the secondary wall, as if an enemy army wasn’t waiting to storm in and ravage them, and then march them into slavery.
King Jarrek shook his head in wonder at the ignorance of his people. The siege would be broken soon, he had no doubt, but someday, an enemy might really threaten to take the whole place. He could only imagine how the castle folk would act if a time like that really came.
He and his advisers were in his conference room, planning. The table where they were sitting was forty feet long. Its eight legs were carved into perfect wolf’s paws, and its oak surface was varnished, and polished so perfectly that it looked wet. The chairs were just as impressive. The crown of each sported a growling wolf’s head above a back thick with padding, and covered in red velvet. The armrests were wolves’ forelegs, and the chairs’ feet matched the table legs in miniature.
All along the walls, on both sides of the table, realistic paintings of heroic battle scenes, and other historical events, were separated by fancy brass oil lanterns hung on ornate sconces o
n the gray and white swirled marble walls. Like the tabletop, the black marble floor resembled a body of water. The room’s two huge carved oak doors were shut and barred, giving the dozen men inside the room total privacy. They were planning to break the siege.
One of the two wizards in attendance was from Highwander. His name was Targon. He stood a head taller than any other man there. His height, and his plain white robes made him stand out quite dramatically in the rich, colorful council chamber. His long, silver streaked black hair, his dark eyes, and well-trimmed goat’s beard, gave him an almost sinister look.
Willa the Witch Queen had sent him to Wildermont as soon as she had heard the reports of Blacksword impostors flying her banners and firing arrows into crowds. She claimed that, though some of the merchants and traders of her land had surely attended the festival, no one that represented Highwander, or her Blacksword army, in any formal capacity had been there. She and her kingdom held no ill will towards any other in the realm at the moment, and Targon assured King Jarrek that if she did, she would handle the dispute swiftly, and in the open.
Targon had come there to assist in the investigation, and to find out who it was that had impersonated the Blacksword. He got caught up in the Westland surprise attack. Now, acting on his newest orders from Queen Willa, his full services as a War Wizard had been offered to King Jarrek and Wildermont in this time of need.
The other wizard, Keedle was his name, had been born right there in the castle eighty years earlier. The riverside villa he had been raised in was now being used as a Westland Command post, and he was none too pleased about it. His bitter anger at King Glendar was the only thing keeping him from being jealous of Targon’s presence in his kingdom.
Keedle, with his long, white hair and beard flowing over his red and gold trimmed black robe, stood looking out the glassed-in window wall at his city. The audacity of Westland’s new king showed. Placing his pavilion tent right there in front of the main gates, as if inviting them to charge out and take him, was maddening. The fact that, for days now, he had paraded the women of Wildermont in and out of his tent, as if they were his, was infuriating. Keedle had decided that he would show no mercy if he had a choice in the matter. Glendar wasn’t just a bad neighbor or a land-greedy tyrant. He was a menace to humanity.
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