by T. H. Lain
Whitman smashed heads with his hammer, Regdar's greatsword cleared a path, and Tasca and Naull stood at the back of the pack lobbing arrows and spells over their friends' heads. Beside this group of heroes, the holy warriors took their toll as well. Swords, maces, and the power of Pelor smote the forces of evil all around. Every enemy they slew brought them closer to the duke. His standard was still several hundred paces away, however, and they were separated by perhaps a couple thousand troops and jann.
As the battle raged, the sun continued rising over New Koratia, and the fog slowly burned off in the warming morning rays. With the disappearance of the low-hanging clouds, more of Lindroos's troops appeared. It was as if the willowy vapors coalesced into articulated minions of unholy fervor.
Where the black-clad army clashed with the New Koratian military, blood spilled and men died. Where the blackguard's troops attacked the duke's elite guard, swords slashed and heads rolled. Where Regdar and his band cut their way through the attacking forces, goodness triumphed over evil.
Still, the duke remained surrounded by a much larger force, and Regdar knew that Koratia had nothing in reserve. This battle would determine the fate of the duchy and Regdar's home, at least in the near future. More importantly, if Lindroos won, it could quite possibly determine the fate of the entire kingdom.
As they fought their way across the field, Regdar spotted the commander of the elite guard.
"Gohem," he shouted. "Captain Masters!"
The gnome followed the sound of the familiar voice. When his eyes landed on Regdar, he looked shocked and confused. Hesitating for a moment, Gohem looked around, then turned and gave an order to one of his lieutenants. The soldier nodded and began shouting to the troops.
The hne of blue-and-gold garbed guardsmen shifted toward Regdar and his men. The jann and cultists between the two groups were squeezed like a spider between a beetle's pincers, and they fell quickly. The former New Koratian soldiers and their holy warrior counterparts were soon enveloped by the duke's elite guard. Whitman, Jozan, Alhandra, and the holy avengers took places in hne with the other soldiers. Tasca and Naull stood behind, dropping arrows and spells on the attacking army. Regdar stepped back to talk with Gohem.
"I wasn't sure if you'd consider us friend or foe," admitted the human.
"I'm still not certain," replied Gohem as he shook Regdar's hand.
"Perhaps you're not," boomed a voice, "but I am." Duke Christo Ramas stepped up to the two captains. "Captain Masters," he ordered, "arrest this man and his companions." The duke pointed his ring-bedecked finger at Regdar.
The gnome nodded, then looked at Regdar with a resigned expression. "Men," he shouted, "you heard the duke. Arrest Captain Regdar and his companions."
In a blink Regdar, Tasca, Whitman, Jozan, Alhandra, and the two avengers were in custody. Regdar was held tightly by two soldiers, one on each arm. He let himself be taken without a struggle, leaving his hands open and loose at his sides. He dropped his greatsword to the ground.
Restrained as he was, Regdar turned to his lord. "Duke Ramas," he pleaded, "we've come to help you."
The duke narrowed his eyes and stepped toward Regdar. "You knew the consequences of your actions, but you left anyway," he shouted. "For all we know, you've joined forces with the army that's attacking us now. You could be a traitor. Captain Masters, tell me, what do we do to traitors?"
The gnome cleared his throat. "Sir, we hang them."
"You see, Regdar, we have well-established regulations for dealing with people like you."
"But sir ..." Regdar tried to pull away, but the soldiers on his arms held him tight. "I know I disobeyed your orders, and my actions should be punished, but I swear to you, I am not a traitor." He tugged again, only to be rebuffed again. "We know what the blackguard has come for, and we've returned to help—to make up for my mistake." He shook his head toward Jozan and Alhandra. "If you won't believe me, at least listen to the cleric or the paladin. They had no part in my leaving. Surely their words should carry weight."
The duke scratched his beard and studied Jozan and Alhandra. He nodded. "Yes, I see you keep good company." He stepped up to Jozan. "Tell me then, good cleric, is Captain Regdar telling—"
The line of elite guardsmen surrounding the duke and the prisoners suddenly buckled. A flood of black-clad soldiers poured in, and behind them strode Lindroos, a long, black cape billowing out as she walked. The cultists and jann cleared a path before her, and she moved right through the New Koratian soldiers up to Duke Ramas. Lifting her enchanted black blade, she lunged forward.
Regdar watched the blackguard. Time seemed to slow down, and the sounds of the battlefield drifted away. Straining with every muscle in his body, Regdar struggled against his captors. The soldiers held his arms tight, but Regdar let out a tremendous yell. Summoning strength he never knew he had, he gave one last, desperate push. He could feel his face burn bright red with the exertion. Blood vessels popped out on his forehead and biceps. Then his arms slipped free of his captors' grasp, and Regdar sprang forward with all the force he mustered. His body was like an arrow launched at the blackguard.
In a blink, his shoulder collided with Lindroos's midsection. The blackguard hollered as she was hit, and the two warriors smashed into the ground with a loud bang, tumbling away from the duke in a pile of heavy armor and muscle.
Captain Masters reacted in an instant, running through two jann and a human soldier with three quick blows. The gnome turned and forced the duke back and away from the advancing attackers. The temporarily stunned guardsmen reacted to the actions of their captain and reformed their frontline, forcing the invaders back.
When Regdar and Lindroos came to a stop, Regdar sprang to his feet. His sword was still on the ground somewhere in the swirling collection of elite guardsmen. Without a weapon, he stepped back and clenched his fists, then looked at Lindroos. The blackguard rose to her knees, then slowly lifted herself up, appearing to be in no hurry. Unlike Regdar, she still had her sword.
"It's a pity," Lindroos said as she rose to her full height, "that my girlfriend didn't finish you off when she had the chance."
A bolt of crackling, purplish-blue energy arced over Regdar's shoulder to strike Lindroos squarely in the chest. The stunned blackguard dropped her sword and fell to her knees, shaking and twitching from the lightning blast.
Naull stepped up beside Regdar. "I wasn't your girlfriend," she shouted. Then she grabbed the big fighter by his elbow and pulled him back toward the elite guardsmen.
Naull and Regdar crashed through the frontline, stumbling through a small gap the soldiers opened for them. They came to a stop only a few feet from the fighting. Regdar looked up to see Whitman, Tasca, Alhandra, and Jozan. All of them had been freed and were armed.
Beside them stood Duke Christo Ramas. The old fighter glared at Regdar for a minute.
"I should make an example out of you for disregarding my authority," he said, obviously perturbed, "but I have bigger problems right now." He ran his hand across his face. "Fighting against impossible odds has always been your forte."
A lull in the fighting brought an eerie quiet over the center of the battlefield. Lindroos pulled her forces back to regroup. The elite guardsmen hadn't given chase, instead holding their line to protect the duke. At the edges of the open field outside of New Koratia, the battle raged on.
Regdar looked across the field at the blackguard and her slowly forming unit of soldiers and jann. He turned to Alhandra.
"What do you think she's up to?"
The paladin shrugged. "Evil. What else?"
"I mean, besides the obvious."
"Well," replied Alhandra, "my guess is that with the backing of the jann, she didn't expect to encounter this much trouble with the army of New Koratia." The paladin turned and looked Regdar in the eye. "She's probably all out of plans, and now she's improvising." She put her free hand on his shoulder. "Which makes her very unpredictable and even more dangerous."
Regdar nod
ded. "You know her better than any of us," he said. "What should we do?"
Alhandra looked over the battlefield. "We wait for her to make the next move. If she's making this up as she goes along, that means she's out of surprises."
As if Lindroos had heard their conversation, she and her newly reformed unit charged. Regdar could hear their booted feet pounding the hard ground as they advanced, and he could feel the soldiers around him tensing up.
Tasca fired two arrows, then his string went silent. He dropped his bow and empty quiver on the ground and unsheathed his rapier. Whitman stood beside him, a grim smile on his face. The head of his hammer rested casually on the ground with both his hands wrapped around the hilt.
"You know, Whitman," said Regdar, studying the smirk on the dwarf's face, "someone who didn't know you might think you were enjoying yourself."
The dwarf shifted his glance to look at the human out of the corners of his eyes. "Someone who did know me would know that I am."
The first four jann leading the charge impacted the front of the duke's line, and the sounds of battle filled Regdar's ears. Metal screeched as it bent and was ripped open. Men screamed as their guts were torn from their bodies. Grunts of exertion and the clang of weapons colliding mingled into a new sound, startling in its familiarity and unnerving in its foreignness.
Then the sky began to darken. At first Regdar thought it was rain clouds or the beginning of some magical effect. Looking up, he saw a dozen jann flying high into the sky, each of them holding one of the duke's elite guardsmen in his grasp. A chill ran down Regdar's spine as he realized what was happening. In the next heartbeat, the jann dropped their captives, hurling them like stones from the height of a castle wall.
Bodies rained down on Regdar and his men. Several New Koratian soldiers were hit by the grisly bombs, smashed into piles of goo by their falling comrades. The sounds turned Regdar's stomach. He was almost grateful for the screams of horror that nearly drowned out the sounds of impact.
Another host of jann lifted off into the sky. This time the soldiers fought back.
"You're coming down with me, bottle boy," shouted an elite guardsman as he soared into the air.
The man jammed his dagger deep into the janni's stomach when they were no more than ten feet in the air. The outsider growled and let the man fall back to the ground unhurt.
Others weren't so lucky. As more bodies plunged earthward, the elite guardsmen broke their ranks to get away from the danger zone, and enemy soldiers flooded through the gap. What once had been an orderly, organized resistance turned into a frenzy of individual fights. Pockets of guardsmen fought against cultists and their jann counterparts. As men scattered everywhere, Lindroos marched forward through the chaos.
Regdar grabbed Whitman and Tasca. "Protect the duke," he shouted, and the three warriors turned around.
As they closed in on the duke, another body fell to the ground before them. The heavily armored soldier crashed into the only organized unit in the area—the duke and his personal bodyguards. A number of guardsmen were struck down, and those who remained were watching the sky as much as the ground.
A handful of black-clad soldiers closed in to attack. The guardsmen were outnumbered and shaken, their ranks diminished and demoralized by horror. Regdar watched the duke draw his own weapon and wade into the fight.
Three of Lindroos's men crowded the duke. The old warrior narrowed his eyes and whipped his keenly honed, magical battleaxe around in three quick, perfect strikes. Three cultists dropped to the ground, each in his turn—one with a head wound, another with a freshly opened belly, and the third missing his privates. The sight of the old man laying waste to a pack of evil soldiers brought a smile to Regdar's face.
"That's why he's the duke," said Regdar as they closed in.
"No," said Whitman, lifting his hammer, "he was born to the title."
Tasca shook his head, looking at Regdar. "It's a dwarf thing."
The three fighters fought through the crowd of enemy warriors. They covered ground quickly. The duke mowed down enemies on all sides. Regdar, Whitman, and Tasca cut up anyone wearing black who stood in their path. In less than a minute they fought through the last line of evil soldiers separating them from the duke.
Several paces away, Captain Masters was joined by Jozan, Alhandra, and one of the holy avengers—Regdar didn't see the other one anywhere.
"Seems you have things under control, my lord," Regdar said, admiring the duke's bloody axe.
The duke smiled. "Did you think I carried this beautiful axe just for show?"
Over the duke's shoulder, the air shifted and wavered, rippling like the surface of a pool disturbed by a tossed stone. A form took shape rapidly out of the shimmering air and wrapped its arms around the duke.
"Janni," shouted Regdar. He grabbed one of the outsider's arms and tried to pry it off the duke.
The genie jerked away, pulling itself and the duke out of Regdar's reach, then it launched into the air, taking the duke along.
Tasca bent his legs and leaped, dropping his rapier in the process. The elf soared high over the other guardsmen's heads and grabbed hold of the janni's foot. The monster's ascent slowed from the added burden. The bare-chested outsider glared down at the elf dangling from its ankle. It shook the leg, trying to kick off the unwanted passenger.
Meanwhile the duke struggled against the janni's grip. Shifting his weight from side to side, the old fighter slowly slipped down through the outsider's arms. Between Tasca hanging from its foot and the duke's flailing, the janni had a hard time keeping its balance in flight. The trio twisted sideways in the air. Duke Ramas slipped free of the janni's arms, and Regdar bolted forward.
Regdar hoped only to break the duke's fall somehow, but before the man struck the ground, another janni swooped in and grabbed him from the air, then surged back up toward the clouds.
Regdar stopped only a step from where the duke would have landed. He watched in growing anger as the janni flew with the duke toward the eastern wall of New Koratia. In the distance, Regdar could make out another janni hovering above the city, a figure in its grasp as well. He squinted.
"Is that—?"
"Lindroos," said Alhandra. She stepped up beside him and was looking at the same janni. "Yes, it is she."
"Then she has the duke." Regdar looked around, taking stock of the situation. The fighting had slowed. The final surge made by the invaders was no more than a last ditch effort to grab the duke. When Lindroos left the field, the jann also departed. Deprived of their leader and their strongest shock troops, the cultists were no match for the rallying New Korations. Most were already dead, in custody, or fleeing for their lives.
Naull ran up, pointing at the duke and Lindroos, both being flown over the wall of the city by jann. "We can't let her get that bottle."
Regdar nodded. "When I retrieved it, the duke seemed quite relieved to have it in his possession. I'm sure it's well hidden."
"Still," said Alhandra, "Lindroos can be quite persuasive. We need to get to her before she gets to him, or retrieve the bottle ourselves."
Regdar agreed. "But who knows where he's hidden the bottle? The keep is a labyrinth. Something as small as a bottle could be anywhere. Just finding the duke and Lindroos could take us days."
"The bottle is in a warded vault," said a voice.
Regdar turned to see Captain Masters nursing a wounded leg as he limped toward him. "It's in his bedroom, behind the picture of King Ramas."
"Put me down there," commanded Lindroos, pointing to a spot in the courtyard. "Near the door."
The janni did as Lindroos commanded, setting her down gently before the door on the edge of the courtyard inside the ducal palace. The other janni set the duke down next to her.
The minute Duke Ramas had his feet on the ground, Lindroos punched him in the face, and the duke fell backward.
Lindroos nodded to the jann. They proceeded to disarm the old, fallen fighter.
"I want you to und
erstand, Ramas," said the blackguard, pacing before him, testing the sharpness of her blade as a chef might test her cleaver, "I have no qualms about killing you." She leaned down, smiling in his face. "In fact, I think I'd enjoy it."
Christo Ramas simply nodded.
Lindroos stood up. "Good," she said. "As long as you play along and behave, there's no reason for me to torture or maim you." She pointed the tip of her sword at him. "You don't want to be maimed, do you Ramas?"
The duke shook his head.
The jann stepped back, taking the duke's weapons and most of his armor with them.
"You two stay and guard this entrance," she ordered. "The duke is going to show me where he's keeping our friend trapped inside a terribly cramped bottle."
Regdar's lungs burned inside his chest. He'd never run so far so fast, wearing heavy armor, in all his life. He tried to distract himself by looking at the things around him. The ground was littered with dead or dying soldiers—that didn't make him feel any better. Beside him, Tasca and Whitman ran at full speed.
Whitman was having a hard time of it, trying to keep up. With his typical determination and his teeth gritted tight, the dwarf carried on, charging toward New Koratia with all of his strength. His boots of speed helped briefly, but in the end it was Whitman's willpower that allowed him to stay with the elf and the human.
Tasca, on the other hand, made the run seem effortless. He smiled when Regdar looked at him. Then he shrugged, obviously responding to the look of confusion on Regdar's face. The elf was as composed and casual as a princess at a harvest festival.
The eastern wall of the city came up quickly. Regdar felt as if he'd never make it, and he'd never been so happy to be wrong. The arched entranceway was completely unguarded. The group headed into the city, toward the bridge from the Merchants' Quarter over the river to the duke's island keep.