EXILED Defenders of Ar

by Jack Lovejoy

  Neither had any of the other sentries, and they too howled and turned their heels on the ramparts. The crews up in the towers were all awake now, but only one was steady enough to fire its catapult at the flying dragon, and the shot somehow went awry. Then one of the terrible storm giants of ancient legend appeared suddenly out of the eerie moonlight, then another. The second dragon that descended upon the defensive cordon was even more menacing than the first.

  The panic was complete; the whole camp was now in an uproar, running helter-skelter, howling in terror, ignoring the calls of their battle priests to rally.

  Mithmid could do no more. The wizards he left assembled in the cornfield might sustain the illusions he had created, but without him to focus their powers through the fragments of the Khavala they could create no new ones. He left them in silent concentration, and scrambled over the deserted ramparts, with a helping hand from Ortakh.

  His highlanders were now in their natural element, and bent back every attempt to rally against them, to block their path to the barrage. The rest of The Three were already assembled there according to plan. There were twice as many as in the cornfield, and Mithmid had only half the trouble concentrating their mind power. And it had to be concentrated as never before, tapped if need be to exhaustion, for the new barrage was a far more massive structure than the first had been, and far better engineered.

  It was difficult in the low-angled moonlight to pick out a weak point. The camp guarding the far side of the gorge was also up and moving, but in disciplined order; barges were already carrying troops across the pounded waters behind the barrage. They too could see the monstrous illusions, but seemed to recognize them as just that. There was no time to lose.

  The center of the barrage, heavily buttressed, arched upstream against the miles of water pressure. There was no weak point there, and Mithmid focused his attack on the nearer side, where the barrage met the wall of the gorge. The hurried, makeshift construction was shoddiest here, and he first shattered a timber buttress, then began tumbling reed bundles and sandbags, and at last in one mighty explosion opened a sluiceway that quickly began to widen. But not quickly enough, and Mithmid continued to tap the mind power of The Three, until the whole barrage collapsed and was swept away in a raging flood.

  The barges ferrying troops across the river were swallowed by the foaming, chaotic rush of water; any cries for help were drowned by the thunderous roar that pounded and reverberated through the gorge. There would be no attack on the walls of Ar tomorrow, and as the divided bands of wizards and highlanders reunited for the weary trek home—some of the former, whose mind power had been tapped to destroy the barrage, were so dazed and unsteady of gait that they had to be led by the hand like children—Mithmid drew Ortakh aside.

  Tonight’s sorties had gained only respite for Ar. Another barrage might be raised at Dragonneck Gorge; perhaps some other means found of getting the towers and siege engines up to the city walls. The only thing certain was that the siege itself would continue, the enemy more determined than ever upon rapine and plunder. The respite must not be wasted, and the conference between the wizard and the highland chief continued, with few distractions, all the way home.

  Sruss smiled maternally at the boyish delight of the old wizard, as she praised him. His deeds had once more preserved the city from ruin, and she had made certain that this was known everywhere. The defamations of the Silent One would themselves now be silenced. Rhenowla no doubt would find some new means of working her malice, but for the time being The Three were safe from public reprisals.

  Since he had used his magic this time only to tap the mind power of others, to focus and direct the concentrated force through himself, Mithmid was not at all depleted by the strains of last night’s sortie. He could afford to swagger a bit before Sruss, and to revel in her praises.

  They sat together once more in her garden. The White Dancers had already finished their morning exercises. It was a muggy overcast day; the noontide sun was hidden by lowering storm clouds, threatening rain.

  “It must be risked,” he said.

  Sruss looked at him with concern. “A grave risk, perhaps foolhardy. I’ve told you of my own experiences. The very land of dreams has become dangerous.”

  “Only while the Evil One is vigilant,” said Mithwid. “It is when his vigilance relaxes that I will make the attempt to teleport the sword. And I will assume the risk myself, grave as it is. No one with lesser powers could hope to succeed.”

  They both gazed thoughtfully at the ruby fragments dangling like charms from the bracelet on his left wrist. They seemed pathetically small compared to the evil magic concentrated against them.

  “But how can you know when the Evil One relaxes his vigilance?” Sruss repressed a smile, knowing that the old wizard wanted her to ask that very question.

  “Ah, but there is a way,” he cried, as if expecting new praises for his cleverness. “The same way we overmastered him the first time. Vengeance is his god, his purpose in life, his fatal weakness. How will he react to the news that his latest plan of conquest has failed?”

  “Yes.” She was serious now. “He will indulge himself in beastly orgies of vengeance. But the timing will be critical. How can you know when the news reaches him—or if it does? The commanders of the enemy host also know the price of failure, and will be reluctant to report it to him.”

  “Ah, but they must. For if they don’t, those seeking to supplant them in power will. Then would the wrath of the Evil One be implacable. No, they’ll tell him what happened, naturally trying to blame others for their own blunders. But they will tell him.”

  “Do you plan to intercept the messenger?”

  He shook his head. “That was my first idea too, but I’ve since learned it would be impossible. The runners who carry message pouches are just too swift, and more than one copy of the message would surely be sent over different routes, in any case. We must learn from the enemy warlords themselves when their reports are dispatched to the east. With the known speed of professional runners, we can estimate pretty closely the exact time it would take the reports to reach Cragsclaw.”

  “Then you will risk the teleport?”

  He nodded. “It must be risked, for even the fall of Ar is not our gravest peril now. A son of the Shadow Warrior, at the very moment he is most needed. Who can now doubt the intervention of the All-Mother to protect her children from evil? But fear not, my lady,” he reassured her. “Even should the worst befall me, I shall not be defenseless against the Evil One. His powers may be overwhelming in this dimension, but less so in any other. I have my left arm”—he held out the bracelet—“and my right, which will bear the Demon Sword we shall soon forge.”

  Carried away by his enthusiasm, he brandished this arm too—the spindly, flab-muscled arm of an old mrem, who even in youth had never borne arms—but quickly lowered it again in embarrassment. He glanced self-consciously at Sruss, but she was looking the other way, beckoning her lodge keeper to approach.

  “Ortakh, King of Maragadan,” he announced.

  “The mission I told you about, my lady,” explained Mithmid, “Very well,” she said. “Please show His Majesty into the garden, Pepik. Have all the invitations been sent out?”

  “Yes, my lady. I saw to it myself this morning.” The tufty old lodge-keeper clearly disapproved of wizards coming and going at all hours, in a respectable house, but had been in service here too many years to question his mistress. “The preparations for tomorrow’s assembly are nearly complete, and all the housemaids and kitchen wenches given the night off.”

  This last breach of household discipline seemed even more deplorable to him than the comings and goings of a lot of scoundrelly old wizards, but it was not his place to reason why, only to carry out his instructions with a good grace. The stiff dignity of his bearing, as he strode loftily from the garden, alone betrayed his disapproval.

  “
I don’t think Pepik likes me,” said Mithmid.

  “The common mrem have always distrusted wizards.” Sruss looked thoughtfully at him. “Not much is needed in times like these to provoke them to violence. You told me yourself about witnessing atrocities during your journey to Ar. Beware they don’t happen here.”

  He too had heard of the insidious campaign being waged by Rhenowla’s agents against The Three, but before he could reply, Ortakh entered the garden and approached them with the stolid gait of someone more accustomed to climbing up and down hills than walking on level ground. He greeted Sruss with his usual shy deference, but she soon put him at ease.

  “I have learned the password,” he said.

  “Can the man who revealed it to you be trusted?” Mithmid asked. “Perhaps it’s a trap.”

  “The man is a highlander,” said Ortakh, as if no more were necessary to prove him trustworthy. “As you know, I sortied eastwards against an enemy supply depot, to divert attention from the attack on the first barrage. The flood waters cut off several of the defenders, and we put them to the sword. All but one. He drew in his claws, and begged for quarter. I granted it, on condition that he return the favor upon demand.” He glanced at Sruss, then lowered his eyes. “Alas, my lady, there are all too many highlanders in the enemy host. Renegades in their own lands, to be sure. But highlanders nonetheless.”

  “So long as you are confident of this particular highlander,”she said.

  “I am,” he replied without hesitation. “No true highlander, regardless of his crimes, would renege on his oath.”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and an ominous yellow gray light glowered from the overcast sky, as if it were already dusk.

  The Bridge Has Wheels

  MITHMID WAS not as confident about the fidelity of highlanders as was his guide through enemy lines; he depended rather on the bracelet encircling his left wrist. During his long unsuccessful quest after the Third Eye he had had various experiences with highlanders. Some could be nobly hospitable and just; some crafty, brutal, and treacherous. Often these traits commingled in the same highlander. Too often, in fact.

  “ ‘Death to Ar,’” Ortakh boldly challenged a team of craftsmrem—most seemed to be carpenters—a couple of miles inland from the river.

  “‘The bridge has wheels,’” their leader responded with the password.

  “Carry on.” Ortakh allowed them to pass.

  Again Mithmid was impressed with his guide’s cool resourcefulness, acquired through a lifetime of highland warfare. He himself would have been caught out at their first encounter, and this was at least their ninth. Despite the intermittent showers, the vast sprawling camp of the enemy was a hive of animation. Some great enterprise was afoot. The destruction of the barrage had only whetted the malice of the besieging hordes toward those who denied them rapine and plunder. Woe unto Ar, should its walls now be breached!

  The camp followers seemed to Mithmid as vicious as the bandits, desert marauders, steppe rovers, highland renegades, and cutthroats on whom they battened. The dancing around the campfires was wild and lascivious; some of the dancers were village she-mrem, carried away by the invaders, or lured from home by natural lewdness or the promise of spoils, although most were obviously professionals. As they whirled and dipped and leapt, their shadows seemed to rage like demons at the fringes of the night. Drunken shouts and obscenities mingled with the rude music.

  “The informer was vague about when the council was to be held,” whispered Ortakh, as they passed between campfires. “It makes sense that the warlords should all meet tonight, to decide how to deal with the loss of the barrage. My informer heard rumors to that very effect. But we can’t be sure, and I doubt if the password he gave me will get either of us into the council tent.”

  “I’ll handle that part of it myself,” said Mithmid. “Just get me to wherever the council is being held ... Oh, oh, looks like more rain.”

  Heavy raindrops began to patter around them as they joined the motley of thugs, cutthroats, and half-naked dancing girls scurrying for cover. Thunderbolts seemed to explode on top of them; lightning crackled; then the clouds burst in a drenching downpour. The evil-smelling tent in which they took refuge was too promiscuous for any risk of discovery. Ortakh looked like a highland renegade to his very whiskers, and Mithmid—long experienced in disguises—was dressed as a clan scribe. In any case, the shameless behavior of the dancing she-mrem, who made a rare show of drying out their wet garments, attracted all the attention.

  The cloudburst did not last long, and the furious animation of the camp resumed at once, despite the mud and squalor.

  Mithmid suspected by now that his guide had reasons of his own for infiltrating enemy lines, reasons shared by all the kings of the League of Ar. They were concerned only with military threats to the city. Were any new schemes afoot for rebuilding a barrage? How were the new towers, which could be seen from the city walls, armed and mounted? What was the meaning of the strange password, “The bridge has wheels”? These were the questions Ortakh and his fellow kings wanted answered. The ultimate peril to the race was still unknown to them.

  “Ah, it is tonight.” Ortakh nodded with grim satisfaction.

  “There’s the council tent, there’s one of the warlords and his staff just arriving, so you’re on your own.” He left Mithmid standing where he fully expected to find him when he returned.

  Reconnaissance was Ortakh’s true purpose in slipping outside the walls tonight. No doubt The Three had interesting powers of magic—acting collectively, under the protection of others—but this was war, something magicians knew nothing about. The enemy hordes might be greedy for plunder, but their leaders had been handpicked for military acumen by the Eastern Lords. If a barrage upstream allowed them to trundle siege towers right up to the walls of Ar, well and good. But they would not be so foolish as to depend solely on that one strategem.

  Whatever they were up to now, it was screened from the city by a dense concentration of towers. That’s where reconnaissance would begin, and Ortakh strode openly in that direction with the swagger of a highland renegade. He knew the password; if there was any challenging to be done, he’d do it first.

  Not that he was careless about Mithmid, who was amiable in his way; it was just a matter of priorities. He had known beforehand, as any experienced soldier must, that a council tent would naturally be so surrounded by armed guards, captains, battle priests, and the retinues of the various warlords as to be unapproachable by anything less than a battalion. But to have mentioned this, or refused to have guided the old wizard out here tonight, could have led to arguments and delays, just when some new enemy strategem was imminent.

  He glanced back, to reassure his conscience that his charge was still in no danger, and froze.

  “The old fool!” he muttered between his teeth.

  He watched Mithmid walk straight toward the council tent, expecting at any moment to see him collared and dragged away in chains. But nothing happened. For some reason, nobody noticed him. The old wizard just walked right up to the tent and entered without a single person even glancing at him.

  Perplexed, Ortakh turned and headed for the construction site he was sure he would find screened behind the massed towers. What he saw there made him more certain than ever that the magic of a handful of old wizards would not save Ar. The bridge indeed had wheels—three bridges, in fact, beside which no less than six of the great wooden towers stood ready to be mounted as counterweights. Their length indicated the northern branch of the Mraal, which was the narrower of the two. When completed, they would simply be rafted to the opposite bank of the river in sections, reassembled there, counterweighted with pairs of towers, and mounted on wheels.

  An assault with towers and siege engines against the southern walls, like the first attempt to take Ar by storm, while bridges spanned the northern branch of the river? The Three had proven they co
uld cope with one such attack; but a second would be beyond their endurance, if not their very powers. He had seen the dazed and exhausted condition of those whose mind power Mithmid had tapped for the destruction of the barrage. No, force would have to be met with force, machines with machines.

  He was favored by another downpour, which drove the construction crews inside the looming towers for shelter. He recognized some of the workers as highlanders; the type of renegade he had hunted down and punished all his life. Which meant that he in turn was in danger of being recognized, as the King of Maragadan. The few lanterns left burning shed a gloomy light, both on the massive constructions themselves and the hopes of Ar.

  He slogged back through the mire and downpour, soaked to the pelt, his mind racing with battle plans.

  Ar could not long withstand a two-pronged assault by such vast numbers. One of the prongs would somehow have to be bent back, delayed so that the entire resources of the city could be concentrated on each in turn. They had divided their forces to destroy the barrage; now they would have to unite them as never before. The land east of Ar had been scorched to retard the advancing hosts of the enemy; now they in turn were devastating the land north and south of the city, razing whole forests for the raw materials of their colossal towers and wheeled bridges. Ar would have to respond with constructions of its own, formidable new engines to mount the walls. Would there be time enough to build them? Could one prong of the attack truly be delayed long enough to beat back the other?

  There was only one way. A fellowship of warriors, fighting together with berserker fury, qualities possessed only by his highlanders. Few would survive—he did not expect to live himself—but none would survive the fall of Ar. He had witnessed the terrible berserker ceremony only once, as a kit. But the priests of Maragadan would recall every detail of the ancient rite, for it was their god alone who granted berserker magic....