EXILED Defenders of Ar

by Jack Lovejoy

  As the martial chanting continued, she saw Changavar confer with old Severakh, who leaned down to exchange whispers with him. Apparently they were going to share the same bambarong, in a way unifying command. And there was Branwe. His eyes were on her, as she knew they would be until she was safely inside the walls of Ar. She felt a stirring of tenderness toward him, and for the first time in her young life had second thoughts about the restrictions of the White Dancers.

  With no dissident voice to interfere, the sacred battle formulary—the chanting of little green-robed maidens, the ranks of armed warriors, the hundreds of imposing bambarongs, crimson dawn reaching across the isolated mountain valley was inspiring and beautiful. It concluded with a welter of activity.

  Srana descended the temple stairs, as Yozgat warriors, with a few score of her own people, raced for their bambarongs. Branwe met her at the foot of the stairs, and escorted her to where a group of dwarfish she-mrem awaited with her battle costume, an enlarged version of their own. They raised a screen of fur cloaks, the trophies of honor flayed from bygone enemies, while she changed.

  Branwe thought she looked even more charming in the quaint battle costume than wearing the copper-green robes of a goddess. The scepter crafted to mount the Khavala stone made her seem regal, and the fierce little Yozgat females around her instinctively treated her with deference.

  She and Branwe gazed into each other’s eyes. Each understood the dangers before them, the fatefulness of defeat; there was no need for speeches.

  “May the All-Mother guide and protect you,” was all they said.

  Then they were mounted upon their respective bambarongs, ready to begin the long journey to Ar. So were all the Yozgat; their uncanny battle empathy seemed to extend even to preparations for war, and no parade could have been more precise and orderly than their mounting of the hundreds of bambarongs, three to a saddle. The only incident that was not their fault, and it was a comic incident, was one that lightened their mood and sent waves of laughter through the ranks.

  The sumpter bambarongs were generally the sturdiest animals; the exception was the one assigned especially for Kizzlecosh. Only one other rider was to share its special saddle with her, but the dwarfish male was so disconcerted by her bulk—the very bambarong looked rebellious—that he was not sure what to do next. There were grins at this, but not until they were actually mounted, Kizzlecosh behind the Yozgat, did outright laughter erupt. Their contrast in sizes was truly comical.

  Kizzlecosh did not seem to notice, and stared straight before her. But Cajhet, mounted on a bambarong nearby, could see that her feelings were hurt. Woe unto the ears of the little warrior mounted in front of her, should he make a single unlucky remark.

  The remarks came from others, safely out of range of her sharp powerful teeth, when it was noticed that her bambarong—as huge and vigorous as it was, with but two riders—neither leapt as high into the air nor glided as far between runs as any of the others.

  Twirling their swords and fur cloaks as they rode into the dawn, the Yozgat chanted their ancient war song, and the morning air quavered with the rising and falling of their voices, as the bambarongs they rode ran and leapt and glided down the valley, westward toward Ar.

  The Last Battle Begins

  THE DARK ceremony being enacted upon the midnight plains, miles beyond catapult range from the walls of Ar, was neither inspiring nor beautiful. It was terrible to behold; its purpose was to terrorize.

  There were no gods or goddesses worshipped here, no eidolon or chanting priestesses; only Khal, hideous and evil, his three ruby eyes glittering with malice in the trembling firelight. Tomorrow the great city of Ar would finally be his—though his reveries tonight were less about the deployments of the last battle than the vengeance which would follow.

  He would have vengeance not only against the conquered inhabitants of the city, but cunningly against their conquerors as well; eventually against the Eastern Lords themselves. Their contingents of liskash, with the enslaved mrem they deployed in battle as screens and shock troops, had just encamped down river. Only now had they joined the besieging armies in force, thinking that tomorrow would indeed see the last battle, and hungering for the spoils. Their warlords possibly—nay, almost certainly—had secret instructions for making sure of him, once The Three were no longer an obstacle, and the mighty walls of Ar finally breached. They would soon learn the folly of their treachery; they and the Eastern Lords, who foolishly presumed that conquest of the mrem meant their own supremacy.

  Eggs were now hatching daily at Cragsclaw, and the hatchlings being prepared to reassume their lost heritage. Every step had been meticulously worked out to the last detail, as he lay brooding in darkness, year upon year, in his vault of enchantment beneath the Kazerclawm. Power and vengeance. His reptilian mind had been cleansed of any other thoughts but the means to achieve these, to revel in them, to trample underfoot all his enemies. His very daydreams were about the torments he would inflict upon The Three, now that they were as good as in his hands.

  Let these mrem barbarians sate themselves with rapine and plunder; let these lesser breeds of liskash delight in their own crudities of torment and beastliness. The seeds of discord had already been sown. Little more was needed to goad the inevitable squabbles over booty and females, the rivalries and distrust natural among so incongruous a host of bandits, desert marauders, and renegade highlanders, into open conflict.

  Mutual antipathy always lurked just beneath the surface of any seeming concord among the races of liskash. His claws fairly tingled to scratch that surface. Even at tonight’s dark ceremony the mrem warlords sat mistrustfully apart from those of the liskash. Squabbles goaded, old feuds rekindled, instinctive fears and hatreds inflamed, racial hostilities enraged; then open war, a war to the death, internecine and without quarter.

  Yes, the eggs were hatching, the hatchlings maturing far more swiftly than the offspring of these wretched mrem. Soon the Old Race would again rule the planet. Soon would power and vengeance be his.

  The great barrage, spanning an entire valley, was a stupendous feat of engineering. Not just the Mraal, but the confluent of another major river, which had its source in the same watershed, had been impounded for weeks now in a vast artificial lake. The riverbed bifurcating around Ar was cracked and dusty, and the warlords had long clamored to renew the assault, this time directly against the walls. But Khal was not to be hurried with the unfolding of his master plan. A failure with himself in personal command, and the Eastern Lords might try to supplant him before he was ready to challenge them for supremacy. There must be no mistakes this time.

  The Three were still powerful—no doubt they would wreak vast destruction upon the attacking hordes—but the effort would soon exhaust them. By nightfall they would all be in his hands. He had issued strict orders that no wizard of Ar was to be killed.

  Weeks? Months? Years perhaps? They would not die soon, nor easily. And in the end they would all dine with him—or at least their stuffed effigies would, reposing in various postures around his banquet hall forevermore. So intense were these reveries that for long minutes he was oblivious of all else.

  The lesser vengeance being ritually enacted before him, and before a picked assembly of battle priests and warlords, was of only passing interest. War captives, slackers, those who had failed in their assigned tasks; their torment and execution tonight would ensure the valor of the attackers tomorrow, but there were no kings or queens here, not a single great personage of the mrem. It was a mere object lesson to the beholders.

  From a throne plundered from a king of the mrem, Khal seemed to look down upon the fire lit arena, but his thoughts—alien, drifting in and out of reveries of vengeance, coldly reptilian—were elsewhere. The steps of his master plan must be taken in natural order, never forced, never hastened. So long had he brooded upon them that they were now a second instinct, and yet again and again, as he pondered the
ir unfolding, something at the very outreaches of his mind made him uneasy.

  He was alert to detect enemies trying to project their thoughts telepathically, or any wizard still so foolish as to attempt teleportation. But it was a feebler sort of magic that now disturbed him. Some new enchantment by The Three? No, still, feebler than that; more individual.

  Focusing his powers through the Third Eye, he was surprised to discover that it was no more than concealment magic, a trick any shabby bush wizard could perform.

  Had he become too skittish about magic practiced against him? Too leery of The Three? Rationally—if indeed his liskash mind was ever truly rational—he knew he was more powerful than them all. But so had he been years ago, when he first acquired the Third Eye, and still they had taken him unawares and entombed him in a vault of enchantment. He might have been there yet, had the Eastern Lords not decided that the time was ripe for invasion, that they needed his powers of magic.

  No, he could never be too vigilant where The Three were concerned, never too cautious. After all, their most powerful wizard had recently escaped him, in a manner still unexplained.... He gazed down at the cruel execution of a war captive, his mind tending to wander off again among reveries of torment and vengeance. But the uneasy feeling continued to disturb him.

  Concealment magic? No mere bush wizard could have exerted so powerful an enchantment over the minds—With a hissing snarl of rage he leapt to his feet. All eyes were on him; executioner and victim alike, ghastly in the trembling firelight, turned toward him. His hideous liskash face writhed with fury, as it had when he first discovered that the most powerful wizard of The Three, Mithmid himself, had escaped his trap, denying him many more days, perhaps weeks, of delight. The couch he had had especially designed for Mithmid still stood empty in his banquet hall at Cragsclaw.

  Battle priests and warlords parted deferentially before him as he stalked off in the direction of the old quarry at the edge of the forest. It had become a place of dread for the assembled armies, as he had intended it should. All knew that this dragon had a mighty appetite, a knowledge which had wonderfully improved efficiency throughout the camps.

  “I’ve lost everything,” moaned the bargemrem.

  “You still have your life.” Mithmid hushed him. “But if you don’t be quiet you’ll lose that too, and our lives along with it. I told you you’d be compensated for your barge. Now shut up, or by the All-Mother I’ll have the gates closed in your face.”

  There was not another word from either the bargemrem or his son. They had sensed that the old wizard was no businessmrem, and had both cunningly wheedled him for higher rates—and higher and higher and higher. But if they knew he was no businessmrem, they were also aware that he was a powerful wizard. In all the miles they had traveled upriver since their barge was stranded by the receding waters, not a single watchmrem, sentry, or patrol had looked in their direction, though twice patrols had passed within a few feet of them. It was magic, powerful magic.

  “All right,” whispered Mithmid, “down the riverbank. Watch out for pockets of mud and quicksand.”

  There were no arguments. Nizzam was still apprehensive about the judgment of The Three, when they learned of his conduct at both Kazerclawm and Cragsclaw. He knew he had a lot of explaining to do, and could hardly have been more servile to Khal himself.

  The ramparts loomed above them in the dual moonlight, as they picked their way the length of the city, through cracked mud, dust, remnant pools of water, war wreckage, rotting fish, and the skeletons of sunken boats, toward the Southland Gate. This was one night that Nizzam would have welcomed an overcast sky, but there was not a cloud. Magic alone concealed them, a magic that in his new humility he had to admit surpassed any he himself would ever wield.

  As he trudged miserably along, his nose wrinkling at the fishy stench, deathly afraid of stepping into a pool of quicksand, he wondered why everything had suddenly grown so dark. The night was cloudless, and yet he was now engulfed in shadow.

  He looked up—and fell straight back into a pool he had carefully just stepped around, soaking himself through, The cold water revived him from his swoon, but it was not the coldness that now made him shiver or his teeth chatter. He had not realized that the great dragon could levitate so high; it hovered between him and the lesser moon, in the sky above, as high as the very ramparts of Ar. On its monstrous neck sat Khal himself, his ruby eyes boring down at him with a malice that paralyzed any thought of resistance.

  Yet even in his terror he knew why Khal had not already blasted them all into smoke: He wanted them alive—in Mithmid’s case so he could resume his interrupted torments, in his own so they could begin. There was nowhere to hide, no use in running. Mithmid himself seemed to realize this, and stood stock—still, gazing fixedly up at the dragon and its rider. Then he raised his left hand, whether in challenge or a plea for mercy, Nizzam did not know. He knew only that either gesture would avail him nothing with Khal.

  The reptilian sorcerer made no move, issued no command.

  He seemed intent merely on prolonging his delight in the helplessness of his victims, in their dismay at the torments awaiting them. He himself was invincible, and he only grinned sardonically at Mithmid’s gesture. Too late he realized that in his triumph he had protected himself only.

  With a hissing scream of anger the dragon dropped straight to the ground, flames shooting from beneath its colossal tail, its long neck snaking back and forth as if seeking its attacker, its terrible jaws snapping savagely at the air. For several minutes Khal could do nothing but cling to the saddle, in danger of being bucked from the monster’s writhing back and smashed to a pulp by its lashing tail. The screams of pain and anger echoed against the city walls with redoubled fury.

  Concentrating his power through the Third Eye, he at last brought the dragon under control and healed its singed flesh. Then it was aroused anew by a catapult dart, shot down from the ramparts across the riverbed. Once more he had to soothe and protect it, screening them both from the rain of darts and missiles now being fired with deadly accuracy down from the walls.

  He was invincible! He was Khal the Great! His outrage momentarily unhinged his mind. Vengeance against all who dared oppose him! Vengeance against Ar! Remultiplying the natural levitation magic of the dragon, he would raise it up onto the very ramparts of the city. Then would the city reel beneath his vengeance! Mithmid and the wretched Nizzam had used his discomfiture to slip inside the gate. They would not escape him long! None would escape him! Kings and queens had fled here from all over the land, the great personages of the mrem, like ripe fruits ready for plucking. Now would he glean his harvest I Now would vengeance be his! What need had he of armies, of the Eastern Lords themselves? He was Khal the Invincible!

  “Up, my pet!” he urged the dragon, now calmed, its wounds healed and soothed. “Up, up on the ramparts, whence these barbarians seek to torment you. Up!”

  Magically screened from the catapult barrage, the dragon began to levitate, at first without resistance, higher and higher, its natural power multiplied by its strange rider. It had been kept hungry so it would not be sluggish during the battle tomorrow, and now saw hundreds of mrem defenders—succulent and juicy—furiously working their catapults. Firespears were added to the barrage, but were deflected as magically as all the other missiles. Higher and higher rose the dragon.

  Then its dull mind sensed resistance, not only to its own primitive magic, but to the force remultiplying it. On the highest rampart, directly over the Southland Gate, stood scores of old mrem, motionless amid the furious bustle all around them. There, it sensed, was the focus of resistance. That was where it should attack, and its terrible jaws opened with an angry hiss. But the resistance stiffened, and it levitated no higher, nor was it able to move across the riverbed below toward the walls.

  Had its wits been keener, it would have sensed the tremendous struggle now being waged in silence
between Khal and The Three, hurriedly assembled on the ramparts by Mithmid. The barrage of darts, fire-spears, and missiles continued to arc through the moonlight; thousands of defenders had now gathered on the walls. More and more of Khal’s force had to be diverted to screening himself and his mount from injury. Nor did his inflexible reptilian mind function effectively on more than one object at a time. Nonetheless he persisted; such was his fury, his insane lust for vengeance.

  Half the city was now roused against him. Volcanic streams of lanterns and torches flowed toward the walls below; the catapult barrage intensified in violence and accuracy. In the instinctual recesses of his mind Khal had until this moment still been leery of The Three. But he now realized exultantly that the force resisting him was already beginning to tire, like an old one who has exerted himself beyond his strength. Even at its strongest this force had barely neutralized a fraction of his own divided powers.

  Tomorrow, when he would again be able to concentrate all his overwhelming might against them, he would reduce this assemblage of foolish old mrem to groveling helplessness. That would free him to realize more perfectly than he had expected all the sinister workings of his master plan; to ensure that besiegers and besieged alike suffered the most terrible possible casualties, while the great city of Ar at last fell into his hands.

  An exultant cheer rang through the night as he and the dragon retreated from the riverbank. With his back turned to them, the thousands cheering upon the moonlit ramparts above were unaware that his own face gloated with a dark exultation. Nevermore would the mrem laugh or cheer or congratulate each other on their deliverance in Ar, after he returned there tomorrow.

  Mithmid did not have to see the sorcerer’s hideous gloating to realize how desperate the situation had become. All the united powers of The Three, allied with all the armed forces of the League of Ar, had been needed to repel the last major assault upon the city, months ago. And it had been a near thing, even after an heroic foray had destroyed the barrage impounding the waters of the Mraal.