The War of the Lance t2-3

by Margaret Weis

  "Less than half a mile beyond, the gorge walls fall away and the river returns to its wide, deceptively placid flow. It remains thus tamed throughout its course to Margaard Ford, some fifty miles to the north of the Narrows. In the spring, at the time of the battle, the water was at its highest, raging around the crests of the boulders that dot the bed, roaring angrily against anything daring enough to enter this channel.

  "But the silver dragons entered, and they landed on these boulders — fighting for purchase on the slick rocks, some of the serpents slipping into the water and splashing back into the air after being swept far downstream. Finally, some perched on the wave-swept crests of stone, others crouched on the rocky banks. Their long necks stretched downward to the water, the great serpents awaited the further commands of their Golden General.

  "Laurana gave the order. The silver dragons breathed upon the waters; their maws gaping wide, their lungs pulsing with the most potent and deadly of a silver serpent's horrific attacks: a blast of icy frost that casts its chilling grip across everything that lies in its path and magically penetrates the target, sapping every vestige of heat. It is an attack that will drive life from mortal limbs, kill fragile leaves even as the force of the blast shatters the brittle rock into frosty dust. It will turn water, instantly, to ice.

  "Once and then again, each dragon expelled his powerful breath. The Vingaard River froze solid in its bed. A belt of ice, extending to the bottom and anchored firmly in the great rocks of the river bed, dammed the river's flow. As the pressure of surging water rose, waves poured over the top of the frozen barrier and the dragons breathed again, building the ice dam higher and higher.

  "The channel behind this bottleneck was much wider than the choke-point, and much deeper. The waters of the Vingaard gathered there, swirling and tossing, surging over their banks and spreading outward. Although the lake thus formed expanded steadily, the wall of ice — thickly built and firmly centered in its frame of granite bedrock — held back the pressure.

  "Below the dam, the mighty Vingaard began to dwindle to a trickle, seeping between sodden banks. Fifty miles north of the Narrows, downstream of the dam, the Army of Solamnia reached Margaard Ford at nightfall, to find the water still too high to cross safely.

  "That night the brass dragons returned with word: the dragonarmies were on the march. The Red and Blue Wings had joined forces with the powerful reserve wing, which must have been marching northward from Sanction for weeks, concealed by the crest of the Dargaard Mountains and the clouds beyond."

  Indeed, Excellency, we know from dragonarmy records that Ariakus had put the formation into action weeks before — even preceding the defeat at the High Clerist's Tower. Although initially the Emperor himself commanded this formation, by this time in the campaign, command had been turned over to General Bakaris.

  Now the entire force advanced under a swarming flock of blue and red dragons — the mightiest of evil dragonkind — bound to destroy the Army of Solamnia. To the captains of the knights, who received these reports with their backs to an apparently impassable ford, the news must have seemed dire, indeed.

  Nevertheless, the Golden General met her captains there and told them they would cross in the morning. We have no record of their reactions, but surely any misgivings they held faded away as the river level fell steadily during the night. By dawn, the ford was a collection of puddles spotting a smooth, gravelly path. The Army of Solamnia marched across it in a matter of hours, while copper dragons kept watch over the advancing wings of the dragon-armies.

  The spying copper dragons dived and circled on the horizon, evading the blues and reds that frequently soared out to drive them away. Finally, Bakaris realized that such futile skirmishes only tired his dragons needlessly. He decided to conserve their strength and allow his enemies to maintain their airborne spies in peace.

  Bakaris managed to avoid the mistakes of the other commanders who had thus far faced the Golden General. He maintained the concentration of his forces during the advance, refusing to be distracted by anything except his goal: the Army of Solamnia. He marched with considerable speed, making record time for even the normally fast-moving draconian forces. And he wasted no time deploying for battle when the enemy was at last located.

  His skill, determination and, of course, the size of his force, made him a very dangerous opponent. He drew close to Laurana's army with shocking speed. By dawn, the morning after the Army of Solamnia had crossed the Vingaard, the advance elements of the dragon wings were visible on the horizon to scouts on dragonback. The dragonarmies would reach the dry ford sometime around the middle of the day. The captains heard the reports of the vast numbers of the enemy and were dismayed. Defeat seemed inevitable.

  But Laurana had a final element to her plan, a part she kept secret to the last possible moment, fearing enemy spies. Some of the hidebound knights — who refused to recognize an innovative tactic until it all but knocked them out of their saddles — must have guessed what it was. Still, concern grew through the camp as dawn passed into full daylight. The battle was six hours away, and no barrier stood between the armies — yet Laurana retained all of her dragons in the camp.

  Mellison relates that the captains gathered privately, muttering with concern as the sun rose steadily into the sky. They had just agreed that Sir Markham should go to the general when Laurana surprised them by calling them to her tent.

  "I'll be leaving now, for a short time. I'll be taking most of the dragons with me."

  The knights were certainly astounded by this pronouncement. If any of them mustered the wits for a reply, it has been lost to history.

  "I'll leave you the silvers and the coppers. Form a line of defense along the riverbank. By tonight, we'll have opened the road to Kalaman… or to the Abyss."

  The knights argued vehemently, but the Golden General held firm. She seemed unusually somber — perhaps even severe — as they watched her mount Quallathon. Gilthanas stood beside her and clasped her hand for a moment. Then, turning toward the army of metallic dragons around her, Laurana signalled with a wave of her hand. The great flight of brass, bronze, and gold dragons sprang into the air. The morning sun flashed on their wings as the monstrous serpents soared aloft, riding the updrafts. Lifting themselves above the trees, they bore south, along the line of the empty riverbed below.

  Shortly after, from the riverside entrenchments, the dragonarmy came into sight. Bakaris proved as aggressive on the battlefield as he had been in the march. His dragons — massive waves of red and blue serpents bellowing their challenges through the skies — slashed into the silver and copper dragons protecting the Army of Solamnia. Gilthanas and Silvara, together as always, fought in the great aerial melee. He wrote to Porthios.

  "I saw a dozen good dragons fall in the first pass, wings seared off by fiery breath, wounds gaping in their flesh, ripped by the lightning bolts of the blue. Silvara wheeled sharply, ducking below the crackling lightning bolt spit by a great blue dragon. I raised my lance, tearing the wyrm's wing as it whirled past. The two dragons met with a brutal crash, slashing at each other with rending talons as we plummeted toward the ground.

  "The dragons split apart at the last instant, both of them torn and bleeding. Silvara struggled to regain altitude. I lost sight of my enemy in the chaos of the smoky sky, but drove my lance through the belly of a small red that attacked us from overhead. Mortally wounded, the dragon and its doomed rider plunged to earth, bellowing smoke and fire in a spiralling trail."

  Yet such victories were rare. Gilthanas saw many corpses of silver and copper sprawled across the landscape below. Finally, after a half hour of savage battle, the elf was forced to accept the grim truth: the good dragons had lost this fight. More than half of them had perished.

  Hellish fireballs spewed by the red dragons continued to erupt. Crackling bolts of lightning spit by the blues still crisscrossed the skies, rending copper wings and scorching scales of silver. The numbers made the outcome inevitable, and ultimately Gilth
anas and Silvara were forced to order the surviving good dragons to retreat.

  During the course of the screaming fight in the sky, Bakaris's ground troops quickly reached the bank of the ford. Hordes of goblins and hobgoblins, mounted upon howling wolves, immediately charged across the dry passage.

  Sir Markham, commanding a large force of the knights, watched them approach. He writes: "The frenzied din of the snarling canines and their equally vociferous riders rolled across us — a cacophony of chaos. They rushed forward with astonishing speed, splashing through the shallow pools that were the only remnants of the onceflooding Vingaard."

  Markham held his riders back from the west bank of the ford. When the charging wolfpack reached the halfway mark of the crossing, the knight gestured to his signalmen. Trumpets brayed, and a line of armored horses thundered toward the riverbank. The goblins and their snarling wolves scrambling onto the near bank were met by the crushing advance of the heavily barded warhorses and fully armored cavalry. Markham continues:

  "My horse pitched and bucked in the midst of a swirling melee. Wolves snapped at my steed's flanks, drawing blood in many places. But a number of the beasts fell with skulls crushed or backs broken by the powerful kicks of the charger's hooves.

  "No sooner had the snarling wolves launched into desperate battle with my knights than three thousand kapak draconians surged across the ford in support. Shrieking and hissing in their hideous tongue, the reptilian scourges flapped their wings madly, hastening the speed of their advance into an unnerving rush.

  "Their charge was met by the pikemen of Palanthas, who stood in a three-rank line along the shore. The steely heads of their weapons ripped into the lizardlike attackers. Though the momentum of the charge staggered the line with its impetus, the men held against a breach. Savage and snarling, the formation of draconians crowded against the bank of the ford."

  Bakaris here began to reveal his own plan — he hurled the rest of the draconian forces into the attack, holding only his companies of ogres in reserve. At the same time, the evil wyrms appeared in the skies overhead, having defeated the silver and copper dragons. The Dragonarmy general mounted his own dragon — a powerful blue.

  Before he rode aloft he sent his field report by courier to Kitiara.

  "The time to finish this is now — we own the skies over the field! I join my dragonriders, and we shall waste no time in driving onto the Knights of Solamnia, and the pathetic footmen of Palanthas and Ergoth — all of whom stand defenseless against the onslaught!"

  Markham's knights had finally driven the last of the wolfriders back; nearly half of the vicious carnivores and their riders lay dead on the riverbank. Now, however, a newer — and far greater — menace approached.

  The knight looked upward in raw, frustrated fury as he saw the green and blue forms fill the sky overhead — a sky devoid of metallic colors. The evil serpents tucked their wings, and Markham felt that every one of the beasts glared straight at him. The wyrms fanned into a broad line, spreading to strike the entire army.

  The lines of pikemen and knights on the riverbank wavered as the dragonfear swept across them. Markham cursed and shouted, even using the flat of his sword to try and muster shaken footmen — but to no avail. Whole companies broke, fleeing blindly away from the ford, panicked beyond reason by the great, circling serpents above. Fireballs of dragonbreath and searing lightning bolts landed with enormous blasts, eliminating entire ranks and melting the stony bank. Screams of the dying mingled with the terrified wails of panicked men — veterans and rank recruits alike quailed at the dreadful attack. In mere seconds, most of the Army of Solamnia had broken and fled, leaving the ford unguarded.

  Excellency, I must here remark upon the fact that, if the evil dragons had not expended so much of their limited breath weapons against Gilthanas and his flight, the carnage would have been many times worse. Nevertheless, in moments, the Army of Solamnia teetered at the brink of total collapse.

  Laurana, meanwhile had flown southward with all speed — the timing of her activities was crucial. Soon the flight of good dragons and their Golden General came to the Narrows, where the ice dam had swelled from the overnight pressure of the great river. A vast new lake spread across the plains to each side. Before the huge sheet of white, glistening in the sunlight, but not melting in the cool spring air, Laurana and Quallathon settled to earth. The other golds and brass dragons also dropped, landing on the rocky riverbed. The bronze dragons circled overhead, watchful for any interference from the dragonarmies.

  Again the Golden General turned the breath of her dragons onto the River Vingaard — but this time in the form of heat. Explosive fireballs belched forth from the golds; from the brass came blistering waves of scorching wind. The searing breath weapons swept across the frozen surface, assailing with arcane heat the same waters that had earlier suffered the onslaught of cold.

  With convulsive force the great sheets of ice cracked and splintered, shifting and breaking under the rapid change of temperature. Huge chunks broke free, white mountains tumbled into the surging water. With a rush, the dam broke away. The waters of the Vingaard thundered forth, many times more powerful than they had been even at the height of the spring flood.

  The huge, newly-formed lake roared through its new outlet, carrying massive pieces of ice, like jagged daggers, in the forefront of the advancing tide. Rocks that had rested in the river bed for a century ripped free in the space of a minute, rumbling along with the flow like great engines of war.

  Above the water flew the dragons of gold, brass, and bronze. They soared northward now, racing the torrent — but only barely matching it in speed. Thus, both the waters and the good dragons reached Margaard Ford at the same time, little more than two hours after the dam had collapsed.

  Nevertheless, according to Gilthanas, the situation stood at the brink of disaster. His silvers still wheeled in the sky, forced back from the fight — and sadly reduced in numbers. He had all but given up hope of victory, when he saw the glint of sunlight on gilded wings.

  Laurana's mighty gold. dragons bellowed a challenge, echoed by a hundred throats of gold and brass and bronze. And below the wings of gleaming metal surged a maelstrom of frothing white, capped by the icebergs and boulders.

  The waters swept through Margaard Ford with all the impact of a tidal wave, drowning and crushing the enemy troops trapped there. At the same time, the dragons of Laurana and Gilthanas tore into the blues and reds. The evil serpents fought desperately, but the vengeful attackers swiftly slashed the enemy from the skies in the greatest aerial melee of the war. By my calculations, Excellency, it seems likely that nearly four hundred dragons fought in the air over Margaard Ford!

  It is worth noting, Excellency, that Bakaris himself was taken captive in this airborne clash. He ended the fight clinging for his life to the mane of a bronze dragon after his own mount had fallen. It was the famed hill dwarf Flint Fireforge, together with his squire, who rode the bronze. This was Fireforge's last flight on dragonback. He vowed everafter to keep his boots firmly on the ground.

  The waters of the Vingaard slowly settled to their normal levels. We'll never know how many bodies they carried along their route to Kalaman and the sea. The few surviving troops belonged to the Blue Wing, and they hastened back to Dargaard Keep, where the Dark Lady still held her fortress.

  The last of the dragonarmies had been driven from the plains, and Laurana slowed the pace of her march somewhat, to rest her weary army as it at last approached long-forsaken Kalaman. That city had endured a bleak winter of isolation and siege, and so it was only proper that their liberator and heroine should pass through the city gates to commence the Festival of Spring Dawning.

  That event concludes the tale of the Vingaard Campaign. I hope Your Grace will forgive the addition of several of my conclusions that, I feel certain, can be comfortably established within the boundaries of objectivity.

  It is interesting to note that the Dark Lady, Highlord Kitiara, was sentenced to dea
th by Lord Ariakus for her failures in this campaign. When he arrived at Dargaard to carry out the sentence, however, Kitiara was able to persuade the Emperor that much of the campaign had passed according to her "plan."

  It is true that her life was spared, but my own suspicion is that this is due more to her "friend," the Death Knight Lord Soth, than to any lapse in Ariakus's judgment. It is hard to imagine the campaign being viewed by the Emperor as anything but a monstrously disastrous defeat.

  In retrospect, Grand Master Gunthar Uth Wistan's appointment of Laurana as the army's commander stands clearly vindicated. The Golden General proved capable of initiative and audacity far beyond what any Knight of Solamnia could have mustered. In fact, her use of dragon breath for strategic purposes (damming the river) clearly shows how she managed to outwit even her battleseasoned opponents — no Highlord used the dragons for any purpose other than a tactical application on the battlefield.

  In conclusion, Lauralanthalasa of Qualinesti must clearly stand alongside Kith-Kanan, Vinas Solamnus, and Huma himself as one of the greatest generals of Krynn.

  In gratitude, I shall remain heretofore,

  Foryth Teel, Senior Scribe of Astinus

  The Story That Tasslehoff Promised He Would Never, Ever, Ever Tell

  Margaret Weis,Tracy Hickman

  CHAPTER ONE

  So I guess you're wondering why I'm telling you this, since I promised not to. I'm sure Tanis wouldn't mind, seeing that it's you. I mean, you've heard the other stories, all about the War of the Lance and the Heroes of the Lance (of which I, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, am one) and how ten years ago we defeated the Dark Queen and her dragons. This is just one more story, one that never was told. As to why it was never told, you'll find that out when I get around to the part about promising Fizban.