Gold Throne in Shadow

by M. C. Planck

  “Up!” Christopher shouted, and everyone scrambled to the ropes, while men pulled from the top.

  The dinosaurs were fast. Even with his new strength, yanking himself up hand over hand, Christopher had only made five feet by the time the first cannon fired. He did not need to look over his shoulder to see the danger. The faces of the men above him, and the sounds behind him, were sufficient. He clawed at the rope in deafened silence after the cannon to his immediate left spoke. Rifles sprouted from the wall, and he saw a cavalryman above him empty his carbine as fast as he could pull the trigger. At the edge of the wall, helping hands grabbed his arms, shoulders, helmet, and dragged him over, even as something massive slammed into stone where he had just been.

  The dinosaur was only a ton of flesh; the wall shrugged it off. The creature snapped with flashing teeth before falling away. It struggled to right itself, but bullets pinned it down. Within seconds the wall was wreathed in white smoke, rendering even the ground invisible.

  When the smoke dispersed, six dinosaurs lay dead. Their riders were strewn about the field, identifiable by their silvery armor. The rest were in full retreat, a hundred yards out and running fast.

  “More for the kettle,” Gregor shouted with a demonic leer. And the party went back over the wall.

  When they came back up ten minutes later, there was no danger, so Christopher let the men on the rope pull him up. His spell gave him strength, not endurance. Half an hour of sprinting and climbing in plate-mail had left him limp.

  Leaning on the wall, he looked back at the enemy camp.

  “What do you suppose they will try next?”

  “I don’t know,” D’Kan panted, “but, as one of the men on the wrong side of that rope, may I suggest you cast your flight spell next time?”

  Their victory had restored the Ranger’s spirit. The young man was cracking jokes again, basking in the ridiculous bravado exuded by the soldiers. Even the men slain by the invisible ulvenmen did not distress them. The living stuffed the dead into barrels, joking about how lucky they were to escape kitchen duty so lightly.

  Christopher had promised to revive them if they brought in enough tael. And the wealth of heads going into the kettles was staggering. The dinosaur riders were moderately ranked, judging from the number of bullets it had taken to bring them down. Each of them was worth a fortune alone.

  He reached up to clap D’Kan on the shoulder, to share in the glory of the moment. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flare of light, bright and hot and heading directly for him. Instinctively he dodged, throwing himself out of the path, which in this case meant off of the wall and into the fort. As he fell a bolt of lightning streaked past him, its glowing halo galvanizing his body and setting the sleeve of his shirt on fire.

  Along the wall he had abandoned, men transformed into charcoal statues of corpses, their clothing bursting into wreaths of flame as the stroke ripped a blinding line through them.

  Christopher landed heavily on the ground. His helmet protected his head from the stunning impact, for which he was duly grateful. Even though it had only barely touched him, the electricity had evaporated his tael and cooked flesh through his shoulder. He could not feel his left arm. With the last of his strength he looked up. An ulvenman, glittering with gold- and silver-scaled armor, stared down at him from the wall. The alien features did nothing to disguise the annoyance on the creature’s face. Christopher was absolutely certain there hadn’t been any ulvenman there a second ago. How it had gotten there he didn’t know, and it wasn’t telling, but the way the creature was pointing its hand told him it meant to finish what it had started.

  Christopher had time for only one act. He chose to use it casting a defensive spell. Torme had come running to his aid, already kneeling at his side, oblivious to the doom crouching on the wall. When the next bolt came crackling down, slamming into the ground, Torme writhed like a hooked fish and burned.

  But a golden haze flared around Christopher as his spell countered the lethal damage intended for him. Astonishingly the spell faded away, spent; he had been counting on it to be good for several strokes, but the ulvenman’s magic was terribly potent.

  His soldiers were already reacting. They pretty much reacted to every unusual event the same way. Gunfire rattled the camp again.

  Distressingly, the bullets bounced off the monster as easily as D’Kan’s arrow had bounced off the hawk. The whine of ricochets sounded like defeat. But as the firing reached a crescendo, every gun in the fort turning to face the new threat, one shot got through. The monster’s metal coat of scales jingled, a scale popping off to spin through the air, and blood spattered in its wake.

  Growling in frustration, the dog-man transformed into a giant eagle and threw himself off the wall. Men rushed forward to point their guns over the edge, only to shout in dismay. The creature had disappeared into thin air, it seemed.

  Gregor arrived and stood over him protectively, his glowing blue sword pointing out and sweeping from side to side in defensive arcs. He called to Disa, but she sobbed in frustration.

  “I have no magic left.” She had spent it all on the men attacked by the first set of invisible ulvenmen.

  “I do,” Christopher said, and started healing himself. It took several of his lesser spells to undo all the damage. But there was no point in saving any. The men who were struck by the lightning were beyond healing.

  Karl issued an order from thirty feet away.

  “If you cannot aid him, Ser, then get away from him. Let us not put all of our eggs in one basket.”

  The blue knight and the priestess retreated to a different part of the camp.

  “Get these corpses in barrels before they suffer more damage,” Christopher ordered, watching in horror as Torme’s left hand crumbled into ash.

  “They are already past raising but not beyond resurrection,” Karl said. “Just more expense for your purse. We can fit them all in one.”

  Christopher blinked, trying to understand the man’s strange comments, before realizing they were supposed to be reassuring. Karl was dispelling the shock by focusing on the task at hand.

  “How many?” Christopher asked, and immediately changed his mind. “I don’t care. Collect them all. Don’t bother to identify the parts.” He would revive them all. He would not single out Torme and D’Kan.

  Assuming, of course, that anyone survived to take the barrel home.

  An hour later, Christopher stood in his cabin with what was left of his staff, listening to a damage report.

  “You owe your architecture a note of gratitude,” Gregor said. “Because the wall curved, only twenty men died in that first stroke. Had the wall run straight, we would have lost forty.” The second stroke had been aimed down, at Christopher, and had killed only Torme.

  One of the small cannons had shattered under the first blast, though, and several of the dead men’s rifles were warped and torn. Their ammunition had caught fire with their clothes. Luckily, since it was only contained by paper, it had burned instead of exploding.

  “Because you live, the men hold firm,” Karl reported.

  “We have no magic left,” Disa whispered. “We cannot renew until the morning.”

  “I still have one spell,” Christopher corrected her. “If that thing comes back, I’ll show it what an enchanted cannon can do.” It had saved him against the goblins, in the end. It might save him here.

  “What else will they throw at us?” he demanded.

  “Flesh and blood only. Amazing that such a high-ranked shaman came alone into the camp in the first place. He must have been very sure of his power, yet he failed to kill you. Instead you sent him packing with a bullet wound.” Gregor spoke confidently. “No other ranks will risk themselves now. Instead, they will overrun us with their unranked.”

  “Speaking of rank,” Karl said, “I suggest you consider this.” He handed Christopher the results of the boiling operation, a purple stone the size of a golf ball.

  “A profitable day,” G
regor said weakly. He apparently found it harder to crack jokes in the face of staggering wealth than in the face of certain death.

  “If you do not count the ones we lost,” Christopher answered. The resurrection was three times as expensive as a simple raising, and he now had twice as many who needed it.

  “I do not think we should count them,” Karl said. “If we do not survive, they remain dead. If we do survive, we will no doubt gain more tael to spend on them. Let us spend what we have while we have need of it.”

  Gregor nodded his approval. “Promote Karl,” he urged Christopher. “Within the day he will be a knight and twice the strength he is to us now. In fact, you could promote a gaggle of knights with that rock.”

  Karl frowned. “A knight with a gun is not twice a man with a gun. We need magic, not strength.”

  As always, the young soldier was right. Carving off a large flake, Christopher handed it to Disa. “Your second-rank is worth more to us than anything.” Looking at what he had left in his hand, he calculated. “Ser Gregor, how close are you to fourth?”

  “Halfway, Christopher. But I find myself swayed by Karl’s wisdom. Better you should gain a rank of healing than I should gain a rank of fighting.”

  Christopher understood this world well enough to know Gregor was wrong. The blue knight’s high rank meant he was the only other person in the camp who could pretend to have a chance of surviving the lightning bolt. And his skill with his magic sword might be necessary to penetrate the shaman’s arcane defenses; the guns had been surprisingly ineffective. As much as he hated to admit it, he still needed the knight’s raw strength.

  He chipped off another, much larger, chunk, and handed it to the blue knight. Then, before he could question himself, he ate the rest of the tael, shoveling a veritable fortune into his mouth. It would be enough, just barely.

  “If they let us live another day, we’ll each have an extra rank to face them with.”

  Gregor held his share in his hand, his face troubled.

  “Go on,” Christopher told him. “It’s not charity, or even pay. Just simple necessity.”

  A ghost of a smile on the blue knight’s face. “Terms I can agree to.” He put the chunk on his tongue and closed his mouth.

  Then they went back to their posts, to wait for whatever came next.

  What came next was startling. The wizard’s voice, in Christopher’s head.

  “Got your bird yesterday, but took a while to fire up this spell. I see you’re still alive, so I assume things aren’t too bad.”

  Christopher could feel the wizard’s attention waiting on him, and he knew he had only a few words before he lost it. “Three thousand ulvenmen, two dozen dinosaurs, and a shapeshifting shaman. Warn the king,” he thought as loudly as he could, and then the presence was gone.

  No point in asking for help. It would take the Kingdom days to mount a force that could hope to challenge this horde, and days more to get it here. By then, the monsters would have either gone over Christopher’s fort or around it.

  Then Gregor’s voice outside his cabin, a real sound, though a less encouraging one.

  “They’re coming.”

  Christopher closed his writing case and shoved it under his cot. The letter he had been writing to his wife was unfinished, though it could not matter. There had never been anywhere to send it to. And she already knew everything he was trying to say.

  Outside, mounting the walls, he took a deep breath. This would be the final push. He was physically whole and fresh, having been restored by his healing magic, but he had only one small spell left. Their last remaining secret was the six-inch Napoleons, as yet unused.

  “Fire arrows!” came a sentry’s cry, and a moment later a flight of burning shafts fell among the camp. Kennet had the water bottle in his hands, and he dashed around putting them out. But if one managed to land in an ammunition store, it would get ugly.

  Looking over the wall, he saw the archers preparing another volley. They were three hundred feet out and obviously thought they were safe from counterattack. They should have been; at that range, with nothing more than starlight, the men could not possibly pick out targets. But the ulvenmen were holding flaming arrows to their chest.

  “Shoot them,” he ordered, and rifles barked. The dancing lights in the distance began to fall to the ground and stop moving. Then they all fell, as the archers cast away their arrows and fled.

  If that was the extent of the attack, the ulvenmen must be getting desperate.

  Then he felt the ground tremble slightly under his feet and realized the ulvenmen had a surprise of their own planned.

  Because they were so large, the Triceratops became visible much farther away. They trundled toward the fort, gradually picking up speed.

  “Stop them!” he cried, and the small cannons began to fire.

  “Faster,” he muttered, as his crewmen reloaded their guns. The dinosaurs were easy to hit, but one shot from a two-inch cannon only made them angry.

  The six-inch guns were loaded with grape-shot, for short-range slaughter. Their crews started unloading the rounds, intending to replace them with solid cannonballs that could hit the big dinosaurs at long range. Christopher swore at their foolishness until they emptied the guns the easy way, by firing them into the darkness. The explosion was tremendous. If nothing else, it was good for morale.

  Finally the big guns were properly loaded. They belched, spitting tongues of fire ten feet long. Christopher saw a huge dinosaur stumble and fall, and he started breathing again.

  As the herd approached, Christopher could see small figures swarming around them. The entire ulvenman army, advancing on foot.

  The small cannons fired another salvo, and another Triceratops trumpeted and fell, crushing ulvenmen as it rolled over. Christopher could see the dinosaurs were blindfolded, with huge swaths of cloth over their eyes. The Triceratops weren’t just baggage trains; they were mobile siege engines. Ten-ton battering rams. And they would be here in heartbeats. Time for only one more salvo.

  “Double powder, and don’t fire until you are sure,” he shouted. Then he looked for something to hang on to.

  At point-blank range, the cannons shot the beasts in the head. The huge bony plates shattered, and several Triceratops collapsed. But three sailed on, driving head first into the wall. He could feel the section of solid rock lift up slightly, vibrate, and then crack.

  One of the dinosaurs fell over, stunned, one horn snapped in half. One blundered off in a different direction, blind and angry, trampling ulvenmen under its feet. The third went berserk, pounding the wall like a jackhammer. Dust sprayed in the air as the stone began to disintegrate.

  Ladders were slapped up, and again a horde of ulvenmen scampered over the top. This time they would not be dispensed with by the time the carbines had to reload.

  Christopher opened a box of hand grenades and threw them with both hands, pulling the pins out with his teeth. He didn’t look where they went. As long as it was the other side of the wall, he didn’t care. Other men followed his example, a profligate consumption of expensive objects. When life was measured in minutes, the price of things had a different meaning.

  When he reached the bottom of the box, he tucked the last two in his pocket, drew his sword, and stood to face his doom.

  A lull in the fighting. Thick white smoke masked everything more than a few feet away, and the ringing in his ears was unbearable. The wall had stopped vibrating, which told him someone had killed the last Triceratops. Blind and deaf, he stood uncertainly, waiting for a cue. Beside him a man reloaded his rifle.

  Christopher felt the threat coming, tael-fueled instinct or perhaps just the pressure of air. Kneeling just in time, he let it sail over his head. Claws, leather, and a long tail whipped over him.

  The Megaraptors leapt into the camp, using the dead Triceratops as stepping stones. They landed heavily, gathered themselves, and staggered forward to make room for more. Wading through men and wooden buildings, they smashed
everything in their path.

  Most of Christopher’s men were on the walls, however. The Megaraptors had to stretch to reach them, yanking the unlucky ones by a leg and tossing them over their heads, where others snapped them out of the air and bit them in half. But the dinosaurs were only flesh and blood, if three times the size of warhorses. Under the withering fire, they began to fall. In their agonized death throes the dinosaurs demolished everything, including the stables. Horses panicked and fled, but it was for a good cause. The disoriented and angry dinosaurs snapped at the tasty horses, ignoring their riders’ demands to focus on the real danger.

  The riders wielded curved bows and lances to deadly effect, but their surprisingly effective armor and advanced rank only bought them four or five extra lives. They fell, one by one, and the problem began to reduce itself to manageable.

  The south wall clattered with ladders again as the ulvenmen regrouped. Christopher worried that he had not brought enough grenades. But the six-inch guns opened up again, full of grape-shot, and the ulvenmen staggered back in confusion.

  A pike tapped at the inside lip of the wall. Christopher leaned over to see what was up.

  Charles drew his attention to Kennet, who was standing on a ladder and trying to hand up a box of grenades. Christopher pulled the heavy box in, stowed it against the wall. This time, when the ulvenmen came back, he only threw them one hand at a time. The pace of the battle had slowed, the wall and the smoke reducing everything to a series of individual encounters on a narrow stone path. His knew that his army survived because of the constant drumbeat of rifle fire, punctuated by cannons and grenades; he knew the ulvenmen were still there, because the only thing he could hear over the gunfire was their barks and howls.

  More importantly, he knew that the ulvenman shaman had not committed himself to battle yet because the only flashes in the night were fueled by gunpowder. If he did see the streak of lightning, it would be his duty to run toward it.

  Sometime in the night, he felt his magical strength desert him. That bothered him less than realizing he was out of grenades again.