by Rick Cook
Back in the Wizards’ Keep, the command group around the tank watched in satisfaction. The diversion had worked perfectly. The Enemy had thrown almost all his forces north, out over the Freshened Sea. Now those forces were fully committed and it would take time for the Enemy to recall them. Too much time. Of course that also meant that one lone biplane was the focus for every undead dragon and rider the Enemy had in his first wave, and he had a lot of them. Gilligan looked at the clocks on the walls. "Okay, initiate phase two." He stared into the tank to watch the aerial ballet he had choreographed unfold. He tried not to think of Karin.
Karin spared another glance for Senta, standing now on the black rock and lashed by ocean spray. Now the signal had come and at last, at last they could do something besides wait.
Senta reached into her pouch and pulled out one of Taj’s Origami dragons. She placed it in the palm of her hand, holding it against the wind with a curled little finger. She spoke a spell, blew on the bit of folded parchment and tossed it into the air with a cry of "oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh." As soon as it left her hand it began to grow and change. Now there was a dragon and rider swooping up past Karin to circle over their heads. Even this close the illusion was well-nigh perfect to Karin’s senses, right down to the rush of air on her face as the
"dragon" climbed past her. She only hoped it appeared as perfect to the Enemy. Below her Senta selected another parchment dragon and repeated the process, this time crying "oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-eye." The next was "oh-oh-oh-oh-eye-oh" and the one after that "oh-oh-oh-oh-eye-eye," just as the foreign wizard, the one they called Taj, had instructed her.
Origami after origami was tossed aloft to shapeshift into the seeming of a dragon and rider and join the circling throng above the rock. Finally the last of the sixty-four "dragons" was launched and named. With a wave of her wand and another one-word spell, she sent the group on its way. As one the dragons sorted themselves out into squadron Vs and climbed toward the south, a non-existent armada flying straight at the Enemy’s stronghold.
If Karin was impressed by the reality of the seemings, Senta was even more impressed by the magical skill behind them. Such ruses had long been common in battle, but they suffered a fatal flaw. A magician could not control more than one seeming at a time. True, such an illusion could appear to be an army or a horde of dragons, but magically it was all one unit, with but a single true name. A skilled magician could quickly detect the fact and even the greatest of wizards could only control a few such magical entities.
This group was different. Somehow by naming them as they had been named they had become part of an entity called "array," each separate, each with its own true name, yet all of them bound to perform collectively by a single spell. To Senta, this was high magic indeed.
She was still admiring her handiwork when Karin came sliding down the rock to join her.
"Perfect," the blond woman said. "Now let’s get out of here before the Enemy decides to investigate this place."
Senta looked after her creations winging south. "I wonder why they call them drones when they don’t make any noise at all?"
"Mick said:" Then she stopped, looking north. "Never mind that," Karin said flatly. "We’ve got a problem."
The other turned and saw a ragged line of black dots on the line where gray clouds met gray sea.
"Back under the rocks, quickly." Both women sprinted for the shelter of the crevice, hoping against hope that the zombies’ senses were as uncoordinated as their movements.
Had the seeming been detected so quickly? It had to be an accident, Karin told herself firmly as she pressed against the spray-wet rock. Only by chance had these undead been near at hand when Senta activated the seeming.
But chance or plan, it put them in a precarious situation. They were caught on the ground, outnumbered and perilously close to the Enemy’s base. If they were spotted:
From her recess in the rock she watched as the ragged V passed perhaps two dragon lengths above the tallest point on the reef, swinging around the crag in jerky precision. For a minute Karin thought the zombies had not seen them. Then one by one the zombie dragons peeled off and swooped back toward the island.
"Shit," Karin breathed and pressed further back against the rear of the overhang.
Gilligan watched the second wave of dummy dragons soar aloft from the Executioner and aim straight for the City of Night. Almost immediately he saw a few ragged dots rise from the city to meet the suddenly-appearing foe.
"Okay," he said. "They’re as fully committed as they’re going to get." He picked up the microphone connected to the communications crystal.
"Now," Gilligan said. Tora Tora Tora." In the back of his mind he wondered if it had been such a good idea to let Charlie pick the code names. Then he focused on the display to the exclusion of everything else.
Charlie was in the middle of a heck of a fight. There had been perhaps ten squadrons of zombie dragons launched against him and the survivors pressed then-attack ruthlessly.
Charlie put on a display of flying that would have been the hit of any air show-and gotten his license lifted immediately by the FAA. He hauled the big biplane around so tightly the whole frame shuddered, giving his gunners belly shots on three and four dragons at once. He dived for the sea and skimmed so low that the following dragons crashed into the waves. He zoomed for altitude and then hit his flaps far above the safe maximum speed so that his pursuers overshot him and fell to his turret gunner. He used every trick in the book and a few that never made it into the book.
The zombie attackers gave as good as they got and then some. Salvos of arrows struck the plane, without effect. The mechanical damage the iron arrows could do was minor and the plane itself was not complex enough to be killed by their death spells. Dragon fire was something else. In spite of the efforts of his gunners and Charlie’s frantic jinking, the swarm of dragons drew closer and closer, swirling in about him and diving on the aircraft to deliver gouts of fire. The cockpit was magically protected against dragon fire and there was no fuel on board, but the fire of even undead dragons is hotter than a flamethrower.
Finally it was all too much. Trailing flame in half-a-dozen places, the AN-2 went down in a flat spin. As the plane hit the water the magic link broke and the green diamond on the display winked out.
"I don’t suppose:" Moira said into the strained silence.
"We will do what we can," Bal-Simba said, "but I fear it is not much." He turned to issue orders to one of the Watchers.
The others continued to stare numbly into the inky water.
"I am sorry," Kuznetsov said at last.
"Don’t be," Jerry said quietly. "It was what he wanted." He looked into the still black water in the bowl. "Maybe more than he ever wanted anything in his life."
"At least it will not be in vain," Moira said. "He has taken us the first step. Now we will continue what he has begun."
"Your part approaches, Lady," Bal-Simba told her. The others have assembled in the great hall."
Gilligan nodded to the Chief Watcher. "You have the watch."
Erus inclined his head and stepped to the tank to watch and issue whatever further instructions might be necessary.
As he followed the others out the door Gilligan’s feelings were decidedly mixed. His training told him he was abandoning his post at a critical time, but his reason told him there was nothing more he could do. Unlike a controller in his own world he didn’t have the capability to shape the battle from here on out. The forces were launched and everything depended on the execution. Now he could go kick ass with impunity.
Gilligan wasn’t the introspective sort so it never occurred to him to wonder how much of his decision was reason and how much was the driving need to actually do something.
Perhaps fortunately, he was gone by the time the tank showed the zombies closing in on Karin and Senta.
Over the sea north of the City of Night a new battle was shaping up. The Enemy launched the last of its forces to meet the incoming squadrons.
The zombie squadrons bore north in ragged formation. These were the scrapings of the Enemy’s aerie and many of the dragons and riders were so badly damaged they could barely fly, much less maintain formation. Still, under command of their guiding intelligence they all climbed and circled as best they could. The League dragons came on in a smooth squadron weave. The defenders had height on them and the sun at their backs. Wings locked, they dove on the intruders. A blast of dragon fire and a spark went tumbling from the sky. Another blast and another scrap of burning parchment went fluttering seaward.
In quick succession they knocked a dozen more "dragons" from the sky, all scraps of parchment.
That was proof enough even for zombies. As one they turned away from the drones and ran for the City of Night.
It was already too late.
The dragon cavalry of the League had trickled south under a cloaking spell, giving wide berth to the City of Night. Now they swept in around the volcano and over the City of Night on its slopes. Wing on wing of dragons soared above the Enemy’s city and strafed anything that moved on the ground with bursts of dragon fire. The Enemy’s aeries were empty and no dragons rose to oppose them. The zombies that trickled south from the decoy missions arrived in dribs and drabs and were easily burned from the air by dragon fire.
The great hall was not merely full, it was jammed. The eight wizards who would send the storming party on its way were pushed back against the wall by the crush. Besides a twenty-foot dragon, most of the castle guard was mustered, armed and ready, and another dozen or so wizards were scattered among them. Mick Gilligan was toward the center with his new pistol. Taking up half the space was a knot of 127 dwarves gathered close around their long and as far from the dragon as they could manage.
Kuznetsov and Vastly came pushing through the crush to stand next to Gilligan. From somewhere the Russians had come up with powder blue berets, striped jerseys and fatigues in a pattern of camouflage that Mick found just a little disconcerting.
"Brings back old memories, eh?" Kuznetsov said as they positioned themselves. Around them the wizards raised their staffs and began to chant.
The Colt had sunk quickly, leaving only a small oil slick behind. Charlie had managed to launch the life raft before the plane disappeared, but with the zombie air force overhead Charlie had hidden under it rather than riding in it. The undead riders had made pass after pass on the bright yellow raft, tearing it to waterlogged shreds with their arrows. Then, as one, they had wheeled and headed south, leaving Charlie alone in the water.
As the last of the enemy dragons disappeared into the clouds, Charlie inflated his life jacket and surveyed his situation. He was hundreds of miles from land and already the chill of the water was starting to creep through his exposure suit. He had no food, no radio and nothing with which to call for help.
"Son," he said to the empty ocean. "It don’t get any more sporty than this." Then he saw dorsal fins slicing toward him.
TWENTY-SEVEN
SNEAK ATTACK
The whole purpose of the operation was simply to distract the Enemy for just this instant. Distraction enough so it wouldn’t notice that Moira was arriving with company. Or what that company was carrying.
Although the Enemy was naturally multi-tasking, each new assault had spread it thinner and thinner. From the very beginning Watchers had been scrutinizing parts of it, judging its reactions, looking for signs of slowdown and confusion. When they came, when Bal-Simba judged the time was right, a dozen wizards struck against the Enemy’s defenses to push the attackers through.
They were in an enormous echoing room in total darkness. Glow lights floated up from a dozen wizards simultaneously and the group realized they were standing in a gigantic limestone cavern. Even with a dozen lights the illumination barely reached to the edges of the room and threw eerie shadows into the parts it didn’t quite penetrate.
According to plan the group divided up. Following separate magic detectors, Moira, Bal-Simba and half the guardsmen went one way, Jerry, Taj, the Russians and the rest of the guards went another. The dwarves formed into a column and marched off in their own direction.
"How do you think they will do?" Jerry asked the guardsman nearest him as they looked after the dwarves.
The man rubbed his chin where his chain mail coif met his jawline. "Either turn and run at the first opportunity or break off and start looting."
"Well then?"
The guardsman shrugged "So we send them off independent. Can’t hurt, should draw some of the Enemy off us." He paused, considering. They may even do some damage."
"I still don’t like this," Taj said to Jerry as the other parties moved off.
"Neither do we, but we don’t have much time to search. This way we have a better chance of finding either Moira’s body or Wiz and his group before the Enemy can seriously oppose us."
"Besides," Kuznetsov said, "this will confuse Dushmann. If we move quickly," he added significantly.
Terry took the hint, checked his homing crystal and ordered his group to move out down a side passage.
"Sharp lookout now," Tosig Longbeard commanded. "And mind those side rooms. They might have something in them."
As the humans scattered in response to their magic detectors, the dwarves worked through the dungeons more methodically, checking each room and nook for j valuables. Thus they moved more slowly and were closer to the arrival point when the Enemy’s first counter-attack struck.
"Something’s coming," Durgrim told his King.
"Sound the recall," Tosig ordered and looked around him.
It wasn’t an ideal situation. Rather than being in a snug tunnel, the dwarves were in another large room where the enemy could come at them from all sides.
"Light," the dwarf long commanded, and the blackness of the cavern gave way to the twilight gloom dwarves prefer to daylight.
As the last of the dwarves scurried back to the safety of their fellows, Tosig’s breath caught in his throat. From all sides ragged lines of shambling, twitching undead warriors were converging on the little band of dwarves.
Against human foes it might have worked. But dwarves are tougher than mortals and bonny fighters beside.
"Steady the shield wall," Tosig bellowed "Here they come."
As if by instinct, the dwarves crowded into a tight circle two-deep in the middle of the cavern. Those in front dropped to one knee with their round shields before them. The rear rank shrugged their shields off their arms and stood behind the protection of their comrades’ shield wall with both hands on their axe shafts.
Heedless of their opponent’s new formation, the undead charged. There was no sound save the scuffling of feet on the cavern floor and the breathing of the dwarves. Soundlessly the zombies lurched forward and soundlessly they struck. Then the cavern erupted in the clamor of steel on steel and dwarven battle cries as the undead warriors hit the 128-dwarf Cuisinart.
The zombies might be already dead and hence unkillable, but there are certain practical problems in attacking when one’s arms have been lopped off at the shoulder or one’s head is rolling across the floor. Further, zombies’ muscle control is notoriously poor and this handicaps them in hand-to-hand combat. The first rank of dwarves was safe, crouched beneath their shields. The second could swing their axes with full force, protected yet unencumbered. About the only weapons that could reach over the shield wall to strike the axe bearers were spears and halberds. But as soon as a polearm extended over the shield wall, the shield dwarves would reach up with their axes and hook it, immobilizing weapon and wielder and leaving both open to a counter-stroke by the axe dwarves.
Not that it stopped the zombies. Whole or hacked up they continued to come on in deathly silence, pulling themselves forward to the attack with whatever limbs they had left Again and again they pressed forward and again and again they were cut into ever-smaller pieces.
Finally, when the last zombie had been chopped into pieces too small to be dangerous, the attack s
topped.
Tosig Longbeard peered into the darkness, seeking other foes. He was breathing heavily and the gold crown upon his helm was battered and scarred. Already those warriors with healing skills were tending to their comrades’ wounds.
"Casualties?" He did not turn to look at his men.
"Six wounded," Durgrim told him. "Four will be able to walk once the healers finish with them. Two we must carry."
"Well enough then. Anything else about?"
"Nothing I can sense."
The dwarf long hawked and spat upon the still-quivering flesh of their late foes. "Pfagh! Animated corpses. These humans become ever more troublesome." His second-in-command gestured at the pile of bodies strewn about them. "Human these were. Yet I am unconvinced a human animated them. The magic was wrong." Tosig rubbed his chin. This is a matter to be thought upon. Meanwhile," his voice rose so all his troop could hear, "stand up and prepare to march! But carefully now. We know not what else we may find in this place."
The magic detector tuned to Wiz led Jerry, Taj and his group down a side passage, through a series of natural caverns and finally to an iron-bound oak door that led off the side of a tunnel.
Jerry pressed his ear to the door and listened.
The wizard behind him, a young man named Elias, checked the magic detector around his neck. "There is nothing in there."
"Yeah! Jerry hissed. "Well, that ’nothing’ is breathing awfully heavy." Elias frowned and tapped his detector on his palm.
Keeping his back to the wall, Jerry reached out and pushed on the door. It creaked, but it swung open smoothly, showing only darkness beyond. Now they could all hear the hoarse, heavy breathing.
"What do you think it is?" Taj whispered.
"I dunno," Jerry whispered back, but it’s cloaked, shielded and probably nasty." Taj regarded the door. "So, do we go in or not?"