by Niel Hancock
“Did the white warrior slay him?” asked Otter, eyes wide in fear and awe.
Mithramuse did not answer for a moment, so deeply lost in his far mind he did not hear Otter.
“I don’t think whatever it was was slain, Otter,” said Flewingam. “But look at the snow.” Flewingam held out a hand and caught a few of the drifting flakes. They showed up a deep crimson against the pallor of his hand.
Bear held out a hand, and looked also. “It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Red snow? What new disaster awaits us now?”
Mithramuse returned from where his thought had touched Na’tone’s.
“He is safe, where no trick of the other can harm him. He touched that unliving flesh with the Sword of Light from the White Flame of the Starkeeper. He cannot be slain by that, but he has returned to his Dark Queen’s realms for a space. Perhaps in that time, we may win through here. Her armies will be without will now, although they still greatly outnumber us.”
Otter looked around, and it was true. All around them the battle still raged, more fiercely now, for the dark armies were vicious and cruel, and knowing not bravery, they yet knew bitterness, and all about they fought on.
“Can’t you do something more, sir?” asked Bear, hoping his renewed faith in the slouching gray figure of the old man would not be deflated again.
“I grow tired, Bruinlth. I called Na’tone from a sphere far removed from ours, and the cost to me to do so was dear. I must rest first”
“Watch out” cried Flewingam, casting Mithramuse to the ground as a flurry of rifle fire burst over their heads.
“They’ve seen us. Quick, Bear, you hold that side, and Otter, stand closer there that you may cover the approach.” Flewingam crawled over the general and began firing rapidly down the slope of the hill Otter, trying to find which end of the man weapon the lead darts came out looked downward and saw the running, crouched black shapes below him. They fired as they ran, and were coming straight for him. Behind him, he heard Bear’s rumble-growl as he fussed with his own unfamiliar man weapon, then a loud report and Bear’s stunned cry of pain. Otter pumped the trigger of the rifle twice, and felt the sharp blow against his chest as the thing jumped alive in his hands. Bear had had the butt of his rifle against his jaw, and the sharp blow it had given him stunned him for a second.
“I’d rather use my own paws,” he mumbled over the din. “No chance of losing your teeth from them banging in your face.”
Otter looked over to where Flewingam lay, and trying to copy the way he held the weapon, he began firing jerkily again. After a few terrifying moments, the hill was clear of attackers. Otter looked down at two fallen black shapes that by sprawled at the bottom of his side of the hill.
“You’ve done well,” said Flewingam, crawling over to him. “For waterfolk, you do passing’ well as a soldier.” Then laughing grimly, he touched Otter’s shoulder. “Don’t think about it friend. And don’t look at them if you can help it” He crawled back to his position.
It was too much for Otter’s whirling mind to associate his firing the jumping thing in his hand to the dead Worlughs below, so he simply lay, waiting, and hoping Mithramuse would be rested enough for another magical trick to help them escape the noise and fury of the battle.
Bear turned, and moving slowly, crawled beside Otter.
“This man thing has broken my jaw, I know it,” he complained, putting a hand gingerly to feel the swelling lump on the side of his face.
Otter looked at it, then moved his own hand over the swelling to see if he could feel a break. “It’s just a bruise, Bear.”
“I know it’s broken, I tell you. How in the name of Bruinthor will I be able to eat? If I can’t chew, I’ll be forever sucking mush through my front teeth to stay alive. Eek, but what a sad fate, starved to death. Bear groaned, thinking of the still unfinished loaf in Otter’s tent. He groaned again when he saw the whole camp burning below, and knew the food lost forever, burned to a blackened char.
A great volley of heavy firing and shouts broke out farther away, toward where the road led into the main camp. They all strained to see what new aid or assailants the noisy stir brought, but it was too far away to make out plainly any more than two horsemen galloping through an angry swarm of dark-clad soldiers, passing through the great glow of the fires out of sight.
Above, the snow had stopped, and the sky began to lighten faintly, with a pale, teardrop-shaped glimmering light that appeared to be approaching swiftly from away over the high peaks of the mountains.
“What new deviltry is this?” said Mithramuse aloud, rising and turning to face this new threat wearily.
An
Unquiet Peace
By far the most dangerous of the enemy armies—more deadly and cruel than the Gorgolac half-man beasts, or the thick-hided Worlugh soldiers—Dorini had fashioned in her grim halls were the tall, well-shaped, handsome men of the northern realms who had fallen into her treacherous web of destruction. Once they had been a proud race, seafarers and horsemen, and the now darkening lands where they dwelled still showed the beauty and strength their hands had once wrought before they turned to warring and slaying the neighboring inhabitants that yet lived in peace. The Urinine, as they were called, were, promised wealth and great power by Doraki, who after a time drew the once wise ruler of the strong race into his malignant plan, and Dorini, as she had promised, bestowed great wealth and power upon all those of the Urinine and their minds were filled with greed and lust, and all other thoughts were lost under long years of disuse. As their treasures grew, their minds sought still more, and the handsome dark heads of Urinine warrior clans turned from their sea and their pastures to destruction and chaos upon others of Atlanton Earth, and they ranged far and wide, pillaging and burning, forever in search of gold or jewels to fill their coffers.
It was a small troop of these Urinine that Cranfallow, with Dwarf behind and Thinvoice following, broke through in their mad flight to enter the general’s heavily besieged camp. A moment before, the three had looked down upon the great battle from the confines of a tree-sheltered hill, and Dwarf at last had spoken.
“There’s no use going back, for they do battle there, too, and if we ride on, what shall we find beyond? This is no small skirmish by the looks of it. We either fight through, and’ hope to win out, or perish. Our choices are none too pleasant, but all we have.”
Thinvoice looked up from where the burning camp lay, covered with a thick shroud of black smoke.
“If this Greymouse has them powers too, why isn’t he after using them? It don’t looks so good, to my way of thinking. I gets out of one stew pot, and rides until my backsides is blistered well enough to suit the taste of one of those filth, just to get off my horse and jumps into another one.”
“It looks bad,” said Cranfallow, “but what fight don’t? We can’t sees nothing for sure, until we knows how they stands. We might as well tries to go on, like Master Dwarf says.”
“I don’t likes it, I says, but I don’t wants to go back neither. My good sense says run, but my bottom says no, so I guess we might as well gets on with it. At least in a fight, I can gets off this bouncing nag.” Thinvoice paused, and gravely held a hand out to Dwarf and Cranfallow. “If we doesn’t shoot through, then well met, and we parts as friends.”
“We’ll do it, Ned. Just hang on tight, and I’ll see if I can’t stir tip a spell or two to help us along.” Dwarf shook Thinvoice’s trembling hand.
“Can you makes us invisible, sir?” asked Cranfallow, having second thoughts about riding down through the whining, flying storm below.
“No, my good Cranny, I can’t do that, or at least I could if I remembered the verses, but they’re long, and we’d most likely as not be here all night while I tried to remember them.”
“Well, that suits my fancy fine, sir,” said Ned, hopefully.
“No, we can’t wait. I’ll see what I can do with this one, then be ready to ride like you’ve never ridden before, Cranfallow, a
nd don’t worry about losing me, I’ve got a grip like a good vise.”
“I knows that, sir,” replied Cranfallow. “But if the bullets don’t do me, I’ll be squished clean, sure.”
Dwarf laughed. “That’s a worry I shouldn’t entertain, good Cranfallow. A dwarf hug is strong, but I don’t think it’s fatal”
“If all your kind is as strong of hand as you is, sir, you never needs to fret over dropping your supper plates, I’ll says that, and no harm meant, sir.”
“I’ll see about that the next supper I have, Cranfallow, and we’ll continue our talk about a warm fire. Now we must move. It seems to grow quieter down there.”
Dwarf removed his hat, spun it, called the secret sign forth of that ancient dwarfish king Brion Brandagore, and set forth before them a great horde of pale, glimmering figures of dwarfs with great bladed battle-axes, and helms with the fierce masks of griffin heads upon them, causing their horses to rear and shy from the ghastly, shimmering vision.
“Ride on, stout Cranfallow. On, Ned. Brion Brandagore,” bellowed Dwarf, and the crazed horses flew headlong through the glowing images of the advancing dwarfish army, onward, until the reeling lines of Gorgolacs before them parted, panic burning in their half-lidded yellow eyes, onward still until the three had crashed past all alike, defenders and enemies fleeing aside from the terrible vision of the swarthy dwarfs with the flame-gleaming great axes and death-filled eyes. The two horses neighed and pulled up suddenly near a cavalry troop that seemed to be standing by in reserve of the battle.
“Hail, comrades,” shouted Cranfallow, addressing the man who seemed to be in command, a tall, clear-featured man with a handsome roan horse that paced about, eager to join the struggle that raged all about them.
“Who be you?” questioned the tall, dark-haired man, his cloak thrown back to reveal a solid black tunic, with two faintly flowing dark disks upon his epaulets, the insignia of the Dark Queen’s armies. The man cruelly spurred his horse toward the three companions, brandishing a pistol with a long, glistening black barrel.
Dwarf quickly removed his hat and twirled it twice around, and the grisly figures of the dwarfish army broke through the smoke, their ancient war cry chilling the frozen air with a bloodcurdling, booming thunder.
“Fly, fly,” shrieked Dwarf, and Cranfallow lashed the animal, but the beast reared and Broco fell stunned to the ground beneath the flying hooves of many riders. Cranfallow jumped to help Dwarf, and the explosions of rifles fired at close quarters rattled harshly in their ears. Ned fell, a bullet lodged in his elbow, but with his good arm he raised his weapon and shot down a dosing dark rider from his saddle. Dwarf, having regained his breath, and Cranfallow beside him, pulled Ned into the low cover of an overturned and burning wagon.
“Bloody traitors, murdering scum,” bellowed Cranfallow, aiming and firing at a madly galloping Urinine horseman. “Bloody missed ‘im,” he said, firing again.
The Urinine cavalry troop galloped around the burning wagon, singing their dreadful war song.
Black death rides, we are
The Urinine,
We come in darkness
Bearing doom,
We are the Urinine,
Bloody, heartless Urinine.
and their rifles sent volley after volley of crackling bullets all about the three desperate comrades.
Broco’s spell had worn away, leaving the three friends hopelessly surrounded by the circling black-cloaked cavalry. The smoke grew a dark blood-red from the crimson reflections of the burning camp, and Dwarf, having no time to reach for his hat, which had been blasted away by a bullet passing close enough to his large head to stun him for a moment, dropped to his knees and began wildly firing the man weapon at the gradually closing circle or horsemen. Ned Thinvoice fell back, stricken for the second time, and soon Cranfallow was holding a bloody leg with a clenched fist, trying to staunch the flowing wound, and Dwarf, in a voice he did not recognize as his own, was crying in a terrible hoarse voice, “Brandagore, Greyfax, Brandagore, Fairingay,” firing the bucking man weapon into the smoke until darkness overcame him, and he remembered no more.
Bear, at Otter’s side, was tying a piece of his torn jacket about his friend’s arm. After they had watched the two horsemen disappear, they had been set upon by a platoon of howling Worlughs, who cut all escape by encircling the hill. They were too hard pressed to see Dwarf, who had been upon one of the horses, but so small as to go unnoticed, or the desperate stand he was making only a short distance from their embattled hill Otter flinched as he tried to move back to his position near Flewingam, who was also wounded, and bandaged about the head with another piece of ripped clothing. Bear’s own huge left hand was numb and useless from a bomb that had landed near him and he had to hold the clumsy, noisy man weapon with his remaining good arm, which caused the bumping thing to bang repeatedly against his sore jaw, making him groan bitterly with every jarring report. The whirling, fire-smothered night around him at last began to grow dim, and weakened from his wound, he slumped, falling away into a soundless black cloak that covered him heavily, pressing him spiraling away into a dreamless sleep.
Around the four figures, the firing grew more intense, and a billowing pall of grayish red smoke covered them. Mithramuse looked upward, trying to see the sky, and to detect what this new threat was that had been approaching for the past explosive minutes of the battle. He could see nothing at first, so thickly clung the evil haze, but he at last broke through the dark mists, and there before him, flying down the rearmost ranks of enemy soldiers, was Froghorn Fairingay, son of Fairenaus, leading a great host of sinning, grim-faced elfin warriors. They swept away all before them like a blazing white tide, and winding the ancient battle horn of Fairenaus, king and Elder of the Fourth Age, the raging brilliant fight of the Elfin host rampaged nearer, slaying great numbers of Worlughs and Gorgolacs, and falling upon the terrified but grimly holding Urinine.
With a sudden fit of uncontained joy, General Greymouse, Mithramuse, lifted the hems of his gray, mud-spattered, bloodied cloak, and danced a quick jig upon the beleaguered hill. He had not had time to look about him at the wounded, unconscious figures of his three faithful guards. With a jubilant cry, and revived somewhat, he sent soaring skyward green and blue rocket bursts, which turned blazing in midair to a fine, gold-hued dust that fashioned the glittering letters, “HURRAH, FARAGON FAIRINGAY,” then all gleamed a deadly crimson, and turning and whirling ever downward, flowed into the forms of a thousand exploding shells that burst savagely among the crazed, fleeing enemy ranks.
Froghorn, engaged fiercely by two grimly straggling Urinine, spied the fallen mud-covered bright-green-brimmed dwarf hat, and with deadly skill long unused in battle, he cleaved a head and split a helm with a vicious two-handed stroke of the bright blazing elfin blade his father had carried long ages before him upon Atlanton Earth in the Wars of the Dragon Hordes. He dismounted and knelt beside the wagon, and his clear gray-blue eyes clouded with a terrible, burning wrath. He reached out tenderly and touched Broco’s brow.
“Thank the breath of Starkeeper, he yet lives,” he said aloud, and quickly moved the little man and carried him to his great steed, Pelon.
“We must find Mithramuse quickly, my friend. I fear our Dwarf has taken grievous wounds.”
“I shall go as softly as wind across shadow,” replied Pelon as Froghorn mounted, holding the limp figure of the little man closely to his body, and Pelon moved gently away toward the hill where the now shining figure of Mithramuse stood outlined against the raging, fiery bier of his camp.
Mithramuse sobered from his wild elation as Froghorn neared, bearing Dwarf.
“What dark news mars this hour?” asked Mithramuse. “Are we to celebrate a victory with the funeral fires of our brave Dwarf?”
“He yet lives, Master, but we must find healing for him quickly,” said Froghorn, looking down at the gentle calm settling across Dwarf’s face.
“I have Bear and Otter here with me. These three,
I think, must come with us to Cypher, for the halls of Lorini have healed many hurts more grave than these.”
“Are we allowed that without our lady’s word?’* asked Froghorn, surprised at the older wizard’s suggestion.
“I shall answer to her, although I think she will not find it amiss, for these three have been her faithful followers and have borne up their parts most gallantly. She will deem it an honor to be able to reward them with a stay in Cypher.”
“Then what of the crossing? Shall we be able to hold them safe?”
“With prudence and good timing,” replied Mithramuse. “But we must be quick. Come, carry Dwarf here, and let Pe’lon return as he will.”
Froghorn dismounted, and the great horse neighed once, bowed, and was gone. ,
“Come nearer here, and help me call the Watcher. He shall carry us safely over.” the older man, gray cloak covering the halo glow of light, stooped low and began his chant. Froghorn joined, and soon all sky and earth reversed, and the distant glimmer of stars shone through the hazy pall of smoke, and a shimmering, golden ship came tiding upon the breath of wind from the last outer meadows of Windameir’s realms, and across that deep, silent beginning and end of time bore back the two wizard kings, Faragon, elder of Fairingay, and Mithramuse Cairngarme, ageless of the ageless Circle of light, servants of Cephus Starkeeper, and the unnamable holy name, and also among them were the three unknowing figures of they who had set out from beyond Calix Stay, Great. Water that guarded the nether realms, and on and beyond time they flew, and on and beyond sight or vision of mortal eyes that yet lived upon Atlanton Earth, and Dwarf, and Bear, and Otter passed there into Lorini’s halls for a time.
And behind, across the darkened borders of Northerland, Melodias Starson and Greyfax Grimwald moved with their white shining hosts against the foes that threatened Lorini’s borders.