by RW Krpoun
Petor came cantering back to the main body after scouting ahead as was his custom, a burly, battered half-Orc whose blunt visage was locked into a permanent grin by a jagged scar that bisected his right ear, crossed his cheek horizontally, and then darted down to the corner of his mouth. He reined up next to the Nepas officer and tossed her a casual salute. “Four more hours to the outskirts of the ruins, the city proper. We’ll be there long before sundown, plenty of time to organize the meeting protocols.”
“And you’ll be spending the night alone,” Kustar fixed the Thane with a baleful stare. “Get used to it.”
The half-Orc shrugged. “It was nice while it lasted.” He winked clumsily with his left eye and reined back his mount to fall behind.
Four more hours; Kustar worked her shoulders tiredly. By nightfall she should have negotiated entry with the guard force and be installed in guest quarters; sometime in the next couple days she would negotiate with the liche itself. With two or three days of rest under their belts she and Coke would be able to make the return trip in much better condition, and Petor would have to keep his distance or pay with a limb. All in all, things were going pretty well. The Anlarc would not be leaving the fortress until tomorrow by the soonest, giving her plenty of time to complete her business and Gate back to Alantarn before he got anywhere near Oramere. The Watcher at Fort Margrave, that horrid little half-Goblin, had confirmed that the White Necromancer was, well, not alive but at least still active, and thus everything seemed to be going as she had planned.
Agyra the Axe sat in his quarters, a featureless cell that was unfurnished save for the throne-like chair he now occupied. Windowless, the blackness was absolute, which troubled him not at all as the organs that now provided him with sight pierced darkness as easily as sunlight. He sat as motionless as a statue, whatever movement of breathing cloaked by his armor, bright electric thoughts dancing within the depths of his skull-faced helm. He had not always been Agyra the Axe; once long ago he had been an officer in the Temple Guard, a simple servitor of the Dark One. That had been before the ground was broken for Alantarn, before the verax that was the fortress’ reason for existence had even been discovered.
Nearing the end of his useful years of service he had been chosen for the ultimate honor: elevation to the status of Anlarc, a personal representative and avatar of the Dark One. He was bound to this course in a dark, blood-filled ceremony, the memory of which still fresh in his mind after all these years. He had survived the rite, and survived the years of drinking potions laced with andern, potions that increased his oneness with the Void, amplified (temporarily) his personal powers, and slowly reshaped his body to the task of spreading Chaos. As the changes came, he was entrusted with Void-blessed weapons and armor to aid him, items whose construction was impregnated with andern, the pure stuff of the Void, weapons and armor which changed with him, until they were part of him and he, them.
It had been decades since he had ingested andern; he no longer needed it, any more than he needed food, water, light to see by, or the pleasures of the flesh. He was beyond all that, beyond the needs of mortals, above their petty concerns, past their meager ambitions, rules, and dreams. He was the Axe of the Dark One, Minion of the Void, a force unto his own dark calling.
He was also a creature of his word. There was no doubt as to Kustar’s game: she had changed his report, and would hide all other traces of the true origins of the raid in order to be the one to present the Hold Commander with the answer to his questions. Even now she was off gathering the final evidence, no doubt. Agyra had agreed to her charade in order to obtain the identity of the group that had faced him in that corral, inflicted serious loss upon his personal servitors, and escaped. She had given him the information he desired, but required him to delay in order to ensure that he could not reach and storm Oramere before she returned to Alantarn, a rather ill-informed conceit, he felt.
A cautious knock echoed into his room. “Enter,” his thin, feathery voice carried no further than the ears of the knocker, a trick he had long ago acquired. The door swung inward on silent hinges, admitting his third in command bearing a hooded lantern.
“Curion, all is prepared. We have received the signal that the detachment is in place, just as you ordered. I have drawn the quantity of gold that you requested and placed it in a case on your mount’s saddle, and all is ready for your immediate departure.”
“Has the midnight bell sounded?”
“Not yet, Curion. It should toll soon, however.”
“Good. One detail: the prisoner in cell four is to be kept in complete isolation; feed him yourself and allow no other contact. Check with our Pargaie contact as to Chora Pravas’ status. Should she return, dispose of the prisoner as she desires; tell her nothing of my actions. Should she be reported dead or missing, or be placed under arrest for any reason, kill the prisoner and covertly dispose of the body in the usual fashion.”
“By your command.”
“Should any of the Temple inquire as to my whereabouts, advise them that I am undertaking a reconnaissance of strictest security; if the Temple Master should press the issue, advise him that I seek out a Goblin Seer that I wish to add to my retinue. Should the Seers report my existence terminated, you will execute all prisoners in cells two through six, dispose of the bodies covertly, and then take your own life.”
“By your command.”
“Leave me.”
The Anlarc waited in the dark. He was a creature of his word: he would not leave Alantarn until the midnight bell signaled the start of the eighth day since Kustar’s departure. The foolish half-breed’s blind confidence that he would not have access to the Gates in the Fortress was both factual and false: true, he would not be able to employ the Gates without more explanations than he would be willing to give, but the ignorant bitch had never considered that there were other avenues open to him, specifically that he had access to Orbs of Sending, simple single-use items which could act as a Gate for a single individual. He would ride a good distance from Alantarn to ensure that he was safely outside of the range of the Watchers in the fortress before using the Orb to join the detachment of his own guards which he had dispatched within an hour of making the pact with Kustar; after all, his agreement had been in respect to the Anlarc himself, not his retinue. In four days’ time he would be at the gates of Oramere with enough troops to complete what had been started in this very fortress.
Let her gather her secrets and take the glory; the blood of the Phantom Badgers would have dried long before the ink on her report.
Chapter Fifteen
The night was closing in, the last of the light fading from the west as the stars came alive in the cloud-less sky. The raid group had stopped before sundown to cook and eat their evening meal, then rode for half an hour before making their fireless night camp, ever alert for trouble.
Bridget lay on her stomach in the freshly trampled turf of their night camp, chewing a stalk of sweet grass while she waited for Maxmillian to finish picketing the horses and for Elonia to return from the employment of her Sight. To her left Henri was a long low shadow in the thin, watery light cast by a quarter moon and the cloud of stars that swept from horizon to horizon, lying stretched out with his head propped on his rolled cloak. The wizard was tired, she knew, just as she and the others were; it had been fourteen days and hundreds of hard-riding miles since the Goblin fight, and each mile had been paid for in sweat and fatigue. All four had lost weight, and their mounts were badly worn down despite the rest-days and the diminishment of their loads as the group’s supplies ran out. All their reserve food was gone, their grain had given out tonight, and they were down to a couple ounces of salt.
On the reverse side of the coin Tiria and the ultimate goal of their mission was only forty miles to the west, meaning that they would carry out their mission tired, but not so badly worn that they could not fight. With any luck, they could steal or capture replacement stocks of grain and salt in the White Necromancer’s hold; if not
, by following the coast, they would be able to acquire a quantity of sea salt, and perhaps even locate a smuggler who would carry them back to the Empire for pay.
When Maxmillian and Elonia returned, Bridget tossed her stalk aside and rolled to a sitting position, quietly calling the others to her. Henri turned to face her on his side, head propped up on one fist; Maxmillian and Elonia sat facing her, their knees nearly touching hers, the entire group close enough together that a whisper could be clearly heard by all.
“Final briefing,” Bridget whispered.
“That’s the last thing they say in the Badgers before they nail the lid on,” Henri muttered. “And then they review the plan for burial.”
“And they’ll put on your tombstone: ‘it wasn’t our fault, we covered it in annex three of the plan’,” Maxmillian chuckled.
“Oh giggle, giggle, laugh,” the Serjeant drawled, secretly pleased that there was still enough spirit left in them to joke. “Elonia, anything? Oh well, perhaps that's good news. Four things to cover, so let’s get this over with and go to bed. No guards posted tonight: we’re twenty miles out, and that calls for a change in operations. We’ll get up at midnight, and make as much speed as we can until dawn. Once it’s light enough to see easily, we’ll hole up and rest all day; as the light fades, we’ll saddle up and make the final run to the outskirts of Tiria. I hope we can made ten to fifteen miles tonight, and the rest tomorrow.”
“That puts us to the second point: inside Tiria, and our overall mission.”
“Which can be neatly summed up as follows,” Maxmillian observed. “Find a good hiding place for our horses, then infiltrate on foot, improvise, improvise, take advantage of any opportunities, improvise, kill the White Necromancer, escape the wrath of his followers as opportunity allows, return to horses if possible, and flee. Did I miss any of the key points?”
“That’s pretty much it,” Bridget conceded. “We lack maps and hard data on the city, other than it’s built on the Sur river, very old, and in ruins. We’ll have to make our plan as we go along, aided by the Torc, Elonia’s Sight, and the small size of our party. Third point: the opposition. The White Necromancer will have a staff of servitors, some of whom will be lesser liches (called lechtor) themselves, and a handful of living slaves. The garrison will be made up of Undead whose numbers and composition are unknown although we do know there won’t be any Children of the Night King; for some reason the White Necromancer will not employ vampires.”
“This leaves two basic types of combatants that we will face, the first and lesser being Animated Undead, which are humanoid corpses which are reanimated through special ceremonies. Animated Undead retain a little better than half of their old motor skills, but are basically brainless, and cannot communicate; they continue to decay in a dry-rot fashion, and last only about a decade at the very most, less under rougher climatic conditions. They are usually used as point security, often resting in a unanimated state until an alarm spell is tripped, so be very careful of any bones you encounter in the city; they may be an Animated Undead that is intended to reform and attack after you have passed. To kill an Animated Undead, simply batter the skeleton apart; they aren’t usually much danger to veteran s. Their main advantages are the ease with which they are called up, and their shock value to unprepared troops.”
“The ‘poor liche’s’ troops,” Maxmillian observed.
“Exactly, and the one we face is rich indeed,’ Bridget nodded. “Which brings us to the second type of guardian we face, the Skeletal Warrior. The Skeletal Warriors, which are more properly called Dayar, are created by a more complicated process. A device called a levare is made, the levare consisting of a leather cylinder the size of a quiver which contains a couple pounds of ashes and bone fragments of a sentient creature which had not received consecration by a priest of the Eight; the levare is sealed with blood and fat from the same source. In a ceremony which involves a very small quantity of andern the levare erupts into a Dayar, a man-sized creature which appears to be an animated Human skeleton.”
“So if they have levare on hand, andern in stock, and weapons with which to arm them, a good necromancer could raise a sizeable force in short order,” Elonia observed. “The process is remarkably similar to that of Direbreed.”
“Exactly,” Bridget nodded. “One such as the White Necromancer could raise an army in a matter of hours. Now, the Dayar appear to be a Human skeleton, although its frame is smoother and denser than bone, and fits together without cartilage or sinew; not all the bones in a Dayar match the Human skeleton, either. The eyes sockets of a Dayar are filled with a flame-like light that is grayish or smoky in color. They cannot communicate verbally, but can hear and understand commands; they obey the summoning necromancer, Dayar leaders, and others who are marked by batons or similar devices that the Dayar recognize. As individuals, Dayar are fair fighters, and learn by experience as Direbreed do, so that in time subunit leaders can be drawn from the Dayar ranks. As the skeletal warriors get older, the bone darkens and spiky protrusions grow from the main bone structures; their ‘eyes’ usually deepen into hues or red or blue.”
“Dayar do not require food or water, are largely fearless, and can have physical damage repaired by necromantic magic; to put them down for good, you must destroy the skull. Their main weakness is that they are not truly alive: they cannot think beyond simple, straight-forward concepts, so they react sluggishly to situations that fall outside the scope of their orders whenever there isn’t a living controller present. They cannot smell, and cannot tell people apart unless marked by special insignia, with the exception that they can always recognize necromancers, other Undead, and those marked by the Void.”
“Which leads us to our fourth and final point: the nature of the environment and why we are going to succeed where others have failed. The magical nature of a necromancer’s lair, especially a necromancer who has successfully transformed into a liche, is a very different proposition from anywhere else. As you know, the frequent use of any sort of magic will affect an area, making the use of a scryer’s skills difficult or impossible, and in extreme cases affecting spell casting. Necromancy lingers longer and disrupts more than other forms of magic. In a place like Tiria, where such magics have been used for centuries, and where the binding enchantments of Dayar and liche add to the mix, the disruption is so great that no one short of an archmage could effectively cast spells, and even enchanted arms would be temporarily disrupted. Most importantly, this negative aura would have the reverse effect on necromantic magic, creating a near-perfect environment in which to function.”
“So an attacker would be reduced to cold steel, and unenchanted steel at that,” Maxmillian shook his head. “Fighting house-to-house against a near-endless pool of Dayar.”
“Worse than that,” Elonia said. “The attacker would have no magical or Seer talents to guide them while the Undead commander would enjoy enhanced abilities in such an area.”
“There it is,” the Serjeant shrugged. “The same goes for any assassin: a liche is immune to poison and nearly so to steel; you need magic to put one down. There probably hasn’t been a serious attempt mounted on this place in decades. Thus we will have the advantage of surprise: the liche and its forces will be complacent, more concerned with preventing a raid by another necromancer or the forces of the Dark Star than with assassins.”
“Our greatest advantage, however, is the Torc of Siuan, which was specifically designed for hunting necromancers. When employed, the Torc nullifies the pervading magical aura in a necromancer’s lair, while rendering this null point invisible to necromantic magic, allowing us to use our spells, enchanted items, and Elonia’s Sight normally and without fear of detection within Tiria. Within this area we are greatly protected from necromantic enchantments, and our weapons will be polarized to the ... well, just say that in layman’s terms they will be better able to disrupt the binding enchantments of Animated Undead and Dayar. The shortcomings to the Torc are that the area affected is only a
radius of about ten feet, which is why we only sent four on this mission. Additionally, the Torc’s effects diminish over time; while this is a slow process, it is cumulative, so that once we are in we will have about five days to accomplish our mission before the Torc is rendered useless. Should we have to pull out, it would be months before the Torc would be effective in Tiria again. I’ll don the Torc after we hide the horses, which should give us plenty of time to accomplish our mission. As for spitting up, after a few hours within the Torc’s aura you will be able to emerge from within its range and retain the benefits for about a half-hour, so we won’t have to move in lock-step once we’re in Tiria.”
“Five days should be plenty, one way or another,’ Maxmillian agreed. “What will happen to the Undead if we kill the liche?”
“Any Animated Undead called up by the liche will lose their life-force in a matter of hours, as will any lechtor created by the White Necromancer who are not necromancers themselves. The Dayar will be thrown into confusion for a period of time, but like Direbreed they are products of the Void, and not physically bound to their summoners. Still, it should not be too hard to escape in the confusion.”
“Have you ever hunted a liche before?” Henri asked.
“No; I’ve taken part in hunting down necromancers, but never one who successfully crossed over; they’re very rare. Still, the principles are the same, and the Torc is an incredible advantage. Surprise is our best weapon: if we can assault the liche’s physical remains before it is aware we are in the area, we should be able to destroy it with minimal risk. The key question that we have unanswered is to what degree has the White Necromancer deteriorated in physical form, mental capacity, and magical ability. Remember, it is very likely that the liche has not faced a personal threat in centuries.”