by Doug Niles
He noticed with some surprise that his belly, the lumpy gut that had bulged over his belt, had grown flat and lean again. His legs had been weary, his feet sore during the first week of marching, but finally they were muscular and strong, sturdy as tree trunks. Even his mind seemed quicker. Pond-Lily flattered him continually, gushing about his prowess—in all endeavors—and he began to feel like a godlike champion once more.
Moving north and east, Ankhar even recruited from some of the restless ogre bands on the borderlands of Throtl—he had never used them as troops before, but they knew of his reputation and were eager to believe his promises of pillage, of riches and slaves. The young bulls were drawn from far and wide. Thousands upon thousands swelled his following. And, with Pond-Lily standing to one side and Laka on the other, Ankhar sat upon a great chair and reviewed his recruits. And he was pleased.
They were heading back to the west, coming up against the foothills of the Garnet Range. The half-giant relished the smell of the wind blowing down from the high country, for it bore the scents he had known all his life. The ogress Pond-Lily had followed him uncomplainingly for all of their long march, and Ankhar felt generous and expansive as they came into those familiar, sweet-smelling hills. He hugged the ogress to his side with his brawny left arm, threw back his head, and bellowed in exultation.
“Est Sudanus oth Nikkas!” he roared, waving his emerald-tipped spear over his head. He was heartened by the great swelling of cheers from the ogres and hobgoblins who marched in the long, undulating file behind Pond-Lily, Ankhar, and Laka.
“You are remembering your first home, now.” Laka cackled. “But you are a mighty king and can make a home anywhere in the world you choose.”
“There are few places better than these mountains,” Ankhar reflected.
“Bah!” Laka scolded. “Many places better! You just need better army to take them.”
“How? Where can I get better army?” bristled the big half-giant, dropping Pond-Lily—who recovered with surprising grace, bouncing only a couple of times—as he turned to the withered, fiercely grinning shaman.
Ankhar gestured to the column of warriors, dominated by teeming numbers of hulking, muscle-bound ogres, which spread out through the light forest in the shade at the mountain range’s base, extending as far behind him as Ankhar could see. “More ogres than ever! See the big bulls! How many tribal chiefs have I? More than anyone!”
Laka merely smiled smugly and squinted at the sky. “Look,” she said, pointing to a circling eagle.
Puzzled, the half-giant observed the bird. The huge raptor wheeled and banked, gliding easily on the mountain updrafts. Barely moving those graceful wings, the eagle serenely tilted back and forth, watching the valley floor with deceptively casual interest. It soared with a freedom and majesty Ankhar could only envy.
A dozen rabbits, flushed by the activity of the encamping army, bounced through the grass, racing for the protection of the woods on the slope. The eagle tucked its wings and plummeted like a stone, coming down on the back of a large hare, breaking its neck with the force of the strike. Proudly the bird sailed upward, tearing at the warm flesh with its sharp beak.
“See how that eagle strikes … from the air? Kills quickly … by surprise?”
“Yes, I see!” Ankhar retorted in exasperation. “Of course it flies! It has wings!”
“Your army would fight better if it could fly,” Laka noted.
Ankhar snorted indignantly. “And I could kill you with my breath if I was a dragon! But I am not a dragon. And my army cannot fly!”
“But what if you were to find some warriors, some flying warriors, who would join you in your glorious battles?”
“That fly like dragons, you mean? Where are warriors such as this?”
“There are some. They are not far away.”
“Did you dream about these flying warriors?” he asked suspiciously. He had been exposed to many great and terrible things in the past as a direct result of Laka’s dreams, so he didn’t want to discount her suggestion out of hand. But neither was he willing to embrace the inevitable risks, at least not until he learned more. He would ask some questions, require some persuasion!
“Yes, I did,” she replied triumphantly. “And I know where you can find them.”
“Flying warriors?” he mused. They would be useful, to be sure. Face an enemy cowering behind a wall? Bah! Let them form a line of pikes? Hah!
That was enough thinking for the half-giant. “All right, we go,” he said. “Pond-Lily, you stay here.”
“Yes, my lord,” said the ogress, bowing meekly.
And so it was, three days later, that the hulking half-giant and his frail, withered hobgoblin stepmother made their way high into a remote valley of the Garnet range. Ankhar left his army behind because Laka had assured him the warriors they sought would flee into hiding at the sight of a barbarian horde approaching.
His prospective allies remained utterly mysterious in Ankhar’s mind, and he grew tired and weary of the new quest prompted by his stepmother. While he loved the mountains, he had forgotten how hard it could be to walk up and up and up for days at a time. He even missed Pond-Lily, who—despite her mental shortcomings—had a way of making the long, cold nights a good deal warmer and shorter. Footsore and grumpy, he was working up his courage to challenge Laka when he was distracted by a shape that dived from a nearby cliff, swooped past his head, and landed on the trail before him.
Great pale wings spread from the scaly shoulders of the creature, which snarled at him and Laka, opening a pair of tooth-filled, crocodilian jaws. And then it stood on its hind legs and drew a short steel sword from a leather belt.
“Stop!” it hissed. “And be afraid!”
Ankhar, in truth, had been badly startled by the creature’s appearance. It was a draconian, he noted at once, but of a type that was larger than any draconian he had ever seen previously. Furthermore, the draconian had a broad set of wings that spread much wider than the atrophied leathery flaps that allowed the standard example of the species to glide short distances while preventing true flight.
The creature was silvery white in color and almost as tall as the gaping half-giant. The hissing growls that issued from the draconian’s maw were indeed frightening, and its flapping wings made it look even larger than it really was.
But the thing was not as tall as Ankhar—nor, he felt certain, was it as strong or fierce. The half-giant’s surprise changed to anger and insult, and he lowered his spearhead, brandishing the emerald stone at his challenger’s chest.
“Who are you to tell me to be afraid?” he demanded.
“I am Gentar—chief of the sivaks!” snapped the draconian, hissing, growling, and spitting.
Only then did Ankhar realize that other draconians were settling to the ground all around them. Within moments he and Laka were surrounded by more than a dozen of the creatures, each of whom was some nine feet tall—taller than a bull ogre—and continuously flapping their great, powerful wings. Others remained in the air, wheeling and circling, like bats. They flew with grace and power, and wore bands of leather strapped across their chests and girding their loins. The growling, hissing sivak draconians presented an impressive array of fangs, talons, and silver-bladed weapons.
“I am not afraid!” Ankhar lied—loudly, which was his favorite way to lie. “You fear me, or die!” He waved his emerald-tipped spear for good measure.
A blast of fire erupted from the ground in front of him, sending the half-giant tumbling backward. The blaze shot upward as if exploding from a deep hole, crackling and burning, radiating heat that forced Ankhar to raise a hand just to shield his eyes. He only barely managed to hold on to his spear as his jaw dropped at the sight of a slender, wingless draconian standing in the place where the column of flame had shot upward.
“You are Ankhar!” declared this new draconian. He was smaller than the other winged monsters, but there was something that suggested command about him. His eyes, slit with vertical
pupils, nevertheless gleamed with intelligence, and his voice had a sibilant quality. And he knew the half-giant’s name.
“Who are you?” demanded the one who called himself the Truth.
“I am Guilder,” the creature replied easily, stepping forward, extending a taloned paw in a gesture of greeting. “Aurak draconian, master of these sivaks, and lord of this valley. I greet you in friendship and respect.”
Guilder held that paw extended. Ankhar, watching suspiciously, switched his spear to his left hand and took the paw in his own—and immediately felt a numbing, chilling paralysis take root in his palm and start to run up his arm. Magic! He pulled his hand away with a roar of alarm. Weakness seeped through his flesh, and a wave of dizziness surged up through his mind.
“Take them!” cried Guilder, pulling his paw free, dancing away from the suddenly staggering half-giant. The aurak crowed in triumph and chanted words to a magic spell, wildly gesticulating.
His mother laughed shrilly, a cackling sound that made the half-giant wonder if she were going insane. Whose side was she on anyway? The aurak was still casting a spell, making grotesque sounds that rose to a crescendo and—Ankhar feared—a coming convulsion of magic.
Abruptly the sound of the aurak’s spell-casting ceased, though he continued to work his jaws, frantically. But there was a glimmer of fear in the creature’s slit eyes as the shaman’s spell of silence disrupted the casting of whatever sorcery he had been preparing.
As one of the silvery draconians charged him from in front, Ankhar raised his spear by instinct more than plan, still holding the weapon awkwardly in his left hand. The green stone at the head of the weapon pulsed brightly, a flash of light brighter than the sun. The weapon almost seemed to draw the suddenly frightened draconian onto the weapon. Ankhar took heart from that flaring brilliance and thrust the spear forward with a triumphant bellow.
The green stone wedge pierced the draconian’s chest and exploded through its back, halfway between those two suddenly flailing wings. “Die, wyrmling!” roared Ankhar, pulling the spear free. The draconian tumbled back and fell to the ground. Wings flapping, it thrashed and kicked for a moment, but its struggles quickly faded and it died in a spreading pool of black blood.
The other sivaks growled and barked and squawked, obviously dismayed. Several feinted lunges at the half-giant but retreated before he could parry against them. He spun through a full circle, feeling the strength returning to his numbed right arm. He still held the heavy shaft of his spear in his left hand, shaking it over his head, roaring challenges and taunts at the reptilian band. With his chest thrust out and his muscles flexing, he felt his mastery over the craven creatures and, like his mother, laughed out loud at their hissing, clacking, and flapping.
“Look at Arcen!” The aurak, Guilder, gasped in surprise as Laka’s spell of silence fell away. He was pointing at the dead sivak, now sprawled motionless on the ground at his feet.
Slowly, with a strange rippling through its flesh, that silver-white body began to change. The shape writhed, its talons drawing back into the fingers and toes, its wings shriveling and shrinking. Ankhar was familiar with the gruesome death throes of lesser draconians—the baaz, who became hard stone statues when slain; or the kapaks, whose flesh dissolved into searing acid. But the sivak was strange and different: the draconian was changing shape.
With a violent convulsion, the scaly flesh of the creature’s skin ripped apart. Its chest thickened, and its dragonlike face smoothed, the jaws shrinking until it resembled a more humanoid creature. With a gasp of disbelief, Ankhar suddenly realized that he was looking at the very image of himself! The corpse was wearing strange, ornate garments—nothing like the half-giant’s leather tunic and leggings—but he was too stunned to take note of the garb.
“What foul sorcery is this?” he demanded, taking a step backward.
But the other draconians were not listening. They all recognized the image of Ankhar the Truth—but it was an Ankhar wearing a golden crown and wrapped in the robes that signified he was a great king. The aurak, Guilder, threw himself to the ground, pressing his face forward to kiss the half-giant’s muddy boots.
“My liege!” he cried. “Forgive me!”
“Hail Ankhar!” croaked another of the draconians, the sivak called Gentar who had first confronted him. The draconian placed the tip of his great long sword on the ground and leaned the hilt toward the great lord. “Allow us to serve you, O mighty one!” he croaked.
“My power is my Truth!” bellowed the half-giant. “Est Sudanus oth Nikkas!”
“And we,” Guilder said, speaking with bowed head from bended knee. “We will follow your Truth to the far ends of Krynn!”
Deciding that they did not want to risk magically transporting themselves into the middle of a battle, Selinda and Melissa teleported safely to the yard of a country inn that the princess knew that was several miles south of Vingaard Keep. They arrived unnoticed and, in the early morning light, simply walked up the lane without being seen by anyone in the barely stirring household.
The two women were dressed in simple shawls and easily passed as farmwives when encountering dairymen or laborers on the dirt road that curled gently down the valley of the Vingaard River. That great flowage, a mile wide, spread to their right, but the keep itself and the town around it was obscured from their view by the ridge of low hills just south of Apple Creek.
They walked along in silence and after about an hour came to the crest of those hills. They both stopped and stared. The silhouette of Vingaard Keep loomed before them, but it was a sad, twisted mockery of the once elegant fortress. Only one tower could be seen, standing aloof and proud, with many black gaps where the once-beautiful windows had been. The other two towers were gone, replaced by stumps of rubble.
There was a picket of Crown Army guards at the crest, a dozen men-at-arms who stood near the road, watching to the south. They had clearly been observing the women for the past hour, but just as obviously did not perceive them to be any threat. In fact, they ignored them as they moved past until Selinda stopped and turned. She spotted the sergeant of the detail, a grizzled knight who was a decade or two past his prime, and approached him.
Curtsying respectfully, she begged his pardon for interrupting him at his duties.
“No problem! No problem at all, little lady. What can I do for you on this fine morn?”
“Is it safe to approach the castle? Does the battle still rage?”
The sergeant chuckled genially. “Not so much of a battle, really. The poor beggars were ready to quit at the first sight of the emperor’s bombard. But he wouldn’t let ’em—turned the cowardly curs right back to their walls, he did, when they tried to yield. He had to teach them a lesson, you know.”
“He turned them down? When they offered to yield?” Selinda tried to keep her voice level even as her stomach heaved with nausea. She felt Melissa take her hand, the priestess squeezing it hard, trying to give her strength.
“Well, he had to, you see. Had to teach them the lesson.”
“And now? Where is the emperor?” asked Selinda.
“Why do you want to know so bad?” asked the guard, suddenly suspicious. “You are a pretty thing, I’ll say. But you know he’s married, don’t you?”
“I had heard that, yes,” said the emperor’s wife. “I’m curious, that’s all. Do you think he will knock the rest of the castle down?”
“I don’t think so. The lord’s daughter came out to see him, in the wee hours it was. She went up and begged him to stop. She was up there with him a long time, but when she rode away, he called for a ceasefire. You can see they’re taking the gun down … right there.”
She looked and did notice the mighty bombard, the barrel lowered almost to a horizontal position as oxen were secured in the wagon’s traces. Beyond, she saw a building, probably an inn, and recognized the three-symbol pennant that was the emperor’s banner.
“Is he down there, then?” she asked, pointing to the obvi
ous headquarters.
“Well, he was. But a few moments ago, he and a party of men, all decked out they was, road across the Stonebridge and into Vingaard Keep. Maybe he had some more terms for the little lady, eh?” he added with a lewd chuckle and a wink.
“Yes, maybe,” Selinda replied disconsolately. Then she walked away from the sergeant with Melissa at her side. Instead of turning toward the castle or the headquarters building, however, she turned her footsteps toward the Apple Creek road, leaving the Vingaard, the castle, and the army behind.
The priestess walked with her in silence for a long time. Finally, she spoke. “You’re not going to try to talk to him, then?” she said.
Selinda shook her head. “No, I’m not. I mean, in the end, there’s really nothing to say.”
The cleric of Kiri-Jolith nodded somberly, and again took her friend’s hand. The Lady Selinda was right.
There really wasn’t anything to say.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CROSSING OVER
Marrinys Kerrigan proved an able administrator. By the time Jaymes, Dayr, and the Freemen rode into the courtyard of Vingaard Keep, she had ordered the vaults opened and somehow collected enough treasure to fill a small chest with gems and larger chests with steel coins. Jaymes didn’t need more than a glance to see that the recalcitrant town’s taxes would be paid in full.
“You’re as good as your word,” he said approvingly.
“I wish I could say the same about you,” she replied, startling him with her vehemence. “But your word has been sullied by your disregard of the parley, more than you even know. The world will long remember how you betrayed my father under a flag of truce.”
“I told you—I didn’t plan to kill him! I gave no order to injure him. It was simply an accident.” Once again, he found himself wanting her to understand and was irritated that she refused to accept his explanation. “Do you think I’m lying to you?” he demanded.