by Rutger Krenn
Barad looked thoughtfully into his goblet. “I’ve learned this much however. A Wizard can somehow ease his body into the realm between life and death. In that twilight world his spirit can walk free from his flesh. He could spy out the Goblin encampment and even, perhaps, what the Turgil is up to. I saw something like it once but apparently it’s very dangerous. I would guess it would be even more so in the presence of a sorcerer.”
That was something to think of. Could be done? They might learn a great deal, but at what cost to Arandur? Could he ask the Wizard to risk himself in ways that he couldn’t even understand himself? Did the predicament of Thromdar warrant it?
He and Cadrafer talked to Barad a little while longer and then left him to go their separate ways. Kenrik found himself walking to Arandur’s tower. Whatever the risk he had decided to put Barad’s idea to the test. Could it be done? Was one man’s life expendable if he agreed? Was a Wizard’s life expendable, who might yet be desperately needed before the end?
The night was growing chill and Kenrik found Arandur, alone and grim, with his cloak closely wrapped about him.
“It’s a cold night,” said Kenrik.
“It will get colder before the dawn.”
He sat cross-legged beside him. “We fought well today. I’m beginning to feel that just maybe we can pull this off after all.”
Arandur glanced at him. “That is well. There is a different feeling now among the men as well. They grow close as destruction weighs heavier upon them.”
“I sense that myself. There’s a unity and it feels good to be part of that.”
Arandur looked at him appraisingly. “Perhaps there is purpose to life after all?
“Maybe,” said Kenrik. “It helps when there is something to fight for. A cause to believe in good people in danger who need help. What of the Turgil though? What will he do?”
“That is hard to say. He will be doing something - that much is certain.”
“Barad says that you have ways of finding these things out. Is that possible? Can you discover his plans?”
Arandur looked out at the Goblin’s encampment and did not reply for some time. “It may be possible. He will have told you of how the spirit of a Wizard can leave the restraints of flesh behind. If I do so you may learn something to your profit. On the other hand, it is perilous. Doubly so with the Turgil. There are ways in which I would be vulnerable should he detect my presence. He will have established wards to alert him.”
“Can you get around them?”
“I may be able to do so. I will make the attempt if you wish, but I will need your help.”
“I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Very well then,” said the Wizard. He laid his staff upon the stone between them. “Take hold of the wood, and do not let go. Remember that, do not let go whatever happens. I must walk in the world of the spirit and follow the paths of the dead so closely as to cease living myself. Only then might I escape his senses and only something alive can bring me back. Do not let go of the staff.”
Kenrik took a firm grip of the timber and watched Arandur prepare himself. The Wizard closed his eyes and began to breathe in a slow and measured way. It became noiseless and seemed to cease altogether and Kenrik wondered if his heart still beat. He seemed to be coming closer to the Wizard, to feel what he felt, to think what he thought. He closed his eyes and the impression increased.
Suddenly the cool stone of the battlements receded from his mind. It seemed as though he were falling upwards and all feeling left his body. He looked down and saw himself seated on the stone. He looked asleep, but even in repose he thought he looked grim. He sensed now that he was strong again, strong and vigorous as he was in his youth and yet with the full measure of his mature mind. There was no age in the spirit world. There would be no sickness either, no weariness of body, no pangs of hunger or thirst. There was, however, danger. He could sense that and he could discern the will of the Wizard, somewhere around him, or within him, moving their combined presence through the air.
He drifted to the edge of the battlements and looked out. It was dark, and yet not dark. To his spirit eyes the night was no barrier. He saw the army of the Goblins encamped before Thromdar. He looked down and saw the Kraken still and motionless in death. It was a monster from the deep, brought out of its natural environment by unnatural means: by dark sorcery. He saw the fabric of reality about its form was torn and twisted. The creature should not be here. It was a misuse of the magic. He intuitively understood that was why it was called sorcery and not Wizardry. They were two different things serving two different masters. Or perhaps they were the same thing but the purpose and manner of their use differed.
His spirit swept over the battlements and flowed down toward the Goblin camp. He went through it, and saw, but was not seen. The Goblins sat around their fires, sharpening blades, eating, laughing at crude jests or snarling viciously at companions as the mood took them. They were a barbarous race, but they at least, unlike the Kraken, belonged to this world. There was no rent in the fiber of reality about them. They were creatures of the natural world, yet even so he detected the hand of Eruthram upon them. He saw it in the dark glint of their eyes. They were under the shadow. Changed in some way from their natural tendencies, or rather certain tendencies had been strengthened and others suppressed. They were who and what they always were, and yet the worst part of their nature had been nurtured.
He drifted on. There was no sign of activity, no sign that any attack was imminent. The Goblins were restless. They had suffered a defeat today. Their master, for whom they felt nothing but terror, had failed. It was a time to be wary, and the Goblins, barbarous and sometimes stupid, were always cunning. They stayed out of harm’s way and waited for their master’s bidding.
It was to their master that Arandur now took them. He braced himself as he went up the hill toward the darkness. Even with spirit eyes the hill remained shrouded; a cloak of sorcery about it to protect it from prying eyes. He sensed himself become thinner. There was no other way to describe the process. It was as though his mind dispersed; became one with the currents of air that eddied about the hill: like a faint glimmer of starlight, like the scent of snow in the mountains, like the sheen of light from dew in the grass their presence passed upwards.
The darkness was all about them now: cold, oppressive and evil. It was a feeling that weighed down the soul and made him despair. He shook those feelings aside as they slipped imperceptibly along the sweep of the grass to the crest of the hill. There were few Goblins but many Trolls whose large frames stood out against the nighttime horizon. Their eyes glinted darkly but could not see him. He swept past them, past the ranks of guards and to the very crest of the hill upon which a tent had been placed.
The tent flap was closed but Arandur took him within and he felt as though he were in yet another world.
It was freezing in the tent. This, he felt, should not be so. In spirit form he could feel neither heat nor cold. It was not a cold of temperature though, but a cold of the soul. A void that sapped away at what was good. An emptiness that sucked hope and decisiveness away and left only despair and indecision.
He was aware that it was dangerous for him to linger here too long. If the Turgil did not detect him, and he sensed that the cold was in some way alive, some power of sorcery linked to the Turgil that would warn him of intruders, there was still the danger of being contaminated, of his soul being utterly darkened by hopelessness and depression. This was something that neither he nor Aren Daleth could afford.
Within the tent it was dark as midnight. Nothing stirred, neither Troll or Goblin, nor even the Turgil. After a little while he perceived that there were two compartments in the tent. A divider hung down some twenty feet away from him and he moved in this direction.
Straight away the cold intensified. He sensed Arandur’s body on the tower overlooking the valley spasm and shiver: but here, in the stronghold of his enemy, he felt the Wizard’s resolve harden.
; Slipping through the partition he saw the Turgil with spirit eyes. The sorcerer was kneeling down on the floor, his form shrouded in a black cloak and his face turned away. He was muttering under his breath, whispering incantations that Kenrik could not hear, but he knew Arandur understood a part of their purpose. He watched, and as he did so the sorcerer rose and drew symbols on the wall of the tent. Where his finger passed it left traces of fire, muted crimson flames that burned with light but no heat.
The tent grew chillier still and the sorcerer kneeled down once again. His whisperings continued, rising higher in pitch and volume. Now Kenrik could hear some of the words and knew Arandur felt abhorrence.
Some minutes later the sorcerer stood once again. He traced more symbols on the canvas and these burned brighter than the first. The cold became crushing and a feeling of malevolence and an urge to destroy filled the air. It was becoming dense in the tent.
Arandur took them away. He had apparently seen enough and guessed what was to come. What had the Wizard discovered? They slipped into the outer chamber and thence into the encampment beyond. Out he swept over the Goblin army and up to the walls of Thromdar and higher still into the tower.
Kenrik’s eyes flickered open and the stars wheeled and spun above. He toppled from his cross-legged position and lay sprawled on the stone. He looked to Arandur and saw the Wizard, blue in the face, had toppled over and what looked like frost glittered on his eyebrows while his breath steamed in silver clouds as he lay gasping and shuddering.
He leaned over and tried to rub life back into the Wizard’s limbs. Had he asked too much of him? Gradually, the trembling subsided and warmth and life returned to his body. His breathing came back to normal and the color of his skin turned rosy again. It was well, thought Kenrik, they returned when they did. Arandur would not have survived much longer.
The Wizard spoke and his voice was husky and old. “It was not a wasted effort. I learned some of what will happen tomorrow. The Goblins will be driven as your men have never seen before.”
“What will drive them?”
“The will of the Turgil. It will take all we have to hold them off.”
“What can we do to prevent it?” asked Kenrik.
“Prevent it? It cannot be prevented. The Goblins will come, and they will come in a wild frenzy beyond anything you have ever seen. They will come as does a storm: unstoppable. We must just endure it, but I can do something that may help a little. It will lighten the hearts of the men and give them a spark of hope when it is most needed. You must let them know how the Goblins will attack. Warn and prepare them. Tell them this also. It is the Turgil who drives them on. It is the Turgil who infuses them with madness, but let them know this also. Wizardry shall contend with sorcery. They will not stand alone.”
Kenrik wondered what else would happen. Arandur had learned some of the Turgil’s plan, but not all. Anyway, he felt too tired to do anything just yet and waited for the dawn. When it came Cadrafer and Barad joined him on the battlements. Was it the last they would ever see? He tried not to look at the Goblin army that defiled his home. He looked up at the rim of the valley and the swathes of forest that covered it. He pretended he could still smell the scent of pine resin and snow in the air instead of the acrid smell of burning campfires and the stench of the Kraken.
He looked higher still to the peaks of the mountains. Thromdar stood close by, but above them all. It was wreathed in mist and crowned with ice and snow.
It had stood here since before Goblins and men had come, and it would stand here after they, and their petty wars, had gone. Petty, he thought, in the light of tens of thousands of years. Petty, compared to the unnumbered winters and summers that had passed in this valley since the beginning of time. Petty, in the ruthless interplay of the natural world where there was no beauty or mercy except in the eye of men who beheld it. But it was not petty to him, nor to the Northmen about him defending their home and their wives and children. Nor to the men, women, and children who made up the nation of Aren Daleth. It was not petty to them at all. Their lives and future depended upon its outcome.
Barad spoke. “It is quiet, is it not?”
Kenrik looked out at the army before him. It was quiet.
“So it seems,” said Cadrafer. “The Goblins are quieter than normal, but it is not the subdued quiet that overcame them yesterday when the Kraken was slain. This is something different.”
“It is different indeed,” said Arandur. “This is the quiet before the storm. They begin to hear voices in the wind, and it scares them. They hear the whisper of death, the urging of a malevolent mind filling them with a frenzy of destruction. They await only the command to act. And when they do, they will come in such fury as you have never seen before: they shall try and rid themselves of those voices. The will have a compulsion to climb the walls and kill. They will come, and they will not be stopped. Not by the fear of death, at any rate. They will be driven, and each man up here, each defender must be driven also if they are to stand against the onslaught.”
Chapter 19
The attack came soon after dawn.
Hordes of Goblins charged in a seething mass. They rushed toward the ramparts as though they were a tidal wave: grey-green and frothing; surging in an unstoppable rage that could only be appeased by overtopping the battlements and destroying all beyond.
The noise of their onrush swelled to a wild roar in the Northmen’s ears and the sight of their approach turned the men cold with fear. This was death. Here, surely, they would at last succumb to the onslaught.
No one could stand against this: not even the full regiment of Thromdar, let alone the pitiful remnant that remained. The charge was the madness of nightmares embodied into a single entity with only one purpose; destruction.
Kenrik beheld the fury on the faces of the Goblins, the madness that drove them, instilled in them by the Turgil. He was appalled. To do that to another creature was unthinkable.
His eyes turned to Arandur who stood atop the tower. The Wizard watched proceedings with cool eyes. This time, thought Kenrik, he could not wait to the last moment. Now he must do something before it was too late.
Or was it already too late? What man, Wizard or not, could stop the oncoming wave of destruction?
Arandur suddenly straightened and lifted his staff. He held it in both hands in front of him, parallel to the ground. His arms slowly described an arc, lifting forwards and upwards until the staff was high above his head. With a sudden jerk he straightened his arms completely and stiffened.
White-hot flames erupted from the earth in a line a hundred feet out from the battlements. The Goblins ran toward it. Some few of them paused, less affected by the impulsion of the Turgil than the rest, and died as those behind, driven by madness, trampled them.
In their obsession to reach and kill the Northmen they ignored the screams of their brethren. They paid no heed to the silver flame and leapt wildly through it.
The first rank disappeared from sight. Moments later they emerged. Silver fire streamed from hair and clothes. Some fell, choking and unable to continue. Dark smoke drifted from them as clothes, hair and flesh burned. But the horde came on. Reduced, but unstopped, they continued their frenzied dash.
Kenrik watched in awe, unable to tell what effect the fire was having. It had thinned the ranks of the Goblins, but there were so many!
On came the host and they reached the battlements. Siege towers were placed against the walls, some of these were burning too, but the Goblins climbed them regardless. They made no effort to put out the fires. Driven by the Turgil they could no longer reason. Their only aim was to reach their enemy and destroy them.
Nevertheless, the fire had caught upon them. It stuck to them like grease and continued to burn slowly. The Goblins, enraged, continued on.
The flames burning in their clothes caught to their flesh and charred them. Some never made the full climb. They fell in a bright flash, sweeping downwards and dislodging many below.
T
he first wave reached the top of the battlements and fighting broke out. The soldiers were shocked by what they had seen. These Goblins had no fear of death, there was only madness in their eyes and they came on without pause for anything. Yet their numbers had been thinned by the fire. The soldiers had hope now that maybe this onrush could be withstood with the Wizard’s help. They rallied together and fought stubbornly.
The Goblins rushed upon them in ever greater numbers. Neither fire nor injury swayed their purpose. They came to kill, and even with severed legs they crawled upon the ground, driven to reach their enemy.
The battle raged on. The fired died down and petered out, but much of its work had been done. Hundreds of Goblins had been killed before they even reached the fortress and hundreds more died atop the battlements.
Wave after wave came on and the battle continued. The minutes slipped by. Near the center of the wall some Trolls, less affected by the fire than the Goblins, reached the top of the battlements. They pressed the Northmen back. Huge maces swung and crushed the lives out of defenders. They seemed unstoppable.
“To me! To me!” Bellowed Kenrik and a group of twenty men from the reserves ran to him. What ensued was no delicate fight of skilled swordsman against swordsman. It was smash and crush from the Trolls and weave and evade from the men; stabbing, thrusting and hacking where they could. Some of the Northmen went down straight away but others surrounded the Trolls and dashed in from the sides. They could not land killing blows, their blades seemed to only barely slice through the thick skin and hardened leather armor of the Trolls, but their attacks wore them down.
Soon one of the Trolls fell, not dead, but badly injured. He swept his mace around him in huge arcs, bringing instant death when it struck one of the men, but other men came in from the sides and landed blows. He was killed and then another of his companions fell. So it went in a long, mind numbing battle for a time that seemed without beginning or end.