by K L Reinhart
And in the center of that blue radiance, gleaming like a star, was the form of a black-clad woman in long robes and with a shaved head. Magister Inedi herself had come to answer the Hexan, and she was clapping slowly, mockingly, as she did so.
“Brave words, Hexan!” She reached the opposing place in the walls of the Black Keep that looked down upon the Hexan’s form.
“I will ignore your insults to me, sorcerer,” the woman said with curdling derision. “As they are the signs of a mind which still cleaves itself to success and failure. But I cannot allow you to insult my Brothers and Sisters and students here.”
She threw one arm forward at the Hexan in an accusative blow. “Begone!” she cried out, as a lightning-rod of purple, blue, and white power lanced down through the air, crackling and spitting as it shot toward the Hexan.
“Ach!” Reticula heard a muffled gasp from below a moment before the Magister’s bolt hit the man. There was an explosion of light and a sound like the cracking earths of the Tartaruk mountains themselves.
The Magister’s bolt of energy remained surging and pulsing down at the spot, but the explosive brightness was fading and dimming, leaving behind a wide crater of earth. In its center stood the crouching form of the Hexan.
“Grragh!” Reticula could hear the Hexan’s cry of effort. He held both of his forearms crossed before him, creating a greenish shield of force that flickered and flared in keeping with the Magister’s burning curse-bolt.
“Begone!” the Magister cried out once more. The beam of power redoubled in brightness as it pulsed down toward the human sorcerer. There was another blinding flash of explosive power. This time steam and smoke were thrown up from the crater as the Magister’s power appeared to pulverize and burn even the rocks themselves.
But the radiance faded, just as before—and there was the Hexan in his crouch, protected by his green shield, although he had been pushed back several feet.
“Ag Ugol Maitta, Lug Agol Veshktat—” and Reticula could hear the Hexan muttering under his breath. He was casting some sort of horrid enchantment. The green shield he held pulsed and grew stronger.
“Ag Ugol Maitta! Lug Agol Veshktat!” the Hexan roared, for there to be a sudden thump and roar of sound out in the distance.
“He’s summoning something,” Reticula breathed, searching the Plague of Darkness behind the servant of Ungol to see what was coming their way.
Two small red flares of light in the distance bobbed closer and closer, getting brighter and brighter.
“Arms ready!” the call went up from the Senior Brothers and Sisters of the Enclave. Reticula moved to place a hand on the first lever of the pulleys as she waited for Father Jacques’s signal. Still the bright curse-bolt of the Magister burned through the air, forming a stationary lightning bolt that connected the leader of the Black Keep to the guarding Hexan.
“Begone from this place! I am Magister here, and I demand it!” Inedi screeched, this time bringing her second hand to clasp the first as her curse bolt intensified.
And the two bobbing red lights grew larger in the air. Suddenly Reticula realized what they were.
They were eyes that glowed and burned with Ungol flame.
A shape was bounding out of the darkness on backward-jointed legs, like a goat’s. It was a tall shape, an otherwise humanoid form that was easily ten or twelve feet tall, with skin that was so deeply crimson as to be almost black. And from its temples there curved two great, backward-sweeping horns.
“Stars!” Reticula breathed, and saw the front lines of waiting Enclave guardians shuffle as they, too, realized what it was. It was the Gatekeeper. The Fifth Baleful Sign, the Herald of the Armies of Ungol, and the being that presaged the opening of the Blood Gate itself.
The Gatekeeper was not tiring nor slowing in its charging run. It bounded toward the walls, its shoulders and back convulsing as it threw one giant, muscle-bound, and corded arm forward.
There, flickering into existence from the being’s clawed hands, was a gigantic spear. Larger than any human, it was seemingly made of solid red-and-purple fire.
Which shot upwards toward the Magister Inedi.
“Magister!” Reticula gasped, cursing herself for being so very far away.
“Ach!” There was a momentary woman’s screech in the heartbeat before the Gatekeeper’s summoned spear struck, exploding in a shower of flame and sparks and with a mighty crack. Inedi’s own curse-bolt winked out in an instant. Reticula blinked the burning afterimages from her eyes as she searched for signs that their Magister was still alive.
The place in the battlements where the Gatekeeper’s spear had struck was now steaming. Reticula could see that giant black stone blocks now looked like cracked and pulverized teeth where they had been blown apart as if by mighty cannon-shot.
Where is the Magister? Where is the Magister!? Reticula was desperate, seeing a space in the defenders where other Brothers and Sisters were rushing in. They seized up the limp and blackened forms of their comrades.
But there was a spark of blue light, expanding into a faint and flickering radiance once again from the battlements. A figure staggered to a crouch and then to her feet. It was the Magister Inedi, but Reticula could clearly see how she wobbled.
Below them all, the Gatekeeper bellowed in challenge. It stalked back and forth along the plain in front of the Hexan, who was even now rising to his feet.
“UGOL ATTA!” the sorcerer of the Ungol horde roared. Reticula saw the Plague of Darkness suddenly roll back once more, this time revealing lots and lots and lots of other eyes in the dark.
“Oh, dear Stars . . .” Reticula swore. For, as far as her eyes could see, the foothills and gullies of the rising Tartaruk were filled with rank upon rank of orcs and goblins. They were organized into rough cohorts, with long spears held high to their shoulders. The Sister of the Enclave could see their black and strangely twisted part armor as they marched forward to the beat of great war drums.
Thumm!
THUUMM!
THUMMM!
And in front of each column and cohort was what looked to be a long metal archway, rolling on spiked wheels.
“Siege weapons!” the cry went up, as the covers for the goblin sappers and stranger goblin engines started to trundle forward. They had used the cover of the Plague of Darkness to mask their movement, and now they were almost directly at their walls.
“Fire at will!” the Seniors of the Enclave shouted, as arrows and spears started to lance down at the front ranks of the orcs and goblins. The Gatekeeper still bellowed and roared his challenge further across on the plain before the Black Keep—and Reticula even saw a few arrows dart toward its form and hit. Not that it appeared to slow the ogre-like Gatekeeper down in the slightest. It did not seem to be aware of the pain at all.
There were orcs falling where they marched as eagle-eyed marksmen and woman found them—but for every orc or goblin that fell, three or four more would surge forward. There had be thousands of them against the few hundred that defended the Black Keep.
Arrows skittered and broke over the back of the metal arches, useless against their hammered plate protection. Nothing stopping first one, and then a second, from picking up speed and racing toward the place where the Black Keep’s walls met the ground.
KERAACK! The sound of their strike was like one of the Tartaruk peaks breaking apart. Reticula could say for certain this time that she felt the reverberation through the walls.
One of the siege engines was almost directly below her tower, where it had clearly picked the archway door at the base for its easiest point of entry.
Reticula glanced back through the eastward window. Where is the Father’s sign!? She cursed to herself a second before she saw the plume of blue erupt from the north-western tower windows. Reticula started pulling the levers desperately.
First, there was a grinding noise as the rust flaked and broke from the ancient cogs of the pulleys—but then the chains flashed faster, and the cogs spun fa
ster and faster, too.
The rocks and barrels were being drawn up to the base of the tower. Just before they met, Reticula seized the last levered handle in the sequence and pulled.
The pulley-machine jolted and shuddered as it released its payload down onto the siege engine below . . .
Whumpf! Reticula saw flashes of purple light as she raced to the window to look down—to see a purple-edged inferno, and great plumes of white smoke. Boulders and rocks had pounded the roof of the metal siege engine, bursting it in several places and splintering one of the six cart-wheels into a thousand pieces.
“It burns! It burns!” She could hear the screams and wails as the goblin sappers sought to clamber and scrabble out of their engine as the purple flames and the choking white smoke found them, too. It seemed that Father Jacques did still have some tricks up his sleeve. He had mixed in barrels of Choke-Powder and chemical fires into the collections of rocky barrages.
There was nowhere for the maimed goblins to run, as the armies of the orcs were all around. It was confusion, fire, and ruin below Reticula’s tower and—although she knew that she shouldn’t take enjoyment in destruction—she still grinned in fierce pleasure.
She knew that Father Jacques’s inventions wouldn’t hold them for long, but this tower and this part of the wall were safe. For now.
But there was still the rest of the entire stretch of the northern walls to defend, Sister Reticula thought. She spun to charge down the steps of the tower, drawing her blade as she did so.
11
The Kingsdrake
Ach! Terak felt the white-hot flare of pain. Then everything went black, before the next jolt of rocks and moss shook him into consciousness as he tumbled, bounced, and rolled toward the cliff edge.
The elf attempted to grab onto the grass, but the dried, weak stuff was torn from his hands as he tumbled.
“Rargh!” The elf scrambled, slapping and scratching at the soil as his body ached. His hands clamped onto a boulder, and he hugged at it with all his might. Suddenly, his motion was stilled.
Thank the Stars . . . The elf had a moment to think, just as there was a mighty crack of thunder behind him as the Ixchtish battle-barge broke apart against the terraces of the quarry below. Terak heard the roar of fire and splintering wood. He hugged at the rock that had been his savior as he waited for the ground to stop shaking.
Which it did, revealing that he had only been a couple of yards away from the edge of the quarry ledge. He had come closer than a cat’s whisker to falling into the burning inferno that was half of the quarry below him.
“Urgh . . .” Terak felt like he had passed through a meatgrinder. He flopped onto his back to look upwards—and was suddenly galvanized by the sight of the battle that was raging through the skies.
The battle-barge of the Royal and Ancient Guild of Navigators was attempting to fight the Ixchtish battle-barge.
But the Navigator craft had run out of cannon-shot decades ago.
And the Ixchtish had fire-cannons.
No. Terak wobbled to his feet as he watched the two elongated craft move and dance around each other. Plumes of green-and-purple fire spat out from the Ixchtish vessel toward Terak’s friends. They answered with spears and thrown barrels—some managing to hit the Ixcht, but only one crashing through an Ixcht sail and seeming to do any damage to their craft at all.
We’re already on fire. Terak saw the leap and dance of flames from the Navigator’s craft—not everywhere, but anywhere on any sort of boat was too much.
Lars was attempting to raise the nose of the battle-barge over the prow of the Ixcht, to do the same tactic that Terak had designed just minutes earlier. The elf hoped that enough of the Elder Beings had managed to leap and fly back onto their home boat, before being asked to do the same running ambush as last time.
The Ixchtish craft was the faster of the two and far more responsive than the Navigator’s was. It merely slid past and away whenever Lars attempted to rise above—and then answered with plumes of chemical fire from its cannons against the blackened and charred hull of Lars’s barge.
No! Terak swept to his feet. It was too terrible to watch. The conclusion was obvious—it was like watching a wolf snap and pick at a fat old house dog.
BWAM-BWAM-BWAM! Until there was a sudden jarring ring that reverberated through the quarry, a great gong being hammered—as another vessel emerged into the fray.
It was an air galleon, but it wasn’t any that Terak had seen before. It was wide-hulled with a forward, upward-tilted prow and figurehead carved into that of a leaping dragon. Its hull was slightly bellied, and it appeared to have at least three decks—a fore and aft upper deck, as well as some kind of building in its center, by the three masts.
And it was flying up from one of the largest mine-tunnels of the quarry below, as if it had lain there, dormant and waiting, for a long time. Terak saw the craft smash through the plumes of smoke left from the wreckage of the other burning Ixchtish barge. Its foresail bore the faded and threadbare insignia of a stylized boat, topped with a gold crown.
The seal of the Royal and Ancient Guild of the Navigators, Terak realized. It seemed that they did have one last boat after all.
The elf watched, agog, at the sudden arrival of the new Navigator craft. It was wider and taller than the previous battle-barge, but it didn’t appear to be that much longer.
In fact, she’s only about half the size of The Lady of the North, Terak thought as he saw it flash up toward the battle above.
The Ixchtish craft was already turning away from its wounded foe to counter the new threat. But this new air galleon appeared to just dance upwards in the air, springing above the enemy.
And from its underside, the elf’s sharp eyes could see large hatches spring open, and something falling from them.
“Rocks!” Terak started to grin, despite his austere training that counseled him to take no pleasure in victory nor misery in defeat. But it was hard not to feel jubilant as bundles of the cream and bone-colored stone of the quarry tumbled from the open hatchways of this new craft toward their target. They broke from what must be simple hemp-rope holdings as they sprayed down to hit the Ixchtish craft below in a barrage.
“Yes!” The elf further ignored his Enclave training to grin savagely at the sight before him. He saw the rocks first punch through the taut iridescent wings of canvas, then splinter through the masts themselves of the Ixchtish battle-barge.
The new Navigator galleon had attacked too fast for the Ixchtish to even attempt to evade the attack. The craft of the insect-men was swerving to one side, rocking as it started to spin and spiral out of control.
The new air galleon swung high into the skies in a short circle. Even down below, Terak could hear the scream of the wind against its rope and in its sails as it turned to release another deadly payload over the attempting-to-flee Ixcht.
This time, only half of the released boulders found their home, but those that did were still devastating as they added to the mayhem and destruction of the previous attacks. Terak saw the boat roll to one side, and then parts of the Ixcht hull burst outwards when boulders as large as he was tall smashed through it.
Then their new ally was sweeping away. The last Ixchtish battle barge tumbled low over the ground to crash into the line of hills south of them in a mighty fireball that sounded like the roar of a northern bear.
Terak laughed, raising his hand to wave at the two Navigator vessels. He saw the slender, winged arm of one of the Elder Beings answer him from their barge, as Lars brought their people home.
“She’s called the Kingsdrake, and I never thought I’d see her fly again,” Doctor Lars Mendip said reverentially. He led the battered, slightly limping Terak to the landed air galleon that had saved their lives.
Beside them also limped Kol, the Elder Scout, and a handful of others of the Emarii. Lars had managed to bring his damaged barge down to the top of the hills above the quarry with many a thump and skid of rocks. Then it had list
ed on one side, still steaming from all of the fires that she had sustained.
“We’ll be lucky if she ever flies again!” Lars said in a lower nod to the barge behind them—but when Terak glanced over at him, the small and portly man did not appear in any way annoyed by this fact. Instead, he was beaming proudly at both his battle-barge and the Kingsdrake.
“Ah,” Lars purred pleasingly to himself. “It’s good to be flying—properly flying again, I tell you!”
“As good as the day we built her!” said a new voice, ringing clear from the foredeck of the Kingsdrake: Yarl Mendip. The thinner brother seemed to be transformed by flying the air galleon, Terak saw. Gone was the reticence and opposition, and in their place was an eager gleam to his eyes.
“She’s important to you,” Kol murmured quietly, as Lars stepped up to the side of the great wooden hull and reverentially placed a hand upon it. The paint on the top rails and upper board skirts had long since faded and peeled, but the elf thought that her woods still appeared as fresh as they day that she had been built. There was still even that tang of resins and oils that must have been used to preserve them.
“The Kingsdrake is . . .” Lars had his head bowed, and appeared lost for words for a moment . . .
“She was built for the true-born heir of the Old High King, the one who should have united the human kingdoms into one,” Yarl said gravely from above them.
“But I thought that the Old High King of the humans died hundreds of years ago?” Terak said as softly as he dared.
“He did,” Yarl confirmed as his brother appeared to be lost in emotion. “But the line continued through the monarchies of the other kingdoms. The eldest of the eldest of the eldest has always been deemed the one to bring the different families together.”
“And who’s that?” Terak said, before he earned a small nudge from Kol with his crook. “What!?” The elf was baffled by this apparent secrecy. Perhaps it was the fact that he was an elf and had never learned the ways of the territorial, greedy human courts. Perhaps it was due to the fact that he had been raised in the Enclave, which looked on in disdain to any of the more mundane human politics.