by W. C. Conner
“It feels almost as if the earth itself is being struck with unimaginably large hammers,” Caron observed.
From where they stood, they could see the flurry of activity within the units upon the plain before Blackstone as the commanders ordered all of their troops to full readiness, anticipating another rush from the gates. After several hours when it became apparent that no attack was imminent, the commanders ordered half of their forces to stand down but to remain in full battle dress in the event the enemy once again emerged from the fortress.
Two more days followed with no surcease from the incessant booming, and the stress from the noise and anticipation of attack was beginning to show in the host drawn up before Blackstone. Purple smudges under the eyes of most attested to their inability to fall or remain asleep, so deep and invasive was the sound.
On the morning of the third day, Gleneagle sat considering whether or not to send a scouting detail to learn more about the defenses of Blackstone, a decision which would normally be a matter requiring no prolonged thought but which had become one almost beyond his capacity to make under the battering of the drums. He looked up as a soldier approached.
“Highness,” he said. “We have intercepted a group of wizards approaching our position from the direction of Castle Gleneagle.” At the question in the prince’s eyes he continued. “They request an audience with you.”
“What is their demeanor?” the prince asked. “After this long lack of activity from Blackstone I mistrust anything having to do with wizards. Do they seem of hostile intent at all?”
The soldier’s laugh was genuine. “You will have to see them to judge for yourself, Highness.”
“I will go to them,” Gleneagle sighed. He rose from his seat and signed for the soldier to lead him to the wizards. Rounding the tent, he saw them standing together in a group. In the middle of them stood his daughter along with Tingle and Thisbe. They were greeting one another as if they were long lost friends. He smiled in recognition of the wizards in Caron’s account of all that had passed since they had last seen one another.
“Unless I miss my guess, these are the disaffected ones,” he said as they all looked up and bowed at his approach.
“They are, indeed, father,” Caron said, “and more, these are our new allies.”
Eldred stepped forward and bowed once again. “Your Highness, I don’t doubt that your very persuasive daughter told you about us and how we had determined to remove ourselves from this battle.” The look in Gleneagle’s eyes told him the prince was familiar with their stance and Eldred continued, “After Caron and the others departed, we spent many an hour debating our position.” He smiled as if enjoying a private joke.
“It almost seemed, Highness, that the name of that little town became a lodestone pointing us to the wisdom we had missed when we renounced all at Blackstone. We had forgotten that we cannot run away from ourselves or the world in which we live, so we took it upon ourselves to rejoin the battle we had abandoned when we escaped from Blackstone. While our renunciation of our position was unanimous, not all of us were brave enough – or, more likely, foolish enough – to return to face the evil within these walls. Even so, Highness, there are nine of us here and we declare before you and all men – yes, and even you, Greyleige,” he said, shaking his fist toward the grim black walls before turning back to face the prince, “that our skills are yours to command.” Whereupon he went down upon one knee before Gleneagle, followed immediately by the eight others.
“Arise my friends,” Gleneagle said. “Come and meet with me and my advisors so you may tell us how you may best serve our common purpose.”
As they walked toward the command tent, Gleneagle looked to Eldred. “Tell me,” he asked, “how it is that my pickets allowed you to pass? I would expect that you would have been detained there.”
Eldred winked at the Prince. “What sort of wizards would we be to allow such a trifle as a few spears to deter us?” As Gleneagle chuckled uncomfortably at his answer, Eldred continued, “In fact, Highness, your guards upon the road did detain us, and they summoned the Princess as we had requested. It was she who gave us leave.”
At that point, Eldred’s face grew somber and his voice dropped to a level meant for the prince’s ears alone. “I hesitated to mention this in front of everyone, Highness,” he said, “but my brothers and I fear that the drums you hear are more than just a prelude to war.” At the question in the prince’s eyes, he continued, “This unnerving noise has the scent of unwholesome magics about it. Before we can tell more than that, we will need some time to join our strengths together to sift the threads of power that blow past us from the sounds.”
“The time is yours, Eldred,” the prince responded. “Whatever is needed for your group will be provided insofar as it is within our powers to do so.”
“We will require an enclosed area where we may be isolated from all intrusion.”
“You will have my tent, and guards will be posted to turn away all disturbance.”
“Finally,” Eldred said, “no matter what is seen or heard, no one is to enter the tent unbidden once the chanting has begun. To do so will be to sentence that person along with the nine of us to immediate death.”
The late afternoon sunlight shone directly into the faces of Gleneagle and his party as they sat or stood looking toward the tent from which issued a low chanting. Nervous looks passed between anxious faces as the chanting increased in volume.
“They’re all damnable wizards,” General Kolburn muttered, working his heavy mustache back and forth in irritation. “Spies and double agents. Not to be trusted.” Gleneagle ignored the mutterings but the seed was planted in more than one mind nonetheless.
Now the chanting grew grimmer and its pitch grew lower until it resembled nothing so much as a huge carnivore growling over a kill, and still the sound persisted, competing with the booming issuing from Blackstone.
With the sun’s disappearance behind the hills a glow could be seen coming from within the tent. It was of sickly colors – unearthly blues, purples and greens reminiscent of the weeping of pustules – wavering, waxing and waning, growing in brilliance as did the pitch and volume of the chanting.
Kolburn could resist no longer. Drawing his sword, he bellowed as he started toward the tent, “Treason! There is treason afoot, Highness. They are agents of Greyleige placed in this camp to attack us from within.”
It was Mitchal who intercepted him, grabbing him by the arm as the posted guards shifted toward him, their short swords at the ready.
“You are wrong, General,” he said in a low, threatening voice. “These men are brave beyond your ability to comprehend. I saw them defy Greyleige’s horrors with my own eyes. They are frightened to their cores, yet they marched here alone from Wisdom to aid us in this desperate battle against Greyleige’s evil.”
“And if you are wrong?” Kolburn asked coldly.
“I think it would be too late already, General,” Morgan interjected, “but I know Mitchal is not wrong and I’m staking my life on that.”
“You are staking all of our lives on that, General Morgan,” Kolburn hissed, then wrenched his arm from Mitchal’s grasp and stalked away toward his own tent. Several of the guards and attendant soldiers eyed him as he went, seeing the possibility of the truth of his concerns.
It was toward midnight that the volume of the chanting from within the tent increased suddenly, then ceased just as suddenly. The unnatural lights flared and died along with the chanting. Following several minutes of tense anticipation, Eldred pushed back the tent flap and stood swaying before them. Mitchal and Morgan sprinted toward him, each taking an arm to keep him from falling.
“The others,” he said hoarsely, his voice spent from the chanting. “They need help to get water and to bed for sleep.” As a squad of soldiers entered, Morgan and Mitchal moved as if to take Eldred to a cot for some sleep, but he held them back. “I must speak to the prince of what we have learned,” he said, “and it must be i
mmediately.”
Eldred sank to the ground where he stood and watched as the soldiers picked up each of the exhausted wizards and carried them from the tent. Roland had already arrived in company with the dukes of Beramor and Altamont before the last of them was carried out. With the exception of Eldred, all of the wizards were gone when Gleneagle strode up accompanied by Caron, Tingle and Thisbe, and Generals Kolburn and Galwan. Observing Eldred’s sweating, fatigued face, he sat down cross-legged next to him and the rest joined them, forming a circle before the entrance of the tent.
“Highness,” Eldred croaked. “You haven’t much time to prepare. When this sound stops, it will be no more than an hour before the gates open once again.”
“Did you not glean more than this?” Gleneagle inquired, his own fatigue evident in his voice.
Eldred nodded. “Through our chanting we succeeded in joining ourselves to the sounds coming from Blackstone and what we learned is dire, indeed. As we had suspected, the sound you are hearing is not drumming. It is the rhythm of a spell being worked within Blackstone that is summoning foulness from the other side of the boundary into his warriors. What you will next face in the coming battle is like nothing you have faced before.”
He looked into the prince’s eyes to reinforce the gravity of what he said next. “Caron told you of the creature they dispatched in Wisdom, I am certain. When next the gates of the fortress open, the warriors you face will look like the men they were but they will be foul. They will not know pain or fear and they will continue to fight even as they die much like the seekers, but therein will be their peril. That which is both their strength and their weakness is the hatred which drives them to implacable savagery in battle.
“At the same time, however, it makes them mindless and difficult to direct. When Greyleige looses them, it will be like loosing a flood which is great and powerful but impossible to guide. A force such as this will cut its own channel if allowed to do so and Greyleige undoubtedly envisions this horde sweeping away all before it as does a flood, but therein will be the leveler. The discipline of your forces will be key to breaking or even surviving their attack. What you face will have only one directive and that is to kill or die in the attempt. There will be no desertions, no loss of individual will, no retreat. If we are to triumph, every one of them must die.”
Gleneagle’s expression was sober as he considered Eldred’s revelation.
“There is one last thing, Highness. The men you will face have been transformed into a corruption of life, and the spells that have transformed them will cause the very sight of them to strike terror in men’s hearts and souls. But there is hope yet, for the contribution of our little group of wizards will not be weapons, but clarity. We will use our collective powers to strip away their masks of terror on the battlefield that our own soldiers will see them as men only.
“Even with our help, though, everyone must know exactly what it is they face. Without that knowledge they would certainly quail and break before such a flood of mindless hatred.”
General Kolburn shook his head emphatically. “We must yield this battlefield, Highness,” he said. “Mortals are no match for the monsters this man describes.”
Eldred responded wearily. “These monsters are mortal also, General. They will not fight as we are used but they will die as we do when pierced or slashed or clubbed. But we must not fight them one to one, for in that the chances favor them. Our men must fight as small teams. The enemy will have no discipline, no esprit, no concern for their comrades. Whenever possible, we must work in teams of two or three and take them singly in the knowledge they will have no friend watching their back. They will be fearsome and strong but dull witted and will have difficulty focusing on more than one opponent at a time. They will round on only one, leaving the other one or two an open advantage.”
Eldred cocked his head as he had another thought. “There is another way in which we might help. Perhaps we can cause the oncoming enemy to hesitate at some certain point, allowing fewer to cross some invisible line. If we could manage that, we could more nearly ensure our men the advantage of numbers at any one time.” His expression brightened. “Or perhaps we can help this living flood cut its channel where it would favor us. If we can achieve such a spell, we could make this more like a slaughterhouse than a battlefield.”
“War is a bloody business,” Gleneagle said, “and amongst us we will make it our duty to see it is their blood and not ours.” He turned to Roland and the Dukes of Beramor and Altamont as well as the generals assembled. “Start preparing your armies for the battle to come. Heed Eldred’s plan of attack. All must be assigned their battle partners before the gates open. We shall need every advantage we can muster.”
Thus it was that by the time the sun was well risen in the morning, every man in the assembled armies had formed what Morgan had dubbed their ‘triangles of death’.
Roland and Eldred, in their turn, had fixed on a dry streambed in the fields before Blackstone as the point toward which the wizards’ spell would nudge their enemy in an attempt to aim the living flood. The channel had been cut steep-sided and narrow in places by rushing waters during heavy snowmelt and was filled with uneven rubble and large boulders. As Roland had pointed out, should they succeed in creating this invisible barrier, the stony footing would slow their enemies’ passage, effectively metering but a few of them at a time through the opening. It would become very much the slaughterhouse suggested by Eldred.
The world was filled with the sound of the heavy booming issuing from Blackstone as Prince Gleneagle and his war leaders stood atop the rise when the sun rose above the edge of the Crelleon Plain that morning. Their grim faces made it clear they awaited a day none of them wanted but none could prevent. On the plain before the fortress the battle groups of three men – Morgan’s “triangles of death” – stood near one another, each looking for strength and courage from the others.
“It shouldn’t be long, now,” Gleneagle observed.
33
The four riders who approached the picket guarding the rear of the allied armies had first heard the booming sound from many miles out, so deep and pervasive had it become. Scrubby and Peg looked at each other apprehensively while Kemp rode stoically beside Wil who lifted his head from time to time as if sniffing the air.
“What is it you smell, Wil?” asked Kemp.
“It’s not a smell, Kemp,” he replied, pulling his horse to a stop before the pickets, “but if it was, it would stink. That which sounds like the rumble of drums is the rumble of fell magics. It is a close thing, but it appears we have time as yet.”
As the sergeant in charge of the picket stepped forward, Wil spoke. “We must be taken to Gleneagle immediately, whether as prisoners or guests, for the time of your battle is at hand.” And with those words the pulsating sound stopped, leaving all who had experienced it over the past days with a ringing in their ears and dread in their hearts.
The sergeant looked up at Wil, suspicion in his eyes. “How’d you know those drums’d stop just then?” he said, making the sign against evil behind his back.
“I did not, of course,” Wil replied. “I knew only that they would stop soon. But we are wasting time, sergeant. I must be taken to the Prince immediately.”
Whether it was because of the commanding tone of Wil’s voice or the fear that had come with the cessation of the pounding, the sergeant neither hindered them nor offered them escort as they spurred their mounts to a hand gallop toward the tents that could be seen atop a low hill in the near distance.
It was Caron who first turned at the sound of the approaching hoof beats and quickly left the rest of the war leadership looking toward the closed gates of Blackstone. As the group dismounted, she greeted each of them with a brief hug, leaving both Scrubby and Peg flustered.
“You have come,” she said simply, looking deeply into Wil’s steel gray eyes.
“Though it has felt from time to time as if I had no choice in this,” Wil responded, �
��I know that at the last, the choice was mine.” He, in his turn, was drowning in the dark pools of her eyes. “Yes, I have come.”
Peg moved to Kemp and placed her arms around his large bicep possessively. She knew the look passing between Caron and Wil and rejoiced in the release of jealousy and fear she had felt whenever Caron and Kemp were near one another. Thisbe and Tingle had come down the hill behind Caron and stood watching quietly. Wil looked up to catch Tingle’s and Thisbe’s eyes, and he smiled.
“Well and well,” he said, “we are missing only Morgan and Mitchal, then.”
“You’re not, lad,” came Morgan’s voice from behind him. “We saw you coming from across the plain and rode as quickly as we could to meet you.” His eyes went from Wil to Peg, still clinging to Kemp’s arm and he smiled contentedly. “My other daughter,” he said, “how pleased I am to see you again.” His smile turned to a glare. “But you are a headstrong, foolish girl to place yourself in such danger! You should be back in Confirth.”
Releasing her grip on Kemp, Peg ran to Morgan and buried herself in his embrace. “I love you too, father,” she said from the closeness of his arms.
From the top of the rise, both Roland and Gleneagle watched attentively as Wil removed himself from the reunion and, drawing Caron with him, walked a short distance away. Gleneagle’s eyebrow lifted in appraisal while Roland’s face reflected a different sort of emotion altogether.
Wil stopped and removed the gemstone from around his neck. “I feel it is time for this to be returned to you. I have more than enough jewelry already,” he said, opening his shirt slightly to show her the lock talisman on its silver chain.
