Black Wizards

by Douglas Niles

  “They look steadier already,” remarked Robyn.

  “Yes. If we can avoid the king’s army for a few more days, I think we’ll have an army of our own!” said Tristan. “We’ll rest here for an hour and then move on—that’s our best chance to pick up more recruits.”

  “You may not even have to do that—look!” The druid pointed to the south, along the coast.

  The ragged band of men trudging wearily toward them were obviously also men of Doncastle—several hundred of them. As they drew closer, Tristan recognized two of the men in the lead.

  “O’Roarke and Pontswain,” he said quietly.

  Robyn and Fiona joined him as he walked purposefully toward the approaching band. The bandit leader stopped to wait for them, and his men flopped wearily on the grass.

  “Prince of Corwell,” said the outlaw, eyeing Tristan with barely concealed hostility. “I see you have gathered some of my men together.”

  “They are yours no longer, my lord Roarke,” Tristan responded evenly. “You lost the right to command them when you led them to disaster in Doncastle. You were indeed the lord of that town, but that town no longer exists. If you wish, we shall ask them who they desire to follow—I am confident it will be me!”

  “So you failed to usurp the king, and now you would take my men instead?”

  “Don’t be such a pompous fool!” snapped Fiona, stepping before the prince to glare at O’Roarke. “He has done more to strike at the king in a week than you have done in your entire life! Now you must help him—it’s your only chance to make my father’s sacrifice mean something!”

  “How dare you—” Hugh choked with rage.

  “How dare you pretend you are the man to lead them!” barked the prince. “Your stubbornness cost the lives of hundreds of their companions. Your refusal to look at the battle rationally doomed your entire town to burning!”

  The prince’s words cut into Hugh O’Roarke like a knife. He had carried the guilty knowledge with him since the battle, but no one had dared to throw it so bluntly in his face.

  “There is hope of victory yet,” urged Tristan. “You and your men can join with me. You can avenge the defeat, stand up to the Scarlet Guard! We will unite and give battle!”

  A spark of O’Roarke’s old spirit flashed in his eyes, and he looked from his band of exhausted stragglers to Tristan’s group, industriously carving spears.

  “Let me lead us all to victory,” said the prince quietly.

  Hugh O’Roarke drew his sword in a swift motion, then knelt and offered the hilt of his weapon to the prince. Tristan took the blade in gratitude and relief. “Rise, my lord, and join us!”

  A cheer arose from both groups as O’Roarke’s men stood and marched quickly to Tristan’s. The small force now numbered over five hundred men.

  “Pontswain?” Tristan turned back to the lord, who had stood sullenly during his conversation with O’Roarke. “Will you, too, cast your lot with us?”

  “You have no hope—none at all,” said the lord, looking in despair at the ragged band. “I will fight and die here now, for I have no choice!

  “But know this, my prince! Our deaths—yours and mine—mean the death of hope for Corwell. You have chosen to fight your battle here in Callidyrr. It is my own folly that my fight is tied to yours—for now our own kingdom is bereft of leadership!” Pontswain stalked past him toward the gathering of men.

  “He’s wrong,” said Robyn quietly. “There is a strength in these men that you can harness. We can prevail!”

  “You’re right. I’m beginning to feel that it is possible, that maybe we can win. If we can have just a few more days to grow and get a little rest, we’ll have an army that can stand up to the Scarlet Guard and thrash it!”

  After a two-hour rest, they resumed the march, traveling between the forest and the sea. The coastline here was a low bluff that rolled down a grassy slope to the shore. The beach itself was lined with coarse gravel.

  They encountered more groups of stragglers along the shore, and all of these joined their ranks. Finally, in their march to the south, they came over a rise and saw a small fishing town spread before them—Cantrev Codfin, according to one of the soldiers.

  There were no signs of activity around the village.

  “Stay here, with the men,” Tristan said to Daryth and O’Roarke. “I want to have a look at this.”

  “Take some of the men with you,” urged O’Roarke.

  “We will be safe,” Robyn said. “The danger is past here.”

  Tristan and Robyn walked down the gentle hill into the village. From a distance, they had seen few details, but as they moved closer they entered a scene of grim horror. In the village, sprawled grotesquely, were a hundred or more bodies, Torn and mutilated Ffolk lay motionless in their cottages and yards. There was no living thing left in the village. Humans, dogs, chickens—everything had been slain by those tearing claws.

  “What could have done this?” asked Robyn, her face ashen. “Not the ogres. They wouldn’t tear the bodies like this, and they would have burned the place to the ground.

  “Not even the sorcerers would do this!” Robyn whispered. She was certain, in some mysterious way, that this attack was part of a larger scheme.

  “But what—or who—would do this?”

  “I don’t know,” said the druid, but she pointed to the ground in a soft patch of wet sand. Many prints of feet that were both webbed and clawed crossed the patch. The feet looked familiar to the prince, and he remembered where he had seen them before.

  “The sahuagin have come from the sea.”

  “What’s a scatterbrained faerie dragon doing here?” growled Finellen, in no mood for idle chatter.

  “Why, looking for Robyn, of course! I should think that would be obvious, even to a dwarf! But what are you doing here? Now that’s a good question!”

  Finellen was too tired and discouraged to argue. “We flee one battlefield, and look for another—one where we can die with honor.”

  “Well, that seems like a silly plan. I mean, like you plan to lose the battle or something! Now, wouldn’t it be much better to find Robyn and Tristan and do something fun?”

  “What do you know of the Prince of Corwell?” demanded the dwarf. “Quickly, Wyrm, speak!”

  “Well, I certainly am not in the mood to talk to someone who speaks to me like that! Wyrm, indeed! Why, if you weren’t a friend of my friends, I would use a spell on you that would—”

  “Tell me!” growled Finellen in a voice that even Newt could not ignore. Yazilliclick, invisible some distance away, actually feared for the little dragon’s life.

  “Well, it started when we went back to Doncastle.…”

  By the following evening, Tristan estimated his fledging army’s strength at nearly a thousand men. At the same time, reports of more vigorous pursuit by the king’s army came to them through stragglers. That afternoon, they were discovered by crimson-coated horsemen. The riders shadowed them for the rest of the day, and the prince knew that it wouldn’t be long before the entire army gathered for the attack.

  Indeed, as they came over a hill just before sunset, they saw a full brigade of the Scarlet Guard’s human mercenaries. These spearmen and swordsmen stood shoulder to shoulder, facing north.

  “Damn!” Tristan, in the lead of his force, stopped.

  “That’s not all,” said O’Roarke, stepping to his side. The bandit lord had been cooperative and forceful in getting his troops to march beside the prince, and Tristan had been grateful for his presence. “There, to the north!”

  Looking behind them, the prince saw more red-cloaked figures emerging from the forest. These were huge, rumbling shapes—the ogres!

  “We’re trapped,” he said bitterly. The sea rolled to their west, and brigades of the guard stood to the north and south. To the east, the land climbed quickly away from the shore. If the men tried to flee that way, they would inevitably scatter along the rough ground and be destroyed piecemeal. And even that op
tion was eliminated as another row of crimson uniforms appeared along the crest of the high country—the third brigade of the Scarlet Guard had completed the encirclement.

  Alexei, Daryth, Pawldo, O’Roarke, and Robyn joined the prince as he groped for a plan.

  “My prince, what is that?” asked Alexei, pointing toward the south. Tristan looked past the ranks of spearmen up the steeply sloping headland, to the rocky promontory he had originally seen as a bivouac. There were small figures up there, moving toward a point below them. The mercenaries, apparently, did not realize there was a group behind them.

  “Who are they?” asked Robyn.

  I can’t tell—but what’s that?” Astounded, Tristan watched the tiny figures pry and push at the boulders on their hilltop. Several of the huge rocks broke free, tumbling toward the backs of the king’s brigade below them. More and more of the stones were pushed off the crest, tumbling and rolling until they crashed through the line of the Scarlet Guard.

  Soon a crashing landslide tore at the side of the rise as an ocean of crushing rock poured down the hill. Whoever was up there had just done them a great service, but they would need to capitalize on the opportunity.

  “Charge!” he cried. “To the hilltop!”

  His men voiced a ragged cheer and followed as he held the Sword of Cymrych Hugh high above his head. A thousand voices cried for the blood of the guard, and the rebels of Doncastle rushed forward like a tidal wave toward the broken crimson ranks.

  The dust from the landslide had barely settled when the men of Doncastle reached the base of the hill. Many of the crimson-coated spearmen had been crushed by the rocks, and the rest had been separated into small groups in their haste to escape the slide.

  These groups were easy prey for the attackers. Tristan led the way into one band of perhaps eighty spearmen. The great moorhound growled and snapped at his side, and the men of Doncastle spread behind him. He stabbed and cut and thrust his way into the thick of the enemy, ignoring a dozen painful wounds.

  The pocket of spearmen quickly fell under the attack, and the prince saw his men slow the momentum of their charge. “Onward! To the top!” he cried, leaping among the boulders to begin the climb up the rocky knoll.

  He paused and looked back. The ogre brigade lumbered forward, and the mercenaries to the east were streaming down to the shore. But his force had broken through the shattered brigade, climbing the hill. They would reach the top before the other guards could join the fight.

  And there, grinning down at him through her bristling beard, stood the stalwart Finellen.

  A thousand men of Doncastle and one hundred fifty sturdy dwarves stood upon the rocky knoll and watched the sun disappear into the Sea of Moonshae. The rise was a good place to fight—steep sides dropped to the north, east, and south, while a peninsula jutted into the sea to the west. A narrow neck of land, barely fifty feet wide and flanked by towering cliffs to either side, connected the promontory to the mainland. This would be their final redoubt. Cliffs sheltered their position from attack by sea.

  Tristan’s elation had dimmed, though, as Finellen grimly pointed out that the help of the dwarves came with its own cost: The creeping mass of the duergar army was plainly visible to the south. Already, the leading dark dwarves were probing the base of their rise—though a brief shower of arrows from the archers of Doncastle sent them scurrying back for cover.

  The dark dwarves probed and retreated several times as darkness closed in. Each time they tried to force their way up the slope and were called back by their own commanders. It made sense—all of the enemy armies would attack in the morning and Cyndre would not want to allow the dwarves to attack alone—and possibly suffer a bloody repulse—before the rest of his troops were ready.

  The ogre brigade had moved down from the north to camp at the base of their hill on that side, and to the east the human mercenaries of the Scarlet Guard had made camp, cutting off escape inland.

  The Prince of Corwell knew that his victory over the king’s force, if it were to happen, would have to come here. But he faced the fact with grim acceptance: It was far more likely that the battle would lead to the deaths of them all.

  The hard ground prevented Alexei from sleeping comfortably, as it had for the last several nights. He awakened well before dawn, chill and stiff beneath his woolen blanket, listening to the sounds of the slumbering camp.

  And then he felt something else—a presence not of this camp, but near it. It settled upon him uneasily, banishing all thoughts of sleep. He arose and threw a robe over his shoulders, shivering in the pre-dawn chill. He suspected the nature of his uneasiness, but he stood still for several minutes, staring to the north until he could be certain.

  Cyndre was near.

  Alexei had studied and mastered the spellbooks of Annuwynn. His hands, while not as limber as they once were, had recovered sufficiently to allow him to use his magic quickly and easily. And now was the time.

  A startled sentry saw Alexei disappear from sight. No one saw him reappear several miles to the north on an empty stretch of coastline. His intuition had served him well—he heard the rumbling of wagons and the tread of heavy footfalls nearby.

  Invisible, the mage walked toward the column that gradually materialized out of the darkness. He stepped to the side to avoid a galloping outrider. The man did not slow down as he passed, but his horse gave a startled whinny as it caught the unseen wizard’s scent.

  Alexei stopped less than a hundred feet from the road and watched the king’s army. He saw the ogres tromp past, and then the rest of the Scarlet Guard. The king’s coach rolled into sight, and he saw the green aura surrounding it. No matter—he had a different target in mind.

  Finally, he saw the eight black horses and the long wagon that carried the council of sorcerers. Many times he had ridden in that wagon with his companions to serve some whim of Cyndre’s. Now, he expected, Wertam, Talraw, and Kerianow were in there. They had done nothing in particular to arouse Alexei’s anger, but that was quite unnecessary. Their deaths would anger Cyndre, and that was justification enough for the sorcerer.

  “Pyrax surass Histar,” he said, pointing at the coach.

  The little marble of fire floated from his fingertip, wafting casually toward the council’s wagon. He waited until the spot of light touched the door of the long coach.

  “Byrassyll.”

  Light shot through the darkness, casting long shadows over the members of the king’s army. Searing heat followed as the fireball expanded to engulf the coach and its horses. The fire was too hot to grant its victims more than the briefest of tormented screams.

  Moments later, the coach and its occupants were nothing but ashes on the ground. Panic spread through the column as troops and outriders scurried to find the attacker.

  But he was already gone.

  The hand of Bhaal reached forward. Eagerly, the god nudged the players in his game. Things were progressing splendidly, and he relished the approach of his ultimate victory.

  The sahuagin swarmed from the surf at a dozen little villages along the coast of western Callidyrr. They emerged awkwardly from the rolling breakers, stumbling onto the gravelly beaches and struggling to adapt their gills to breathing air. But this they did quickly, flexing those wide organs open as they slipped among the houses and harbors of the villages.

  They killed quickly, without emotion. Any man, woman or child they met was swiftly slashed to death by claws and razor-sharp teeth, or impaled. The younger bodies were devoured, and any items of gold or silver were plundered. Then the sahuagin returned to the sea.

  Searching, they swam along the coast and gathered with their king at a promontory along the shore.

  The undead had marched slowly toward this shore for several days, and finally they climbed the sloping bottom toward shallow water, and surf, and then air. Late in the night they joined the sahuagin at that high promontory.

  Sythissall was the first to emerge, striding boldly from the rolling waves, thrusting hi
s chest forward and swaggering toward the one who awaited him on shore.

  The enemy, the sorcerer told him, was on top of the hill. When the sun gave them light, the sahuagin, the undead, the dark dwarves, the ogres, and the humans of the Scarlet Guard, would attack and slay them all. Cyndre said that his plan had come together quite nicely.

  And Bhaal chuckled as he heard. “His plan,” indeed!

  y prince.”

  Tristan woke instantly, reaching for his sword. He relaxed as he saw Robyn standing beside him.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she apologized, kneeling beside him. “And then I saw that.” The druid pointed to the north, and Tristan saw a brilliant fire blazing in the distance. “It just exploded—like a magic spell, not like a normal fire.”

  The prince stood and looked. The fire was the only break in the darkness. Moonlight reflected off the sea, but that was only a vague distortion of the gloom.

  “Have you been up all night?” he asked.

  Robyn nodded. “There’s something … something else out there besides the duergar and the Scarlet Guard. I felt it several hours ago, and it has been growing stronger. Tristan, I’m afraid. There’s something horrible here—every bit as horrible as the Beast or the undead!”

  He held her against his chest, black thoughts running through his mind. She was right, he knew. And their chances had been hopeless enough earlier in the evening. He had brought her to face death with him on some remote and rocky shore. But for what? For a failed, short-lived cause. Damn his foolishness!

  “Robyn,” he whispered. “I love you—by the goddess, I love you!”

  He kissed her and pressed her close, and for a moment joy filled him. He felt a kind of invincible serenity that banished the real world. But all too soon he remembered their situation. He could not let her go.