Black Wizards

by Douglas Niles

  “I missed you so much when you were gone that I thought I’d go crazy. I was even going to come to the Vale and see you, if I could have found you—to try and bring you back to Corwell.”

  She smiled at him through her own tears, and he continued awkwardly. “I can’t ask you to turn from your calling—you have a destiny that even I can see, to serve the goddess. But, if you have room in your life for a husband …”

  She kissed him quickly, almost playfully. “I like the idea of being a queen,” she whispered. “A druid queen! Of course, you’ll have to win the kingship for me first.…” And they said no more for a time. The sky grew pink and then pale blue as the sun climbed toward the horizon.

  Then they heard a sentry shout, and another alarm raised from a different quarter. The battle, it seemed, was beginning.

  “By the goddess, what are those?” growled O’Roarke.

  Daryth looked into the pre-dawn haze and saw movement at the base of the hill. Things that looked like humans emerged from the mist, stumbling forward. But they did not move like humans, nor did they make any noise. Among them, he saw the fishlike figures of sahuagin, their yellow scales ornamented with golden bracelets and headdresses.

  “They’re dead!” gasped Pawldo, straining past Daryth to get a better view.

  “No! That’s impossible!” gasped Pontswain. He stared in shock at the shambling forms, with their sightless eyes and grasping fingers.

  The things had pasty white skin—where they had skin at all. Many of them were bare skeletons, clacking along like puppets, while others had swelled into bloated blobs of flesh from their long immersion. Patches of rotten flesh fell away from them with each step, revealing white bone or bleached sinews.

  Beside the undead, so ominously silent, there suddenly appeared the berserk forms of a thousand charging duergar. Halfway up the slope, they started to howl. The shrill, unnatural sound carried across the battlefield, chilling the hearts of all who stood in their path.

  Waving axes and swords over their heads, the duergar pounded their stubby legs across the rocky slope, momentum carrying them up the hill like a tidal wave.

  “Now!” cried O’Roarke. As planned, the men of Doncastle all along the south edge of the hilltop kicked loose the piles of boulders they had prepared overnight. The huge stones thumped and rumbled down the hill.

  The dead of the sea took no notice of the rocks, except for those struck by the tumbling missiles. Corpses were spattered by heavy boulders, or knocked down and crippled by smaller rocks. Skeletons went down like tenpins, and many rolling corpses added to the confusion as they tumbled into their fellows below.

  But this side of the hill was neither as steep nor as rocky as the other side. Daryth and the rest of the fighters pushed as many rocks as they could, but the all-consuming landslide that had tumbled onto the Scarlet Guard the previous day did not recur.

  Soon the boulders were gone, and the duergar roared forward in all their fury. They were close enough now for the men of Doncastle to see their wildly staring eyes, their bristling beards, and dark, scowling brows. When their stubby legs finally carried them to the men of Doncastle, their axes and shortswords were met with spears.

  Instantly the din rose to hurricane proportions, as the battles cries of the duergar mingled with the hoarse challenges of the humans, the screams of the wounded, and the crashing of weapon against weapon and shield.

  Daryth stood upon a wide, flat rock with Pawldo. Eyeless sockets stared blindly upward as the skeletons reached their clawlike hands toward the defenders in an effort to rip them down. The Calishite slashed and gashed with his silver scimitar He cut the head from a soggy corpse and, with one vicious down-strike, cut a skeleton into two halves that fell, twitching, to either side of the rock.

  Pawldo stood at his back, driving back a white, fleshy thing that tried to crawl onto the boulder. He stabbed it twice with no effect, but then kicked it in the head, gagging as his foot sank into the thing’s mushy face.

  A skeletal hand reached out, grasping Daryth’s ankle. The Calishite stumbled and slipped toward the edge of the rock, but Pawldo’s blade cut cleanly through the creature’s wrist, drawing sparks from the rock as the severed hand still clung to the Calishite’s leg. Daryth staggered back, twisting to catch his balance. He saw Pontswain’s face behind him still gaping in shock. The lord had yet to draw his sword.

  The howling of the dark dwarves rose to a frenzy, and Daryth saw with rising panic that they had broken through the line of rebels. Screeching insanely, twoscore duergar raced for the hilltop.

  But Hugh O’Roarke bellowed, his red beard and hair seeming to blaze like fire, as he led a dozen men to the breach. He wielded a great broadsword in two hands, roaring a challenge every time he killed a duergar. He roared very frequently, and soon the survivors fell back to their own troops. The outlaw lord charged forward and the gap was filled.

  But still they came out of the mist as if they had no end.

  “When will they come? I’m getting bored!” Robyn, go down and talk to them—tell them we want to get this battle started!” Newt scowled at the ogres, standing in a row at the bottom of the hill. Beside the brutes, the sahuagin slithered and seethed across the moor. The fish-men looked not like individuals, but like the giant, scaly surface of some unimaginable beast, so tightly were they packed.

  Tristan, Robyn, Alexei, and Finellen stood at the crest, with Newt and the invisible Yazilliclick sitting on the ground before them. Canthus stood, tense and bristling, at the prince’s side. They all watched the attack begin. On the other side, they could hear the battle raging between the duergar and the men of Doncastle. The prince wanted desperately to see what was happening over there, but he could not be everywhere at once. He had left O’Roarke in command, and could only hope that the lord was capable of leading the defense. Daryth and Pawldo were fighting at O’Roarke’s sides, and their steady swords could not help but strengthen the defense.

  He saw a flash of red hair to his side and looked down to see Fiona’s eyes flashing at him. “I will fight!” she stated, daring him to challenge her. Earlier, he had directed to her a place of some minimal safety—the top of the knoll. She clutched her shortsword, looking as able as many of their fighting men, and more determined than most.

  “Very well,” he said. She would have to take care of herself.

  The sahuagin slithered forward, slipping toward the slope and up onto the rocks, though many of the creatures fell backward. They were unused to walking on land, let alone climbing, and this slowed their advance considerably.

  But the ogres suddenly charged at the foot of the hill and lumbered easily up the steep grade. The dwarves sent a few more boulders tumbling toward them—but most of the loose rock had fallen from here the day before. The few ogres that fell to the boulders left small gaps in the lumbering line that were quickly filled by a second rank.

  “This’ll be a pleasure,” grunted Finellen, fingering her axe as she trotted to her company. “Let’s go, dwarves!”

  The stumpy creatures formed a line of their own, a single rank against the two of the ogres, and marched off the crest of the hill toward the charging monsters. The heavy creatures were slowing their climb, now grunting and panting as they pushed upward—and this was how Finellen wanted to fight them.

  The sahuagin, Tristan was happy to see, were still slipping backward almost as fast as they advanced.

  “The ogres—there are too many!” cried Robyn.

  Tristan saw the ogre brigade spread into a line, one rank deep, but long enough to easily envelop both ends of the dwarven line. Finellen had placed her company line abreast to face the attack, but there were not enough dwarves to meet the huge ogres. The orges struggled steadily up the slope, now only two dozen yards away from the dwarves.

  Suddenly the dwarves turned and marched to their right. “What’s she doing?” asked Robyn.

  “She’s shifting the line so that only one of her flanks will be enveloped. It’ll help, b
ut I don’t think it can save them!”

  “Tristan, I might be able to help,” said Robyn, “since Yazilliclick saved this from the fire.” She held up the runestick.

  “Let’s go!” Tristan cried. Twenty fighters of Doncastle followed them down the hill as they raced toward the left flank of the dwarven line.

  “Charge! Get ’em!” cried a shrill voice, and Newt popped into view, clinging to the bristled fur of the moorhound’s shoulders like a lancer riding into battle.

  The ogres broke into a trot, counting on their massive weight to roll over the puny dwarves. As the companions reached Finellen’s line, Tristan could feel the ground shaking underneath his feet. For a moment he regretted their rash charge. Now they faced a company of dozens of ogres. The bestial faces of the attackers broke into grins at the sight of the impudent humans.

  The prince drew his sword with a flourish and stood with his feet well braced. He sensed brave men to either side of him—but then his jaw dropped as Robyn darted past. She stood alone, not two dozen yards from the ogres. The monsters howled in glee and broke into a run.

  The druid shouted something that Tristan could not hear and waved the carved stick at the ground beneath her. She sprang nimbly backward to stand beside the prince.

  The rocky hilltop rose and buckled before him. Two hulking forms, far bigger than the ogres, rose from the ground to stand before them. Each was made of black earth and gray rock, molded into a vaguely manlike shape. Robyn pointed, and the two things shambled toward the suddenly tentative ogres.

  “Elementals,” she said. “The magic of the Great Druid—stored in the runestick. That was Genna’s parting gift to me.” She could not conceal her awe at the might of this spell. Genna had crafted the strength to call two of the mighty elementals into the stick.

  He watched, stunned, as the earthen figures plowed into the rank of ogres. Huge, rocklike fists smashed skulls and crushed chests as the elementals stood side by side to meet the charge. The company of ogres fell apart, many of the monsters clustering to fight the elementals, while a few circled around to attack the companions.

  Tristan sprang forward and slashed his sharp blade through the forehead of an ogre. The monster dropped like a stone, and Tristan turned to stab another in the chest. The men of Doncastle and Canthus all joined in the melee, moving quickly among the clumsy attackers.

  Six ogres stopped, dumbfounded, as a colorful fountain sprang from the grass before them. They stared transfixed at Newt’s illusion while the fight raged around them. An ogre with huge, drooling tusks appeared to be in command of the company, snarling and snapping orders. The Prince of Corwell attacked like a berserker, knocking the club from the ogre’s hand with his first blow. His second cut deeply into the monster’s forearm, raised in defense, and the third spilled the ogre’s guts onto the muddy grass.

  Tiny arrows sprang from the air to strike ogres in the eyes or lips as Yazilliclick hovered invisibly about. The missiles were too small to do anything except aggravate the brutes, but they distracted and confused the enemy.

  One of the elementals tumbled to the ground, but the second continued to smash at the ogres. Their leader down, their numbers shrinking rapidly, the ogres suddenly had had enough. As one mass, the company facing the companions turned and lumbered toward the imagined security of their own army. Tristan’s fighting fury diminished, and he leaned on his sword as he gasped for breath.

  But then he noticed the commotion to his right. Finellen’s dwarves fought bravely—dozens of ogre dead littered the ground. But the dwarves were paying a heavy price, falling slowly back before the monstrous crush.

  And then, to his left, he heard cries of pain and shrieks of horror—human shrieks. He saw that the sahuagin approached the crest and had met the thin line of defenders. He stabbed expertly, knocking a sahuagin spear aside and driving the tip into the monster’s chest. But as it fell backward, two more swarmed into its place.

  More and more of the fish-men crept up the hill. And suddenly the line of Ffolk collapsed as the sahuagin broke through in a dozen places at once.

  And the narrow path to the promontory—their only route of retreat—suddenly lay open before the rushing sahuagin.

  White, fishy eyes stared emotionlessly from the hilltop. A hundred sahuagin had pushed through the thin file of defenders to gain the highest ground. They stood in a circle, facing outward, holding sharp tridents or captured spears in a bristling ring of weaponry. Pink, straight tongues flicked between their tooth-studded jaws—the only sign of fear or excitement.

  Others of the sahuagin pressed upward to gain the breach their first line had created. Men of Doncastle came from parts of the knoll to fill that line, however, and they stopped the second push. But still the ring of fish-men held the hilltop and could control the outcome of the battle by striking anywhere they chose.

  “Fall back to the promontory!” called the prince, and the word flew down the line.

  The men of Doncastle retreated before the dark dwarves, before the bloated, rotted undead. They held firm against the sahuagin, lest more fish-men break through and cut off their retreat onto the high peninsula.

  “Finellen—let’s, break that ring!” urged the prince. The sahuagin stood astride their retreat path. The monsters would have to be pushed out of the way before the rebel force could cross the narrow neck of land leading to the promontory.

  “Charge!” cried the dwarf, and her company—now less than a hundred—shouted a hoarse challenge. Their stumpy legs pounded the ground as, axes flailing, they rushed toward the fish-men.

  But another challenge came from the prince’s left, and he saw Hugh O’Roarke leading a band of his men into the bristling defense. The bandit lord fought like a demon, roaring and crashing about with his broadsword. The sahuagin stabbed and hissed, thrusting at the human attackers, but then the dwarves crashed into the other side of the ring. The creatures fought to the last, but soon the hilltop was greasy with their red, fishy blood.

  Tristan caught a glimpse of Pontswain in the middle of a mob of duergar. The lord’s blade was bloody, and though his eyes were wide with panic, he struck about him like a wildman, somehow keeping the dark dwarves at bay.

  Now the men of Doncastle fell back across the neck of land. Here, where the promontory was barely fifty feet wide, sheer cliffs more than a hundred feet tall dropped to either side of the peninsula. Farther out, the promontory widened, but it was surrounded by high cliffs on all sides.

  The rebels filed across the land bridge as the dwarves and small groups of men held the attackers at bay. Tristan stood with Finellen, and Canthus snarled and fought between them. They fought back-to-back against the sahuagin that threatened at any moment to overwhelm them—but somehow, they held them at bay.

  The prince’s arms had long grown numb, and blood poured across his skin from a number of wounds. He was soaked to the elbows in the gore of his enemies, and his movements had become automatic. Numbly, he lifted his still-gleaming blade and swung, lifted and swung.

  O’Roarke and Daryth stood with their men on the other side of the knoll, holding back the dark dwarves and the sea’s dead. They, too, fought with automatic precision, adding body after body to the pile.

  Finally the bulk of their force had crossed, and the men of the rearguard backed onto the neck of land. Tristan, Daryth, Finellen, and Hugh O’Roarke stood side by side in the center of the line. They fought a mixture of duergar, sahuagin, corpses, humans of the guard, and ogres.

  A vicious, drooling ogre lunged at the prince, and fatigue numbed Tristan’s reactions. The monster’s huge, spiked club whistled toward his head, but then a wide broadsword cracked into the weapon, knocking it off its mark.

  The ogre bellowed at Hugh O’Roarke, who had stepped forward to deflect the blow. Before he could recover, the lord staggered from the thrust of a sahuagin trident.

  Tristan leaped forward and cleaved the ogre’s chest into a wide death-wound, seizing O’Roarke’s arm as the lord stumbled.
But another fish-man stretched forward his horrible claws and pulled on Hugh’s arm. Tristan whirled to avoid a duergar battleaxe, and suddenly O’Roarke was gone.

  He heard the lord’s bellow of challenge as a dozen sahuagin dragged him into their midst, and saw at least two of the fish-men fall dead from the outlaw’s dying blows.

  And then he felt the earth reel beneath his feet, and the world began to come apart around him.

  Cyndre sat upon the roof of the royal coach, watching the progress of the ogres and the sahuagin. He could not see the other brigade of the Scarlet Guard, nor the duergar, nor undead, but he felt confident the battle progressed according to plan.

  His time would come soon, when all were occupied. He waited specifically for a sign of Alexei. Often in a battle such as this, the mage who revealed himself first was the mage who died first.

  But Alexei was careful. Cyndre was not overly concerned by this—he knew his own power far exceeded that of his former lieutenant. Soon it would be time to move.

  Below him, seated in the coach, the king drooled and gibbered senselessly. His mind was finally broken, and only with great difficulty had Cyndre concealed this fact from the men of the Scarlet Guard. After their victory, however, it would not matter.

  Now, he decided. He would find Alexei and kill him. Then he would see that the battle was won in a suitable fashion.

  Cyndre gestured quickly, and in the space of a blink he disappeared.

  Alexei idly watched the struggles raging around him. He stood upon the highest rise on the promontory, separated from the main battle by the thin peninsula. From here, he sought signs of visible magic or any other clue as to Cyndre’s whereabouts. Safe from the din of the battle and tense with the thrill of his impending vengeance, Alexei dwelled upon images of his former master writhing under the torturous impact of his spells. When would Cyndre appear? For the hundredth time, his eyes searched the battlefield, looking for an explosion of flame or rolling cloud of gas that would give his former master away. Nervousness seized him. Now that the hour of his vengeance was almost at hand, he feared he lacked the power to challenge the mighty sorcerer. He thought briefly about teleporting to someplace far away—but then he remembered his days of torment, his hands crushed and his spirit broken, in the cell. And he vowed to claim his vengeance no matter what.