Hundreds of the defenders fell, pierced through, many writhing in agony amid spreading pools of blood. Others, stabbed in the heart or the skull, lay still, killed instantly. Some twisted the weapons free from gory wounds, even as the cruel barbs tore painfully at the victims’ flesh. A very bold and lucky few, having eluded the barrage, picked up the javelins and tried to hurl them back at the attackers. But most of the return missiles missed their marks, bouncing off the armor and shields of the regulars, clattering to the ground with more noise than effect.
Still the shield wall pressed forward, advancing steadily over the bodies of the hapless defenders. Captain Veinslitter strode forward step by step with the first rank, shouting exhortations, clapping his men on the shoulders as he stalked behind the line, wielding his own blade whenever a tiny niche allowed him to lunge directly at a foe.
The royal guards and the undisciplined, conscripted citizens were undeniably outmatched by the steady, well-equipped veterans of the Black Cross. But for some reason that Willim didn’t readily understand, the defenders refused to break, to surrender, or to flee.
He watched as one white-bearded old fellow charged forward with a pitchfork, jabbing it futilely against the shield wall until he was cut down by a stab to the abdomen. As he fell, he thrust his weapon one more time, and one of the Black Cross dwarves stumbled, taking a tine in the hinge gap of his armor around his knee.
At the same time, another pair of dwarves, wearing only stiff leather smithy tunics, raised hammers and hurled themselves against the shield wall. Even from his lofty vantage, Willim could hear the resounding bang of the heavy mallets against the metal shields. One of the smiths went down, cut almost in two by a sideways slash, but the other brought his hammer down heavily on the swordsman’s wrist, breaking bone and forcing the veteran to drop his sword. The injured infantryman backed out of the line, his place quickly taken by a comrade, but too many Black Cross dwarves were being similarly attacked and forced to yield their positions on the shield wall.
“Why do they stand?” he demanded of General Darkstone. “We’re killing a score of them for every one of our men wounded!”
“I know,” growled the commander unhelpfully. “But our numbers are limited. Look.”
He pointed toward the wall around King Stonespringer’s fortified palace. Willim saw the gate open, spilling hundreds more irregulars onto the plaza. Some of them weren’t even armed, but still they howled and charged, hurling themselves with suicidal frenzy into the mass of dwarves battling the Black Cross. They picked up weapons from the dead and wounded, eagerly surging forward to join the battle against the rebels.
At the same time, more of the irregulars were advancing from the side streets, swarming into the square with little semblance of order or formation. Some came at the Black Cross ranks from the side or even from behind.
Fortunately, the veteran Captain Veinslitter recognized the fresh threat, pivoting his troops on the right flank to meet the new danger. At the same time his crossbowmen fired at the dwarves surging toward the rear of the Black Cross. So effective was that volley that a hundred of the enemy fell, and the few survivors among them were so intimidated by the deadly crossbows that they pulled back. Under their captain’s steady, shouted orders, the Black Cross resumed its slow, deliberate advance.
“They are penetrating too far,” Darkstone declared grimly. “They’re in danger of getting cut off.”
“No!” retorted Willim. “Keep charging—break them! Smash through to the palace!”
The general nodded and, when Veinslitter looked up, simply gestured the captain to continue pressing the attack. The Daergar captain touched his silver helm and cheered the Black Cross regiment forward with renewed determination. Every few steps they had to pause and launch a volley of crossbow bolts against the militiamen who were milling around near the streets that spilled onto the plaza from nearby neighborhoods.
More and more citizens attacked from the side, rushing out of the alleys and streets, carrying makeshift weapons or picking them up from beside the bodies of the slain. It was a floodtide more than a thousand strong, a relentless force of nature.
“There—a breach!” called Willim, spotting a gap in the defenders.
No sooner had he spoken than a hundred howling irregulars filled the gap, threatening to sweep around the exposed flank of the outnumbered veterans. Veinslitter reacted by pulling his right flank back, thinning out his ranks to extend the length of his line. Even so, there were too many of the militia, too few of the Black Cross. The king’s loyalists started to spill around both sides of the Daergar heavy infantry, and there were no longer enough troops to extend the line. The Black Cross curled back to the right and the left until it resembled a horseshoe, fighting countless foes to the left, ahead, and to the right.
And still more of the king’s troops and volunteers, ill-trained and poorly armed but seemingly infinite in number, charged into the square toward the beleaguered Daergar.
At last even Willim recognized the grim reality.
“Sound the retreat!” he barked tersely, and Darkstone immediately passed the command to his trumpeter. The brass call finally signaled the dwarves of Veinslitter’s elite company to back away from the grip of the frenzied mob.
But already it might be too late. The possessed defenders followed the thinning lines of the Black Cross as the veteran Daergar tried to fight their way free of what was becoming a deathtrap. At the same time, organized ranks of the Royal Division advanced against Veinslitter’s left flank, nearly surrounding the formation. The line fractured, the Daergar on both flanks fighting as islands of resistance in an enemy sea, while the remnant of the center struggled back toward the gate. Willim grimaced in anger as more and more of his veterans fell, vanishing under the press of the enemy’s rabble.
The few surviving Daergar finally made it to the gatehouse, where the rest of the rebel army stood ready to support them. Even so, Willim could see that his elite company had been decimated; only about a quarter of those veteran warriors had made it back to his own position. The wizard ground his teeth, knowing that his best regiment had been squandered, without a single foot of ground gained to show for the sacrifice.
Beside Willim, Blade Darkstone covered his eyes with his gloved hand and uttered a sob of despair. The wizard grimaced and turned away.
“What did you mean, telling them there might be a way to get them out of Thorbardin?” Peat demanded soon after the Hylar family, buttressed by sudden hope, had departed with the promise to return in twenty-four hours. “Surely you’re not thinking of our ring?”
The two Guilders had several very precious treasures that were definitely not for sale. One of those was a ring of teleportation, a device that would allow the wearer to magically travel to another destination. Only a few were said to exist on all of Krynn.
“Of course not!” Sadie retorted. “There’s only the one ring, and therefore only one person could use it. It wouldn’t be much good to those four Hylar!”
“Well, I know that,” replied her husband, peering at her with his watery, nearsighted eyes. “But what in Reorx’s name are you talking about then?”
“That spell!” Sadie replied, a wide grin brightening her nearly toothless mouth. “The spell on the scroll, the one that I’ve been saving for a very long time.”
Peat harrumphed. “I know what’s in the scroll cabinet. There’s nothing in there that will get a blind rat out of Thorbardin, much less a family of Hylar.”
“Ah,” Sadie said, her eyes gleaming in her wrinkled face. “But this is a special scroll! I have been trying to copy it for a while now, and I am almost done.”
With her husband tottering along behind, she led him into the storeroom at the back of the shop. With considerable effort, she bent down and tapped several times at a piece of rock that looked like the foundation of the bottom shelf. To Peat’s immense surprise, the rock swiveled away to reveal a dark aperture—the entrance to a secret compartment.
&n
bsp; “Eh?” he said. “How’d that get there?”
“I made it myself,” his wife said smugly as she reached inside to pull out a long tube. She handed it to him and stood up with surprising alacrity, given her age and arthritic limbs. “Now take it over here to the worktable!” she instructed.
Peat, speechless for once, did as he was told. He unscrewed the cap on the end of the tube and pulled out a roll of parchment while Sadie muttered a quick spell, igniting the candle that rested in a wall sconce above the table. Under the bright yellow glow, Peat could make out the words at the top of the piece of parchment.
“A dimension door?” he asked in surprise. “You want to conjure a dimension door?” He had intended to ask how she had gained access to such a powerful spell, why she had hidden it from him, what she had planned to do with it. Instead, he just gaped at her, amazed at the idea and imagining the possibilities.
Sadie smiled so wide that her toothless gums were exposed. “Just imagine how much we could charge to use it,” she said.
“Aye,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “Pretty much whatever we want to for someone who really wanted to get out of here. And who had the money to pay.”
“Darn tootin’!” his wife rejoined, cackling gleefully. “Now get out of my way. I need to finish the copy so we can save the original. We’ve got a lot of work to do!”
He looked over her shoulder at the complicated magical scribing. It was a spell far beyond his ability, and he was slightly awed by the knowledge that his wife had kept the scroll a secret from him. But mainly he felt proud that she was capable of such magic.
“So … tell me again how it works,” he finally asked.
“It’s a dimension door,” she snapped, though a measure of pride softened her tone. “When I read the spell, the door will open—one portal here, wherever I cast the spell. We can step through the door and come out at the other end, which will be wherever I want it to be. Or we could let somebody else go through—somebody who could pay. And then I would have to make another copy for us to use later.”
“So we could actually leave, escape Thorbardin,” Peat said, scarcely daring to believe it. “Even the Master couldn’t—” He bit his tongue, unwilling to finish the thought. Yet even his partial admission scared his wife, who clocked him over the head.
“Don’t even think such things!” she hissed. “Think about the Hylar and how much they will pay.”
Only then did another, eminently logical, question occur to him. “But where would we send them?” he asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Sadie replied. “We don’t want them to end up in the wilderness somewhere or in some den of humans or draconians. That would be bad for business. I think the safest thing would be to send them to some mountain dwarf holding outside. I was thinking of Pax Tharkas.”
“Yes,” he agreed thoughtfully. “Pax Tharkas might work. There won’t be any war going on there, not now. We could even go there ourselves!” he added, surprised at how tempting the notion was.
“There won’t be many customers for us in Pax Tharkas either,” Sadie said tartly. “And we can’t exactly take our inventory through the door, in any event. We would hardly have enough steel to live there. We’d be paupers!”
Peat nodded, crestfallen.
His wife had started another scroll, copying the first one she had so laboriously created. He frowned and cleared his throat, looking at her questioningly.
“Think about it!” she barked at him. “These Hylar are not the only dwarves who want to get out of Thorbardin,” she said. “I’m going to make another copy of the scroll. It’ll take me a day or more to rewrite the scroll, but then we’ll use it for their escape, and they’ll pay us very well for the privilege. And they might not be the only ones willing to pay a hefty sum of steel to get out of here before the war sweeps his whole world away.”
“And we … we could charge them all to use the door?” Peat said. “How much could we ask?”
“How much is a rich dwarf’s life worth?” Sadie asked.
SIX
STANCHING THE FLOW
Willim snarled out loud as the remnants of the Black Cross regiment streamed away from the palace, fleeing across the great plaza, limping through the gaps that opened in the rebel line. His initial estimate was accurate: far more than half of the elite, highly trained troops remained where they had fallen. Those not already dead were dying or were quickly slain by the impetuous militia who raced forward to capitalize on the enemy’s sudden collapse. A few knots still held out, veterans battling back-to-back, but one by one, those stalwarts vanished under the relentless onslaught.
The survivors, the wizard saw with his magical gaze, bled from multiple wounds. Many of them limped, and the few able-bodied ones were trying to help their injured companions escape from the debacle.
The black wizard turned his back on the disaster, thinking furiously. With his eyes turned toward the plaza, he studied the rank of royal dwarves that extended all the way across the plaza. The troops of the Royal Division formed a solid wall, an obstacle blocking the rebel army from reaching Jungor Stonespringer’s palace.
“Master, I have returned.”
Willim heard the voice and recognized the speaker as his female apprentice, Facet. He spun around. She was kneeling on the floor at his feet, and her face was turned downward. He could see her black hair, shiny with a wetness that looked too much like blood.
“Facet! Look at me!” he commanded.
She raised her eyes, and he was stunned to see the blood smeared across her face. Her forehead was gashed, with a piece of skin hanging down over one of her eyes. The crimson liquid was everywhere, garish on her ice-white skin. He saw that she cradled one of her hands, also bloody, against her breasts, pressing it there with her other hand.
“What happened?” the wizard demanded vehemently. Facet’s beauty was marred, and he wanted nothing so much as vengeance against the ones who had done such a thing.
“Gypsum and I reached our position on the king’s balcony. But, Master, we were betrayed. Even before the king showed himself, we were set upon by guards. I wanted to teleport away, but Gypsum was caught in the grasp of the royal sentries. I tried to save him, my lord, I really did, but when I fought them, the guards struck me with their swords. I saw Gypsum fall, dead, and only then did I magic myself away.”
“Thank all the gods you’re alive!” Willim said sincerely, kneeling down and taking her good hand. His eyeless face, the stitched lids blank and scarred, was turned toward her, and the spell of true-seeing allowed him to study all of her wounds. She had been cut in several places, deep and bloody wounds, though fortunately none likely to prove fatal. He could sense the grief, sadness, and shame that burned within her beautiful flesh.
“But, Master, I failed you!” Facet declared with a sob. “Punish me! I do not deserve to live!”
“Hush, my maid,” Willim said soothingly, feeling a rush of tenderness for Facet, for her devotion and her undeniable skill. He would find who had betrayed her—and himself!—and that treacherous dwarf would suffer. But for the moment … “You are injured,” he said, touching the flap of skin on her forehead, feeling her flinch away from the pain. “Go to the healers at once; tell them that it is my personal command that your flesh be fully restored at once.”
“Thank you, my lord. But surely there are others who need the healing magic worse than I?”
So tender, so thoughtful was she! Willim felt a rush of affection for his apprentice, an emotion he had never felt before, not in all of his adult life. “You know my command. I would like to see you well, whole, and unscarred again as soon as possible.” He stood and helped her to her feet. She clung to him, and he relished her touch until, finally, he disengaged from her embrace. “Now go,” he said gently.
She departed slowly, yet too fast for the Black Robe, who already regretted her absence.
Willim saw Captain Veinslitter, commander of the Black Cross, approaching. Good, the wizar
d thought. I need to punish somebody. He stood stiffly, his eyeless face turned away as he magically observed the loyal captain, a warrior whose bravery and competence had been demonstrated a dozen times or more, approach. The Daergar knelt on the rampart platform before Willim the Black and bowed his head abjectly.
“I offer you my life, Master,” declared Captain Veinslitter. “My regiment failed you. I have no excuse.”
He removed his red-plumed helmet with a flourish and even pulled his black hair aside so that the wizard could plainly see his pale, defenseless neck.
And Willim sorely would have preferred to kill him right then and there.
The failure of the Black Cross attack and the loss of so many of those steadfast, veteran troops was a bitter blow to his long-planned campaign. The death of the lackey who had failed to carry the day would have been deeply gratifying.
The logical part of the wizard’s mind, however, argued that vengeful punishment would accomplish less than nothing. Willim was an emotional firebrand, but he was also a pragmatist. He had prepared too long, fought too hard, to accept failure at that juncture. He wouldn’t allow his temper, his thirst for momentary satisfaction, to distract him from his larger goal.
“Get up,” he said, his voice dripping with disgust. “Yes, you failed. But you will have a chance to redeem yourself. See to your troops. I want them rested, their wounds healed insofar as that is possible. I will have another task for them … and very soon.”
“Thank you, Master,” declared Veinslitter tightly. If he was relieved to have his life spared, he gave no sign. Indeed, though the concept was foreign to Willim himself, he sensed that the captain was deeply saddened by the loss of so many of his loyal soldiers. Fool, Willim thought, marking it down as a lesson about the Daergar’s character. Your troops are only so much ammunition, to be used up as the commander desires!
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