Clearly they were beginning to trust the nobleman from Vingaard; never before had Blayne seen more than a dozen legionnaires there. They made room for him at the head table, one man even bringing him a mug of cold ale. He nodded at a few he recognized.
The friendliness was not universal. Across the table sat a dark-skinned knight he had never seen before, and Blayne was surprised at the suspicion and hostility he noted in the man’s black eyes.
“Wet your whistle,” Ballard said encouragingly. “We’ve got a lot of planning to do.” Noticing that Blayne was staring at the dark-skinned knight, Ballard chuckled. “Sir Jorde,” he said, gesturing to the dark-skinned man. “I’d like you to meet Lord Blayne Kerrigan, now the rightful master of Vingaard Keep.”
“Hello,” Blayne said as pleasantly as he could. Jorde replied with a slow, deliberate nod.
Gratefully, Blayne took a drink as Ballard, who seemed to be in command of that unit of the Legion of Steel, explained.
“There are two more companies in the city, each awaiting word from me that it is time to move,” the knight said. “The legion is ready to retake our city and restore rule based on the Oath and the Measure. But we need time to implement our plan-more time before the emperor arrives here with his own army.”
“I understand,” replied Blayne. “And I have good news on that score. I have just received confirmation: the High Clerist’s Tower has been liberated by rebel forces. It surrendered without resistance to a band of fighters. They have manned the battlements and are prepared to block the pass against the emperor’s passage.”
“That’s good news, if true,” Ballard said. “A good garrison-say, a thousand men-manning the walls in that bottleneck will be enough to impede a whole army.”
“But where’d they come from?” Sir Jorde asked curtly. “I’d wager it would take a lot more than a thousand men to pry that fortress away from Markus and his Rose Knights.”
“It was an army of rebels-a small one, but several thousand trained men,” Blayne explained. “They were gathered in a secret valley not far from the tower. They’re friends of mine; they took me in when I fled Vingaard Keep in front of the emperor’s men.”
“These rebels-are they men of Vingaard too?” asked Ballard.
“Well, no,” young Kerrigan admitted. “At least, I don’t know them as such. I think they have come from all across Solamnia, everywhere people have become fed up with the emperor’s edicts.”
Sir Ballard fixed the lord with a piercing, suspicious look. “Well, it’s a curious development. I thought General Markus was the emperor’s man all the way, so I’m surprised to hear he would surrender without a fight. How good is your source of information?”
Blayne stiffened. Should he take offense? How good was his source?
When he considered the circumstances, the unseen man cloaking himself in magic and visiting Blayne in his small room in the thick of the night, he, too, wondered if he were being deceived.
But no, that was impossible. The man must be trustworthy. Blayne’s concealed visitor had known too much about Hoarst and the Black Army. It was Hoarst who had guided him to Archer Billings, and Billings who had put him in touch with the legion. The only explanation was that his nocturnal visitor was in league with Hoarst.
“I believe it’s reliable,” Blayne said. “I got it from a source connected to the man who sent me here.”
He had expected that explanation to be sufficient, but Ballard seemed surprisingly unmoved. “We’ll have to watch and wait, to be sure,” the legionnaire said. “But at the same time we’ll get ready to move at a moment’s notice.” He turned to Sir Jorde. “Can you send a man up there to check it out-as fast as possible?”
The dark-skinned knight nodded. “I’ll send my fastest rider at once.” He rose and, without a second look at Blayne, headed out through a door at the back of the room.
Ballard took a drink from his mug and changed the subject. “With the emperor’s legion out in the plains, there are only a few places in Palanthas that we need to infiltrate and control in order to effectively seize the city,” he said. “The palace on the central plaza, of course. The headquarters of the city guard, in the mayor’s office-the guard will not offer resistance if their commanders order them to stand down-and of course, the three gates leading through the Old City wall. We’ll be stretched pretty thin.”
“I have good news there too. The rebels in the High Clerist’s Tower have sent a number of men, something like a thousand, down the road to the city. They should be here in a matter of days, and they’ll augment our numbers and help us.”
Ballard nodded. He didn’t seem to take the news of reinforcements with as much enthusiasm as Blayne would have expected. Instead, he cleared his throat, looking at the lord from the corner of his eye.
“Then there’s the lord regent’s palace, outside of the walls,” he said. “Have you considered whether or not du Chagne will ally himself with us or stand against us?”
“I had intended to ask him to be our spokesman,” Blayne said. “That is, if you agree. His differences with the emperor are well known. He’s the only one with the authority to inspire the people to support our…” He hesitated, groping for the right word. “Coup,” he concluded, realizing he had to accept the fact.
“I agree,” Ballard said. “He was our leader until the emperor took control a few years back. He’s not really a military man, but he’s always had the sense to leave that department to others.”
“For better or worse,” one knight muttered. “Remember his dukes?”
Ballard shrugged. “Aye, but the people will respect him. Still, the emperor married du Chagne’s daughter. Will that complicate matters?”
“No,” Blayne replied with certainty. “If anything, it’s a point in our favor. I have it on good authority that the two men hate each other, and that the daughter is much the sticking point.”
“Well good, then. I’d heard rumors of that myself but couldn’t be certain whether or not they were true. A fellow of noble blood such as yourself no doubt has better contacts for courtly gossip,” Ballard added dryly.
“I suppose so,” Blayne said, embarrassed in spite of the fact it was probably true. “In any event, I suggest we go to see the lord regent at once and bring him in on our conspiracy.”
“Once again, I agree,” Ballard said. He nodded at the younger man’s half-full mug. “Now, drink up. We’ve got work to do.”
As a mountain dwarf, Dram should have been right at home in the dark, crowded tunnel of the mine shaft. After all, he hadn’t even seen the sun for the first decade of his life and had spent most of his youth in the great, subterranean, halls of Kayolin. Many mountain dwarves lived their entire lives underground as the natural course of things.
But he was surprised to realize he actually missed the daylight. For the past three days, as some thousand of his townsfolk had huddled with him in the narrow, sunless tunnels, he had come to realize how much he had fully embraced life on the surface. He didn’t feel claustrophobia or fear, but he had really come to cherish the world of fresh air, sunlight, stars, wind, and sky.
How long would it be before he sampled any of those joys again, if ever? The ogres had sealed the three tunnel mouths very thoroughly. They hadn’t even attempted to attack the entrenched dwarves, no doubt perceiving their disadvantages: because of their size, one ogre at a time would have had to fight against two or three dwarves at each narrow passage. So Ankhar had shrewdly ordered his ogres to toss large boulders into the mine entrances. The bombardment had seemed like a game to the brutes, as they competed to see who could throw the largest rocks with the most force.
A few dwarves had tried throwing the rocks out as fast as they were coming in, but they had been pummeled. When the third dwarf had fallen with a crushed skull, Dram had ordered the rest to withdraw deeper into the mines. The ogres had wasted little time in sealing off each hole, and even after all evidence of the sun had been blocked off, the dwarves could hear more a
nd more rocks thunking and crashing into the pile. The result was a plug that was probably more than a hundred feet thick-and many, many tons of weight-blocking the mouth of each of the three mine entrances.
“Pop?” asked Mikey, climbing into his lap. Sally and about a hundred others were sitting or lying nearby; the place near the mouth of the center tunnel was one of the widest spaces in the network of tunnels. They had been eating and sleeping there since the siege began.
“Yeah, Mike?” Dram said, forcing a jovial tone into his voice.
“Go outta here?” The little tyke pointed a chubby finger toward the massive pile of rocks blocking the mine tunnel.
“Well, you see Red and Beebus over there? And Damaris? It’s their turn to dig now, and when they’re done, it’ll be my turn again. And sooner or later, we’ll have all those rocks gone and go outta here.”
In truth, the excavation was far more involved. Three diggers worked shoulder to shoulder, sometimes standing, other times kneeling, or even lying down to pull a stubborn piece of debris out of the way. Other dwarves loaded those rocks into mining carts, while still more trucked those carts deeper into the mine, where the excess rock was unceremoniously dumped into plunging, unused shafts. The same work was going on in the other two tunnels, Dram knew; there were side passages connecting all three mines, so in effect the whole town was sheltering in a network of tunnels that formed an underground fortress.
But it was a fortress with very limited food supplies. Originally they had provisioned the mines with enough victuals for the approximately three hundred children and their caretakers to survive for a month. There were four times as many dwarves in there as originally anticipated, with most of them needing significantly more food than a child. Dram had ordered the food to be strictly rationed almost immediately after entering the mines.
At least they had fresh water from several natural streams descending through the interior of the mountain ridge and enough air for them to breathe comfortably, thanks to some long ventilation shafts extending to the top of the ridge. Considering the fact they had no way to get out of there, their fortress was more of a prison-which was all right temporarily, as long as it didn’t prove a tomb.
Easing Mikey down to the floor, Dram got up and went to check on the progress of the work. “How much farther?” he asked Red, who had been one of the miners who originally excavated the tunnel.
“I’d say eighty feet,” the hill dwarf, nicknamed for his long, fire-colored hair and beard, replied. He wiped his brow, studying the chisel marks on the wall that served as calculations. “They really sealed us in.”
“Need more help?” Dram offered.
“Not for now. Sit down, take your rest. There’ll be plenty of work for you later.”
Dram went back to his place and sat down, grateful when Sally slipped her hand into his. Mikey sat between them, slowly drifting off to sleep. Swig Frostmead came over, his face locked in a frown. He was on the verge of some loud complaint when he noticed the sleeping lad.
Glumly, Sally’s father sat beside Dram, watching the workers. Finally, he leaned over and whispered into his son-in-law’s ear.
“Why didn’t you think to store a few kegs of spirits in here?” he wanted to know.
Selinda was aware of voices. She tried to move, to speak, but no noise came from her lips. For a panicky moment, she feared that the hateful Lame Hale had poisoned her with another lotus drink. The sounds around her were vague and indistinct and did nothing to refresh her memory, to enlighten her.
But after a while, straining her ears, the voices started to make sense.
“Ten prime diamonds, and a large bottle of the potion. That’s a fair price for this merchandise, I agree.”
Selinda recognized Lame Hale’s voice, and her throat constricted at the thought that she was the “merchandise” at the heart of the negotiation.
“I agree as well.” The second speaker’s voice was muffed, as though he spoke through gauze or something.
The princess tried to open her eyes, but the lids refused to move-almost as if they were glued shut by some gummy substance. Frantically, she strained, trying to move, to speak, to see.
“Now get her out of here!” Hale said. “It makes me nervous, and she’s been here too long already!”
“I intend to.”
Selinda heard someone come close, felt a presence-like a cold, black shadow-loom over her. Abruptly a cold, clawlike object brushed her hand, and a painful shock pulsed through her body, forcing an involuntary scream.
Immediately her eyesight cleared, and she found herself looking up at a faceless man, an image of darkness that utterly terrified her. After a moment she realized that it was a person concealed by a black mask, but that only added to her fear.
“Get up, my dear,” he commanded in a clipped tone. “You will find that your limbs are quite capable of functioning again.”
Wiggling her fingers, lifting an arm, Selinda was surprised to see he spoke the truth. She forced herself to a sitting position, swaying dizzily. The man was standing very close to her, and she nearly gagged on the stench of foulness and decay that seemed to permeate his black robe.
“You aren’t going to take her out the front door, are you?” asked Hale, alarmed.
“Of course not.” The masked man stared down at her. She felt like a mouse under the keen stare of a circling hawk. “Stand up,” he said.
She did so, still dizzy, bracing herself against the bed. A momentary thought of flight entered her mind, but she banished it just as quickly. Even if she were steady enough on her feet to try to make a getaway, she sensed power in the man’s voice and knew that she couldn’t resist if he simply ordered her to stop. He must be some kind of wicked priest, she deduced, but she couldn’t guess which god he served.
“I know you have powerful friends,” he said to her, mildly amused. “So you must forgive a little spell that will mask you from magical detection.”
The priest pulled a dirty black powder from his pocket and sprinkled it over Selinda. She wanted to shake her head, to lift her hands and brush it away, but her body would not obey her mind.
“That will suffice,” he said. “Now we go.”
He swirled his hands around himself and circled Selinda’s head while muttering a deep, glottal chant. Almost immediately the room filled with gray haze, so thick Selinda couldn’t see the walls or floor; then she realized that the room itself had disappeared. She felt the sensation of standing in an immense space, but she could see nothing beyond the tip of her nose.
She experienced that clawlike touch again and gasped as the priest took her hand. Every fiber of her being compelled her to pull away, but once again she felt powerless. “You do not want to escape me… not here,” said the black-masked man. “You would wander for very many lifetimes and never find your way back home.”
Terrified, she felt herself pulled along, dragged and stumbling across some kind of smooth, hard surface. She looked down but couldn’t see anything except the gray haze. For a little while she tried to count her steps, but her mind was clouded, and the numbers swirled randomly in her head. Had they gone twenty paces, or was it two hundred? She had no way of telling.
“Now… here we are,” the priest said finally. The grayness vanished and she found herself in a wood-paneled room lined with books. There was a fireplace-cold at the moment-along one wall. There were great windows, and she could see that it was fully dark outside.
The place was vaguely familiar-no, more than vaguely, she had been there many times! Why was her mind so thick?
“I have her, my lord,” said the priest, addressing someone behind Selinda.
She turned and gasped out a single word. “Father!”
Then the contents of her stomach rebelled, doubling her over, forcing her to retch all over the expensive imported carpet.
“Excellency! The men are tiring badly. Are you sure you don’t want to stop for a few hours to let them rest?”
General Weaver�
��s question was legitimate since the army had been marching hard for three days. But the emperor had no patience for questions or delays. Jaymes had traveled that valley many times. He knew that New Compound was a two-hour march away-two hours if they could at least maintain their crawling pace!
“No rest!” he snapped. “There’ll be plenty of time for that after Ankhar is dead.”
He knew the risks he was taking. Bringing a fatigued army directly into battle from a forced march tempted disaster. But it was a calculated risk too, for he reckoned the ogres would be celebrating chaotically after driving the dwarves out of New Compound. Most likely the great majority would be drunk or groggy with powerful hangovers. If he delayed, his men would have time to rest, but the enemy would have time to recover as well.
And there were other risks. What if Ankhar was planning to withdraw back up and over the Garnet Mountains? They might lose his trail entirely! And how many dwarves had he killed? Was Dram alive… and Sally? What about their little son? With a twinge, Jaymes realized he hadn’t been there to see the lad in more than a year.
Curse Dram for a fool anyway! If he had built those bombards-ah, a foolish complaint at the moment. The big guns could reduce a fortress, but they would have been useless against ogres swarming down from the mountains. By the time the gunners were readying their second or third shot, the battery would have been overrun.
“Move!” demanded the emperor, picking up the pace of his own marching. He had dismounted hours earlier, striding on foot so as to set a better example for the men. He was grateful for the good dwarven road, smooth and gently graded, carrying them steadily and quickly up the valley toward New Compound.
He recognized a ridge before them, a moraine running perpendicular to the valley floor. It was the last obstacle before the town, and he halted his army. Ordering them to deploy on both sides of the road, he advanced carefully to a crest with General Weaver and Sergeant Ian.
They spotted the smoke even before the town came into view. Crouching, moving through some underbrush to the side of the road, they made their way to a decent vantage, where they could look over New Compound without being observed.
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