by Steve Barker
“Regroup?”
“Yes, Your Grace. I feel now that our best strategy is to signal our forces to assemble between the South and Green rivers and make plans to engage the enemy outside the city walls. I also believe it would be safest to spirit Your Grace away to Stonehome, on the High Trail within the Western Mountains. There you would be safe with only the need of a small force to keep an enemy at bay, as the High Pass is too narrow, and its cliffs too steep for the Demarians to reach you there.”
“You want me to leave the city? What makes you think we can get past the Demarian army that now lays siege to our walls?”
“Your Grace, there are secret tunnels beneath the city which could provide a means to slip past the Demarian line. But we will have to wait until the sun has set, that we might use the cover of darkness to slip away unseen.”
“And whom would you propose accompany us to Stonehome?”
“Your Grace, Lords Ventrent and Marnon would take two cohorts and ride the High Trail to Stonehome with you, staying until word arrives that our victory is secure.”
“Lord Wendal, are you sure that such a victory can be won?”
“I am Your Grace. Between the garrisons and your Royal Army, we at least equal the forces of our enemy. Once the recall is complete, we will have a force assembled large enough to face the Demarians. Our only test will be time. That is why I wish to evacuate you from the city, so that the enemy has no chance to seize the crown.”
“Lord Wendal, these matters are not within my scope of expertise. I defer to you in this time of war. Make your preparations.”
“At once, Your Grace.”
The Master of The Royal Forces exited the King’s personal chambers with haste. Turning to his personal page, the young King tried his best to contain his anxiety.
“Tedd, will you stay close to me?”
“Until my last breath, Your Grace.”
The King looked with trepidation out his window at the battle which raged against the city walls, as the sun neared the horizon.
“Tedd,” the King called to his page, who looked up and stood to attention. “Go to the Sorcerer’s Laboratory and tell him I must speak with him. He prepares some sort of magical counterattack to this siege. Tell him that his time is running out, and that I need to know that he can repel the enemy. Go, and report to me how long it will be before he is able to give response to the siege.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The page hurried out of the chambers to carry out the King’s orders.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
“Your Grace, we have begun to ram the gates and I am confident that it is but a short matter of time before we are through,” reported Lord Birk. He had been near the front line most of the day, organizing the offensive and coordinating each wave of the attack with his commanders. The Lorian forces had given a show of strength upon the battlefield outside the city walls initially, but retreated to within its gates once the bulk of King Dermond’s army had presented itself on the ridge above Magnaville’s outlying fields. Lord Birk had ordered the start of siege tactics shortly before the noon sun, and though the city’s walls were strong, the overwhelming number of siege engines he had employed were beginning to break cracks in its structure.
“Good, Lord Birk. Make ready a cohort of your best fighters, for once the gates have been breached, I shall lead them into the city. I want to find this boy King myself and put fear in his heart by my own hand,” announced the King as he stood and readied himself to continue the battle.
“Your Grace, I advise that you allow some of our forces through the breach ahead of you, as I do not wish you to risk yourself to such an extent as the initial breach would create,” replied Lord Birk, thinking to himself that the King’s advanced age put him at excessive risk.
The King raised an eyebrow and smirked in response.
“My dear Renald,” the King chortled as he placed a hand on the lord’s shoulder, “I did not ride this far to hide behind other men. My blade has felt the inside of more men than any ten of these good warriors put together. It will not remain dry now. Have your cohort assembled quickly, that I may ride for the front line.”
The King’s resolve was unshakeable, and Lord Birk had learned long ago that once the King had made up his mind, there was no changing it. With a bow, Lord Birk excused himself to assemble the men to ride with the King.
Ten minutes later, Lord Birk returned to the King with a cohort of one hundred men, presenting them in formation, ready to advance on the wall.
“Your Grace, these good men are honoured to ride with you.”
“With us, My Lord. I will not deny you the honour” grinned the King.
“You Honour me indeed, Your Grace,” smiled Lord Birk.
As they mounted their horses, the shouts of hundreds of men came from the front line. Shouts of triumph.
“Your Grace, the gates are opened!” declared War Marshall Greln, riding into the midst of the gathered cohort.
The King responded by drawing his sword and raising it over his head.
“Let us ride!”
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
The light coming through the window was beginning to change as the sun neared the horizon. Hollyglade and Jeron had shared every thought that entered each of their minds on the matter of how to resist the Sorcerer. Neither was completely confident of anything, but they agreed that both of them would do all they could to refuse him.
“Jeron, once he starts whatever it is that he’s going to start, the biggest fear I still have is that if I resist him too hard, and that causes me to release too much power, you’ll be as much the victim as he is.”
“Hollyglade, don’t worry about that. Whatever it takes to defeat him, that is what you must do. Do not hold back for my sake. I believe in you, and if I have to suffer to save this kingdom, then so be it. I would be unworthy of my Royal blood if I were not willing to risk it to save the innocent.”
“But I’m not….” She stopped as the Sorcerer returned to the laboratory. He was carrying two vials of liquid, and dragging what looked like a coat stand, with tubes running from a jar hanging on one of its pegs into the sleeve of the his robe.
“Now my friends,” the Sorcerer commanded “you will join me in a drink. Think of it as a toast to your contribution to my greatness.” His tone was spectral and macabre in its timbre, as he moved first toward Jeron. With a motion of his hand, he forced Jeron to his feet.
“What are you doing to him?” Hollyglade demanded through gritted teeth. Though she had been rendered unconscious by the Sorcerer’s power, she had not witnessed the him employ this level of manipulation. She was shocked at the power she perceived being used upon Jeron. She reacted with a sudden upheaval of her own power, but fought it down instinctively, as she had done so many times before. She cursed herself silently as she did, admonishing herself for not controlling her emotions. She knew that the time to use her power was at hand, but she wanted to be the one to make the decision, she had to be. This could not be allowed to be a reaction, it had to be a function of her intent. She gripped the bars of her cage as she clenched her jaw in frustration.
Seeing her reaction out of the corner of his eye, the Sorcerer responded to her question.
“Bridging the gap, dear girl. Don’t worry, you shall understand fully in a few moments.”
Jeron stiffly moved to the front of his cage, and grabbed hold of the bars. Pressing his chin to the bars and tilting his head back, Jeron’s eyes widened in fear as the Sorcerer poured the contents of one of the vials into Jeron’s open mouth. Grinning widely, the Sorcerer stepped away as Jeron swallowed involuntarily, and then fell back from the bars and wiped his face.
Hollyglade watched as Jeron spit out whatever he could of the remains of the liquid that sat in his mouth before he looked at her and shook his head. Before she could process what she was seeing, the Sorcerer moved to Hollyglade’s cage and made the same motion to her. She felt a deep pull at the core of her being, urging her to stand. She fought the urge to get up w
ith all her will, yet her arms still pushed her off the floor, and her legs still moved her to the front of the cage. The sensation was painful, yet not entirely unfamiliar. As she struggled to make every effort she could think of to fight the power that manipulated her, she began to understand what she felt.
This was power working on her, not unlike the power that she worked from within her when she had tried to melt the metal bars of the cell in the stone prison. But this was different, backward somehow. Instead of feeling it flow from within her, she felt it bind itself to her, surround her, move her like hands upon her shoulders might restrain her. But she could not overcome it, and she was at the front of the cage with her mouth open, her mind screaming curses of contention.
As the liquid hit the inside of her mouth, her tongue seared with sensations of bitter and sour so strong that she felt nausea instantly. She wanted so badly to spit it out, but could not make herself do so. Fighting hard not to swallow, her mouth closed over the vile concoction, and she unwillingly pushed the liquid into her stomach. As the repugnant potion left her mouth, she felt the power that had encased her depart. Falling to the floor, she spat what remained of the liquid as far as she could.
She began to heave, and hoped that she might bring up the contents of her stomach, but could not coax it forth. As she turned her head, she watched as the Sorcerer consumed the contents of the last vial. Then, he began to laugh in a manner that caused the hair to rise on the back of Hollyglade’s neck.
“Ahhhh,” crowed the Sorcerer, “the time is nearly here. Under the dark pull of the new moon, I shall take ultimate power, and make it mine. Your gift shall become my strength, and with it I shall place all those who oppose me under my feet. There is no power that shall stop me, no force that will be able to stand against me. The name, Ni’Morstrom the Almighty, shall dominate the histories of this world!”
Hollyglade shrank back from the front of her cage as she watched the sinister diabolist walk to the window and fully open the curtains and shutter to stand in the light of the fading sun. As she observed him, she heard him begin to chant, and could feel the room begin to resonate with the rhythm of his incantation. Her attention was pulled away as Jeron called to her, whispering harshly.
“Hollyglade, you must fight him, you must. I am impotent in this contest, but you have a way to combat him.”
“I tried, Jeron. But I couldn’t do it. He’s too strong, too skilled.”
“He is not stronger than you, I am sure of it. If he were, he wouldn’t need you. You can overpower him. Please, tell me what you felt when he controlled your movements.”
She dropped her head, closed her eyes, took a deep breath to regain her composure and confidence, and then looked to Jeron.
“It felt, in some ways like when I use power to heat stone. It was different, though.”
“How?” he whispered as he looked over his shoulder at the chanting sorcerer.
“It wasn’t inside me, it was around me, like hundreds of hands grabbing me and moving me, but like water too. Water that moved and became solid as it pushed and pulled me against my will.”
Jeron, brought his hand to his chin thoughtfully for a moment, as he stared unfocused to the floor while working the information over in his mind. Then with a look of understanding, he raised his head and met Hollyglade’s eyes with his.
“That’s it. I think that’s it.”
“What?” she asked with urgency.
“Water. It’s like water.”
She looked at him puzzlingly, and waited with anticipation as he worked to express the thought.
“Think of the jug pouring water, or like a waterfall. If you were pouring a jug of water, one that can never go empty because it has a source of more water within in somehow, like you have the source of your power within, and then I come along and start to pour wine into your jug of water. Think of what would happen. The flow of water from your jug would just wash the wine out, push it out, because it can’t go up the stream of water coming from the jug.
“Imagine trying to pour a barrel of wine at the base of a waterfall and hoping to stain the riverbed red. The water would just dilute the wine and carry it away. You must become that waterfall. You have to overflow!” He grabbed the bars of his cage in the accentuation of his declaration.
Hollyglade’s breathing increased as she tried to translate the analogy into something she could use, something she could do. This made sense to her, yet contradicted everything she had taught herself to do concerning her power. So many years had been spent clamping down on the swell of power, holding back the flow of it, tightening the lid on that proverbial jar. To stop employing those preventative measures would be difficult. To reverse them, and thrust forth the power she had constantly fought to contain, felt like it would be pure folly. But she knew that the thing within her that she must now fight, was no longer the power itself, but her fear of it.
“But Jeron, if I pour out my power at him, won’t he just take it?”
“Some of it, probably, but he can’t handle all of it. We have to believe that. Think of him like a wine or water skin. Fill him so full of power that he bursts! His plan trusts in the fact that you haven’t used your power, and he’s banking on you not using it against him. You have to take him by surprise, you have to overwhelm him. You have to try.”
She looked at him with a sudden ferocity that told him that she finally believed, that she was ready to fight for something. She clenched her fists and jaw, gritted her teeth, and stood up. The room began to vibrate more intensely, and as Jeron looked between Hollyglade and the Sorcerer, the air began to warp like heat rising from sun-baked rock.
The Sorcerer turned from the window, appearing to sense the change in Hollyglade’s mien. He stopped his incantation, and thrust a finger at her as he roared with an otherworldly booming fury,
“You desire to contest with me? I invite you to try!”
He stepped to face her, held both hands out toward her and began to utter a ritual that neither Hollyglade nor Jeron could comprehend. As he did so, the room began to vibrate.
IX : Overthrow
As they neared the now demolished gate which lay fragmented under the crippled walls of the great city of Magnaville, King Dermond, Lord Birk, War Marshall Greln, and their accompaniment of more than one hundred soldiers on horseback charged through the fighting which was still taking place on both sides of the opening. When the gate had fallen, Lorian forces had pressed through the opening and taken the fighting to the Demarians outside the wall. There was no clear battle line as men fought intensely both in and outside the entrance to the city.
Many of the Lorian forces had not been able to retreat to within the safety of the city walls when the signal was given, and had been caught facing the whole of the Demarian army in the initial charge. None of those men still survived. Those who had retreated into the city numbered in the thousands still.
Having also lost many troops in the opening offensive, the Demarians were eager to take the fight to the Lorians inside the walls. The fighting was loud, intense, bloody, and severe. Neither side gave any sign of breaking, and the Demarian King’s cohort were forced to fight their way to the gate, and through it.
The gate was not wide, and when it had been fully functional and in working order, no more than four horses could ride abreast through its opening. Now that the remnants of the destroyed doors took up much of the space within the frame of the gateway, the debris made it quite narrow.
War Marshall Greln spurred his horse to the front of the attack, and swung his longsword with vicious intent, taking out several Lorian troops in a matter of half a minute. Closely following behind him were several more of the cohort, who joined the attack in close proximity. They were the first mounted fighters to the gate, and cleared the way as the King and the rest of the cohort pressed forward behind them. The battle continued to intensify as the full cohort of mounted soldiers poured through the gate. Once through, more Demarian forces followed immediately beh
ind.
Then, progress halted. This was Magnaville, and the Lorian forces knew it well. Though the Demarians had managed to get through the gate, they were now essentially boxed in, and at the mercy of the Lorian Spearmen and Archers. Arrows rained down upon the Demarian soldiers as they entered the interior of the city. The Lorian commanders had organised their forces into walls of men, whose spears were twice as long as one man.
King Dermond shouted instructions to his men as the advance ground to a halt.
“Form up behind me! Make a wedge!” came the King’s booming voice.
In response, half the cohort moved behind the battle hardy warrior, and pressed forward as one. The King directed the advance toward the main avenue which lead to the centre of the city, and to the castle.
“We push for Whiterock!”
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
“Lord Wendal, the Demarians have breached the North Gates and are entering the city!” shouted a page who came running into the Vestry Hall, where King Harford was being prepared for evacuation.
“How can that be? How did they get in so quickly?” exclaimed the Lord as a look of shock overcame his visage. “Your Grace, we must make haste, for there may still be time for you to escape unharmed,” pleaded Lord Wendal.
The young King did not respond. Hanging his head, he appeared frozen in thought. Overwhelmed by all that swirled about him. His thoughts went to his father. What would he have done? What would my brother have done? Why am I here, instead of him? Without giving a reply, the young King slumped into his throne and dropped his head into his hands.
“Your Grace,” pleaded Lord Wendal, “we must act. If we stay here and do nothing, we shall surely be overrun. A fight throughout the castle would be too costly, and likely not one that results in your escape.”
Harford then raised his head, and for the first time he bore a look of anger and determination. He had lost everything he truly valued, his father, brother, mother, friends, and even the freedom and innocence of childhood. He felt something within him break, and lost the desire to hold back. He stood and held a finger out toward Quentin Wendal.
