His shoulders had slumped under the weight of it all, Aleina thought.
She handed the reins to an attendant at the door and bounded up the stairs to the king’s chamber, entering through the door from the hallway just as Firehelm was coming back in from the balcony.
He was a middle-aged man, muscular and tall, with long arms, a thin waist, and broad shoulders, so that when he stood upright with his arms hanging free at his sides, his forearms were far out from his hips indeed. He wore a full beard, still more brown than gray, and had a powerful brow, ridged by what seemed to be a singular eyebrow, knotted above his large and thick nose and beneath his curly long brown locks.
He was dressed in shining plate armor, a thick purple cape above it, and with a thick and heavy bastard sword with an enormous ball pommel set in a scabbard on his right hip—for the King of Sundabar was left-handed. Looking at the formidable weapon, Aleina was amazed he could even draw it, despite his long arms.
But he could, and Firehelm’s prowess in battle was well-known to Aleina, though she had rarely ventured to Sundabar before this troubled occasion. The strong man did not shy from battle, and indeed had led many scouting parties against orc raiders over the years.
“My liege,” she said with a curt bow.
“Knight-Captain,” he replied courteously. “May I extend again my gratitude to you for your service to Sundabar?”
“You were in need and ever has Sundabar been ally to Silverymoon,” the Knight-in-Silver replied.
“In need?” he echoed with an amused chuckle. “Truly you have a gift with understatement. I am out of commanders, Knight-Captain,” He moved to a seat before the flaming hearth and bade her to sit across from him, and as she made her way over, he retrieved a fancy bottle of fine brandy and poured them both a glass.
“Not true,” Aleina said. “Many veterans line your walls, skilled with weapons and in strategy. They were not moved to higher ranks only because your commanders had been in place for so long, until …”
She paused, for she didn’t want to upset him.
“Until the dragon dropped a stone on the lot of them, eh?” the king finished, and he handed her the glass then lifted his own in a silent toast to the men and woman crushed in that tragedy.
“You have many who are capable, King Firehelm,” she said after a sip, “and undeniably, fanatically loyal to king and city. All around the wall, you are well-served by fine warriors.”
“Even fine warriors need a fine leader,” he said. “Do not underestimate your worth to Sundabar in these dark days for the sake of humility. I’ll not hear it, I tell you. Even in the duties of rationing …” He paused and smiled as she winced.
“Aye, it wounds you to tell a child to ignore the grumbling in his belly,” King Firehelm went on. “And yet you do it, because you have put the counters to work and know the limits of the rations you must enforce to get us to winter. But what then? Will food not be harder to find when the snows lay deep on the land?”
“If the orc siege is broken, then we will find allies,” Aleina answered. “The dwarves of …”
Firehelm held up his hand. “Speak not of them to me,” he warned. “They left your kin—they left you—to die at the Redrun. They huddle in their holes unscarred. And this is their fault to begin with, the fault of old King Bruenor …”
“My King, I beg of you to focus your energies on the problems at hand,” Aleina dared to interrupt.
“The actions of the dwarves, now and then, are relevant to those problems.”
“Indeed, but I trust in King Emerus and King Connerad. If they can find their way from their embattled gates, they will come to Sundabar’s aid.”
“If they find their way,” the king said, his emphasis on the first word revealing his doubts that such would be the case. She understood his frustration—he had expressed it to her several times in recent days as the food grew scarcer and the casualties mounted.
In turn, Aleina had pointed out to Firehelm that a third of Sundabar’s citizenry were dwarven, and many had familial connections to the dwarf kingdoms, particularly in Citadel Felbarr.
“In any event, we must hold our ground,” Aleina said. “I am concerned with the wizards most of all.”
“The shudders of their lightning bolts have rattled my bones,” the king replied. “And left many enemies smoking on the field.”
“Their strikes have been deadly, indeed,” Aleina agreed, “but I have asked them to prepare more defensive magic and they have refused.”
“Kabbledar is a stubborn one,” King Firehelm admitted, referring to the mage who led Sundabar’s small but skilled wizard’s guild. “Their lightning strikes down giants and keeps the dragons up high. Their fireballs melt goblins and orcs by the score. What would you have them do?”
“The outer wall is in need of repair at many points,” she said and she put her glass down on the small table between the chairs. “We can hold back the hordes for one day while the wizards cast spells of creation, for stone and iron walls, for …”
She paused as she followed the king’s gaze to her glass, to see the remaining liquid shivering like the waters of a disturbed pond. A moment later, before Aleina could ask what that might be, she felt the tremor, deep within the roots of the citadel, deep within the foundations of Sundabar.
A long and low vibration, it continued and grew in power, like the rumble of a beginning avalanche.
Out on the wall, the defenders also felt the tremble, and knew at once that it was from more than the charge of the orc hordes, who indeed were coming on once more.
“There,” Doughty said to Silverbell, grabbing his companion by the arm and turning him about. “By the gods!”
The cry of disbelief reflected well Silverbell’s initial reaction, for a strange and terrifying sight indeed was revealed to them at the city’s main guard tower beside the northern gate. Tendrils of sparkling lightning climbed up the stone walls, crackling in and out of the arrow slits, blue sparks in the dying daylight. Through one window, the pair caught a glimpse of a soldier scrambling past, trembling and smoking, sparkles of magical lightning biting at him. Atop the tower, the guards watched the magic climb and knew they were doomed—so much so that two leaped from the battlement, flying fifty feet to crash to the ground.
To the side of the tower, further from the two Silverymoon warriors, the wall itself began to shake and tremble, and a great crack appeared in the thick stone.
“They tunneled,” Silverbell said, his voice barely audible.
The web of magical lightning crested the tower walls and loosed its fury on the poor soldiers still atop the tower, archers and spotters and a catapult crew. They jolted about weirdly, several fell from the tower, and their clothes began to smoke.
Beyond the tower, the wall collapsed, folding in on itself, stones scraping and smashing against each other, crashing to the ground and splashing into the moat. One large section fell outward, slamming the outer wall, and it too had clearly been compromised.
Their enemies had tunneled under the walls and to the base of the guard tower, and had compromised the substructure!
Cries erupted within the guard tower, as those who had survived the lightning barrage now met living foes, the sounds of battle coming forth.
A barrage of giant boulders slammed against the compromised outer wall, just beyond the fallen inner wall.
And Silverbell spotted it first, a dragon swooping down from on high, wings folded as it fell into a speeding dive and aimed, the elf knew at once, for the compromised wall.
“Wizards!” he cried. “Wizards! Oh archers! To the breach! To the breach!”
He looked out over the wall, to the worg-riding orcs, the giants, and the armored ogres all speeding for that same area, the spot the dragon, a living battering ram, would soon open wide, and Silverbell knew then that Sundabar, this day, was doomed.
They had the guard tower. The city gates fell open and the hordes poured through.
Silverbell and
Doughty fired off their remaining arrows, then drew their swords and leaped down to join the wild melee.
But they knew they could not win.
Sundabar could not win.
“To the citadel. To the citadel!” came the cries from every corner of the city, and the infirm and the elderly and the young scrambled to get to the King’s Keep, the great citadel that centered the circular city of Sundabar.
And those who could fight, like Silverbell and Doughty, held back the hordes as long as they could, and fought on when the city began to burn about them.
King Firehelm rushed out onto his balcony, and knew despair. A third of the buildings were ablaze, and orcs and goblins swarmed through the streets like a spreading flood.
“Hold the doors!” he shouted down to Aleina and the others, dwarves mostly, battling on the wide stone steps immediately before the great citadel. Every heartbeat they could keep the approach to the great iron doors open meant that another citizen of Sundabar could get in behind the massive walls.
“The caverns,” the king remarked, more to himself than to the two guards flanking him. “We must get into the Everfire Caverns and fight our way through the Underdark, yes.”
Nodding, that thought in mind, King Firehelm retreated into his room to find his maps for those tunnels flowing from the granaries below the citadel.
No sooner had he left the balcony when a dark shadow passed over it, and the two guards he had left behind were so mesmerized by the sight of the dragon passing so low over the city that neither saw its rider leap free into the air, plummeting to the citadel roof in a death-defying freefall.
At the last moment, barely twenty feet above the building and dropping like a stone, Tiago Baenre tapped his House emblem, thus enacting the magical levitation spell. His descent slowed immediately, but did not end, and he hit the roof hard but fell into a roll both to absorb the shock, and to send him to his desired target.
He came to the edge of the roof directly above the king’s balcony and went over without hesitation, pressing his shield underneath the lip of the overhang and calling forth its web-like magic to hold him up as he rolled over and got his feet down over the balcony, still a dozen feet below them.
“Hey!” one of the guards cried out, at last noticing him.
Tiago released the magic of the shield and dropped before the man, and even as he lightly touched down, his sword Lullaby was already in swift motion, taking aside the guard’s thrusting spear with practiced ease, then rolling over the shaft to slash at the man’s upper arm.
The guard grunted and leaped back, blood showing on his sleeve just below his shoulder. He called to his companion, who rushed to his side, and thrust forth again with his spear.
Tiago blocked it with Spiderweb, his shield, and drove it down low and to his left, then chopped down with his sword along the shaft, splintering the spear in half.
To his credit, the guard played the hand perfectly, ignoring the break and stabbing ahead again with the makeshift spear that was the sharp shaft. He thought he had a hit, and against a lesser warrior he surely would have, but Tiago continued his turn behind the sword chop, rolling right around just a hand’s breadth ahead of the pursuing weapon.
The drow went down low as he turned, then crouched even lower, bending over at the waist, as he came around, lifting his left leg up fast in a diagonal kick that caught the pursuing and overbalancing guard under the ribs and drove him up and over the railing. He grabbed for it futilely, but toppled over, plummeting to his death.
Tiago paid him no heed at all, coming around with Lullaby slashing forward in perfect timing to take aside the sword of the second guard.
Tiago cut straight across, right to left, then backhanded down on the return, interrupting the flow before the blade went too low, to stab the sword straight ahead. Pressing furiously, the drow rushed ahead behind the stab, and the sentry, up on his toes and with his hips thrown back, barely got his own shield in line to brace against the weight of Tiago’s bull rush. Spiderweb and the guard’s shield crashed together hard, though given the cushiony composition of Tiago’s shield, it was a muffled sound.
The guard moved to leap back and get his feet under him, but he didn’t understand the properties of Tiago’s shield, for it held on, and as he jumped back, Tiago tugged hard.
The guard landed on his toes and stutter-stepped in an attempt to fully regain his balance, but on came the drow. Tiago released the shield’s grip with a mere thought and raced ahead, stabbing low, rolling his sword over the desperate parry.
Down came the guard’s shield right behind his diving sword, and wisely so, but again, the superior Tiago simply retracted his blade and rolled about over the shield, sending Spiderweb around to bat the shield further across the guard’s body.
Tiago stabbed out to the side, right under his own shield arm, Lullaby slashing into the guard’s elbow.
The man yelped in pain and leaped away, but the drow was with him, Lullaby poking in again over the drooping shield—drooping because of the wounded elbow and because of the insidious poison Lullaby injected. A great weariness fell over the guard and his movements slowed, just a bit.
Even at full speed, the guard was no match for Tiago. Sluggish as he now was, with drow poison coursing his veins, Tiago simply overwhelmed him.
Lullaby flashed in under the guard’s raised shield, then again above it as the guard, stabbed in the gut, reflexively brought the shield slamming down.
Out to the left went Lullaby, a feint that fooled the guard, who overreacted in his mounting desperation, throwing both his sword and shield out that way to try to block.
But the drow’s sword wasn’t there, and it came in fast behind the double block, opening the man’s throat.
The poor guard staggered back, gasping and coughing, and his legs gave out before him.
“By the gods,” came a cry from inside the room, King Firehelm fast returning, huge sword in hand. “Murderous drow!”
As if to confirm the accusation, Tiago shrugged and spun, Lullaby coming across perfectly, the fine blade slicing through flesh and bone with ease.
As King Firehelm leaped onto the balcony, the dead guard fell face down to the floor.
“Dog!” the king howled and leaped in, a great two-handed overhead chop crashing down for Tiago’s head.
Up went Spiderweb above Tiago’s head to block, and a lesser shield would have shattered under the weight of the blow. But not only did Spiderweb survive the impact, its magical properties helped mitigate the weight of the blow, and that, along with Tiago’s perfectly timed drop to his knees, left the drow fully uninjured from the powerful attack.
Convinced this brute of a man would simply hoist him from the ground with his next swing, Tiago didn’t even try to stick Spiderweb to that huge sword. Instead he turned Firehelm’s strength against the man.
Up and around went the large blade, now sweeping in from Tiago’s left. The drow swung about and brought Spiderweb down at the last moment to catch the attack, and Firehelm’s follow-through actually lifted Tiago back to his feet, and there, the drow stepped back and slid off as the sword passed before him harmlessly.
Tiago rolled around it with sudden ferocity, and out shot his sword as he came fully around, stabbing Firehelm in the chest. Tiago retracted immediately and sent his blade in a short vertical spin just as Firehelm let go of his own sword with one hand and reached out to throttle Tiago.
Fingers went flying free and Firehelm howled and retracted his hand, then tried to get his sword back in line as Lullaby came ahead once, twice, and thrice, stabbing hard.
Finally, Firehelm was in position to block, but Tiago wasn’t there.
The drow rolled right around the staggering, wounded king, and on the completed turn, Lullaby swept down across the back of Firehelm’s knees.
And around Tiago went again, a complete spin, and this time the fine blade slashed the King of Sundabar across the lower back.
Down went Firehelm to his knees, f
alling forward to brace himself on the floor with a fingerless hand. Growling, the stubborn warrior king feebly stabbed out underneath his horizontal torso with his sword. The blade hit nothing, for there was nothing to hit, and the confused Firehelm waved it about.
But Tiago was back the other way, on the other side and up near Firehelm’s shoulder, Lullaby up high.
With unerring aim, Tiago brought it down.
He sheathed Lullaby and picked up the head of King Firehelm from the floor of the balcony, then leaped to the stone railing overlooking the citadel’s front gates, far, far below.
But not so far that the city defenders down there didn’t hear the drow’s victorious cry, or didn’t see the specter of Tiago Baenre, standing tall on the balcony, holding high the head of the King of Sundabar.
In the room behind Tiago, the doors banged open and many soldiers charged in. The dark elf turned to regard them, and then looked at them with a bit of amusement.
With a smile and a salute, Tiago stepped back off the railing and dropped from their sight.
A moment later, as the furious court guards rushed out onto the balcony and to their fallen, headless King, Tiago came back into view, but now astride the dragon, and now with the white horned head of Arauthator staring at the fools.
Icy breath bit at them and drove them back and froze the blood in their veins.
Across the burning city went Tiago and his flying mount, all the while with the head of King Firehelm held high for all to see, for orcs and goblins, ogres and giants to cheer, and for humans and dwarves and other citizens of Sundabar to look on and despair.
Many citizens of Sundabar got into the safety of the citadel that day, including Aleina Brightblade, and the great impregnable iron gates banged closed. They had escaped, momentarily at least.
But the city was lost and in flames, and nearly ten thousand citizens of proud Sundabar lay dead, or were trapped outside to be hunted down and slaughtered.
The flames rose high from every corner of the city.
Rise of the King Page 32
