The Crown and the Sword

by Doug Niles

  “The last messenger to make it through the siege lines arrived more than a month ago. We’ve tried to send men in, but sporadic reports—by homing pigeon—indicate that none of them have made it through. There’s a cloud of magic around that place, no doubt caused by the Cleft Spires. Though it blocks our scrying attempts, it is also an asset—for it certainly protects the city against the magic of Ankhar’s Thorn Knights as well.

  “So Solanthus is still holding out. Discipline and morale are reportedly good, my lord, but the shortage of food is becoming the worst predicament. Most of the food is going to the fighting men, of course, so the suffering is greatest among the citizenry. It will not be long before the youngest and oldest citizens will be starving to death.”

  “And the duchess herself?”

  “She pleads for help, as soon as possible. But she also promises to hold out until we can break the siege,” reported Rankin. “She’s but a slip of a thing, and … well … when she married Duke Rathskell, we all made assumptions about her that have turned out to be wrong. By the gods—my men and I respect her now. We should be there with her!”

  For several years Rankin had been the captain in charge of the duke’s army. Following Rathskell’s death, he had retained his office but had been outside the city with his mobile forces when Solanthus was surrounded. Now his eyes grew moist and his voice broke from the obvious passion of his desire to return to the city and fight for its freedom.

  Jaymes himself showed little emotion in his face or voice. “The talents of the duchess obviously go far beyond the bedroom, you mean?” he asked.

  Rankin nodded, flushing slightly. “I admit I made a poor judgment of a great lady, my lord.”

  “We all made the same judgment, I’m afraid,” Dayr noted quickly, coming to Rankin’s rescue. “But she’s a better man than her late husband ever was.”

  “Indeed.” The marshal nodded, reflecting privately.

  “Good riddance to Rathskell, in any event,” Markus huffed. Each of the generals knew that Duke Rathskell had died on Jaymes Markham’s sword, but none of them saw any reason to mention the fact. Nor would they mention the fortune in gems that had vanished upon the duke’s death, though they must suspect that those stones were now being used to fund the expensive, and secret, operations of the distant, mysterious Compound.

  “Excuse me, my lords?”

  They looked up at the approach of a young knight, a clean-shaven officer who wore a tunic of white, emblazoned with small symbols of the Crown, the Rose, and the Sword.

  “Sir Templar? Please, join us,” Jaymes offered.

  “Thank you, my Lord Marshal. Welcome back—I am pleased to see that Kiri-Jolith has blessed you with a safe journey.”

  “Well, he didn’t place any undue obstacles in my path, and for that I myself am grateful,” Jaymes replied. “What can we do for you?”

  Templar was a knight-priest, a Clerist like Sergeant Heath, one of the new breed of clerical warriors who had begun to join the ranks of the Solamnics during the later campaigns of the War of Souls. With the disappearance of Paladine, the traditional high god of the knightly orders, the Clerists had been working hard to rebuild the faith of the troops. Some of them maintained devout worship of the merchant god Shinare, while many others, such as Templar, were devoted followers of Kiri-Jolith, the Just.

  “Well, my lord … it’s the dwarves. We have several good, solid priests among their ranks, and they are trying their best. It’s just that … well.…”

  “Tell us—spit it out, man!” encouraged Dayr.

  “Well, the dwarves are refusing to take the Oath—they serve in the ranks of the Solamnic Army. But they won’t speak the words that pledge their commitment to all of the knightly cause!”

  “Well, they’re not knights, after all,” Jaymes said. “They’re not required to take the Oath. And it seems that too vigorous efforts to bend them to that ideal might only drive them away. I have known more than a few dwarves in my time, and every one of them is stubborn to the core. But also quite honorable, in their way.”

  “That’s not the point!” protested the priest.

  Dayr and Markus exchanged nervous glances—even Jaymes’s highest-ranking generals were not so quick to bluntly contradict the army commander.

  “Now, lad,” said Markus sternly, clearing his throat. “Remember your place. This is the lord marshal you’re addressing.”

  “I know!” said Templar dismissively. “But it’s a matter that needs to be addressed. Thus far this army has been blessed by remarkable success—the gods have smiled upon us! But if we don’t take that obligation seriously, who knows how long this favor will last?”

  “What obligation, exactly, do you mean?” asked Jaymes softly.

  “Why, the obligation to the great legacy of Solamnia! Of Vinas Solamnus, who forged these scattered realms into an empire! And to the noble lords who have carried his legacy on through the ages!”

  “Noble lords, such as Duke Walker of Caergoth? Who killed his own wife to further his ambitions? Who betrayed his fellow dukes and allowed hundreds, even thousands, of brave men to die because he was reluctant to spend his treasury, too lazy to leave the protection of his city walls? You mean that legacy?” Jaymes’s voice took on an edge.

  “Yes! I mean, well, no—not that part of Walker’s character. Surely, he made mistakes. But he was corrupted by the Prince of Lies! It was Hiddukel who turned him from the path of righteousness!”

  “But he took the Oath, did he not? In fact, he administered the Oath to countless recruits, good men who became knights.”

  “Yes, exactly! It was the Oath … I mean … but it’s important! The Oath must be preserved and furthered as best we can. Surely you can see that.”

  Jaymes nodded, pausing before he replied. “Yes, the Oath is important when it is spoken by one who believes that to which he swears. And so it shall be in the Army of Solamnia. You can teach the men—and the dwarves—about the Oath and the Measure and the legacy of Vinas Solamnus. But nobody will be required to speak that oath, nor shall any soldiers in this army be criticized or harangued for failure to speak its credo.”

  “But—”

  “Son, I think the lord marshal has made his wishes known. Thanks for bringing your concerns to us.” Dayr spoke brusquely.

  Templar, finally, seemed to get the hint. He looked glum as he rose, but he bowed with stiff formality and nodded to the commanders. “And thank you, my lords, for hearing me,” he said before turning and shuffling off into the gathering darkness.

  The lord regent’s palace overlooked the city of Palanthas and the splendid, deep-water Bay of Branchala from a mountain vantage outside of the city’s walls—the walls that could, in truth, no longer be said to contain the vibrant metropolis. In fact, much of this splendid city now sprawled outside the ring of ancient fortifications. These outlying districts included the splendid manors of nobles as well as the stockyards and corrals necessary for the bustling commerce that was the city’s lifeblood. Markets, artisans, and manufactories lined the wide highway leading to the inner city.

  Within the palace halls, on this early evening, an elegantly dressed nobleman made his way toward the regent’s drawing room bearing an expression of quiet satisfaction. By the time he reached the chamber and was admitted, he was smiling broadly.

  “I thank you for your intercession, my lord,” said the man. “Your daughter has consented to accompany me to the Nobles Ball next month.”

  “Ah, Lord Frankish. Good. I knew she would,” said Lord Regent Bakkard du Chagne. He was a short, pudgy man with only a thin layer of hair on his head, but his visitor—as well as most others in this city—knew that his unassuming looks were deceptive. Du Chagne was the most powerful man in Palanthas, descended from a long line of stewards who had held authority in the city since the end of the lineage of Solamnic kings. His influence, and money, was enough to intimidate other powerful persons in Solamnia—with the notable exception of the Lord Marshal Jaymes Ma
rkham.

  “In fact,” the regent went on, his voice dropping conspiratorially. “I encouraged her to welcome your approaches. She needs someone like you—a man of good station and impeccable loyalty—to guide her future.”

  Lord Frankish was also one of the wealthiest nobles in northern Ansalon, and while this, too, counted as an important factor in the lord regent’s favor, neither man felt that this asset needed to be voiced aloud. In addition, Frankish was the commanding general of the Palanthian Legion. This large, well-trained, and well-equipped force had been serving as the lord regent’s personal army since shortly after the fall of Mina and the Dark Knights.

  Only then did Lord Frankish notice two other men present in the drawing room. One was the tall, dour priest, the Clerist Lord Inquisitor Frost; the other was Sir Russel Moorvan, a magic-user and Solamnic Kingfisher knight.

  “Good sirs,” said Frankish with a polite bow. Frankish was more a man of action, an accomplished swordsman and equestrian, but he understood that these two men were policy advisers who were equally important to the lord regent.

  “We are discussing matters on the plains,” du Chagne announced, “and would be pleased to have you join us, my lord.”

  The plains, Frankish knew, meant Lord Marshal Jaymes Markham. The four men were united in their firm belief that the upstart army commander—a man of common birth!—was an irritant that they could not continue to ignore. So long as his army was occupied fighting Ankhar’s barbarians, it was hoped that he would stay away from this great metropolis. But as soon as that campaign was resolved, there was nothing to prevent him from marching to Palanthas and offering the city his vaunted “protection.”

  “His operations are very expensive,” the inquisitor observed. “Can you not cut his funding?”

  “I have tried,” du Chagne said with a groan—and they all knew that he was a man who, insofar as it was possible, would clutch every coin in his treasury until it could be physically pried out of his hands. They took him at his regretful word. “But the families of the knights stay my hand. If they feel that I am not sufficiently supporting the war effort, they make things very difficult for me—very difficult indeed.”

  “And how fares the campaign?” asked Moorvan, the Kingfisher.

  “It is hard to tell—he shares little or no information with me,” admitted the lord regent.

  “Haven’t we tried to place spies in his camp?” asked Frankish.

  “Yes—and he willingly accepts any volunteers we send to him, but none of them is ever granted an ear at his councils. No, I suspect he rather enjoys sending my agents out on the front lines of battle.”

  “Then what is to be done?” asked the inquisitor.

  “We must keep watching and waiting,” said du Chagne. “And hope that, sooner or later, he fails miserably. Or makes a fatal mistake.”

  The lord marshal’s tent was surrounded by alert pickets, who had sworn upon penalty of death to keep any intruders, potential assassins, or random nuisances from their master’s domain. Even so, no one noticed the small figure that darted stealthily from the horse corral, through the armory, past the smithy tent, and up to the very base of the army commander’s brown canvas shelter. Disdaining the entranceway, where two guards shifted their weight from foot to foot and stared vigilantly into the night, the figure lifted up the edge of the tent, pressed himself flat against the ground, and slipped inside.

  He rose to his full height, about that of a human child, peering into the pitch darkness of the shelter’s interior. He crept to the low cot where Jaymes Markham lay sleeping. Extending a hand, the intruder poked sharply into the man’s face.

  “Psst! Wake up!”

  There was sudden movement, a flash of steel, and the marshal was awake with a dagger in his hand, the tip halting a mere fraction of an inch from the intruder’s throat.

  “Hey—stop it!” protested the diminutive figure, twisting away. He was stopped by the man’s hand as it reached out to clamp down, hard, on a thin, small shoulder.

  “State your business,” hissed Jaymes, his voice as cold as the blade held so steadily in his hand.

  “Let me introduce myself. I’m Moptop Bristlebrow, professional guide and pathfinder!” The intruder twisted and pulled but couldn’t break the steely grip. “She sent me; she said it was important! Hey, let me go!”

  “ ‘She’?” The marshal sat up on his cot and blinked a few times; then his eyes narrowed. “The Lady Coryn?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why? Tell me what she told you, exactly.”

  “She needs to see you in Palanthas. Right away—as soon as you can get there.”

  “And you’ll take me to her?”

  “That’s what she said—I’m supposed to go with you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I told you, I’m a professional guide and pathfinder. And I’m an old friend of Lady Coryn. We go way back. To before she was Lady Coryn, or a white witch, or any such thing! She trusts me even more than she trusts you. Of course, I don’t know how much she trusts you. I mean, I don’t want to make any presumptions—”

  “The Lady Coryn is very wise,” said the lord marshal, rising from his bunk. “Go to the corral; tell the squires that I order that my horse be saddled.”

  “Oh, all right. The corral. That’s where all the horses are, right? Boy, that place really stank, you know? I rushed right past it, holding my nose. You would have thought that horses … well, they’re so pretty, that they wouldn’t smell so bad. You know what I mean?”

  “Go!” said the man.

  “Uh, wait—I forgot, you won’t need your horse,” the kender objected. He scratched his head. “I don’t know if we could take it even if you wanted to,” he added mysteriously.

  “What do you mean?”

  The kender produced two small bottles from a pouch somewhere in his tunic. “Here,” he said. “We’re each supposed to drink one of these, and hold hands, and—well, it’s a lot faster than horses and smells better too.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LORD OF THE HORDE

  Ankhar, the Truth, strolled through the lines of his great army, wrestling with a sense of disquiet that loomed over him like a dark thundercloud. The half-giant’s problems seemed, on an almost daily basis, to be growing more and more insoluble.

  It was not the loss of his company on the canyon wall to the explosive charges placed by his duplicitous enemy—indeed, if the Marshal of Solamnia had not tried some deadly payback scheme in spite of their truce, the half-giant would have been more surprised. The violence of the landslide had been an ingenious trap; the hulking commander admitted a grudging admiration for his enemy’s cold, calculating originality.

  He even chuckled as he remembered the deadly cloud cast by the most able of his Thorn Knights, the wizard called Hoarst. That man was a frightening character, calm and unemotional even as he perpetrated mass murder. The poisonous cloud had been silent and utterly lethal, and it came as a complete surprise to the enemy. Hoarst and his companions had proven invaluable to Ankhar during the first years of his war against the Solamnics. The dark magic-user and his friends possessed many useful talents.

  But there was one other adviser who was closer to Ankhar’s ear, and to his heart. Now it was to her, to Laka, the hobgoblin shaman who had rescued him as a babe from a cabin in the mountains, that the half-giant made his way. She would be in her tent, the shelter that had evolved into a kind of mobile temple during the course of the past two years. Two burly ogres stood guard outside the door, and they snapped to a semblance of attention, holding their great halberds upright as the army commander approached.

  “Est Sudanus oth Nikkas,” said one, chanting the army motto.

  “Aye. My power is my Truth,” the half-giant echoed, pleased.

  “You are the Truth, lord,” pledged the other ogre.

  Ankhar acknowledged the honorifics with a grunt. He was pleased to have his troops stand at “attention” and to offer him salutes. These innova
tions had been introduced to the horde by one of his most capable officers, Captain Blackgaard, formerly of Mina’s Dark Knights. Such civilized ideals of obedience and discipline could only make his fierce fighters more effective in battle.

  Stepping through the open flap of the temple-tent, the half-giant blinked and allowed his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He was keenly aware of the smells—Laka’s smells, including the acrid stink of perspiration, the sweet musk of the oil she smeared through her hair, the perfumes and incense that she used in the myriad of confusing rites she performed, all of which were devoted to the greater glory of Hiddukel, Prince of Lies. Cinnamon and cloves sweetened the air, while in the background lurked an essence of something hinting at very old cheese.

  Her voice, a cackling rasp, emerged from the shadows and as always, brought him comfort and hope.

  “Ankhar, my bold son, you come to me with troubles weighing upon your shoulders.”

  “Aye, Mother.” He could see inside the gloomy tent now and made out the twin green specks of fire that marked the eyes of Laka’s most potent talisman. She raised it high, a ghastly human skull set upon a shaft of ivory, and when she shook it, the luminous emeralds rattled around in their sockets, tumbling and blinking with power. The death’s-head was a trophy of Ankhar’s first great victory; it had formerly housed the brain of a captain of Garnet, the first city sacked by the half-giant’s war on Solamnia.

  Gradually, the rest of the shaman came into view as she shuffled forward. Her skin was wrinkled and brown as old leather, a dark contrast to the gold chains that ringed her narrow throat and clinked noisily across her skinny chest. She wore the same ragged shirt of fur that had kept her warm through the snowy winters of the Garnet range, though the baubles of pearl and ruby on her fingers were proof that her circumstances had improved from those days as a scavenging nomadic barbarian. Two gold teeth sparkled brightly from her lower jaw, an ornamental touch that gave her great pride, but nevertheless struck in Ankhar a small note of unease every time he saw them.