The Crown and the Sword

by Doug Niles

  As the hours ticked by, the half-giant paced worriedly. All these captains, all of their fierce and veteran warriors, would not be enough to win the battle he intended to wage. Finally he pulled his stepmother aside and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Where is he? What keeps the Thorn Knight?”

  “Sir Hoarst has much work to do,” Laka reminded him. “If he makes a mistake in the creation of his device, it will be difficult—maybe impossible—to control the king once we open the box.”

  Ankhar shivered. The memory of the king of the elementals, shackled and restrained, was terrifying. The thought of him running amok was completely unacceptable.

  Dawn was already streaking the eastern sky, silhouetting the lofty battlements, spires, and ramparts of the West Gate, before the wizard made his appearance. He carried a slender wand, a stick no longer than the span between the tip of the thumb and little finger on the half-giant’s splayed hand.

  “That?” Ankhar asked skeptically.

  The wizard looked haggard; he had dark circles around his eyes and a pallid cast to his skin, his paleness accentuated by the long period under the ground. He had not rested since they had returned to the camp, and now he fixed the commander with a glare that caused Ankhar to immediately regret his tone.

  “This wand is the product of a great deal of research, spellcasting, and careful carving,” Hoarst snapped. “If its appearance is not suitably impressive, I suggest you find someone else to control the creature!”

  “No! It will do—it must!”

  By this time the ogres had arrived, nearly a thousand of the brutish creatures assembled in five battle columns, each ten abreast and twenty deep. The sheer mass and crushing momentum of such a formation would overpower any normal army, and if the elemental king could but smash through the gatehouse, Ankhar was confident that his ogres would be able to strike deep into the city’s defenses. They would be followed by thousands upon thousands of goblins, hobgoblins, and Blackgaard’s mercenaries.

  The half-giant could almost taste the coming victory! But there were still many questions to be answered. He sat with Hoarst and Laka beneath the army headquarters banner and tried to hammer out the details. The ruby box rested on the ground at his feet.

  “The box is the ultimate means of control,” the Thorn Knight explained. He had gone over this before, but if he was impatient now, repeating himself, he didn’t betray the fact. “As long as the king wears the shackles when he is out, he will be compelled to return to the box when it is opened.”

  “Thus it was in my vision, the image of the Truth,” Laka confirmed. She nodded at the slender wand. “And your twig?”

  Hoarst shrugged. “It is a means of focusing the creature’s attention on a target. I must wield the wand—it requires a spell-caster to effect its function. When we open the box, the king will emerge, and he will be consumed with rage by his entrapment. But the shackles bind him to our will, so he will not attack the one who holds the box or any nearby.

  “With the wand I shall steer him to the gate, and his innate fury will drive him forward in a destructive frenzy. I hope, and expect, that the wand will function as a powerful prod, that I will be able to guide him from a distance of several miles away.”

  “But if he gets too far away, he could break the spell?” This seemed to Ankhar to be a rather important point. “Could he turn on us?”

  “If we begin to lose control of him through the wand, Laka must open the box. He will be drawn back to us and be compelled to enter his prison.”

  “Very well,” decided the army commander. The sky in the east was already pale blue, and sunrise was less than an hour away. He summoned Bloodgutter with a wave. “Make ready,” he ordered. Then he turned to his stepmother.

  “Time to open the box.”

  Sir Cedric Keflar looked in on his children, all three sleeping in the single narrow bunk. Violet, the oldest, was nearly as long as the bed, but she curled her slim frame against the wall so her younger brothers could nestle in the softer, central part of the crude straw mattress. The knight leaned down and kissed each child’s smooth cheek, his heart breaking at the gauntness of those precious faces, proof of the hunger that had sunk once bright eyes so deeply into their sockets. He was grateful they didn’t awaken; Violet only sighed quietly and shifted a little in her sleep.

  Barely a foot away in the tiny room, Kiera, Cedric’s wife of twenty years, lay shivering on her own pallet. He touched a hand to her forehead and felt the fever that was burning her up. He took the time to moisten a rag and place it over her clammy skin. Then he leaned down to kiss her, grateful for the flutter of eyelids that was as much acknowledgement as she could offer.

  Dawn was coming, and with dawn came duty. The sun would wait for no man, and Cedric Keflar, Captain of Swords, was determined to be as reliable as that cosmic orb when it came to his duty. He eased out of the tiny bedroom and buckled on his great sword, the weapon that had belonged to his father’s father’s fathers for as far back as any of the Keflars could reckon. Silently he closed the door to the apartment, trying to keep his armor from clanking as he made his way past the sleeping families crowded into the other rooms, and clustered on the balconies and landings of the rickety building’s stairways.

  This was the way of life in crowded, besieged Solanthus. Cedric’s rank would have entitled him to a house for his family alone, but only if such houses were available. The entire human population for a hundred miles in every direction—at least those humans who had survived the horde’s initial invasion—had come to seek shelter behind the city’s high, impregnable walls. They subsisted on starvation rations and during the last winter, had burned every stick of wood within Solanthus. Clerics labored to create food, and while their efforts kept many people alive, there was never enough.

  Cedric had to step over several people sleeping on the front steps of his building, and more were huddled against the curb, in each alley, sometimes tumbling into the roadway. Moving through the darkness, the knight captain walked carefully. Here and there a pair of bright eyes watched him from the darkness, and he did his best to look calm and capable as he marched toward another day at his post.

  As he turned down the gate street, he glanced over his shoulder, toward the heart of his city. The Cleft Spires loomed to the left, but the lofty, graceful outline of the Ducal Palace dominated the view. Flanked by slender towers, with an arched roof that looked more like a cathedral than a castle, it was a view that never failed to inspire Sir Cedric. It reminded him of so many of things they were fighting for.

  “Bless you, my lady,” he whispered, thinking gratefully of the woman who dwelled there, the duchess who moved among her people with such serenity that the citizenry couldn’t help but take hope from her example.

  As Cedric moved closer to the West Gate, he passed through a broad marketplace, now dark and silent except for the snores of sleeping refugees. Beyond, the steep walls of the gatehouse rose before him. He paused in the plaza before entering the building. Outlined by the growing light of dawn, the Cleft Spires stood out against the rosy sky. Silhouetted against the setting of the white moon rose the gatehouse and the formidable walls to the west. That was where Cedric headed this morning … and every morning. As Commandant of the West Gate, he was responsible for one of the key components of the city’s defense.

  “How fares it, lads?” he asked the men of the night watch, who snapped to attention as their captain climbed the stairs to the First Tower, the rampart directly over the thick, iron-banded gates.

  “Bit of a rumpus out there in the wee hours, sir,” replied the sergeant major who ruled the post during the hours of darkness. “Seems to be some ogres moving up to within a mile of the gate.”

  “Well, Mapes, we’ll have to hope the blokes creep a bit closer,” Cedric replied cheerfully. “And our archers can turn a few of ’em into pincushions!”

  “Aye, Captain!” Mapes said with equal cheer. The men of the ranks, a dozen or more of them standing within earshot, look
ed at each other and nodded. Already whispered reports of the exchange, verbatim, were being passed along the lines on the wall tops, through the interior bastions, and down into the central courtyard. With confident leaders like these, the men trusted they were invincible.

  The West Gate was more than just a gatehouse; it was a sturdy castle in its own right. The gate was wide enough, when opened, for two freight wagons to roll through or ten fully armored knights to ride abreast. The approach crossed a drawbridge some forty feet long, over a moat that was nearly as deep. The bottom of the moat was a muddy morass of sewage, brackish water, and mud deep enough to swallow a tall man up to his neck. When the drawbridge was raised, it formed the first barrier of the gates. Immediately within was a massive portcullis of iron bars—the second line of defense.

  An attacker who penetrated the portcullis would find himself in a constricted corridor, blocked by another portcullis forty feet inside. Overhead was a slotted ceiling—whose slots were murder holes, designed for hot oil to be poured down the openings or arrows to be loosed at the heads of any encroaching foes. If the assaulting force broke through the second portcullis, its soldiers then would have to cross a courtyard a hundred feet wide, surrounded on all sides by high ramparts and towers. From those elevations a devastating fire could be directed at the hopelessly exposed invaders. Then, across the courtyard, the whole process of the double portcullis corridor had to be repeated before the enemy actually broke through to the city streets of Solanthus.

  Sir Cedric had a garrison of more than five hundred men to hold just this one gatehouse. Though the troops, like everyone else in the city, were hungry and discouraged, they were brave fighters and if given the chance, they would certainly acquit themselves in a manner worthy of the Knights of Solamnia. Indeed, the greatest enemy that they faced—besides hunger—was the long period of inactivity that had worn away at their readiness over more than thirteen months of siege. To combat this forced lassitude, Cedric and Mapes had organized countless drills and driven the men through numerous training regimens scheduled in the deep central courtyard. But the nearing prospect of battle, the chance to strike back at the ever-present, but thus far unreachable, horde, was to the captain’s thinking the best medicine he could ask for his men.

  Still, Cedric could not quell a sense of disquiet as he gazed over the wall, spying the great blocks of the ogre columns increasingly visible as dawn turned to daylight. The ogres were organized in tight file formations—that is, one file directly behind the other—such that they would assault the gate almost as one. Their drums, in a measured basso thumping, were marking a slow, almost dirge-like tempo, he noted. Ogres were tough brutes, Cedric well knew, but even if they held great shields over their heads, the devastating fire of arrows, rocks, and burning oil from the heights would surely decimate a great number of them before they could crawl through the mud of the moat. So the captain doubted they would attack in a mass and suspected they must have some other plan.

  The first clue to their strategy came now, when a hulking shape, accompanied by a more normal-sized retinue of soldiers, appeared at the fore of the first ogre company.

  “Why, that’s the half-giant himself,” Mapes exclaimed, “or I’m the son of a gully dwarf!”

  Cedric, who had a spyglass, raised it to his eye and stared. “No, Mapes, your bloodlines can reasonably be assumed to have flowed through humans,” the captain confirmed.

  As the bestial, tusked face of the horde’s commander glared back at him, the knight felt his first shiver of apprehension. “That bastard is up to something today,” he said warily.

  He scanned around, examining Ankhar’s party. Next to the half-giant, he saw a man in the armored breastplate and ash-gray cloak typical of a Thorn Knight. On the other side stood a short, stooped creature with bestial features, apparently some kind of witch doctor, clutching a grotesque talisman that looked to be a human skull mounted on some kind of short stick.

  The latter, a gnarled female, placed a small box on the ground before Ankhar as the first rays of the sun streamed over the battlements and brightened the ground. Something as red as blood, rubies no doubt, glittered brightly on that container, as the witch doctor pulled back the lid.

  Cedric continued to stare, betraying no emotion, as a pair of sparkling embers rocketed out of the box, climbing, spiraling around each other, circling into the air. They soared to a height above the heads of the strange trio, then floated unsteadily, bobbing and weaving, occasionally intermingling or floating past each other. Now his eyes returned to the box, which was spewing smoke, a dark cloud of vapor that billowed upward into an impermeable column, masking the half-giant and his two companions. The black vapor shot up to the height of the circling embers then halted its rise, though more smoke continued to pour from the box, filling out the pillar, thickening it, giving it an almost tangible solidity.

  The captain could hear wary mutters and whispers from the men on the ramparts. “Steady, fellows,” he counseled. “Mapes, get a couple of the Kingfishers up here right away.”

  The sergeant major hurried to fetch a couple of the Solamnic Auxiliary Mages, new to the ranks of the ancient order. These men, universally young and keenly intelligent, devoted their time to the study of spells and wizardry rather than the customary use of the sword and shield. As their symbol was the kingfisher, many of the veteran knights had taken to calling them by that name. Cedric had a feeling the Kingfishers might be of some use against this new, as yet unknown mystery. Already the vaporous form was taking a shape, vaguely humanoid, with arms and legs and a broad torso. The entire huge body was an image in midnight black, except for the glowing coals, and a pair of large silver rings that seemed to encompass each of the monster’s wrists.

  The twin embers had settled into the face where eyes ought to be, and the knight captain, vanquisher of many horrible foes, felt a shiver run down his spine as those flaring, evil orbs seemed to flicker before focusing directly upon him. With a muttered curse, Cedric lowered the spyglass and drew a breath. He could see the vapor monster well enough with his naked eye: the conjured being seemed to be standing upon stony legs, while fire surged and flickered all across its torso, arms, and face.

  “Look sharp there, men!” he ordered. “Archers, make ready. Torch the oil pots. Get the reserves back from the ramparts. But all of you, stand by.”

  By the time he had finished his commands, the giant creature was already striding forward, heavy feet pounding the ground with steps that reverberated all the way to the top of the high rampart. This was no smoke monster, he saw now; clearly, it had become a solid mass of rock or metallic weight. Cedric thought of the thick, iron-banded gate below his feet, and with a twinge wondered if it could stand against this foe.

  The drums, massive kettles pounded by ogre drummers, picked up the cadence to a marching tempo. The first column of ogres swung toward the gate, trailing the giant by several hundred paces. But the monstrous creation led the charge … all alone.

  Not that it looked like it would need much help.

  Closer and closer the monster came, seeming to grow and loom larger with each thunderous step. Its growth was an illusion, Cedric realized—by the time it was two hundred yards away, the thing loomed as tall as the great drawbridge that, naturally, had been raised into blocking position. At one hundred yards, the distance previously marked by white posts on the ground before the gatehouse, the captain uttered a sharp command:

  “Archers: mark the range! Volley fire!”

  A cloud of arrows rose into the air, the missiles launched by more than two hundred longbowmen of the gatehouse garrison. The missiles converged in the air at the apex of their flight, glittering in the dawn’s light for a moment before plunging down to shower the conjured giant and the ground around him. Cedric stared, his hands clenched into fists as he muttered a prayer to Kiri-Jolith—a prayer that went conspicuously unanswered as the shower of missiles seemed to disintegrate upon striking the monster’s enchanted flesh. Some of the
missiles missed their target altogether, of course, and they hit the ground, leaving a grotesquely elongated outline of the gigantic shape tattooed onto the dirty plain.

  Cedric glanced over his shoulder as two young mages, beardless, clad in white tunics emblazoned with the colorful bird, joined him on the platform. They were looking, aghast, at the massive apparition.

  “Kingfishers! Make ready!” commanded the captain. With trembling limbs, they raised their hands, chanting their spells. Several magical missiles blazed outward from the first mage’s fingers, the crackling bolts vanishing as they made contact with the fire-eyed giant. The second tried to cast a more complicated spell, but terror apparently drove the words from his memory—he mumbled an inarticulate sound, gesturing wildly, but nothing happened.

  The creature lumbered on with no appreciable change in speed, drawing closer and closer with each passing breath. Cedric ordered a second and third volley of arrows released, but they had the same inconsequential effect. The ogres in the column behind the conjured giant roared a hoarse challenge, exultant as they sensed the power of their new ally.

  “Ready the oil! Shower the bastard when it crosses the moat!” cried the captain. To both sides heavy caldrons were rolled to the very brink of the rampart, levered upward, and balanced between the jutting balustrades. The giant strode on, one foot plunging into the muck of the moat while the other crossed the wide obstacle in a single stride. The mired foot came free with no visible effort; then the monster was, literally, at the gate.