The Puppet King

by Doug Niles

  Dallatar nodded sagely, as if Porthios’s statement was the most logical thing in the world. When next the wild elf spoke, it was to reveal a startling change of topic. “You should know that the city elves are marching from Qualinost to come after you. They have a force of six hundred swords.”

  “That’s news.” Though he had expected something like this, Porthios was in fact surprised to hear that the Thalas-Enthia had already put a plan into motion. “Have you seen this force? Is it close?”

  “No. They will not depart the city for several days yet. But training is under way, under the captainship of one called Palthainon.”

  “General Palthainon … I might have known,” the outlaw leader declared in disgust. Palthainon’s reputation for brutality and bullying had been established, and well earned, during the exile on Ergoth. Now he seemed like a logical choice to send after a group of bandits in the western forests.

  Only then did another, very obvious, question occur to him. He asked Dallatar bluntly. “You say they won’t leave for days, yet you know their timetable, even the name of their captain. What’s the source of your intelligence?”

  “We Kagonesti have brothers held as slaves in the city of gold. There are many ways we can learn of events in Qualinost without the Qualinesti suspecting that news is traveling back and forth.”

  Porthios had to admit to the logic of this statement. He had spent many years in the city and had never suspected that the wild elves who worked as house slaves for some of the more arrogant nobles had maintained any kind of contact with their brethren in the forests. Still, he was now grateful for the fact and said so.

  The wild elf chieftain shrugged. “We have heard of you, of course … the one who was once Speaker of the Sun. You were always fair and generous with our people. That is different from the manner of many noble elves.”

  Porthios was immediately glad that he had always made a practice of treating the Kagonesti as his equals. He knew what Dallatar meant about the arrogance, even cruelty, of some city elf slave owners, though doubtless they, like he, had never attributed such resourcefulness to the clan that had always been casually dismissed as a bunch of painted barbarians.

  “Will you join us in the humble sustenance of our camp?” asked the outlaw who was once a king. “As we are neighbors in the woodlands, I would like to think that so we will also be friends.”

  “That is our wish as well,” agreed the tribal chief. At a signal of his hand, many women of his tribe came forward, carrying two freshly killed does, baskets of fish, and satchels full of fruits and berries of varieties that the Qualinesti had only rarely seen. “The woods are a full larder at this time of year, and we have brought gifts of food to share with you.”

  The shade was thickening in the gorge as the smells of sizzling deer and roasting fish wafted through the air. Porthios and Dallatar sat beside each other around the large central fire pit. Alhana, with Silvanoshei in his tai-thall, was at her husband’s side, and a beautiful Kagonesti maid, her black hair streaked with startling splashes of silver, joined the wild elf chief.

  “This is my bride, Willowfawn,” boasted Dallatar proudly. “She has been mine for more than one hundred winters.”

  “And together we have made two children,” the woman said frankly. “It was our son who slayed the largest doe, using only his knife.”

  “A mighty hunter is Iydahar,” agreed the chief easily.

  “And who is your other child?” Alhana asked.

  Porthios noticed a darkness come into the chief’s eyes. “She was taken from us as a young girl during the years on Ergoth. She was sold to a Qualinesti lord. Now she works as a slave in his house.”

  Porthios and Alhana exchanged a look of guilt and remorse. They had both grown up around wild elf slaves, but somehow they had never considered the origins of those unwilling workers. Now Porthios thought it seemed unutterably barbaric to remove young children from their parents’ family merely because their tribe was judged to lack civilization.

  “And I see that you, too, have a child,” said Willowfawn.

  “Our first—not a full month old yet,” Alhana said with a smile. Her eyes twinkled. “Of course, Porthios has only been ‘mine’ for thirty winters.”

  If Dallatar thought the juxtaposition of the possessive was remarkable, and undoubtedly he did, he made an exceptional pretense of masking his surprise. “I wish the best of health and happiness to your child,” he said solemnly.

  Alhana’s hands were suddenly tight around Porthios’s arm. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you very much.”

  Bellaclaw came to rest in the clearing before Porthios and his outlaws. Samar dismounted, dropping easily to the soft loam of the ground.

  “Palthainon is a fool,” snapped the warrior-mage, shaking his head in disbelief. “He has his elves marching four abreast, one company following right on the heels of the next. They’re making more noise than a drunken dwarf in a chime shop.”

  “What about the warriors in his companies? Was Dallatar’s information correct?” Porthios wondered.

  “As far as I could tell. It doesn’t look like more than one in ten of them is a veteran of any kind of campaign. Maybe that’s why he’s holding them in such a tight formation—he’s afraid the novices will run away if he’s not looking over their shoulder every step of the way.”

  “So he marches them like swine going to the butcher.…” The outlaw leader was still amazed. Every elf who’d ever held a sword knew that a loose formation, flexible and supple, was the best marching order for thick woodlands. That way, if part of a column was attacked, the rest of the elves could circle around and strike the attackers in the flanks. But a dense, short formation such as Samar had just described meant that it was quite possible for the entire force to wander into an ambush.

  “Remember, he’s never fought Qualinesti before. His victories were against small tribes of wild elves, who could rarely muster more than two- or threescore warriors against him. I daresay he’s in for a nasty shock.”

  Porthios nodded grimly. He felt none of the excitement that normally preceded a battle, but he knew he had a job to do and was determined that his own forces would suffer very few casualties. He turned toward Stallyar, who was prancing eagerly under the nearby trees, when he was stopped by a gentle pressure on his arm.

  Alhana stood there, sweat standing out in beads on her fair skin. Her huge eyes were dark with concern.

  “Please, my husband, isn’t there some other way? Do you have to kill them?”

  Porthios sighed, at once angry with her persistence and at the same time grieving for the necessity he perceived in this situation.

  “When we robbed from them, we were able to do it without killing. We outnumbered the caravans, and the guards were easily scared away. But this is an armed force sent to find and attack us! You know they won’t hesitate to use their weapons against us. Furthermore, they outnumber our warriors by three to one. There is no longer any room for gentleness.”

  “Can’t you just avoid them?” She used the same argument she had been pressing for the last week, ever since the Kagonesti had reported that Palthainon’s force had departed Qualinost.

  “You know that’s impossible—unless we want to abandon our camp, to be ready to move at a day’s notice wherever we settle.”

  Through a combination of the wild elves and his own outlaws mounted on griffons, Porthios had kept careful tabs on the advance of the Qualinesti force. For a time, it had looked as though Palthainon might blunder southward along the coast, which would have taken him away from the camp for another month or two. But a day earlier, the general had made a fateful guess, veering his force to the north on a bearing that, within another few days, would lead him right into the gorge where Porthios had made his camp. To counter, the outlaw prince had brought his elves out of the encampment and gathered them in this clearing in the deep forest. He had studied the general’s route of advance and planned his battle accordingly.

 
“I ask you again, can’t you try to frighten them away? You have to see that, up until now, many elves perceive you as the true leader of their people, someone who has been wronged by the Thalas-Enthia. But if you draw elven blood, you suddenly prove to them that you are an outlaw, a threat not only to their pocketbooks but also to the lives of their husbands and sons, to the very fabric of Qualinesti society!”

  “Why should I care about the fabric of Qualinesti society?” Porthios demanded harshly. “Isn’t that the agency that stole my crown, that cast me into exile—called me a dark elf?”

  “No!” Alhana was annoyingly insistent. “You know that was a few hateful old men in the Thalas-Enthia. They are your enemies, elves like Rashas and Konnal. I beg you, my husband, don’t make this into a war that you’ll regret for as long as you live!”

  “Lord Porthios!” cried the scout, Daringflight, who was landing in the clearing. “They’re only a mile away, and they’ve picked up the pace of their march.”

  “The decision has been made,” Porthios declared to Alhana, trying for a stern tone but knowing that he merely sounded petulant. “Now I’ll have to ask you to get away from here. The battle is about to begin, and nothing anyone does can change that fact. You’ll be safe here, though if you’d like, I can ask Samar to stay with you.”

  “It is not my safety I’m worried about!” she snapped. “I wish you could see that, could understand what you have to do!” Her tone dropped, her words pointed and hurtful. “It’s not enough, husband, merely to send Samar to take your place.”

  Her jaw set, Alhana stepped back. Porthios was stunned by the depth of her anger and deeply hurt by her rebuke. He wished she would turn and march away, but instead she kept her eyes fastened upon him, her glare harsh and unforgiving as he stepped to Stallyar’s side and lifted one foot into the stirrup. Samar, nearby, looked away awkwardly. Finally Porthios whirled to face her, his own face distorted by anger.

  “I don’t have any choice!” he shouted. “Don’t you see that? Why can’t you see that?”

  “I see you, husband, and I see the choices that you make,” she said calmly. “And I grieve for those choices, even as I know that you do the same.”

  Only then did she turn and walk away, melting into the woods that made her invisible within a dozen paces.

  “Why does she do that?” Porthios growled to himself, kicking Stallyar with unnecessary harshness. The griffon cast a reproving glance over his shoulder as he spread his wings and sprang into the air. “Sorry, Old Claws,” the bandit leader said in chagrin, patting the softly feathered neck.

  Within a minute, the sky over the clearing was filled with griffons, the savage fliers silent as they took to the air, bearing Porthios’s company of elite fighters toward the approaching file of Qualinesti. He had picked the site for the ambush carefully, knowing that Palthainon’s force would have to cross a wide clearing and then ford a deep stream. The obvious crossing was a tangle of broken tree limbs that would serve as a makeshift bridge but would allow only one or two elves to cross at a time. The far side of the stream was thickly wooded, and this was where Porthios had decided to conceal his force.

  As they flew the short distance, Porthios reflected more on his wife’s accusations. Did she really think that he sent Samar to be with her to take his place? Yet, in honesty, he knew he had relied on the warrior-mage for a lot of help, and he was always willing to attend his queen. A glimmering of suspicion sparked in his mind, but he roughly pushed that poisonous thought aside, though it didn’t vanish entirely.

  But now the flying elves were settling into the trees just before the stream. The griffons gathered in several small clearings, a few hundred paces back from the scene of the ambush, while the elves crept forward to take up hiding places in the underbrush to both sides of the prospective crossing. Within a few minutes, all of the bandits, nearly three hundred strong, had secured hiding places for themselves in the tangle. Arrows were laid beside bows, and swords were loosened in scabbards, though if the plan worked as Porthios intended, there would be little need for the bloody combat of a close-ranks melee.

  Soon the Qualinesti companies broke into the clearing on the far side of the stream. They marched, as Tarqualan had reported, in tightly packed ranks. Many of the recruits shuffled with weariness, while a few veterans shouted harshly at their comrades, even jabbing and slapping with swords to move the recalcitrant warriors along. Clearly this was a raw and dispirited group of elves.

  Porthios’s military mind admired the perfection of the setting, even as his elven conscience railed against Palthainon’s stupidity. Oblivious of the danger, the general marched his column almost to the river’s edge on the far side of the stream. Scowling, the commander stalked along the bank, finally pausing to study the tangle of trunks that spanned the otherwise rock-filled and treacherous gorge.

  “Stand alert there!” Palthainon called to his warriors, some of whom had settled to the ground as they waited for orders. “We’ll cross here. No rest until we’re all on the other side.”

  “Perfect, you fool,” whispered Porthios. These troops, already ragged with weariness, would be denied a chance to rest before they marched into the ambush. The outlaw leader found himself wondering how Palthainon had earned his reputation on Ergoth. Perhaps it was true that all of his battles had involved attacks against peaceful villages, brutal raids with the primary objective of taking slaves.

  The first of the Qualinesti started awkwardly along the makeshift bridge, and now events really did move beyond Porthios’s control. He had set his ambush, given his troops orders, and there was no way to countermand those instructions without revealing himself to the enemy across the waterway. The outlaws were to wait until half the city elves were across the stream. Then they would attack with lethal volleys of arrows, killing most of the hapless invaders before they even knew that battle had been joined.

  After several volleys of arrows, the biggest of the outlaws were to fall on the survivors with cold steel, while the rest of Porthios’s force would race back to their griffons and sweep against the remaining Qualinesti from the air. Probably some of the elves on the far side of the river would escape, but the carnage over there would be savage as well. And it served Porthios well to have a few survivors make it back to the city. He wanted the Thalas-Enthia to think twice before they sent another army after him.

  The first elves to cross the bridge collapsed in exhaustion on the near bank, while others slowly, painstakingly made their way across. They made no attempt to spread out, to scout the thick woods on the far side. Instead, they were all too grateful to have the chance to rest and to be momentarily beyond the range of Palthainon’s temper and authority.

  Porthios looked down at his bow and arrows. He had four steel-tipped shafts ready to shoot, and he pictured each of them puncturing elven flesh, drawing elven blood and piercing elven hearts. He felt sick to his stomach, suddenly horribly reluctant to fight this battle. Alhana had been right after all. It would be a great mistake, an unspeakable tragedy, to lead his countrymen into battle against their own people.

  But already the first company of Palthainon’s three units had crossed the stream, and the elves of the second were starting to pick their way across the bridge. At any moment, the first arrows would dart from the trees, and the killing would begin.

  When he heard the shouts of alarm from Palthainon’s elves, Porthios at first thought, with perverse relief, that his ambush had been discovered. “Run, you fools!” he whispered fiercely, certain that the Qualinesti would race back across the stream and he would have an excuse not to commence this butchery.

  But he quickly realized that Palthainon’s troops still had no clue as to the outlaws’ presence. Instead, the Qualinesti were pointing toward the northern sky. Those troops on the opposite bank were running along the stream, heading for the cover of the nearest copse of trees, a quarter-mile downstream. The elves who had already crossed were standing, staring upward, trying to discern the cause of thei
r comrades’ alarm. Then, with shouts of dire panic, they turned and dashed into the woods, falling and tumbling among the outlaws who lay there in ambush, too panicked even to react to the surprise.

  Yet the ambush never occurred, for now the elves of Porthios’s force could see the sky, and none of them cared to raise a weapon against the Qualinesti. Instead, they could only stare, knees turning to jelly, eyes goggling from their heads, as they watched a wing of blue dragons soar downward. The dragonawe permeated even into the woods, and Porthios felt his own bowels grow loose as the massive serpents swept past.

  Even so, he had to admire the military precision of their flight. Each dragon was ridden by a mounted knight, and the creatures flew wing tip to wing tip, a dozen of them spanning the full breadth of the wide clearing. Ignoring the elves who had crossed the stream, the serpents dived in pursuit of the Qualinesti who fled along the far bank of the gorge.

  Lightning spat from their gaping jaws, blasts of powerful fire that tore elves into pieces and threw up great clods of dirt from the ground. The explosive volley was repeated with ruthless cruelty, changing the pastoral meadow into a scene of carnage, nightmare, and death. The thunder of the deadly attacks reverberated through the trees as dozens, then scores, of Palthainon’s Qualinesti were cut down.

  Finally the dragons landed in the midst of the fleeing elves, and the slaughter was tremendous, horrifying, unreal. Jaws snapped, crushing warriors between daggerlike teeth. Wyrms pounced and clawed, tearing other elves to pieces. Knightly riders stabbed with their lances, chopped with their swords, and shouted in glee as the helpless Qualinesti were mercilessly butchered and harried from the field.

  All during the massacre, one dragon flew overhead, its rider trailing a pennant, a banner bright with the colors of a five-headed wyrm. Porthios knew that these dragons were part of an army, and that the army fought in the name of Takhisis. Queen of Darkness.

  And he knew that war had come once more to Krynn.