Beyond the High Road c-2

by Troy Denning

  About an eighth of the pie, Tanalasta replied. Behind that boulder where they’re bunching up. Be careful. They’ve got spears, and they’re dipping the tips in something.

  Vangerdahast’s only reply was a chuckle. He returned his war staff to its saddle holster, then took the shield from one of his support riders and passed his hand over it. Tanalasta could not see what he was sprinkling on it, but she did see his lips moving as he uttered the incantation.

  The orcs began to regain their wits, forming a broad semi-circle around Vangerdahast and his three companions. Vangerdahast paid them no attention, continuing to pass his hand over the buckler and mouth arcane syllables. This seemed to distress his foes far more than his death-flinging staff, a fact Tanalasta suspected the wizard of intentionally playing up. While he undoubtedly knew many spells that took this long to cast, he was far too cunning to use one in the middle of a combat. A nervous squalling began to arise from the ranks of the orcs. Twice, a handful of brave warriors attempted to initiate a general charge, only to stop dead in their tracks the moment the royal magician looked in their direction.

  At last, Vangerdahast pressed his hand to the face of the shield and fell silent. I take it Ryban and his company are ready?

  Tanalasta glanced up the slope, where she could barely see the silhouettes of Ryban and his Purple Dragons. They were spread across the crest of the hill with their horse-bows in hand and their quivers hanging from their saddle horns. To a man, they were craning their necks toward the plain, peering through the stonemurk to track what little they could of the battle’s progress.

  They’re ready, Tanalasta said. You might even say eager.

  Vangerdahast nodded, then began to swing the shield back and forth, as though he were a water diviner seeking the best place to dig a well. Each time the shield swung past, the orcs in the semi-circle would mewl in alarm and cower on the ground. Then, once it had drifted past, they would leap to their feet and make a great show of shouting and waving their swords at the wizard.

  Unfortunately, the rest of the tribe was experiencing no such reluctance. Axe-wielding warriors were slowly returning to the sections of perimeter Vangerdahast had cleared earlier, while the orcs at Tanalasta’s end of the caravan seemed to be hurling themselves at the wagons more ferociously than ever. Already, Tanalasta could see exhausted guards kneeling in wagon beds or bracing themselves against the wheels, using both hands to swing swords that even she could have wielded with one hand.

  Tanalasta was about to urge Vangerdahast to get on with the attack when she glimpsed a large bird streaking out of the western sky. The creature was a mere blur in the stonemurk, and the princess could tell little about it, save that it appeared far larger than any eagle she had ever seen and flew faster than a falcon on the hunt. It descended in a steep dive, then suddenly circled away from the battle and vanished behind a sandy ridge.

  “What was that thing?” Tanalasta asked.

  “What thing?” asked one of her guards.

  “Didn’t you see it?” She pointed in the direction the bird had vanished. “It was a huge bird, twice the size of an eagle-and fast. Very fast.”

  “Probably just a vulture, Princess,” said the second guard. “They’re drawn to the smell of battle.”

  “This was larger than any vulture,” Tanalasta retorted. “And vultures aren’t that fast.”

  The guards exchanged knowing glances, then the first said, “The stonemurk has a way of playing tricks on your eyes, milady. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  Though it angered her to be condescended to, especially when neither guard had seen what she was talking about, the princess saw no use in arguing. Whatever the thing was, it had apparently wanted no part of the battle. Tanalasta swallowed her irritation and returned her attention to Vangerdahast, who finally seemed to be tiring of theatrics. As the wizard swung his ensorcelled shield past the ore commander’s hiding place, he slowed, then swung the buckler back toward the boulder and stopped.

  The orcs around the leader began to trill nervously. The leader sat up to peer over the top of the boulder. Vangerdahast set his heels to the flanks of his mount, and the big stallion sprang to a gallop so quickly the wizard was halfway to the boulder before his escorts urged their own mounts after him.

  The orc commander rose and began to gesture wildly at Vangerdahast. The spearmen rushed out from behind the boulder and arrayed themselves before their leader, jamming the butts of their weapons into the ground and angling the tips toward the wizard’s charging horse.

  In the name of the king! Vangerdahast started to haul back on the reins, then seemed to change his mind and dropped his shield, pressing himself close to the neck of his mount. You said spears, not pikes!

  Before Tanalasta could reply, one of her guards cursed, “By the iron glove!”

  “Is he trying to impale himself?” demanded the other.

  Tanalasta cringed and started to look away-then recalled how the orcs’ brittle swords had snapped against the horse’s chest earlier.

  “He’ll be fine,” she said, expecting the wizard to barrel straight through the barricade of poisoned tips.

  Instead, the magnificent stallion leaped skyward, then continued to gallop through the air as though its hooves were on solid ground. As the horse passed over the astonished orcs, Vangerdahast pulled something from his pocket and sprinkled it on his foes. The terrified swiners dropped their pikes and leaped to their feet, brushing at their scalps and screeching in fear.

  They did not die until Vangerdahast’s support riders arrived to cut them down in a tempest of whirling horses and slashing steel. So furious was the attack that Tanalasta did not realize until an instant later that only two escorts were involved in the assault. The third lay back at the wagon circle, his chest opened by a gaping wound visible even from the princess’s perch. The man’s horse was a few feet from the body, stumbling around in fear and tossing its head.

  Tanalasta had no time to ask her companions if they had seen what happened. Vangerdahast’s mount dropped down behind the orc leader, prompting the huge swiner to turn and sprint across the sandy ground so fast it took even the royal magician’s powerful horse a full second to catch up. By then, Vangerdahast had once again drawn his staff from its saddle holster and lowered it like a lance.

  Tanalasta expected to see some spell blast the orc’s skull into a spray of blood and bone, but Vangerdahast simply aimed his lance at the back of his quarry’s head and allowed the momentum of his charge to drive it home. The leader sailed half a dozen paces before finally crashing to the ground in a limp heap. The royal magician reined his horse to a stop and wheeled around to face the caravan.

  The orcs began to scatter, wailing and screeching as though their demonic lord had risen from the pits of the Abyss. A couple of well-placed fireballs helped the panic along, then the swiners on Vangerdahast’s side of the battle broke and fled en masse. The wizard threw up a pair of fire curtains to force them toward Ryban’s hiding place on the mountain, then started around the caravan to rout the warriors on the opposite side of the caravan.

  A black streak shot from beneath a burning dray wagon, then seemed to explode into a crescent-shaped phantom of darkness. Before Tanalasta registered that this was the same huge bird she had seen earlier, the shadow sprang into the air and struck one of Vangerdahast’s escorts full in the flank. The rider’s torso simply fell off, leaving the man’s terrified horse to gallop off with his seat still in the saddle and his boots still jammed into the stirrups.

  The phantom was on the second escort even as the man turned to see what had become of his companion. The dragoneer vanished beneath the thing’s black wings, still struggling to bring his sword around. His horse emerged an instant later, saddle gone and blood pouring from three long gashes in its flank.

  “Helm guard us!” gasped one of Tanalasta’s guards. “‘What is that thing?”

  “You called it a vulture,” Tanalasta remarked bitterly.

  When Vang
erdahast continued forward, oblivious to what had just happened behind him, she pictured his face in her mind.

  Vangerdahast, behind you! It’s some sort of demon, or…

  Tanalasta did not finish, for even as she sent the warning, the phantom was spinning to look in her direction. The thing seemed a grotesque fusion of woman and wasp, with a powerful torso, impossibly small waist, and long sticklike limbs folded into inhuman shapes. Its hair was as smoky and black as its eyes were white and blazing, and the princess could just make out the crescent of a yellow-fanged smile.

  Tanalasta, stay still.

  The princess glanced back to Vangerdahast and saw the wizard struggling to wheel his galloping horse around. He leveled his staff at the phantom and unleashed a brilliant bolt of emerald light, but the creature was already launching itself into the air. The streak blasted to ground where the thing had been half an instant before, hurling the mangled remains of the second rider in every direction.

  The phantom’s wings pounded the air, catapulting it over the caravan toward Tanalasta’s hiding place. Already, the princess could see a pair of naked female breasts and ten ebony talons curling from the ends of the thing’s slender fingers. A small flaming orb sizzled up from Vangerdahast’s direction to strike the creature full in the flank. It veered slightly, then lowered its dark wings and streaked away, leaving the wizard’s sphere to explode into a roiling ball of flame. As the thing drew closer, the princess could make out the narrow blade of a nose and a long haggish chin smeared with red gore.

  An unaccustomed fury rose up inside Tanalasta, and suddenly she could think of little more than slaying her foe. She jumped to her feet and thrust a hand into her cloak pocket, in her excitement fumbling for the steel Peacemaker’s rod Vangerdahast had given her. To her amazement, she felt no fear at all, only a thrilling bloodlust that filled her with a strange euphoria and muddled her thoughts. Could this be the battle rapture Alusair was always talking about?

  One of Tanalasta’s guards grabbed her collar and pushed her toward the horses. “Run!”

  The dragoneer’s shove brought Tanalasta back to her senses, and she was seized by a queasy terror as she recalled how easily the phantom had slain Vangerdahast’s escorts. She stumbled back two steps, then stopped when her guards drew their swords and stepped forward to meet the phantom at the edge of the cliff

  “Don’t be fools-retreat!” Tanalasta yelled. She released the steel rod and pulled her hand from her pocket, then began to fidget with one of the rings Vangerdahast had given her in Arabel. “Now!”

  The guards did not obey. They merely roared their battle cries and raised their swords, and it was too late. The phantom swooped over the rim of the outcropping, impaling one man on along talon and batting the other off the cliff and continuing toward Tanalasta at lightning speed.

  She pointed her ring at the ground, commanding, “Dragon’s wall!”

  Tanalasta felt a sharp pain in her finger, then a shimmering wall of force sprang up between her and the phantom. A muffled whump reverberated across the outcropping, and the creature was hanging in the air before her, its night black wings spread across the horizon on the other side of the magic barrier.

  The phantom gave an ear-piercing scream, and its white eyes turned human and ladylike. The darkness drained from its face, revealing the visage of a handsome noblewoman about the same age as Queen Filfaeril. Tanalasta staggered away from the inexplicable apparition, so shocked and terrified that she forgot to run.

  Vangerdahast’s voice came to her. Tanalasta?

  The phantom pulled its head free of the magic wall and turned toward the wizard. Tanalasta’s heart sank as she realized the implications. The creature could hear their thought-talk.

  Answer me!

  The phantom pulled a wing free of the barrier, and Tanalasta’s sense of danger came flooding back.

  Quiet, you old fool! The princess turned toward the horses.

  Then suddenly Vangerdahast was there before her, sitting on his stallion between her and her own horse, swaying and blinking with teleport after daze. Tanalasta glanced back and saw the phantom springing over the top of her magic wall, its face once again a mask of gore-dripping darkness. Tanalasta spun around, stretching an arm in its direction and slapping the opposite hand down on her wrist bracer.

  “King’s bolts!”

  A searing pain shot through her hand, and four bolts of golden magic streaked toward the phantom’s chest.

  The creature’s wing curled around in a blur of darkness, and the bolts erupted against it in a series of dazzling yellow flashes. The appendage turned briefly translucent, revealing a fanlike network of finger-thick bones, then began to darken again.

  Vangerdahast’s staff tapped Tanalasta’s shoulder. “You have proven your point, Princess,” he said. “Now why don’t you leave your old fool to have his fun with this nasty wench?”

  Too tired to trade banter, Tanalasta merely nodded and sprinted to her horse, pulling herself into the saddle as the wizard’s first spell cracked across the outcropping behind her. She leaned down to free the reins of the dead guards’ mounts, then glimpsed the phantom hurling toward Vangerdahast in a blazing ball of white fury. He turned his staff horizontal and raised it in front of him. A hedge of silver-tipped thorn bushes sprang up to intercept his shrieking attacker.

  Tanalasta started to turn her mount toward the rest of the company, but saw a horde of orcs streaming up the mountain and realized she would never reach them alive. Praying to the goddess that Ryban could see what was happening on the outcropping, she turned in the opposite direction and urged her mount to flee.

  The terrified beast sprang up the rocky slope as though it were a mountain goat, and the last thing Tanalasta heard behind her was Vangerdahast’s astonished curse:

  “What gutterspawning succubus hatched you?”

  6

  The royal wizard was frightened, of course-only a fool wouldn’t have been-but he was also mad with fury. His heart was hammering in his chest, pounding like it had not pounded in seventy years. Every beat urged him to battle, to pelt the phantom with bolt and blaze, to attack and keep attacking until he reduced the thing to a scorch mark on the cliff top.

  Never before had Vangerdahast experienced such a combat rage, and he did not understand where it came from now. Vangerdahast had warned Azoun a dozen times that battles were won not through anger, but through cold, emotionless calculation, and now here the wizard was himself, fighting as hard to control his own emotions as to defeat the enemy. It was unnerving, really. The remnants of his last harmless lightning bolt were still tracing crooks of transparency across the phantom’s leathery wing, and the wizard caught himself lowering his staff to cast the same useless spell again. Damned unnerving.

  Vangerdahast threw his staff down and slipped a hand into the sleeve of his robe. In the second he needed to find the tiny pocket where he stored his spider web, the phantom peered over its furled wing and sprang. Vangerdahast’s mount bolted, nearly catapulting him from the saddle. The phantom banked, herding the terrified horse toward the rim of the cliff. The wizard pulled his hand from his sleeve, flicking a ball of web in the dark thing’s direction, then yelling his incantation.

  At the first sound of Vangerdahast’s voice, the phantom furled its wings and dropped to the ground. As it fell, a huge tangle of sticky fibers blossomed around it, completely engulfing the creature in an amorphous mass of white filaments.

  Vangerdahast’s horse drew up short at the edge of the outcropping, pitching him forward out of the saddle. Cursing his mount for a witless coward, the wizard made a desperate grab for the beast’s mane as he tumbled over its head, then found himself plummeting toward a sandy dune a hundred feet below.

  Vangerdahast experienced a fierce nettling as his weathercloak’s magic triggered itself, then the cape’s lapels spread outward to create a sort of crude sail. He fluttered to the ground not far from the guard who had been batted off the outcropping earlier. The poor fellow
had landed headfirst in the sand, burying himself to the shoulders, then snapping his neck as he fell onto his back. A bloody crease angling across his breastplate marked where the phantom’s powerful wing had struck.

  Vangerdahast spun away and pulled a wing feather from inside his robe. Still consumed by his strange fury he uttered a quick spell and extended his arms, then sprang into the air, telling himself that be had a good reason for returning to the battle before checking on Tanalasta. He needed to know where the phantom had come from. He needed to know why it had aided a petty tribe of orcs. He needed to kill the thing before it shredded his magical web. He needed that most of all.

  The wizard rose swiftly, flying close to the outcropping so his foe would not see him. As he ascended, he heard clanging swords and whinnying horses farther up the mountainside. For some reason he could not fathom, Ryban had engaged the orcs instead of fleeing them as planned. Cursing the man for an over-brave dunce, Vangerdahast touched the throat clasp of his weathercloak. When the brass began to tingle beneath his fingers, he pictured Ryban’s face.

  Unless you are defending Tanalasta already, disengage and go to her! Can’t find the princess, and wouldn’t run if we could, came Ryban’s reply. See you in Everwatch! The throat clasp became cold and dead beneath Vangerdahast’s fingertips, and he grew faintly aware of feeling both mournful and perplexed. It was not like the lionar to neglect his duty, nor to think he could reach Everwatch by disregarding an order. Everwatch was the celestial palace of Helm the Watcher, and only the most faithful guardians could expect to spend eternity there.

  Vangerdahast circled around to come up on the opposite side of the outcropping from where he had plunged off, then stepped onto the cliff top. He found his magic web dissolving into a gummy morass of translucent gray silk, beneath which lay the form of a shapely female spine flanked by the bases of two leathery white wings. Little more could be seen of the figure. It seemed to be curled into a ball, with its neck and shoulders hunched forward, its legs drawn up in front of it, and its wings wrapped securely around its body.