Lord of the Rose tros-1

by Douglas Niles

“This is no victory, lord! It is an opportunity squandered! Who knows where they will go, what mischief they will wreak?”

  “Well, they will wreak no mischief on my army today!” replied the duke smugly. He found himself wishing for a consultation, a soothing prayer from Patriarch Issel, and he regretted his decision to allow the priest to remain behind in Caergoth.

  Marckus snorted, biting his tongue.

  Crawford shrugged. “We offered battle here, and they declined. Captain Reynaud has scouted the nearby hills and assures me there is no danger from that direction. What more proof of our supremacy do you need? Now, I will thank you to obey your lord in this matter. Perhaps there is some area of training or discipline requiring your attention? Captain Reynaud is busy inspecting the catapults. Maybe you can see the horses are fed.”

  “Aye, Lord,” Marckus agreed. “I am sure they are hungry.”

  The bored sentry climbed toward his lonely perch on top of the rocky ridge, one of the lowest and westernmost of Garnet’s foothills. He didn’t like being stationed so far from his fellows-and their cookfires-but his captain had posted him on this ridge in the unlikely event that the enemy tried to make a flanking maneuver through the rough terrain.

  Not that any army could move very fast or easily down there, he thought, looking at the tangle of rock and scrub pine in the narrow, carved valleys below, a maze of cliffs and deadfalls. Anyone could see how unlikely it was that an army would take this path.

  But he was used to obeying bad orders. He settled on a sun-warmed rock, noting that it was slightly after noonday, and took out the small flask he carried in his belt pouch. There was one advantage to being out here by himself, he acknowledged. No pesky sergeants or officers were around to see him drink his fill!

  He didn’t hear the slightest rustle, much less the goblin that had climbed the cliff below him, quietly pulling a razor-sharp knife from a leather scabbard. By the time the lone sentry had opened his mouth to shout an alarm, the blade was slicing through his throat.

  The only sound that emerged was a dying gurgle.

  The worg riders came down from the mountains in the middle of the afternoon, sweeping like a summer squall, black as oily smoke, piercing the army of Caergoth. They emerged from a series of valleys that were behind the long ditch, the prepared entrenchments, the carefully measured fields of fire for the catapults. The wolves roared in unison as they charged, with thousands of lupine paws pounding the ground simultaneously, and growls and snarls erupting from fanged, drooling jaws.

  They struck the army in its exposed flank, which was anchored on the foothills of the Garnet Mountains. A secure area; a direction from which no army could attack-Captain Reynaud had assured the duke-after his horse had been unable to make headway into the hills.

  Ankhar’s army had threaded through those hills, and all the more impressive, it had done it silently over only a few hours’ time The goblins and their sleek, powerful wolves bypassed the limited roads and trails that restricted the movement of knights and horses. Ankhar’s army had no wagons, no war machines, no baggage except that carried by each barbaric warrior in his small kit. With that startling tactic, they negated every advantage of Caergoth’s meticulous deployment, his steadfast preparation, and the expectations of his veteran officers and boldest captains.

  The wolf-riders were only the first wave of the attack, but they came so suddenly and fiercely that they had spread through half the ranks before the other half even knew they were under attack. Canine jaws tore the throats of men who were looking up from their afternoon chores. Horses were bitten and hamstrung in their corrals, and the great supply wagons of the baggage train were quickly put to the torch, burned by mounted goblins who didn’t even slow down to admire their destructive handiwork.

  Here and there a company of humans stood armed and ready, and these men formed squares of resistance, weapons and shields turned outward, valiantly defending their ground. The lupine cavalry simply gave them wide berth, leaving them for the second wave. Most of Caergoth’s cavalry had been posted on his left, near the open plain. Now these knights rode toward the sound of the fighting, great waves of charging horsemen-and in the process wreaking even worse chaos through the ranks of infantry who were desperately trying to form up along the whole of the reeling front.

  In the wake of the worg riders came the draconians. The reptilian warriors, more than two thousand of them who had joined at the bidding of Cornellus, appeared along the high crests of the foothills. They howled and barked, making a ghastly song of death-then they launched their assault. Though most are incapable of true flight, all draconians can glide, and they used this ability to great advantage. Spreading leathery wings, they embarked from the high ramparts, descending from the heights with terrifying speed. Even in the air they maintained formation, so that they landed in groups of one hundred or more, spreading out through the increasingly confused ranks of Caergoth’s army.

  They shredded the formations of pike and sword. Even in death they wrought havoc: a kapak glided down to perish on upraised spears and, dying, became a shower of acid spilling across a dozen men, blinding, choking, causing unspeakable pain. When a baaz perished it became a statue, and as it fell the killing weapon was frozen into its petrified flesh, torn from the human’s hands to leave the wielder unarmed in the face of the next brutal assailant.

  Goblins and hobgoblins, the great mass of Ankhar’s army, came as the third wave. They poured out of the mountains in seeming infinite numbers. Their archers halted at the periphery, showering the vast camp with deadly missiles. Droves of arrows filled the sky, spilling downward over great swaths of land. In many places the brave squares of defenders, those who had seized weapon and shield and stood back to back with comrades, holding ground, were slaughtered by this deadly shower. If a few arrows went astray, wounded or killed some goblins, that was no matter-Ankhar’s army had many goblins and a limitless supply of arrows.

  The Thorn Knights assembled and rode forward to aid the onslaught. Sir Hoarst and his two comrades delivered a crushing meteor swarm into the midst of Caergoth’s camp, barely missing the duke and his entourage. They sent hailstorms sweeping across the lines, ignited supplies with blazing fireballs, and sent powerful gusts of wind racing, which kicked up clouds of dust that blinded the defenders and further confused the situation.

  Deep into their charge, the leading goblin regiments converged on the great war machines of Caergoth’s army. Brave artillerists were struggling to bring these big weapons into play, pulling up the stakes that had anchored them facing to the north, wheeling the cumbersome devices around so they could face an enemy that was converging from behind. As often as not, by the time these weapons were oriented toward the east a hundred goblins had overrun the crew, butchering those men who tried to stand by their machines, setting fire to the great structures of timber and steel. One did manage to lob a few big rocks against the enemy, only to be shattered by a well-aimed lightning bolt from Sir Hoarst.

  Much of the right wing of the Caergoth army was annihilated, destroyed before the men could even react to the sudden disaster. A few knights and footmen survived by fleeing south, and they never turned back. The pockets of resistance became fewer and fewer. Those groups too small to be efficiently targeted by archery were overrun by the countless goblins who hurled themselves in a rapturous frenzy at the humans.

  Farther from the foothills, the ranks had had more time-the warning of one or two minutes was enough to save a hundred lives-and here whole companies of armored knights deployed quickly under the commands of their veteran captains and sergeants-major. The duke himself fell back to safety, escorted by Captain Marckus and a small detachment of the Ducal Guard.

  Two score knights rode down a regiment of goblins, leaving hundreds of the attackers dead and dying in their bloody wake. These riders pulled back, and more knights joined the first brave but now depleted unit, their horses surging around the blocks of human infantry, the footmen standing in lines and unbreakable
squares while more and more horsemen collected. Gradually the rush of Ankhar’s attack slowed, ebbed, and ground to a halt.

  There was cause for some hope. More than half the army had survived the initial attack and had regrouped magnificently, holding a line at right angles to the position it had originally staked out. Captains shouted themselves hoarse, and as the enemy paused-even hardy goblins knew fatigue-the moment arrived.

  Later, no one would remember which captain organized the decisive charge. Reynaud was there, along with several others. Most likely it was everyone, recognizing the enemy’s faltering and their last opportunity. The mounted knights mustered a stirring charge between the ranks of their own infantry, companies overlapping, hundreds of horses starting at a trot, accelerating to a canter, and finally into a mad gallop.

  They surged over the goblins and draconians as though they were sand formations on a beach-and clashed with the worgs, more than a thousand riders on each side. Horses and men, goblins and wolves, bit and gouged, slew and died. There was no semblance of rank or order-it was a cacophony of death, with every steed trying to keep its feet, every rider lashing out to all sides at any and every enemy who came within reach.

  Inevitably in this fight, the heavy horses and their armored riders prevailed against fleet, but smaller and lighter, opponents. At first only a few worgs broke from the fight, then more of them, until at last the whole mass of Ankhar’s cavalry wheeled and streamed away, racing through the broken camp, past the burning catapults and wrecked wagons. Those who could not run away fast enough were ridden down and trampled by the vengeful knights. Even the knights’ horses seemed caught up in the bloodlust as, nostrils flaring and lungs heaving, they bore forward.

  The three Thorn Knights stood firm for a long time, magic spells blazing and crackling against the riders, knocking Solamnic Knights from their saddles, destroying horses. But they were unable to break the great charge, and when the line of armored cavalry smashed through, Sir Hoarst teleported to a Garnet hilltop. His two fellow mages, however, were trampled and stabbed.

  Now, at last, the tide seemed to have turned. The wolves and their riders fled headlong in a route the knights could not follow for very long, back toward the foothills. They sped into a narrow valley, a steep cut between two frowning cliffs. The wolves bounded and leaped and loped on the rough ground, climbing slowly up from the plain, and the knights, crowded together, came after. The Solamnics hacked at the stragglers, as the rougher ground took its toll on wolves and horses both.

  At last the goblins and their canine steeds turned and made a stand, and the horsemen converged on them, packed so tightly between the two cliffs that they could barely move, they could only press ahead. The goblins dismounted, took up positions on large boulders and in narrow draws. Still the horsemen plodded on, packing into the valley, knights and their horses frantic for vengeance.

  It was then that Ankhar sprang his greatest trap. The half-giant materialized atop one of the highest cliffs, hefting a huge boulder in his hands. Raising the heavy stone over his head, he cast it into the first of the tightly packed ranks of mounted knights. Two men and a horse died under that massive boulder.

  That was but the beginning of a rain of death. Archers, this time the human mercenaries of Blackgaard’s Brigade, appeared on the cliffs, gleefully shooting down into the pinned ranks of the horsemen. A hundred ogres, the surly brutes who had accompanied Bloodgutter from Lemish, took their place beside their chieftain and added a steady barrage of large rocks to the fray. In the press below, most of the knights could not even turn their horses around, much less make an escape from the lethal mess.

  Countless boulders tumbled from the heights, crushing knights, breaking the backs and legs of terrified horses. Ankhar himself heaved over one hundred boulders. More than a thousand archers showered the knights with their arrows until it became a killing ground such as Krynn had hardly known.

  At the start of the charge, a thousand proud knights rode into the valley. After an hour of slaughter, less than a hundred straggled out.

  “Rally to me, men! Hold the bastards here!” Sir Marckus cried, leading his charger back and forth along the line of swordsmen he had scrounged from the remnants of broken units. They were terrified, but his voice steadied them, made them remember that their best chance to live was to hold together.

  “Stand and fight, man!” Marckus called, when a wild-eyed captain, one of Crawford’s aides, came thundering past on a panicked steed.

  “Make way!” screamed the man. “Fall back to the south! Every man for himself!”

  Marckus grimaced as he turned away, but not before he saw the man fall, pierced through the back by a plunging arrow. He spared no time on regret-better to try and save the lives of those who faced the foe than to worry about the fate of those who died trying to flee.

  The cause was hopeless. The entire right wing of the army had been shattered, and their most powerful striking force, the armored knights, had been lost in the foolhardy charge into the narrow valley. The barbarian half giant, Marckus knew, had outgeneraled the Duke of Caergoth at every turn.

  The captain found his duke, ashen faced and trembling, astride his stallion at the rear of the army. Reynaud, grim-faced and furious, was with him. Marckus glared for a moment at his fellow captain. It was Reynaud who had scouted the hills, reporting them impassable for a flanking maneuver. It was too late for recriminations-now, survival was all that mattered.

  “Take the duke to safety!” ordered Marckus. “I’ll lead a fighting withdrawal.”

  Without a word, the other captain slapped the hindquarters of the duke’s horse, setting the steed to flight. Reynaud joined him, the two of them galloping southward across the plains.

  Marckus did the best he could, trying to hold the men together in retreat. When the line was intact, at least each man could draw on his comrades. They battled stubbornly, giving up ground. In doing so they gave the majority of the survivors a chance at escape.

  Glancing back, the captain could see the catapults and ballistae, the wealth of supplies and cargo in the great baggage train. All were overrun by goblins and draconians. The enemy swarmed around the artillery pieces, hacking at the wooden frameworks, igniting them with oil and torches. At least they wouldn’t be able to turn those captured weapons against the army of Caergoth.

  That was slight consolation, and the retreat continued. By late in the day, the army of Caergoth, those who remained, had left the field, and the goblins only ceased their pursuit when they were too tired to kill any more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY — TWO

  A New Age Of War

  T hings have gone very badly.” Coryn announced calmly, but Jaymes sensed disaster in the uncharacteristic way she bit her lip as she spoke.

  She met him in the skeletal gatehouse of ruined Garnet. They had spent most of the day in the abandoned city, hearing the sounds of battle, seeing the smoke smudging the northern sky. Neither had wanted to go and witness the slaughter, but late in the afternoon Coryn had departed for a reconnaissance.

  “So Ankhar pulled a surprise and attacked out of the hills?” Jaymes asked.

  “Yes. Come, you can almost see from up here.” She led him up the damaged stairway to the top of the gatehouse. Staying low, they looked across the western plains.

  They could see troops streaming past. The nearest were a mile or two away from them, and all were heading south as fast as they could march. A few horses, including one that looked like the duke’s proud stallion bearing a whip-wielding rider, raced among those afoot, quickly outdistancing them.

  “They all have to cross the King’s Bridge,” Jaymes said. “If they’re closely pursued, it will be a slaughter.”

  “Is there something we should do? Something to help?” Coryn asked, her face drawn.

  “Why should we do anything?” challenged the warrior. “This isn’t our fight.”

  “Decent men are dying out there!” snapped the wizard. “Men who are paying for their lord’s h
ubris, his stupidity, with their lives! It isn’t Duke Crawford I’m concerned about-it’s those brave soldiers and their widows, their fatherless children!”

  Jaymes scowled, rubbing a hand across his face, and made no reply.

  “Dammit! You wait here and watch then,” Coryn said contemptuously. “I have to do what I can!”

  The warrior winced as though she had struck him. “I can think of one thing we could do that might be useful,” he said.

  “What?”

  He explained his idea, and she agreed. “I’ll go to the Vingaard Range. I’ll see if I can find Dram-if so, I’ll meet you at the bridge.”

  “All right.”

  After a fervent embrace, Coryn departed with a magical word, and Jaymes rode out onto the plain astride the horse he had stolen from the camp pickets the night before.

  The scope of the disaster was immediately apparent. The swordsman fell in with the retreating army-no longer did he need to try and slip past vigilant sentries or bluff his way through checkpoints. He rode past footmen fleeing south as fast as they could run, then encountered a solitary captain, a weathered old veteran who wore the crest of the Rose, struggling to command a disorganized rear guard. The man welcomed Jaymes’s arrival with an appraising look and a nod of approval.

  “Help steady these lads in the middle, if you can,” said the captain.

  When a small group of goblins rushed them from behind Jaymes charged them singlehandedly, drawing and waving his sword-though he didn’t make it flame. Even so, the gobs fell back, and his example seemed to inspire the troops, who started taunting and jeering the enemy. The pursuers kept up the pressure, staying in sight but out of arrow range as they followed the retreat.

  Every once in a while, a few goblins would rush forward, and the rearguard line would fight stubbornly. By sunset they had managed to hold off the pursuit long enough that the bulk of the army could make for their distant city. All the survivors would still have to pass over the long bottleneck formed by the King’s Bridge.