by T. O. Munro
“What are they doing down there?” he asked.
Elyas shrugged. “Mostly wondering where the stairs have gone.”
When the flood of zombies had forced the elves to seek refuge on the first floor it had been the work of a few spells and some judicious sword and axe swinging to sunder the elegant oak staircases. The undead, those not crushed by the falling timber, now stood forlornly arms raised towards the upper level. The gesture was reminiscent of a toddler desperate for the comfort of its mother’s arms, disconcertingly re-enacted by a rotting body with a ravenous hunger for live flesh.
“They’ve been wondering that for a long time.”
The elf shrugged. “We’re in a stalemate. The zombies down below are as much a blockade to stop fresh attackers coming in as they are a barrier to stop us racing out.
“So even though we’ve got no arrows left, we’re safe.”
Elyas frowned. “I wouldn’t ever say that, Jay.” He stepped lightly across to the eastern window. The early evening sun was casting long shadows of the sculpted window frames. “No,” the elf’s frown deepened as he took a cautious glance through the opening. “Definitely not safe.”
The dry keening cry of the zombies below them grew louder as the undead moaned to a faster beat. Jay scrabbled to his knees peeping over the windowsill in his anxiety to see what had alarmed the elf and roused their beseiging zombies.
“What is it, Elyas?” Tordil strode into the room. “What do you see?”
“There’s something coming, something or someone,” Jay answered for the elf lieutenant, who was shaking his head.
“The Dark Lord has been husbanding his resources carefully,” Elyas said when Tordil joined him at the window. “And now he sees fit to commit his reserve.”
“Himself included!” Tordil exclaimed.
A column of troops was approaching the chateau. Men, many of them outlanders by the ragged variety of their weaponary, but some too were of a more regular infantry. People of Morsalve who had willingly taken arms in the service of Maelgrum. Jay had seen a few such in his father’s town, but never imagined so many would take the Dark Lord’s tainted rewards. On either side of the column rode a squadron of cavalry the uncouth outlanders to the left, showy traitors to the right.
But it was not the mounted warriors or the fresh infantry that drew a tremor of nervousness from the tall elf’s mouth. It was the tall dark shape walking steadily at the column’s head pursued by a trail of mist that cascaded from his arms and shoulders. Maelgrum himself was come.
Jay gripped the handle of his knife more tightly. His nostrils were filled again with the stench of death that Maelgrum exuded, an olfactory echo of the day his brother and his mother, his sisters and his father had all died and Maelgrum laughing as he tormented them all and made Jay the cruellest sharpest implement in his armoury of torture. A bare fifty yards separated him from the creature he had vowed to slay.
Spells showered down from the upper stores of the chateau as elven mages flung all their craft at the undead wizard. Yet all the bolts and blasts of fire and lightning fizzled into nothingness before they got within twenty foot of their target.
Maelgrum beckoned and a score of zombies shuffled eagerly across the chateau’s garden, strewn with dead orcs and sundered undead. The Dark Lord raised his hands like a priest bestowing a blessing and the zombies turned and lurched back to the elves’ strong point.
“What is that smell?”Jay spluttered, for there was a new reeking odour that quite masked the stench of rotting corpses with something finer and more volatile.
Tordil shot a jet of lilac flame at one of the zombies and it erupted in a blazing column of fire whose flames leapt as high as the towers of the chateau. It was a blaze so fierce and brief that the zombie took barely another step before it was consumed all to ash crumbling to the ground.
“Get the others,” Elyas shouted. ”Do not let them get back inside.”
Another zombie was destroyed the same way and then a third but so close that the flames shot past Jay’s window momentarily blinding him with the immediacy of their brightness.
“Fire starters!” Elyas cried.
“He means to burn us out,” Tordil said. “Everyone to the east wing, we must take our chances in the open.”
Even the soft footed fast moving elves made the polished floor tremble with their haste. Elyas dragged Jay by the hand far faster than the boy could run. They had reached the door of the receiving room when the first zombie went off, a pillar of flame erupting through the wooden floor and kindling everything that might burn into instant incandescence.
Jay drew a breath and wished he hadn’t as the hot air scorched his throat and then they were out racing across the gallery high above the great hall with its crowd of expectant undead. Still the fools lunged after the scent of fleeing flesh, oblivious to the destruction that walked amongst them as another of Maelgrum’s incendiary zombies shuffled towards an oak pillar and immediately self-immolated.
Even the zombies that he had not blessed with his explosive spell were catching fire and doing the Dark Lord’s work blundering as unstable mobile torches against drapes and furniture.
***
Niarmit tugged on the horse’s reins pulling it up short as another orcish assault on her northern line faded into retreat. At an early point in the long afternoon the enemy had flung zombies at Torsden’s detached brigade. But the embedded priests had wreaked such havoc, turning so many undead to dust that the zombies had been withdrawn and the attack left to successive waves of orcs.
Each assault had been flung back, but not without casulaties. This was a patch of ground they had hoped not to have to defend. There were no dug in defences and there was little tactical advantage to be gained from the shallow slope along the ridge’s back from its lower northern end to its higher southern tip. Holding the line was a matter of bitter spear and shield work, with occasional cavalry charges and feints to help fling the unnumbered orcs back.
It was warm work. Niarmit had had two horses cut from under her, but the protection of the Helm and the blades of the Vanquisher had kept her from any personal harm. The same could not be said for Torsden’s much depleted soldiers. In every brief pause between attacks each side had drawn in reinforcements to refresh its battered lines and replace the casualties of the last frantic sweating engagement.
Niarmit feared that the other divisions were now perilously thin. Stealing men from Vahnce and Torsden’s main commands to feed this meat grinder of attrition had denuded the force opposing the main body of the enemy, while this bitter battle on the northern wing was bleeding her army dry. She just hoped it was costing her foe as dearly.
“What’s that girl?” The sharp attention of the Vanquisher had snagged on some detail on the scene which had escaped her perception.
She spun back scanning the shifting mass of orcs and undead that had crowded up onto the lower end of the ridge. “There girl, the chateau!”
Her gaze settled on the distant manor house, cut off and besieged. She had taken heart from the fact that the press of enemies around it showed its defenders survived still and fought. But now, added to the thin plume of smoke which had caught the Vanquisher’s eye, there were flames licking at its walls through open windows, racing up the stonework with uncanny speed.
“He has fired the building. He means to burn them all.”
“Tordil!” Niarmit strained her eyes to see some sign of the elven defenders, some reassurance that they were not all burnt alive, but again it was Eadran who was quicker to interpret the sights her eyes gave him.
“See, by the eastern windows.”
Figures were jumping or falling from the nearside of the building, scurrying across the chateau gardens. But even as they did so two companies of horseman circled north and south around the blazing chateau to cut off the escapees’ retreat.
Niarmit seized her reins, but Eadran’s will slowed the movement of her hand. “You cannot go after them,” he said.
> “I cannot leave them.”
“There are ten thousand orcs and zombies between us and them. You can no sooner carve a path through that the Dragonsoul could. His sacrifice may have had some purpose, yours would have none.”
“They will die.”
“Many already have, girl. Our task is to find Maelgrum and destroy him, to make those deaths worth something.”
Niarmit let her hands go limp and shaking her head rode back towards Torsden’s battered line.
***
Jay was still winded from the fall; the gently composting pile of leaves and grass cuttings had only slightly softened his landing and his breaths came in painful hiccoughing gasps as Elyas dragged him at a run eastwards away from the blazing chateau.
The jump from the first floor had posed far less challenge to the athletic elves who landed lightly and ran quickly flooding eastwards. But an orc brigade lay athwart their path and two companies of cavalry thundered up on either side. As fast as elves could run, they could not outpace horses.
At a shout from Tordil the elves formed an outward facing circle to fend off the foes who surrounding them. Though Jay guessed that the elven numbers were less than half those who had begun the day, the enemy were in no hurry to come to close quarters with the foe they had cornered and surrounded.
“Where are you?” Tordil shouted loud and clear. “Where are you, Maelgrum, you coward? Skulking always behind your allies, the dead, the dull and the traitors who have sold you their souls.” The word went unanswered by their silent adversaries. “Come out, I have a message from Lord Feyril, that he bid me give you, to you personally.”
The outlander riders to the south shifted, nervous horses stepping sideways to create a pathway between their ranks, a path that the riders looked down, more anxious at what might walk up that channel, than by any fierce words of Tordil’s. And it was Maelgrum who strode up the avenue of horsemen.
Jay shivered and stepped towards the tall elf. He woud have stood beside him, but for Elyas’s hand on his shoulder, holding him back.
Maelgrum’s presence sucked all the heat from the summer evening. The sun loured low to the west, casting a last full hour of long shadows across the battlefield. And all held their breath to hear what the tall elf and the Dark Lord might say to each other.
“What word hasss my dear friend Lord Feyril left?” Maelgrum’s soft sibilant voice asked. “You ssseem an unlikely envoy for a messssage of any importancsse.”
“It was a word for your ears alone,” Tordil said, stepping forwards.
Maelgrum’s eternal grin split a little wider. “You think perhapssss I might sssend all thessse,” he waved at his own troops and then at Tordil’s, “and thossse away in sssafe conduct while we enjoy a moment of private counsssel.”
Tordil smiled, taking another step. “Even if you made the offer, I would not trust you to keep the promise.”
“The lassst elf to ssspeak ssso bodly to me on Lord Feyril’sss behalf ended by sssticking a dagger in hisss own belly ssso asss to essscape my wrath,” Maelgrum observed. His red eyepits flared at the sight of the sword in Tordil’s hand. “That blade ssseemsss a little long for sssuch convenient ssself dessstruction. Perhapsss I may be of sssome assssissstance.”
Tordil looked down at the sword with an air of feigned surprise. “This is not for me,” he said. “It is for you.” With that he flung himself across the shortened distance between them.
Jay felt Elyas lunge past him and urged his own legs to run at the Dark Lord, but he was suddenly seized with a frozen lethargy, a deep fear chilled his bones. Mist was cascading from Maelgrum’s shoulders and pouring in a carpet across the rapidly freezing ground. The cold sucked the speed from Tordil’s strike while Maelgrum stepped lightly to one side of the tall elf’s leaden footed blow.
“Ssso,” Maelgrum said. “You ssseek to try your ssstrength in a ssshow of armsss?”
Jay’s teeth were chattering, his hand was stuck to the hilt of his knife by frozen sweat. At the periphery of his frost shrunk vision he was aware of elves struggling against the paralysing cold. Elyas wrenched one foot infront of another. Tordil struggled to lift a sword whose weight appeared to have doubled, that or his strength had halved. Maelgrum laughed.
He snapped his fingers and a long red blade appeared in his hand, a sword that a mortal man might have used two hands to raise, but Maelgrum twirled it like a hazel wand with the merest twitch of his wrist. Flame licked up and down its edge as the Dark Lord spun it twice around his head before raising it high above the head of the sluggishly moving Tordil.
Jay dragged his legs up, forced himself to move. His foe was within his grasp, a few yards more of stumbling on nerveless feet across the frozen soil and he could slake his parched revenge by burying his knife in Maelgrum’s side. But his feet moved so slowly and half a dozen yards might as well have been a thousand leagues.
Tordil lifted his sword to meet the swift falling scarlet blade of the undead wizard. There was a cry, Elyas shook off the paralysis of fear and crashed into Maelgrum’s side. The Dark Lord staggered, stunned more by the fact that another should have touched him than by the actual force of the blow. Deep mauve flame flared at Maelgrum’s feet and the cold loosed its grip as Tordil swung his own sword with his customary speed.
Maelgrum’s blade met his with a clash of steel and a bloom of flame. Elyas rose unsteadily to his feet, raising his own weapon at the Dark Lord’s back. The elf’s left arm hung limp and useless at his side, the chainmail links dusted with an icy frost where he had knocked Maelgrum down. But still he leapt at Maelgrum and the Dark Lord turned and laughed and parried both elves’ blades with ease before launching a counter thrust that Tordil only just dodged.
Jay gulped and edged a little closer to the whirling circle of swordplay.
***
“There,” Niarmit said. “A flicker of violet. Tordil lives.” She squinted against the light of the low setting sun which, in this height of summer was drifting down to the north-eastern horizon, behind the chateau. She pointed out another flare of lilac light from the middle of a crowded melee in the chateau gardens. “He lives and he fights.”
Pietrsen scowled. “But for how long, your Majesty? The enemy has committed his reserves to the elves’ destruction and once that work is done, he will bring him here, where we have not the strength to withstand them.” He waved at the spent force of soldiers swaying with exhaustion opposed by an equally enervated line of orcs. But behind the orcs lay fresh zombies, well as fresh as a battalion of decaying corpses could be. And they had still a reserve to throw into the fray, where Niarmit had nothing left.
“Your Majesty,” Pietrsen said softly. “Is it not time to consider how we may withdraw?”
“Send this oaf away,” Eadran exclaimed in her mind.
“I did not chose to make a stand and then decide to run from it, Lord Pietrsen,” Niarmi said.
“You must survive, your Majesty.” Pietrsen dropped his voice still further and leant in to confide close by her ear, “the battle is lost, your Majesty.”
“Then I am too,” she told him plain.
“There is a battle within a battle to be fought, remember,” Eadran hissed. “I sense he is there. I can feel his presence, the stench of him.”
“Where?” Niarmit asked aloud drawing a puzzled look from Pietrsen.
“By the chateau.”
“Then we must go there.”
“No,” Eadran snapped as Niarmit strained her eyes to peer into the dark gardens beneath the bright horizon. “Let us chose the place of combat and draw him to us. Somewhere we can be free of interference from friend or foe.”
Niarmit felt the pressure of the Vanquisher’s will turning her body to look south-east towards the crest of the ridge. The high tip of the escarpment lay behind their much thinned lines. It had long since been abandoned by the archers, despatched to assail a closer enemy. “There will serve our purpose, girl,” he said. “Let us make ready.”
She s
eized control, spinning back to look at the distant desperate battle where the tall elf and his outnumbered comrades were locked in a doomed struggle. A glint of movement caught her eye, a flash of light glancing off a flowing surface like a silver river. She shook her head. “Come on girl,” Eadran tugged at her mind and body but she did not yield to his command.
***
Elf captain and lieutenant swung their blades with feverish haste and Maelgrum danced his blackened corpse between them with hypnotic grace. Wherever the elves struck, his sword met theirs and flung them back in turn first Tordil, then Elyas.
Jay wavered at the margin of their whirling combat desperate for an opening through which he might hinder the enemy without risking harm to a friend. The other elves had launched themselves at the encircling foe creating a ring of battle to fence in the deadly fight between Maelgrum and the last warriors of the Hershwood.
The pair were tiring, Elyas hampered by his frozen arm, and Maelgrum’s lipless mouth gaped in a grizzly grin as he struck with renewed speed. A flurry of blows descended so fast that the tall elf could barely parry them and, in so doing, tripped and was flung full length upon the ground. Elyas, recovering his balance from a similar assault charged in to his captain’s aid. Maelgrum turned and caught the lieutenant’s sword upon his, letting the blade slide down until they were locked hilt to hilt. Elyas strove to hold his weapon steady against the pressure Maelgrum exerted, driving the edge towards the elf’s bare throat. Tordil struggled to his feet with a cry of rage, and Maelgrum jerked his blackened head forward, darting between the crossed swords to crash his cranium into Elyas’s helmet.
Jay gulped, skull barely papered with blackened skin against a finely forged elven steel? It should be no contest. And it was not. Elyas slumped senseless to the floor, his helm dented by the force of Maelgrum’s blow.
Tordil swung his sword up high, but the Dark Lord flung out his left hand in a subtle twisting motion. He hissed one word “enough” as his spell bit home and Tordil froze, rooted to the spot, his panicked eyes the only ourward show of movement that Maelgrum’s spell had afforded him.
