Measure and the Truth

by Doug Niles

  Dram snorted. “I was in the next room when you told her she had to go, remember? It was me that brought the ice pack for your eye.”

  “Aye,” Swig said, more than a little proud. “You’ve got yerself a prize in that girl, you do.”

  “I know,” Dram said, trying hard not to think about Sally, not right then.

  He, Rogard, and Swig stood on the town’s broad central plaza, a partially paved field overlooking the lake. The dwarves of New Compound were gathering around them, streaming from their houses and shops, coming down from the mines and forests where they had been working. Soon virtually every resident of the town, male and female, had answered the emergency summons.

  “All right, then,” the mountain dwarf said gruffly. “Let’s get to work.”

  He stepped up onto an empty barrel that had been rolled into the middle of the square, turning slowly through a full circle, meeting the eyes of as many townsfolk as he could. Their voices stilled. With a full-throated shout, he broke the news.

  “Here’s how we stand: eight hundred hill dwarves, two hundred and fifty mountain dwarves, and a hundred humans who’ve decided to stick around and fight on our side. We don’t know how big a force is coming against us, but a good reckon is that it will be twice our number in ogres alone. And they’ve got hobs along with ’em too. They’re just around the bend, up the valley, and will reach the town limits in an hour or two.

  “So the question is this: Do we pack up and skedaddle, getting out of here fast with whatever we can carry, and hope that these brutes don’t chase us down the valley faster than we can run? Or do we stay here and fight for this place, our town and our factories? Our bridge and our houses?”

  “Fight!”

  Dram didn’t see the female dwarf who shouted first, though she sounded an awful lot like Sally. That first cry was echoed almost immediately from a score—a hundred—throats, until the whole town was shouting its determination to give battle, to hold the ground they had claimed for themselves only a few short years before.

  And so the issue was decided.

  “Swig Frostmead, take three hundred hill dwarves down to the shore. You’ll stop ’em if they try to come along the edge of the lake. Rogard Smashfinger will take the mountain dwarves and hold the logging sheds and powder factory at the south edge of town. I’ll watch from here with the rest of us, as a reserve force, and we’ll counterattack where we can do the most good. Any questions?”

  “How do we make sure they save some ogres for us in the reserves?” quipped one burly lumberjack, a man who had taken well to life in a dwarf town.

  That provoked a laugh, and the meeting broke up, each fighter grabbing his favorite weapon and heading to his assigned position. Sally stayed behind with Dram; Mikey went with the other children, who were being taken by some of the elders up a narrow side valley, the only other easy route away from New Compound. It was a dead end, leading to a box canyon where a number of mines had been excavated, but they should be safe there.

  The children would take shelter in one of the deepest mines. If the dwarves were driven from the field, the survivors would seal off the entrances and hide in the mines along with the young ones. Enough food had been stored there for a month or more of siege.

  By the time they had spent a month in the mines, Dram firmly believed, the emperor’s armies would have arrived to free New Compound, and Mikey—and all the other kids of the town—could come out to play under the sun and breathe the air of freedom.

  Either that or by that time, they would all be dead.

  The Nightmaster moved invisibly through the streets of Palanthas. He departed from his temple, a secret shrine beneath the ground near the center of the city, and rose up through a grate in the street. As stealthy as the wind, he flowed above the ground, unseen, unheard, not even sensed. The gate in the city wall was nothing to him; he simply drifted up and over the wall as a cloud of gas and continued toward his destination beyond the old city.

  Approaching the palace of the lord regent, the high priest of Hiddukel disdained the gates and stairways and courtyards. He rose through the air like a bird—or a bat—coming to rest on a lofty balcony. Though the night was warm, the doors leading into the palace were closed and barred. No matter: the Nightmaster dissolved into a pool of vapor on the paving stones of the balcony.

  Still soundless and unseen, he flowed through the narrow gap underneath the door. Within the chamber, he took a moment to coalesce, watching the man who was poring over a scroll, working sums and subtractions with a scritch scritch scritch of pen on parchment.

  Lord Regent Bakkard du Chagne had not weathered his change in status very well, reflected the Nightmaster. The lord, who had been the unchallenged master of Palanthas until the emperor had come to power, had grown overweight and round-shouldered. His hair, always thin, was nearly gone, the few remaining strands were pale and pathetically stringy. Though three bright lanterns were arrayed on his table, he still leaned low, his face near his writing, squinting as he studied his figures.

  Abruptly he looked up at the place where the Nightmaster was hovering invisibly. “I thought I felt you!” he snapped. “What do you want?”

  The high priest of Hiddukel sighed and materialized to stand on the floor, his features—as ever—concealed by his black mask.

  “Trying to squeeze the last drop of blood out of each coin?” he asked drolly, enjoying du Chagne’s flash of anger as the regent stiffened and turned his face toward his visitor.

  “How dare you speak to me like that!” he spat.

  “A mere joke between old friends,” replied the cleric. “I meant no disrespect.”

  “You forget yourself, my old ally,” said the lord regent. “I know the truth about you, and for that knowledge I will demand respect and obedience!”

  “Very well, my lord. I apologize.” Even as he spoke, the priest felt a tingle, his pleasure kindled by his companion’s anger. Ever it was with the minions of darkness: they thrived on conflict, violence, and fury.

  Du Chagne sat, glowering, and the priest pulled out a chair and sat across the table from him. “As a matter of fact,” the black-masked man went on, “my visit should please you as well.”

  The lord’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at his visitor shrewdly. “Oh?” he inquired noncommittally.

  “You should know that all the pieces of our plan have been put into place. The time has come to act, and if we are decisive, the emperor’s reign may come to an end within the next few days.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?” asked du Chagne.

  “I mean the emperor is gone from the city. The High Clerist’s Pass is closed to him, so he will not return in any timely fashion. I have troops coming to the city and will see that they enter.”

  “Troops? You mean Dark Knights?” asked the lord.

  “Yes, in fact. But they will encounter no real resistance. The city garrison is not only toothless, but riddled with spies.”

  “Do you forget the foe that vexed us through our previous reign? The Legion of Steel! They have agents everywhere, and as much as they hate the emperor, they will surely rise up against a coup of Dark Knights. Don’t underestimate the Legion of Steel!”

  “Good news there, too, my lord. Of course I know the legion to be a formidable enemy. But now I have, after years of trying, figured out a way to neutralize them. An unwitting pawn has been placed in their midst. As soon as the Black Brigade reaches the city gates, you must be prepared to reclaim your seat as lord regent of Palanthas. And the new Solamnic nation will be no more.”

  “Can you hold this place with only five hundred men?” Blackgaard asked Hoarst skeptically. The Thorn Knight and the captain stood in the Nest of the Kingfisher, the little parapet that jutted above the High Lookout at the pinnacle of the High Clerist’s Tower.

  The troops of the Black Army were assembled in the many courtyards that surrounded the broad base of the great spire. But there were not as many soldiers as either man would have liked to
see: the fanatical defense of the Solamnics had claimed the lives of more than a third of the army’s three thousand men.

  The Thorn Knight shook his head. “I don’t think so. Do you?”

  “No,” the mercenary captain replied. “We would be subject to the same kind of attack that we ourselves employed against the garrison. I should say we need more than a thousand swords to do an adequate job.”

  “Which leaves less than eight hundred for the march on Palanthas,” Hoarst replied. “Rather too few, I think.”

  “Damn those traps!” snapped Blackgaard. “Three hundred good men, burned alive! And how many more drowned, crushed, or mangled?”

  Hoarst shrugged; the past was past. “Well, there is one way I could bring more troops here,” Hoarst said thoughtfully. “It would require an unusually powerful spell, but I believe I could make it happen.”

  “You could?” the captain asked hopefully. “How? From where?”

  “I could borrow them from our former master,” Hoarst said in a tone dripping with irony, “and his army on the plains.”

  “But they’re hundreds of miles away!”

  “That, of course,” the Thorn Knight replied mysteriously, “is where the magic must come into play.”

  “Surely you can’t teleport an entire army?” Blackgaard probed, very intrigued.

  Hoarst shook his head. “No, the teleport spell works only for one person at a time. Perhaps I could cast it over and over, but that would be inefficient.”

  “Then how will you do it? And how confident are you that you can pull it off?”

  “Confident enough to suggest you take all but two hundred of your men with you to Palanthas. I will depart for my own castle and make the preparations there. Within a few days—certainly before the Solamnics can react—I will have a full garrison here.

  “I rather look forward to facing the emperor here,” Hoarst added. “Ogres throwing rocks from these walls will cost him half his men. And the other half will die trying to scale the ramparts.”

  “What about his cannon?”

  Hoarst shrugged. “He only had one left when he marched across the plains. Even if it survives his campaign against Ankhar, it won’t be enough to bring down this great fortress. This tower is ten times larger than those spires of Vingaard, after all. And if you recall, I destroyed half of his battery at the foothills battle with but a single fireball.”

  “I do remember,” Blackgaard said, nodding. “It was the high point of the battle, from my point of view. Things turned sour on us not too long after that.”

  “This time,” the Thorn Knight said confidently, “the outcome will be sweet, not sour.”

  “Very well,” said the captain. “Then I will take the rest of the brigade and march on Palanthas.”

  “Where the gates will open before you and the Solamnic Knights will fall.”

  Hoarst looked to the east and wondered how many days it would be—weeks, more likely—before Jaymes Markham brought his army up that road. It did not matter.

  Whenever he came, Hoarst would be ready.

  True to Dram’s estimate, the ogre army came around the bend in the road just over an hour later. The dwarf recognized Ankhar, swaggering along at the front of his horde, and felt a familiar rush of adrenalin as the enemy force spread out. The old campaigner had learned a thing or two, the dwarf was forced to acknowledge: instead of attacking in haste, his army was ordered to halt.

  Together with a few huge ogres and that shriveled witch of a hobgoblin, the half-giant climbed a low knoll on the edge of the valley and peered at Dram and New Compound from across the distance, appraising the lake, the precipitous walls, and the bridge that was the only route leading north out of the town. Dram was disturbed to see a couple of unusually big draconians with the half-giant, and he wondered what other surprises Ankhar had in store.

  A half hour later, the little party trooped down the hill, dispersing into different sections of the barbarian horde. It looked as though the half-giant were intending to attack head-on but also dispatch a secondary force along the lake. Smart moves, Dram thought grimly. He or Jaymes would have done the same thing.

  Dram looked ruefully at Sally, who was holding a blacksmith’s hammer with a haft almost as long as she was tall, and forced a smile of encouragement. She looked back at him and grinned cheerfully.

  Then the ogres roared into the attack. They came in a rush, and Dram knew that Rogard Smashfinger’s mountain dwarves at the edge of town would quickly be overrun.

  “Charge!” he cried, dashing forward as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. He waved his own weapon of choice, a keen, double-edged axe, and felt a primeval thrill as hundreds of dwarves echoed his battle cries and joined the attack. Then he remembered that one of those dwarves was Sally, and the momentary joy vanished into a cold, doomed feeling. He spared a glance over his shoulder and saw that she was running right behind him; she winked, hoisting her heavy hammer without any apparent exertion.

  Heartsick, he realized that she was sensing that primitive battle lust, which had animated so much of his life, for the first time.

  The bulk of the ogres smashed against the two sturdy buildings where the mountain dwarves had elected to make their stand. Timbers shook and groaned, and the drumbeat of blows rang out like the thunder of a great storm. Many ogres spilled between the factory and the logging shed, crowding onto the main road into the village. It was there that Dram led his counterattack.

  Within moments the ogres were upon them. Dram dodged the first blow from a heavy club, swinging upward to disembowel a huge, lumbering bull. The brute uttered a fearsome wail and toppled, flailing. With a nimble dodge, the dwarf ducked out of the way then scrambled up on the still-twitching corpse to swing his axe through a slashing circle, holding the middle of the ogre line at bay.

  “Look out!” Dram heard Sally cry, and he threw himself down behind the dead ogre’s shoulder as a great spear stabbed past where he’d been standing. The head of the weapon was stone, a glowing green emerald, and recognizing the talisman, the dwarf shouted his defiance and spat a curse of instinctive hatred.

  “You!” he roared, popping up and swinging for the haft of the spear with his axe. It was Ankhar himself, the half-giant looming over him, who barely managed to sweep his emerald-tipped weapon up and out of the path of the dwarf’s wild blow.

  Dram pressed his attack, scrambling over the corpse, swinging his axe in a frenzy. Ankhar snarled and snapped with his great, tusked jaws, but the dwarf was too quick. Skidding down to the ground again, he swung his axe at the half-giant’s tree-trunk-sized leg.

  But the hulking attacker displayed quick reflexes, backing away only far enough to evade the blow then pivoting and stabbing forward with that great spear. Dram parried the blow, planting his feet.

  “I’ll distract him!” he heard Sally hiss into his ear. “Go for the kill!”

  “No!” he cried, appalled as she darted past him and brought her massive hammer down—hard—on Ankhar’s foot. With a roar, the half-giant kicked his heavy boot, the blow catching Sally in the head, flipping her backward like a rag doll. She flew over Dram’s head, and he feared she was dead until he heard her spitting curses—the most musical sound he had ever heard in his life.

  He renewed his attack with a frenzied, slashing series of swings. Each blow forced the hulking foe to step backward, and the dwarf’s momentum carried him in so close that Ankhar could not strike with his long-hafted spear. He tried to kick at Dram, but the dwarf’s axe bit home, slicing through part of the half-giant’s boot and provoking a howl of real pain.

  Ankhar hastily backed away, yielding his place in the fight to a pair of ogres who lunged in from either side. Dram cut one of them down by slashing his hamstrings, and the second one fell with his belly sliced open. By then, alas, the swirl of battle had carried the enemy commander out of sight in the melee.

  He went to look for Sally, finding her where she had landed, with a thud, on the road with her back again
st the factory wall. Her right eye was swollen nearly shut, and she seemed a little dazed as she beamed up at him proudly.

  “I saw you chop him in the foot!” she cried, getting up to rejoin the battle. “The same foot he kicked me with!”

  “Sally! By Reorx, I thought—you had me—I was so—”

  “Oh, be quiet and kiss me. I’ll be fine,” she said. Right after Dram obliged, she added. “And it looks like we’re kicking them out of town.”

  Sure enough, he noted, the ogres were pulling back from the main street. The drumming on the walls of the logging shed had ceased, and there, too, the attackers were retreating—at least for the moment. The brutes seemed content to taunt and roar at them from several hundred paces away, staying out of arrow range.

  But the respite was brief; he saw Swig Frostmead come running up from the plaza. His presence that far from the lake could only mean bad news, and his words confirmed Dram’s fears.

  “They’re coming along the shore!” Swig reported breathlessly. “It was a slaughter over there; I lost a hundred dwarves, and the rest of us fell back. The town will be lost.”

  Ankhar limped up to Laka and Guilder, ignoring—for the moment—the pain in the foot that had been so cruelly slashed in his clash with the dwarf. He would probably lose a toe, but for the time being he had more pressing concerns. He had seen Bloodgutter’s charge carry the fight along the lakeshore, routing the dwarves who had tried to stop them. The enemy’s defenses were breaking there, and it was time for the half-giant to play his surprise trump card.

  “Go now,” he said to the hob-wench and the aurak. “Fly, and take the sivaks! Go to that bridge we saw and land on it. With all your warriors, hold it, and do not let the dwarves get away.”

  “Yes, lord,” Guilder replied. “We will take the bridge and hold it, as you command.”

  “Aye, yes—we’ll hold it with steel and claw, and with the power of the Prince of Lies!” Laka pledged gloatingly.