Cormyr

Chapter 20: Battle of the Witch Lords

Year of the Thirsty Sword (900 DR)

It was not a meeting they had time for, thought Aosinin Truesilver, but then it was not a meeting they could afford to miss, either. By rights, King Galaghard, his noble court, and High Wizard Thanderahast should be seeing to the last details of the planned assault in the morning. But these were elves, and these elves demanded immediate attention.

Their appearance was both ominous and telling. For the past three months, the Glory of Cormyr, the army of the king, had met and routed the Witch Lords’ armies time and time again. At the fords of Wheloon, at the forgotten temple, at Juniril and again at the Manticore’s Crossing, each time overrunning the Witch Lords’ position and trampling their undead troops beneath the hooves of good Cormyrean steeds. Yet their foe had risen from the dead again and again-literally.

From each battle, the most powerful Witch Lord necromancers slipped away, to regroup with forces of moldering fighting men freshly disinterred. Now the Glory of Cormyr had ridden to the limits of their supplies and trapped the remaining human mercenaries and levies of the Witch Lords flat against the western verges of the Vast Swamp. A victory here would break their power in Cormyr forever and free the eastern half of the realm from their threat.

Yet on the eve of the assault, a rider arrived, with the news that a great pavilion had suddenly appeared behind the king’s forces. Its green and yellow spires rose like new mountains in the darkness, lit from within by their own radiance.

These were not simply elves of the woods, who had always passed through the kingdom, moreso since the fall of their greatest city. They were noble elves, the first to arrive in Cormyr since the fall of Myth Drannor. Noble elves who demanded a reception.

“They couldn’t have picked a worse time,” muttered Thanderahast as they drew near the entrance. Save for the wizard, everyone in the small party of Cormyreans approaching the pavilion was in full battle armor, including the king, the High Priest of Helm, and several nobles, among them Aosinin Truesilver, the king’s cousin.

“You would snub them, then, and risk seeing their forces arrayed alongside those of the Witch Lords?” asked the king in a low voice.

“We may see them there yet, Sire,” said one of the Dauntinghorns. “The elves have always been treacherous. Not fifteen winters ago, they repelled the Sembians and their Chondathan mercenaries in the Battle of the Singing Arrows despite the fall of Myth Drannor.”

“Don’t speak nonsense,” snapped the wizard. “The Sembians were logging elven lands heavily, thinking that with their cities gone, the elves would be weak. The power of the elves has never been in cities but in the forest itself. Now, hold your tongue, for the ears of the elves are as sharp as their skin is thin.”

One of the Illances made a joke about the sharp, pointed nature of elven ears, but he was shushed by his fellows. The party entered the pavilion.

Its interior had a ghostly, ethereal quality. There were elves on all sides, lounging on broad pillows. They sipped fluted glasses of glowing fluids, regarding the passing humans as if they were mongrel dogs who had wandered into a dinner party. Then the elves turned their attention back to their own dealings. Somewhere in the distance, a sad lute was being played, joined by a wispy thin, haunting voice that just caught the edges of their hearing.

The greatest chamber of the pavilion was nearly empty. A pair of guards stood at the entrance, clad in finely-made but archaic chain mail. Across the chamber stood the twisted stump of an ancient tree, a living throne into which three seats had been carved. Two of the seats were empty. The third, the farthest to the right, was occupied by a single cadaverous figure.

Aosinin reached for his sword, thinking this was one of the Witch Lords and that they were standing in the heart of an enormous trap. He relaxed only when he realized that the figure was an elf… though a very ancient elf, it seemed.

The figure on the throne was clad from head to toe in chain, its ornately shaped links as fine as any that could be crafted in Suzail, even by dwarven hands. Its design, like the mail worn by the guards, was archaic, and many of the links were thin enough from wear to appear nearly translucent. The elf’s face was elongated, his cheeks and eyes deeply sunken, his remaining hair silver-white and flowing from a receding forehead.

Aosinin had never seen an elf this old before. And yet something about the figure seemed familiar… like the mage Thanderahast. There was something similar in the elf’s fluid, well-practiced movements, the grace of well, a near immortal, Aosinin supposed.

The elf lord waited for the royal party to reach the foot of the throne before speaking. His voice sounded like an old book opening for the first time in a century. “So these are the children of Ondeth and Faerlthann? Somehow I expected more.”

The king took a pace ahead of the others. “I am King Galaghard the Third, royal head of Cormyr, called the Forest Kingdom, the Wolf Woods, and the Land of the Purple Dragon. This is my Royal Wizard, Thanderahast, of the blood of Baerauble himself. And the mightiest men of my noble court.”

The elf regarded the humans for a long moment, and Aosinin wondered if these elf lords could cast death magic without moving an eyelid. At length, he said, “I am Othorion Keove, last of the house of Iliphar Nelnueve, the Lord of Scepters. Do you remember me?”

Thanderahast stepped forward. “We know of the tales of great Iliphar and of that first coronation of Faerlthann nearly nine centuries back. I fear we have lost much of the records of his court, but we welcome you back to Cormyr.”

The elf regarded the wizard stonily. “You are the blood of old Baerauble Elf-friend? The blood must be thin indeed by now, though I believe something magical pulses through your veins, allowing you a long life as old Baerauble had.”

Instead of replying, the wizard chose to ignore the venom in the remark. “The same magic that probably pulses through your noble brow as well, lord elf. I am surprised to see one so ancient outside the elven homeland of Evermeet.”

The elf nodded. “I have resisted the call of Evermeet the Fair for many years in order to fight against the human incursions, to fight against the fiends of the pit who claimed Myth Drannor, and lately to fight against the southerners who sought to claim our forests unasked.”

King Galaghard stepped forward. “May we ask why you are here, lord elf?”

“I thought to do a little hunting,” said the elf. “Tell me, do you still have forest buffalo here?”

Thanderahast broke in. “I fear not, Venerable Othonon. They vanished long ago.”

“Giant owlbears, then?” suggested the elf lord. “Or envenomed pumas, or great rugs?”

“They are no more as well, lord elf,” the wizard replied.

Othorion Keove regarded the humans coldly. “You haven’t really taken care of our lands very well, have you?”

Now the king stepped forward once more. “We tend to the land as best as we are able. There are still great forests in Cormyr, which cannot be said of neighboring Sembia, and trees here that stood when your Lord of Scepters was here last. The forested domains are smaller, but they have served us well and have been well tended and mastered.”

Thanderahast tried to speak, but the king gave him no chance, continuing, “We have defended this land from dragons and from orcs, from pirates and from evil sorcerers. On the morrow, we set out in one last battle against the evil forces of the necromantic Witch Lords. We have protected this land and its people because long ago we made a promise to your liege to do so. We have nothing to apologize for to any elf, lord or no.”

Aosinin thought he saw a small smile break across the elf lord’s face. “I see the blood of Faerlthann runs thick and true in his descendants. Your first king had such fire, and his words were sharp, while those of Baerauble were cloying and tricky. It is pleasant to see that threats and bold speech, at least, have not changed. Am I not welcome to hunt within your woods?”

“You are welcome, Othorion Keove,” said the king quickly. “Welcome as an old friend of the land. I apologize in advance for not keeping sufficiently dangerous creatures at hand for your return. I ask only that you trouble none of the citizens of this land, nor harm them in any way. For they, like the land, are in my trust, and I am obligated to protect them.”

The elf nodded silently and the king continued. “If you will excuse me and my brethren, then, we must prepare for our own hunt on the morrow. There are few hours between now and then, and we must make the best use of them.”

The elf lord nodded and raised a hand slowly in dismissal.

Thanderahast said quickly, “The battle tomorrow, O elf lord… we could use any aid you could muster.”

A wintry smile twisted Othorion’s lips. “The Witch Lords’ representative has been here and gone already with a similar invitation, hedged with hidden threats and blatant promises. I will tell you what I told him: I am here for the hunting. But that one did give me a message for you, child of Baerauble. He said that Luthax sends his regards.”

The mage’s face went pale, and he stiffened visibly. Then he bowed low and joined the others in leaving the tent. None of the elves paid the grim, armored humans any attention.

The ride back was a time of low whispers. They did not talk of elves, but rather of the upcoming battle. Marsember had sent some desperately needed infantry, fresh but untried. They would stand on the left flank. The veteran Purple Dragons would hold the right, backed up by Thanderahast’s apprentices. Arabel had sent troops, but even their marching was a shaky, undisciplined affair, they might well prove unreliable. Their ranks would be seasoned with veteran militia from Suzail and placed in the center, near the king and the main vanguard. Those nobles not leading specific units would be mounted and go into battle flanking the royal forces, behind the central troops.

They returned to the camp to find nothing amiss, though there had been activity and many fires in the Witch Lord encampments. The goblins and orcs in the necromancers’ host preferred to fight in the dark, but the presence of human troops meant that they would have to wait until daylight.

The nobles congregated to confirm the battle plan one last time, then broke for the evening. The nobles who had brought their own units returned to their camps, and the wizards retired to their meditations. Soon only a handful were left.

Throughout, King Galaghard was mostly silent, marshaling his words as if they were strength, even after the others had dispersed. At length, he rose. “I want to check the perimeter one last time. Truesilver, walk with me.”

Aosinin strode alongside the king, and the two paced in silence along the hard-packed earth. Finally Truesilver could contain himself no longer and asked, “Cousin, who is Luthax?”

The king looked out over the wide valley that come the dawn would be their battlefield. High fires blazed in the Witch Lords’ camp, and he could imagine the orcs and ogres and trolls dancing about the flames. He said, “Luthax is an old rival of Thanderahast’s, I believe, from before he became the High Wizard.”

“I cannot imagine anything still being around from before Thanderahast was High Wizard,” said Aosinin.

Galaghard smiled in the moonlit darkness. “Wizards live forever, and their rivalries longer than that. I worry that the wizard will forget his loyalty to the crown in the heat of battle, particularly if an old foe has aligned himself with the Witch Lords. Yet many beings in Faerun are older than Thanderahast. That old elf lord, for one. He was hunting here before our ancestors arrived.”

“I didn’t think elves lived that long,” said Aosinin.

“They don’t,” responded the king. “I think he has some of the same magic that keeps Thanderahast and the other wizards going for centuries. Yet he, the elf lord, expected to return here and find all as it was-forests instead of fields, monsters instead of cattle, trees instead of homesteads. It makes me worry.”

“Worry, Sire?” asked Aosinin.

The two passed a guard. Salutes were exchanged, and Galaghard continued only once they were well past. “All that we have achieved, all that we have built, has happened in his one lifetime. Were we to fail tomorrow, to fall to the necromancers, would any record of us be here in another nine hundred years? Would the forests reclaim our fields and the monsters lair in our ruins and no one remember our names?”

“We will not fail tomorrow,” said Aosinin quickly, unsure of what else to say.

“We have been on campaign for three months,” said the king, “three months of living in our saddles and sleeping in our armor. If we fail tomorrow, would I rather have spent those three months with my family, with my wife, with little Rhigaerd and Tanalar and Kathla? And will it matter in the long run who truly rules Cormyr?”

Aosinin was silent. Thanderahast was obviously not the only one shaken by the elf lord’s appearance. “We will not fail, my lord,” he repeated at last. “You know you have the loyalty of every Cormyrean on that battle plain tomorrow. They look to you for support, for leadership. If you are sure of yourself, they’ll follow you into the Pits of the Abyss itself!”

“And if I am myself unsure?” asked the king. “If I feel tired and unwilling to go another step? What then, Cousin?”

“Then I will stand by your side, Cousin,” Aosinin replied, “and remind you of our duty to protect the land of Cormyr. If we fail, no amount of time will eradicate the curse of the Witch Lords. And I will remind you that I am sure you know what you are doing.”

They passed the last of the sentries. The sentry was little more than a boy, but he snapped to attention at the king’s approach and saluted crisply. Aosinin saw the lad’s eyes in his small watch fire. They glowed with pride and respect.

Aosinin looked at his king. Galaghard’s features were lit by the flames. His jaw was firm, and his eyes sparkled. He managed a small fatherly smile.

The men would follow him, and that was important, Aosinin thought. After the battle, the king could retire to his home and hearth and family, and his worries would be laid to rest. And if they failed in the morning, they’d all be beyond such worries in any event.

That morning came all too soon for Aosinin and the others. With the first touch of redness in the eastern sky, the squires were up and about and soon roused their masters as the troops, most of them sleeping little themselves, donned their shirts of mail and leather and saw to their weapons one last time. For some of them, it would in truth be the last time.

The squires brought Aosinin and the rest of the nobles their great suits of platemail and slowly ratcheted the bolts home, encasing the valor of Cormyr in steel. Metal covered their outer legs, their waists, and torsos, and a combination of plate and chain wreathed their upper limbs. Aosinin chose his open-faced helm, as would Galaghard. Despite the risk of arrows, the king needed to be seen, and Aosinin and the rest of the royal nobles would not let their cousin take a risk they were unwilling to engage themselves.

Across the vale, there was the sound of drums and horns. The enemy was preparing, too.

The sun’s disk was just breaking the horizon when the troops of Cormyr formed their battle lines. Patriarchs of Helm the Watchful strutted along the line, each with an attendant acolyte and a bucket of holy water. The patriarch would dip a hollow mace, its head pierced with a hundred tiny holes, into the barrel, then fling the water over the waiting troops, blessing them en masse with the Tears of Helm.

Aosinin was on his brown gelding by this time, a huge, heavy beast barded with interleaved plates heavier than his own. His squire secured the last of the bolts and latches, then retreated to ready himself. The squire, one of the young Dauntinghorns, would march with the infantry, providing some backbone to the Arabellan troops.

The men of Arabel looked nervous but resolute, Aosinin thought, eager to prove their worth and banish the last vestiges of the term “rebel Arabel.” Yet a mantle of fear hung on them that even the blessing of watchful Helm did nothing to dissipate.

The troops from Marsember were descendants of the original smugglers and pirates who had founded and refounded that swampy, independent city. They looked fully capable of taking on the Witch Lords by themselves. Indeed, if the king hesitated any longer, they would do exactly that.

The mages signaled that their preparatory spells were complete, and Thanderahast rode to join the king. The wizard’s mount was a light pony, a dappled veteran of many battles. It had been trained to retreat if Thanderahast left the saddle, and it had survived a number of nasty frays as a result.

The king was mounted on his black charger, a magnificent mount clad in ivory-shaded barding. The charger’s armored headpiece had been fitted with a unicorn’s horn, no doubt further enchanted by the Royal Wizard to protect the rider. Galaghard’s own armor was polished to a luster that caught the sun’s rays and threw them back like a mirror. On his chest was the painted symbol of Cormyr, the Purple Dragon, adopted officially since the years of pirate exile.

Across the shallow vale, the horns grew louder and the drums began to roll, a long, ominous sound that would end in a charge. The Witch Lords’ troops would not wait for the sun to fill the vale, their inhuman troops preferred to fight in the shadows. They would move soon.

There was one last, lingering blare of horns, and the drums fell silent. The armies of the Witch Lords roared in unison and surged forward down the gentle slope. Goblins and orcs trotted on the flanks, their ranks sprinkled with the hulking forms of ogre captains. In the center ran the human troops, bolstered by a few knots of loping trolls. There was no visible sign of the Witch Lords themselves, but then there hadn’t been at any of the previous battles, either.

The Marsembians started to advance in response, only to be hauled back by the shouted curses of their noble leaders. Marliir was the name, Aosinin thought.

The king held up one hand, his eyes locked on the advancing line of nonhumans and traitors. If he had any doubt in his heart, it did not show on his face. The opposing forces had reached the bottom of a shallow delve and were now slowly working their way up the other side.

King Galaghard lowered his hand, and the silver horns of the Cormyrean army roared out in response. Like one vast, amorphous creature spread out over the hilltop, the Glory of Cormyr spilled into the valley. Aosinin rode in the main vanguard, alongside the High Wizard on his pony. An eager-looking young Skatterhawk rode on Thanderahast’s other side, paired with an older, grimmer Thundersword. As they rode, both nobles waggled the blades of their swords to flash reflected sun into the eyes of their foes.

They had closed about half the distance to the enemy line when the bats appeared. The ungainly creatures lofted up from the back of the enemy lines, great fur-covered giants with twisted faces and dead-white skin, shadowing the morning light with their numbers. Humans rode the backs of the daunting beasts-humans wearing dark helms bedecked with stag antlers. The lieutenants of the Witch Lords.

They swooped over the Marsembian troops, and light-fling bolts laced down. The bolts were erratic, gouging the soft, peaty earth more than the troops, but for every two Marsembians who fell, only one rose again.

On his left, Aosinin heard Thanderahast let out a shout of anger, then call out Luthax’s name. His personal enemy was among the bat riders, though how the mage knew, Aosinin could not guess. Thanderahast began to bark the ancient phrases of a spell. Aosinin realized what the mage was doing and reached out to stop him, but his armor did not allow him such swift, stretching overbalancing, and the mage finished the spell and lofted himself out of his saddle, flying upward to meet the bat riders. The pony, as trained, immediately halted and started to trot back up the hill.

Aosinin bellowed at his cousin, and the king nodded grimly. From other wings, Thanderahast’s pupils were rising as well, abandoning their troops in order to join in the airborne carnage.

Ahead, the Witch Lords’ troops halted on the near slope of the valley. Ogres were bellowing orders, and orcs and goblins were desperately trying to form a line, spear-points out, to break the Cormyrean charge. Most would not complete the maneuver before they were struck down.

Above their heads, the bat riders and flying mages wheeled and dodged. Lightning cracked across the clear sky, and the Royal Wizard’s pupils replied with gouts of fire. Here a human form would plummet to the earth, and there a flaming bat wing would flutter downward, trailing ink-black smoke down to its death. Thanderahast had removed the danger of any unopposed, concerted attack from above, but at the cost of any protection of the line troops on the ground if the Witch Lords had any other tricks up their sleeves.

The next horror of the necromancers was apparent when the two armies fully closed. At first Aosinin thought he faced humans-traitors, rebels, and mercenaries. They might have been once, for he recognized some badges on the armor they wore. But now they were marching dead things, the remains of their eyes hanging bloody in their sockets, and their flesh drained of all blood. To a man, they had deep slashes across their exposed throats.

The walking dead! Zombies, Aosinin realized with a groan, magical creations under the control of a powerful necromancer. And unlike the animated skeletons they had fought in previous battles, these were recently made and still had some of the power they held in life. The noble thought of the fires and the drums of the previous evening and realized that it had not been a rallying celebration, but a grisiy enchantment. The Witch Lords had consumed their own living troops to provide fodder of the utmost loyalty for this crucial battle.

The Arabellans in the front line quailed when they saw what they faced, and several began to retreat. Galaghard rode among them to the front of the line, raising his arm and sounding the attack. The Arabellans stiffened at the sight of the king and, with a shout, pressed forward into the undead.

Aosinin spurred his horse forward to follow his king, and all around him, the battle lines disintegrated into the usual chaos of hacking and thrusting and dying as the ranks of soldiers broke into a swirl of smaller conflicts-man against goblin, against ogre, and against undead abomination. The Truesilver wasted no breath on battle cries but set his teeth and hacked at the butchered humans, seeking to carve a path to the king, who wheeled and slashed again and again against the Undead horde.

At the king’s flanks rode two priests of Helm the Watchful. Golden lights danced from their palms as they drove the animating essences from the fighting corpses. As Aosinin watched, one of the priests was overwhelmed by a wave of clutching undead and dragged from his mount. Aosinin did not see him again. Instead, the Truesilver found himself beset on all sides by swarming goblins, who were spilling into the heart of the Cormyrean host in the wake of the undead, slashing at zombie and Cormyrean with equal abandon.

The world became a small, blood-red, frantic place of wheeling and cutting and slashing, Aosinin’s horse bucking under him like a mad thing. He trampled foes who sought to gut his mount and drag him down. He made little charges to nowhere, wheeling as his mount lashed out in all directions with steel-shod hooves, then surging back along the line of destruction he’d already cut, to reap more goblin lives. Twice he was nearly torn from the saddle, and once his gauntlet was ripped clear from his hand. A goblin tried to climb up on his mount, its clawlike fingers scrabbling against the horse’s barding, clawing at Aosinin’s face. The Truesilver cursed and ran the small creature through. As the goblin fell away, Aosinin saw young Skatterhawk, transfixed by three black goblin blades, topple from his horse, knocking over three zombies. There were yet more of the undead to swarm over the fallen noble’s body, and more orcs and more goblins. Aosinin’s world was reduced to the length of his sword.

When Truesilver did have time and breath to look up again, he was wet with blood clear up to his gorget, and half the nobles of the Glory of Cormyr were down. Cormaerils, Dauntinghorns, and Crownsilvers had vanished from their saddles and now lay dead and trampled beneath feet and hooves in the battle. The king was farther away now, driven apart from his cousin by the weight of the advancing undead.

As Aosinin cursed and fought to bring his mount around, he saw a huge shape rise up from among the heaped dead. A monstrous troll, larger than any Aosinin had seen, cunningly hidden among the undead troops and goblins, surged into battle with the king. Galaghard’s mount reared, whinnying in fear, and the king fought to keep it under control.

Another horseman spurred into the space between the king and the troll. One of the Bleth boys, by his markings. To the troll, one human was as good a victim as another. One swipe of its huge claws unhorsed the impulsive Bleth, and another ripped his armor open from neck to waist. Blood fountained, and the young noble threw back his head in a cry of agony that Aosinin could not hear. He fell out of view, lost in the press of staggering zombies and desperately thrusting Arabellan billmen.

Bleth’s sacrifice bought the time the king needed. Aosinin realized that, besides himself, Galaghard was now nearly the only mounted knight left. The king wheeled his charger and brought his sweeping blade around nearly level with the troll’s neck. As the horse plunged forward, the monster’s head was cut from its shoulders and bounced into the throng of advancing goblins.

That would not kill the creature, thought Aosinin, but the loss would keep it busy for a while. Indeed, the troll had already abandoned its attack on the king and was now throwing goblins about like handfuls of straw, searching in the confusion for its lost head.

The king wheeled again, this time facing Aosinin. Seeing his cousin, he raised his sword in salute, and the Truesilver returned it, seeing Galaghard give him a bloody smile. There were no doubts in his liege’s mind this day. No hollowness in the king of Cormyr.

The king used his uplifted blade to point to the left flank, where the Marsembians were slowly being driven back by a wedge of orcs and goblins. Were that wing to fail, the Witch Lords could drive around behind the Cormyrean lines, surrounding them, and force the Glory of Cormyr into a knot of men too tightly packed to fight. Then the outermost could be slain at leisure, while those on the inside were crushed or trampled to death.

Aosinin rallied a small band of Arabellans with hoarse shouts and windmilling waves of his sword-by the gods, was his arm going to fall off?-and led them in a charge across the field of heaped and broken bodies, seeking to reinforce the Marsembian foot soldiers.

The Arabellans took heart for the first time that day and began to shout as they came down on the orcs from one side.

Their cries were drowned out by the sound of horns, shrieking like great hunting hawks. Aosinin had heard only one horn sound like that-a trophy horn carved all of one piece of crystal, as smooth as glass, that resided on a cushion in a room deep in the palace. An elven horn!

Heart rising in sudden hope, he stood in his stirrups as his faithful steed raced along, and he looked beyond units of snarling, hurrying ogres in time to see the elves arrive on the battlefield. Some were flying, and these joined the wizards in their airborne struggle with the bat riders. The remainder rode great stags, giant elk whose heads were heavy with iron-tipped antlers.

This was the true Glory of Cormyr, Aosinin realized. The armor of the elves glowed, as their tent had the night before, in a scintillating pattern of green and gold. They were few in number, but to an elf, they were heavily armed and armored.

The Witch Lord line disintegrated as they struck it full force, the ogres falling like crops at harvesttime under the wicked, slender blades of the elves. In mere moments they were slain, and the elves were through to the heart of the wedge of orcs.

Without their leaders, the goblins and orcs dropped their weapons and tried to flee, only to be cut down as they ran. Aosinin heard exultant singing and realized that it came from the elves. More of the goblin troops fled at the sound.

The glowing wave of death caught up with Aosinin’s band and passed on by, and the Truesilver urged his Arabellans to join the flank of the stag riders. One entire wing of the Witch Lords’ army was in flight before them, and individual elves were breaking away to chase down stragglers.

Now the charging elves struck the zombies at the heart of the Witch Lords’ host, troops too mindless to run. Bright blades flashed, and graceful bodies leaned and slashed and rose to slash again in a deadly dance that separated limbs from bodies and forced the dead to fall. In less time than Aosinin would have believed possible, the undead had also fallen beneath the hooves of the rushing stags. The Cormyrean infantry could clearly see what was happening now and raised a great cheer as they hacked at orcs and goblins with renewed heart.

The elven riders swept up to the king of Cormyr, whose mount was picking its way gingerly over a mound of undead and goblin bodies that the royal sword had slain. Galaghard raised his bloody blade in greeting and bellowed, “We appreciate your aid!”

“Aid?” Othorion Keove grinned down from his high saddle. “I said I came here to do some hunting, and when I awoke this morning, I decided I had a taste for orc, goblin, ogre, and undead. Care to ride with me?”

The king spurred his own mount alongside the elf lord’s stag, and together they swept down on the surviving wing of the Witch Lords’ army. It was mired in combat with the Suzail militia, but it shattered like ice as the elves and men bore down on it. Weary Cormyreans from all over the field trotted over to be in at the kill. Few foes of Cormyr would be slipping away from this last stand.

Overhead, the surviving bat riders wheeled and fled into the Vast Swamp. Two were immolated as they flew, but another half-dozen outran the mages and elves and disappeared into the misty bogs beyond, flapping frantically.

Their mounts exhausted from the charge, Aosinin, Galaghard, and the elf lord rode slowly to a low hillock overlooking the battle. Below, the priests of Helm were tending to the human wounded and dispatching dying orcs. Several smoldering piles marked where trolls had fallen, they would have to be immolated later to make their deaths final. Thanderahast landed nearby, his robes bloodied and scorched. He nodded to the king, and Galaghard saluted him formally. Words would be exchanged later, Aosinin knew, about the High Wizard abandoning the knights of the court to pursue his own personal vendetta.

The elf lord turned to the king and said, “A good day’s hunt.”

Galaghard shrugged his heavily mailed shoulders. “It is good to see that Cormyr still offers something suitable to your tastes.”

“It does, in many ways,” said the elf, and then, after a visible hesitation, he rode nearer and laid a slender hand on the king’s arm. “Hear me, human, for I have altogether too much wisdom bought over long and bloody years. It is easy to rule from a distance, but difficult to lead from the front of a battle. It is easy to order, but hard to inspire. It is simple to conquer, but hard to rule. That is why you triumphed this day over the unseen necromancers. I had my doubts as to your fate, and your worth, until I saw one of your brother humans sacrifice himself in the fray to purchase you time. Such loyalty is more precious than all the gold in your vaults.”

“Aye,” said the king huskily, smiling. “And here-” he thumped his chest with one bloody gauntlet-“it is valued more than all the gold in all the cities of humans all over Faerun. I can believe in my power-my just authority-only as long as others believe in me.” He looked at Aosinin.

“You probably don’t know how important this is,” the old elf added, “but I have to say you’ve done a fair job with this tract of land. Iliphar would approve, and probably Baerauble as well.”

“Will you be staying, then?” asked the king. “You will be most welcome, for I shall ensure that all Cormyr knows that the realm survives because of your aid here today.”

The elf waved a dismissive hand. “For a year, perhaps two, we shall abide here,” Othorion replied, “but no true elf can resist the call of Evermeet forever. Yet in these fair forests, I think there will be good hunting for a small while.”

As the three men and the elf went slowly down from the hill, their trembling mounts moving no faster than the walking wizard, men of Cormyr walked about on the bloody field under the bright sun of morning.

The foot soldiers gathered mementos and told their companions about how they’d almost died here, and had hewn that one down over there, and as the tales went on, the tellers were already expanding their heroisms. By nightfall, all of them would have personally rescued the king and led the elves onto the battlefield in the charge that won the day and preserved the realm.