Crusade

14

Black wings fluttered in front of her eyes, obscuring the battle on the ground below. She swooped lower, closer to the conflict. The carrion birds bumped and battered her, making her view jump, but soon the Army of the Alliance came clearly into sight again.

Tuigan troops completely ringed the western army.

Alusair cursed bitterly, and her black-and-white view of the battle wavered. After she forced herself to concentrate on the magical link with the falcon, the vision cleared again. For being so high above the lines-higher even than Suzail's tallest tower-Alusair was amazed at the detail she could discern. Through the bird's eyes, the princess saw the plights of individual soldiers, even the flights of single arrows.

For all her searching, she couldn't find her father. She'd spotted the royal standard, which was being buffeted about in the press, but the king wasn't near it. That was a very bad sign. As Alusair knew, Azoun needed to be in contact with the purple dragon standard to issue commands; without him, the army was fighting on instinct alone.

Refusing to believe her father dead, Alusair decided that he must have been pushed away from the standard-bearer. The mental effort it took to draw that conclusion weakened the link to the falcon, and for an instant, the battle disappeared completely from her mind.

"Damned magical-" Alusair stopped, kept her eyes tightly closed, and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, she saw Torg standing over her, his hands balled into fists and resting on his armored hips.

"Well?" he asked impatiently.

"Only a few more miles and we'll see the Alliance," the princess said sullenly. "The Tuigan have them surrounded, so we'd better hurry."

Not waiting for more of an explanation, Torg barked a string of orders to his captains. The dwarven army heaved itself wearily to its feet and prepared for the march. Before the army proceeded across the low, rolling hills, however, they dropped their packs and tethered the mules that towed their wagons.

"We won't be needing tents to fight the barbarians," was all Torg would tell Alusair by way of a reply.

Her heart heavy with concern for her father, the princess contacted the falcon, once again using the bracelet the centaur had given her, and told it to circle the battle for a while, then return to her. Next she, too, stripped her pack and put on her full armor. Sweat trickled over much of her body almost immediately after she donned the heavy plate. The princess's thoughts were on other things, though, so she hardly noticed it.

Setting a quick pace, Torg set off for the battle. The dwarves had yet to see a Tuigan patrol, and Alusair hoped their appearance would be a surprise. For his part, the ironlord didn't care much about the tactics of the fight to come, only that it come quickly. If the army gained a few skulls for the caves of Earthfast, so much the better. The number of dwarves who might die to take them didn't matter, either, just as long as they perished in a righteous fight.

Smoke rose on the horizon. From what she'd seen through the falcon's eyes, Alusair knew it was from the fire the wizards had started with their spells early in the battle. The dark clouds rolled into the sky and seemed to transmute into thousands of individual black birds. This grim sight set the dwarven troops on edge long before they heard the first faint echoes of the battle drift over the hills toward them.

"Damn all humans!" Torg shouted suddenly. He slapped his mailed hand noisily against his leg and pointed to the left. A few hundred yards away, three Tuigan scouts were rising from the tall grass. The barbarians dashed away before the ironlord even considered sending soldiers after them.

"It can't be helped," Alusair offered. Bracing her helmet under her arm, she wiped the perspiration from her brow. "We should be able to see the battle once we top that next hill anyway."

The princess was correct. When the dwarves reached the spot she'd indicated, they saw the two armies thrown together in bloody, chaotic combat before them. Far to their right, the Alliance's camp was spread in the bright sun. Without warning, a falcon swooped low over the fields, then caught an updraft and sailed high over Torg's troops. For a moment, Alusair considered using the bracelet again to get a better vantage on the battle. She quickly dismissed that notion when she saw a line of horsewarriors break from the conflict.

"Array for combat!" Torg shouted. He swatted the standard-bearer when the boy didn't move fast enough for his liking. Alusair frowned at the cruelty.

The dwarves scattered and formed a triple line across the hill. The first two ranks placed their pikes at their feet and drew their crossbows, while the third rank braced their polearms as a protective palisade. As five thousand Tuigan horsemen rumbled up the incline, away from Azoun's left flank, Torg's troops swiftly cranked their heavy bows. They loaded the powerful weapons, then waited with their characteristic silence to meet the charge.

"They'll ride close once, then turn and fire," Alusair reminded Torg. "Just as they did with the Army of the Alliance. They'll try to draw you out."

The ironlord raised the visor on his helmet. "I'm not fooled so easily, Princess." He smiled and straightened his beard, bound in heavy chains of gleaming gold for the battle. "And the Tuigan have never faced a dwarven army in battle before."

Slamming his visor back into place, Torg ordered the standard-bearer to relay a command to the troops. As the horsewarriors galloped closer, the dwarves' front rank raised their bows and sighted on the enemy. When the Tuigan reached seventy-five yards, the dwarves fired.

A loud, reverberating retort followed the firing of the bows. Heavy crossbow bolts sped toward the Tuigan and tore fearfully into their ranks. Horses tumbled and soldiers screamed, but the mass of the enemy line rushed toward the dwarves, unaffected by the death and pain around them. At fifty yards, the barbarians reined in their horses and returned fire.

Alusair flinched as the shower of powerfully launched Tuigan arrows arced into the sky and struck the dwarven line. The princess knew what to expect from the attack, so she wasn't really afraid. Like the rest of Torg's troops, Alusair wore plate armor wrought in Earthfast, legendary for its strength. That day's battle added to the stories about the mountain kingdom's craftsmen.

A thunderous clatter echoed in Alusair's ears as arrow after arrow struck armor and bounced off. In only a few instances did the missiles penetrate the dwarves' plate mail, and then only because of a carelessly exposed joint or slightly open visor. As the rain of arrows lessened, the ironlord ordered his troops to fire again. The second line loosed their crossbows, and more bolts ripped into the retreating Tuigan line.

"They won't try that again," Torg said loudly. He looked down the intact dwarven line, then out at the hundreds of wounded barbarians in the field. "Not even orcs are stupid enough to use an unsuccessful attack twice in a day."

With a twinge of guilt, Alusair found herself admiring Torg again. The ironlord was thoughtless and perhaps even cruel, but he knew the battlefield well. "May Clanggedin and all the other dwarven gods prove the rest of your plan as successful, Your Highness," the princess said. She glanced at the horsewarriors and added, "For we will test it very soon."

With a loud and trilling war cry, the Tuigan charged again.

As the double line of riders drew nearer, Alusair could see that they wielded lances and silver curved swords instead of bows. It was clear that they were going to push for hand-to-hand combat.

Showing little anxiety, even though the barbarians were barreling down on his troops, Torg bade the standard-bearer signal again. Deftly the soldiers hung their crossbows from hooks on their brichettes and picked up their pikes. The Tuigan were less than forty yards away when the dwarven lines broke. Their bows clanging softly against their armored hips and legs, Torg's troops formed their battle squares.

It was obvious that the Tuigan had never encountered this tactic before. Their commander, riding next to his standard, halted his charge and attempted to slow his men, but the barbarians rushed to engulf the four squares of dwarves. Capturing so compact and easily surrounded an enemy looked simple at first. The horsewarriors soon discovered otherwise.

"To the right! Crush them between the squares!" Torg bellowed and waved his sword from the center of one group. The dwarves pushed to the right as commanded, driving the horses and riders into the pikes bristling from the next square.

Alusair, in the center of a different square, watched as the Tuigan tried to press the attack. The horsemen found themselves spitted on pikes or knocked from their mounts. The latter often provided worse then a quick death by blade, as the rest of the barbarian attack crushed the hapless victims under horses' hooves. And as more riders rushed to the battle, those caught in front against the immovable wall of well-armored, well-armed dwarves were slain with greater ease.

The bodies of the Tuigan dead were piled high around the squares. Wounded horses thrashed at the dwarves' feet and became a fleshy wall bracing Torg's troops from close assault, but not really hindering the reach of their long-handled pikes. The carrion crows had begun to circle around this bloody battlefield, too, though Alusair found the birds' noisy, insistent cawing less disturbing than the dwarves' disciplined silence. Even when faced with the Tuigan charge, the soldiers from Earthfast leaned silently into their grisly work, occasionally grunting as a pike struck home.

Finally, over the screams of the wounded humans and the clash of metal upon metal, the princess heard the steady beating of drums. Slowly at first, the Tuigan broke off. The dwarves took the enemy's retreat as ample opportunity to slay some of the humans from behind. As Torg could have predicted, not a single dwarf broke rank.

The ironlord bellowed his laughter over the humans' screams and the birds' cries. He raised his beautifully crafted, blood-soaked sword high over his head and shouted his triumph. Without pause, the rest of the army from Earthfast joined in. The dwarves' victory shout was very different from the Tuigan's shrill, trilling war cry. It sounded like it came from deep within the earth itself, rolling and rumbling from the dwarves as if they echoed the noise of stone grating against stone deep within the mines they dug.

The cry chilled Alusair, but she'd heard it before. Perhaps it was the moans and screams the princess noticed behind the victory shout that made her shudder, or the blood she saw splattered across the pikes as the soldiers thrust them into the air. Perhaps it was the knowledge that a long afternoon of fighting lay ahead before her father would be safe. Whatever the cause of her discomfort, Alusair realized that now was not the time for celebrations.

"Ironlord," she cried as she pushed through her square. "We must move quickly if we are to help the Alliance."

Their shout ended, the dwarven soldiers eyed the princess warily as she shoved through the ranks. She had left her post without permission, an offense none of them would ever consider committing, and they silently showed their scorn for the action. Alusair ignored the glares she got and muscled past the few dwarves who purposefully stood in her way.

"I know the tactics we should follow, Princess," Torg sighed as Alusair finally got near. "We will move as soon as we've collected trophies for the caves of Earthfast." He wiped a fleck of blood from his gauntlet and ordered the men to reform into two lines to advance.

"Collect your severed heads after we've saved the rest of the Alliance," Alusair snapped. She pointed toward the battle still raging a few hundred yards away. The Tuigan who had survived the assault on the dwarves, about half of the number that had charged, were now forming a flank to face the ironlord's troops.

Torg frowned. "You're right," he grumbled. "We'd best get this over with."

The dwarves advanced swiftly, but didn't get too close to the Tuigan lines. They fired volley after volley of crossbow bolts into the enemy ranks, wreaking havoc. More than anything, the dwarven army proved a seemingly incurable distraction to the Tuigan's right flank. The horsewarriors' arrows had little effect on the heavy dwarven plate mail, and whenever a direct assault seemed imminent, Torg would order his men to form squares.

Whoever was directing the Alliance's troops at that end of the line took full advantage of this distraction. The western infantry rallied and pressed hard against the Tuigan right, driving them closer to the dwarves' crossbow barrage. Given little choice, the commander of the Tuigan in that part of the battle ordered a desperate assault on the troops from Earthfast.

Torg's squares proved as effective in this combat as they had in the first encounter with the Tuigan. The ironlord slowly but surely moved the groups of pikemen down the hill, forcing the barbarians back to the western lines. With amazing speed, the dwarves and the western infantry destroyed the Tuigan flank, capturing its standard and the general who commanded it.

The rest of the battle dragged on through the afternoon, until the sun began to dip in the west. Smoke still billowed darkly across the field from the various brush fires that chewed away at the tall grass. Few arrows were launched now, but the air was still full of impatient dark shapes. Many of the crows had landed and fed, but more arrived all the time, drawn by the coppery smell of blood and the cries of their kin.

It wasn't until the bright orb of the sun had sunk half below the horizon that the sound of drums echoed over the battlefield. In as orderly a fashion as possible, the Tuigan pulled back from the western line. Unsurprisingly, especially after the disastrous cavalry charge earlier in the day, no one moved to follow the enemy. A few longbows were hefted and arrows shot halfheartedly at the retreating horde, but the majority of Azoun's troops stood in dazed silence. More than anything, they were surprised to be alive.

"Princess!" someone called in a deep, loud voice.

Alusair scanned the mass of western soldiers for the speaker. Men and women lay everywhere, wounded or dead. In a few places, soldiers cried softly for their fallen comrades, and prayers were muttered in musical, lilting voices all through the western lines. In the midst of all this, someone pressed toward the dwarven army, his hand held high.

"Your Highness! Over here!" the armored man shouted, waving his gauntlet in the air.

The press of soldiers parted for an instant, and Alusair saw that Farl Bloodaxe, his helmet tucked under his arm, was the one calling to her. The Cormyrian general smiled when the princess met his eyes, but that couldn't hide the exhaustion on his face nor mask the beads of grimy sweat that rolled down his dark skin.

As the general came close, Alusair said, "Well met!" and shook his hand. "I'm not surprised to find you were in command of this end of the line. You rallied well and took advantage of our press."

Farl gestured to the soldiers all around him. "The troops are responsible for that. Not me." A worried look crossed his face, and he leaned close to the princess. "Have you seen your father?" he asked quietly.

Blanching slightly, Alusair shook her head. "I was hoping to do that right now."

Without much comment, Farl and Alusair made their way through the western lines. The general briefly explained how he'd not seen the king since early in the battle. He was concerned for the monarch, because the fighting had been especially fierce at the center of the front rank. Alusair listened in grave silence, and she noted that more and more corpses lay in the ranks as she made her way to the king's standard.

The crowd of gaping onlookers made it easy for Farl and Alusair to find Azoun. The general called for captains to break up the crowd and reform the men into companies, while the princess shoved the soldiers out of her way and rushed forward. She choked back a gasp when she saw the king, surrounded by clerics and sprawled unconscious on the ground.

"The king will be fine, Madam Knight," a fat, red-faced priest of Lathander said. He placed a restraining hand on Alusair's shoulder and attempted to turn her away. "The clerics do need room to work, however, so-"

"That's my father," Alusair snapped, and the priest's pudgy red cheeks flushed a deeper crimson.

He stammered an apology, but Alusair wasn't listening. Without a glance at the clerics who had turned to look at her, she went to her father's side and knelt.

They'd removed the king's helmet and chain mail coif, even loosened the straps holding his cuirass tight around his chest. Azoun looked pale, and sweat plastered his hair and beard to his face. Though he was unconscious, his breathing seemed labored and his mouth was twisted into a grimace of pain. The reason for the expression was obvious. A broken arrow jutted from the king's left thigh. The missile had penetrated the heavy silver cuisse, and now blood stained the bright armor.

"He'll be all right," a cleric murmured soothingly. Alusair saw the man's deep blue eyes and noticed the shining silver disk-the symbol of Tymora, Goddess of Luck and Patron of Adventurers-hanging around his neck. "But we should move His Majesty from here to a place where we can work our healing."

The princess started. It was clear from the cleric's tone that he was actually asking her for permission to move the king. Alusair hadn't expected to fall into a leadership role with the Army of the Alliance, and she was certain that she didn't want the responsibility.

"Perhaps Vangerdahast or General Bloodaxe should give you your orders," Alusair began. "I don't-"

The infantry commander's deep voice whispered in the princess's ear. "With all respect, Your Highness, you'd best show the troops that someone they respect is in command here. Vangerdahast is quite ill and confined to his tent."

Farl's sudden comment startled Alusair, who was already on edge. She glanced at the crowd, grown larger now because of her presence. Even the general's orders could not disperse the Cormyrians who'd come to see the elusive princess, the daughter of Azoun who had helped to save them from the Tuigan. Memories of regal processions through the streets of Suzail flooded Alusair's mind. She could not help but notice that the hope and awe on the soldiers' faces was very similar to the emotions shown by the poor who had once watched her in Cormyr. Their need was obvious and overwhelming.

"Your orders, Your Highness?" Farl asked, loudly enough for the crowd to hear.

Alusair winced. She had already decided that she would have to put on a show of authority for the Alliance, but she hated being forced into anything. And it was clear Farl was doing just that. With a flash of anger in her eyes, the princess stood and glanced at the infantry commander.

"Regroup the soldiers into companies, General," she replied. She looked to the crowd and added, "The Tuigan could very well come back tonight. My father will expect us to be prepared when the healers are done with him."

"Will the king live?" someone called from the crowd. The anxiety in the hidden soldier's voice was clear.

Forcing a smile onto her dirty face, Alusair paused. After waiting a moment for effect, she put her hands to her mouth and shouted, "King Azoun lives, and he will be at the head of this army by sunrise. Until then, my words are his." She faced Farl again. "Break up this crowd, General," she said softly. "I'll meet with you and the other commanders as soon as my father has been moved."

After bowing deeply, Farl Bloodaxe went to work on the milling throng. Alusair helped the clerics lift her father onto a litter, then refocused her attention on reorganizing the Army of the Alliance. Her first task, she decided as she made her way through camp, would be to talk with the Tuigan general the dwarves had captured in the battle. How the remaining troops should be arrayed depended largely on what they could expect from the khahan, and the general might give her some indication of the barbarians' disposition to night fighting.

The princess found the commander of the Tuigan right flank sitting sullenly amidst a mass of silent dwarves. The khan's standard lay shredded on the ground at his feet, and four armed guards stood watch over him. No one had dressed the bloody head wound the general had sustained in the fighting, so Alusair ordered a dwarven healer to bind the man's cuts while she waited for a translator to arrive from the War Wizards.

The sun had almost set completely when the wizard finally arrived. His long gray robe was tattered and greasy; multicolored smudges from spell components clung to his fingers. Despite his obvious exhaustion, the mage efficiently translated Alusair's opening flurry of questions. The answers the Tuigan commander gave were brief and not very informative.

The princess sighed and studied the khan for a moment. Batu Min Ho, for that was the name he had given the translator, looked to be of Shou descent. His broad features were tempered slightly; his nose was not as flat nor his cheekbones as pronounced as other Tuigan's. Still, he was dressed in the armor favored by some of the barbarian elite: a heavy breastplate over a chain mail hauberk, rough boots, partial cuisses of studded leather on his legs, and thick leather gauntlets dotted with steel on his hands. The disturbing thing about the general was his calm, even though he surely must have known his life was in grave danger.

"Will the khahan offer ransom for you, General?" Alusair asked at last. After hearing the question translated, Batu merely shook his head.

Frowning, the princess leaned forward and looked into Batu's eyes. "Will the khahan attack tonight?"

At first there came no reply. Batu stared at his interrogator for a moment, then at the translator.

"He wants to know if you are the daughter of King Azoun, the man he met in the Tuigan camp," the wizard reported. "He assumes your position in the army indicates a relation to the king, but also notes that you resemble Azoun in many ways."

The princess was surprised to learn that her father had visited the enemy camp, but she let that shock pass and concentrated on questioning the general. "I am Princess Alusair of Cormyr, daughter of King Azoun," she replied. After a pause, she added, "My father sends his regards."

After bowing to Alusair from his seat, Batu met her gaze again. "Then the king has survived the battle?" he asked through the translator. He raised an eyebrow in surprise, an act that shifted the bandage wrapped around his head. "Yamun Khahan offered a great reward for your father's head. I was certain someone would collect that reward."

A shudder wracked Alusair, but she tried not to show it. She took a sip from a waterskin that lay at her feet and offered it to the general, who stoically refused. "Will the khahan come tonight?" she asked again.

The wizard translated the question, and Batu paused for quite a while before answering. From the expression on his blood-smeared face, Alusair guessed that the general was formulating a safe answer. Finally Batu said, "I cannot guess the thoughts of the khahan, Princess, nor would I reveal them to you if I could. I will tell you this much, however. Your armies have presented the greatest challenge the Tuigan have faced in many months. Your troops fight most valiantly."

It was Alusair's turn to pause, for she wondered where she should lead the questioning. Two of the dwarven guards started to build a fire to chase off the growing twilight, distracting the princess for a moment. When she turned back to Batu, she found him studying her.

"Would the honorable princess be so kind as to answer one question for me?" he asked through the mage. The princess nodded, and the general bowed slightly. When he looked up at Alusair, his eyes were dark and his expression grim. "What do you plan to do with me?"

"We are civilized, Batu Khan," Alusair replied without pause. "You will be our prisoner until the end of the war. You will be taken from the fighting and kept from harm."

That answer seemed to displease Batu Min Ho. The general sank into contemplation for a moment, then said something so softly that the wizard wasn't sure he heard it correctly. The comment wasn't meant for anyone else, but the general had noted, "Then there will be no more illustrious battles for me." He bowed stiffly to the princess and asked to be allowed to rest.

The discussion obviously over, Alusair ordered the four dwarven guards to escort Batu to the Alliance's camp at the rear of the battle lines. The khan and the dwarves had not gone more than a dozen steps from the princess when a scuffle broke out.

"Look out, Lugh!" a guard shouted in Dwarvish.

The clash of steel on steel rang out as Alusair rushed toward the fight. Batu Min Ho, a short dwarven blade in his hand, stood over a fallen guard. The three other dwarves circled him warily, their swords held out in front of them. Drawing her own blade, the princess stepped toward the Tuigan commander.

Batu met Alusair's gaze, and a curious smile worked across his lips. After a feint to drive the dwarves back, the general held the sword's point to his stomach. He softly repeated three names-Wu, Yo, and Ji-and fell forward. Batu didn't even cry out as the bright steel pierced through his armor and impaled him.

Other dwarves, hefting their silver-bladed pikes, were now charging toward the disturbance. The khan's original guards, still holding their swords, examined the general's body to see if he were truly dead. Satisfied that the suicide had been successful, they left the body where it lay and turned their attention to their fallen comrade.

The ever-efficient dwarves swiftly carried the dead guard away to be interred in the communal cairn they were building, and Alusair looked up from Batu Min Ho's corpse. The khan's strange, final words ran through her mind over and over again, and she wondered who or what he had called for in his final moment. In fact, the death took such command of her thoughts that the princess didn't realize she had walked far into the Alliance's lines until she was hundreds of yards from the flank.

She found Farl talking quietly to a dark-haired man clad in a muddied sky-blue tunic and hose. Where the color stood out on this man's clothes, it presented a stark contrast to the other soldiers' dark tunics or their leather or steel armor. Both men bowed formally when Alusair came near. "Any word of my father?" she asked.

The blue-clad man bowed again, an act that tossed his ponytail over his shoulder. "Your Highness, I am Thom Reaverson, the king's bard and royal historian. I just came from His Highness. The clerics have healed the arrow wound, but he is still unconscious."

"That's not what I hoped to hear," the princess replied, "but it's certainly not the worst news I've had today." The bard smiled warmly at her, and Alusair found herself returning the gesture. "Could you go back to my father's side and keep me apprised?" she asked after a moment.

"Of course," Thom said. "I'll look for you near the Cormyrian standard, Your Highness." He hurried off at a jog toward the Alliance's camp.

Alusair didn't watch him go, however. As soon as the bard had been assigned his task, the princess moved on to other matters. "What's the army's status, Farl?"

After leading the way to a pair of rickety canvas-and-wood camp chairs set up around a nearby fire, the infantry commander gave his report. The Tuigan attack had cut the Alliance's number by half. With only a handful of exceptions, the cavalry had been wiped out, and a third of the wizards had been killed or wounded in the fighting. "I've got the men gathering the dead," Farl reported, "but I'm afraid it's a monumental task."

A quick scan of the battlefield revealed hundreds of torches flickering in the darkness outside the Alliance's lines. These torches illuminated the field for the details sent to retrieve western corpses and search for the wounded. So far, no body found outside the lines proved to be alive; the Tuigan had trampled most of the corpses in their retreat. A low moan continually hovered over the western camp as the injured and the grieving vented their sorrow together.

A sick feeling settled in the princess's stomach as she considered the situation. She rested her elbows on her knees and bowed her head in thought. "Pull three-quarters of the troops off corpse detail," she ordered at last. "I want them breaking down what remains of the Alliance's camp. We should be ready to move if the need arises."

Farl frowned. "But the corpses of our soldiers-"

"— will be of no use to us now," the princess sighed. She noted the shocked look on the general's face and added, "The gods will certainly understand if the heroes who died fighting here are not given the proper burial rites."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"When that's done, organize the remainder of the troops into three shifts. I want the men rested up in case the Tuigan come back," Alusair ordered calmly. "One shift of the three should remain alert, waiting for the horsewarriors, while the others sleep."

Nodding, Farl looked around at the Alliance's lines. "I've already started on that, Your Highness. If the men weren't so frightened, they might be easier to command." He paused and looked into the fire. "I–I share their concern, Princess. I don't think we have the strength to make another stand here."

A pressure had begun to weigh upon Alusair the moment she'd discovered her father was injured, the moment she'd been forced to take command of the army. The princess felt that pressure increase now. Her shoulders tight and her stomach in knots, she placed her hand on the general's arm.

"Then we'd best be ready to move by midnight," she said softly. "Perhaps we can find a more defensible place to the west."

Farl didn't reply at first. Eventually he stood and bowed. "I'll see that your orders are carried out." He paused, then added, "I'm glad you're here, Princess. I don't know how the men would have reacted to your father's injury if you hadn't taken command."

Alusair appreciated Farl's compliment, but the notion that she was one of the only things holding the Alliance together frightened her. She realized then that it was this responsibility that weighed so heavily upon her. Running a hand through her knotted blond hair, Alusair wondered if this pressure was what her father felt every day.

To take her mind off that and other thoughts, she established a makeshift command headquarters in the midst of the western lines. Despite this effort, the princess found that, once she'd set the army to its various tasks, there was little for her to do but wait and think and watch the bright bonfires that had sprung up around the battlefield. Those fires, which might have been the center for a rustic celebration in Cormyr, were the resting place for the western dead. One by one, corpses were hefted onto the blazing pyres, their souls sent to the afterlife unceremoniously on clouds of foul-smelling smoke.

The funeral pyres brought more unwelcome contemplation, and she was attempting to force her mind away from various morbid topics when she heard a spent arrow snap beneath someone's foot. Glancing behind her, the princess saw Thom Reaverson, a smile on his young face. At the bard's side was another man, dressed in a heavy black robe, its hood concealing his face.

"Hello, Allie," the hooded man said.

Alusair sprang to her feet and threw her arms around her father. When the king groaned, the princess backed up a step. From where she stood, Alusair could see Azoun's pale face and haggard expression. She also noted for the first time that he leaned heavily to his left upon a walking stick.

Before his daughter could say a word, the king held up his right hand. "Thom told me you were here, so I came to see you." He shifted his weight on his leg, trying to get comfortable. "I just wanted to tell you I'm all right, and I wanted to see how you fared in the battle. I was. . worried."

The king didn't need to explain the disguise. After seeing how ill her father looked, Alusair could guess the reason for it. "You don't want the men to see you when you're so weak," she said quietly.

Azoun nodded. "In the morning, after I've rested, I'll return from the dead, their triumphant hero." Alusair could not miss the note of self-scorn in those words. She wanted to comfort her father, but he'd already placed his hand on Thom's shoulder and turned to go.

"Wait!" the princess gasped, running a few steps to get beside Azoun. "What are we supposed to do until morning?"

The king cocked his head, and Alusair thought she saw a little color flush back into his face. "Thom told me that you've taken command until I get better," he said, pride bolstering his weak voice. "And from what I hear you're doing everything I would." He hobbled a step, then stopped and added, "I'd move the troops tonight, though. We'll have a better chance of putting some distance between us and the Tuigan under cover of darkness." Thom cast a sympathetic glance at the princess, then the king and the bard moved on.

For a moment Alusair considered telling her father she didn't want the responsibility for the army, that he or anyone else should take it. But as her father limped back toward the western camp, his face hidden in the hood, the princess realized that he already knew that. Alusair realized, too, that she would take command of the Army of the Alliance, not because she had some vague duty to honor or pride, but because Azoun needed her help.

The weight she felt upon her shoulders that night wasn't lessened by her acceptance. In fact, she felt the responsibility all the more because she knew what it was and knew that the burden could not be lightened. But Alusair was reconciled with that, and she went about organizing the retreat of the army, knowing that her father depended upon her. She was certain she would not fail him.