Measure and the Truth

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Why not send Bloodgutter’s ogres into fight now? Look! We lose battle!” demanded Bullhorn, frightened enough that he dared to challenge Ankhar’s plan with his question.

The human soldiers were storming through New Compound, and Bullhorn’s ogres-who, as novices to conquest, had been more stupefyingly drunk than most-were being butchered by the score. Half the town already seemed in the attackers’ hands, and yet a whole bunch of Ankhar’s army wasn’t even fighting!

“Where is Bloodgutter?” Bullhorn wailed, trying to ignore the throbbing in his head. “Make him fight too!”

“No!” roared the half-giant. “I stick to my plan!” He raised his fist but was satisfied when the ogre chief backed away without further protest.

The bull was simply too stupid to see the plan was, in fact, working to perfection. Events had begun when Rib Chewer’s scouts had reported, a day earlier, that a fast-marching column of humans was approaching the valley of New Compound. Ankhar had been careful to post those scouts, while cautioning the goblin warg riders to avoid discovery. The speedy gobs on their wolves had observed the approach of the enemy column without being detected.

Never very smart with numbers, the goblin chief nevertheless had managed to convey the fact that the new force was not as large as the great armies they had faced a few years before. He was also astute enough to deduce that the human war leader himself-he called himself emperor! — was leading the army.

So Ankhar had made a few stealthy preparations. General Bloodgutter proved himself worthy of his rank as he kicked and cajoled his two thousand veteran warriors away from the booty of the dwarf town. Marching them around the fringe of the valley, he had concealed them in a band of rough forest at the very base of the eastern precipice. Ankhar was pleased and impressed by the fact that, even as the enemy attack unfolded, Bloodgutter’s ogres had remained quietly hidden-just as the half-giant had ordered.

Rib Chewer and his riders, on their fierce, lupine mounts, he had positioned behind the stocks of wood along the lakeshore, where they could not be observed by anyone coming up the valley. The goblins had not fed their mounts for more than a day, and the huge, shaggy warg wolves were ravenous and ill tempered-just waiting to be unleashed on the unsuspecting foe.

As a final touch, Ankhar had ordered two of his few remaining sivak draconians-most had perished when the bridge exploded-to wait by his side. They would fly to Bloodgutter when the time was ripe, and Ankhar would spring his trap.

He snorted in amusement, even as a dozen of Bullhorn’s ogres, bloodshot eyes wide with terror, were cut down by swordsmen not so very far from where he stood. The humans were advancing into the plaza, coming around both sides of the massive, smoldering pile of ashes left over from the great victory fire.

The enemy general was the one who had led the armies that defeated Ankhar in his earlier war, the half-giant knew. That disgrace was about to be avenged.

“Silverclaw! Crookfang!” barked the one called the Truth.

“Aye, great lord!” replied the two sivaks, bowing to the ground, flapping their great wings in readiness.

“Fly to the woods,” Ankhar ordered. “Tell General Bloodgutter that it is time for him to burst forth!”

“Now!” Jaymes ordered. “Lancers, charge!”

The ogres had done exactly as he had expected, falling back across the wide central plaza but forming only an irregular defense on the open ground instead of seeking shelter between the buildings and sheds across the square. Lacking pikes, holding a front that boasted several ragged gaps, they formed a perfect target for a lethal cavalry charge. It was a marvelous situation!

And in the perfection of the situation, the emperor felt a sudden misgiving.

Angrily he tried to shake away the nagging feeling. After all, his enemies were drunk, obviously, even staggeringly so. Jaymes himself had slain an ogre who had been too busy puking in the gutter that he could barely raise his head as death rode him down. How could a foe like that be capable of battlefield deviousness?

But, Jaymes reminded himself, Ankhar had proved during the course of his earlier campaign that he was capable of learning lessons from his failures. After all, he had adopted a reserve; he had learned to array spearmen against cavalry; he had practiced feints and diversions and even, after the siege of Solanthus had been broken, mastered that most difficult of military tactics, the fighting withdrawal.

Why, then, should he expect the half-giant to behave stupidly when things mattered the most?

Narrowing his eyes, Jaymes watched the lancers charge across the square. They tore into the ragged line of ogre warriors, slashing and stabbing. Horses reared and kicked, smashing hooves into roaring, tusk-filled mouths. Steadily the invaders were being beaten and pushed back; the disciplined Solamnic riders held their line, refraining from impetuous pursuit-as they had been trained to do.

The emperor had spotted Ankhar himself. The enemy commander stood upon the stone roof of a low, dwarven house. There were several ogres and a couple of draconians up there with him, and he was watching the fight-which should have been a disaster, from his point of view-with no outward evidence of dismay or consternation.

This realization sounded the final alarm inside of Jaymes.

“Trumpeter! Sound the recall!” the emperor shouted.

Immediately, the brassy notes of the horn rang out. The lancers reined back, reluctantly allowing the stumbling ogres to escape as they looked back in some frustration at their army commander. But they were well-trained Solamnic Knights, so they backed away, keeping their horses-and their keen, bloody lances-trained on the shattered, fleeing enemy before them.

That was when Jaymes saw the two draconians with Ankhar take flight. He noted with some surprise they were sivaks. Those aloof and fearsome dragon-men had not served the half-giant in his previous campaign, and the emperor wondered at the meaning of their presence. Were they fleeing a lost cause?

The sivaks flapped their wings and veered away from the legion positions. A few bowmen launched arrows at them, but the draconians were smart enough to stay out of range. Banking and leveling off, they skirted around the edge of the valley. Jaymes continued to watch as they abruptly dived and came to ground just before the fringe of pine forest at the base of the eastern cliff.

Those were the same woods, he realized, where General Weaver had proposed his flanking maneuver. Jaymes had discounted such a move as impractical, deciding the terrain was too rough for troops and that such a movement would only waste valuable time. Had he been too hasty? Peering at the woods, he saw meadows within the groves, and though much of the ground was rocky, there seemed to be space between the outcrops-most of it concealed by foliage-where troops could hide themselves very effectively indeed.

“General!” cried the emperor, attracting the attention of Weaver, who was directing the heavy infantry as it cleared the buildings on the eastern side of the town. A company of halberdiers were chopping at the barricaded door of a stout house, while spearmen swarmed around the place, stabbing through the windows and the few cracks that had been chiseled in the doors.

The commander rode over at a gallop.

Jaymes, meanwhile, ordered his lancers to redeploy on the near side of the square. “Regroup! Fall back to me! Form a line here!”

“Excellency?” Weaver asked, raising his eyebrows in mute concern.

Jaymes pointed at the woods. “Keep an eye on the flank-there might be something happening over there.”

But the warning came too late. More than a thousand ogres suddenly spilled from the tangled, rocky wood at the slope of the cliff, emerging just where the draconians had landed. They came out like a tidal wave, heading straight for the legion’s unprotected rear. They were fresh veterans, not the drunkards and hangers-on they had thus far battled in the town, and they came roaring and howling.

At the same time, a surging formation of snarling wolves, each mounted by a shrieking, painted goblin, burst from behind the lumberyards along the lakeshore. The warg riders raced across the plaza, straight toward the lancers, as the horsemen struggled to reform.

Both enemy reinforcements howled maniacally, closing in on the exhausted legion from the flank and the rear. Jaymes spared one glance back at the enemy commander, standing proudly on that stone roof. He couldn’t be certain, but it looked as if Ankhar the Truth were grinning in cruel triumph.

“I see a spot of light,” reported Rogard Smashfinger, falling back from the pile of rubble where he had been excavating for the past two hours. His shift was over, but he insisted on going back for a better look, so Dram joined him in crawling forward, over the jagged boulders that had been pulled out of the plug closing off the mine.

“By Reorx, you’re right,” Dram said. He wriggled around and called over his shoulder, “Send me up a pike!”

Someone passed him the steel shaft with a sharpened head; the quarters were too tight to swing a pickaxe. The dwarf jabbed and stabbed away at the slowly widening entrance. After almost half an hour of vigorous activity, he had one more rock to clear and used the pike to lever it out of the way. It tumbled down the mountainside and cleared a gap wide enough for Dram to stick his head out.

Conscious of his safety, the first thing he did was check for ogres in the immediate area. But there seemed to be none around; apparently they had all gone back down to the town. Looking below, where he heard the unmistakable sounds of battle, Dram could see why: a legion of knights were there and had already taken back half the town. But as he stared, a horde of ogres surged out of the woods behind the relief force. At the same time, a furious cavalry battle between human horsemen and goblins mounted on warg wolves began on New Compound’s central square.

Dram went scrambling back to the huddled dwarves waiting deeper in the mine tunnel.

“The ogres are under attack!” he shouted, his words echoing loudly, almost painfully, throughout the tunnel. “Get out there! Follow me! Pull more rocks out of the way when you come!”

He pushed loose rocks before him as he squirmed out the narrow hole, knocked rubble out of the way, and shouldered aside a good-sized boulder that was blocking one side of the narrow tunnel mouth. That rock tumbled free, almost doubling the size of the opening.

Rogard and Swig Frostmead were close behind him, clearing more of the entrance and emerging in a shower of tumbling stones.

Two by two, then three by three, then four or five at a time, the formerly trapped dwarves pushed their way out of the mine, each one widening the gap just a little bit more, making it easier for those behind to scramble outside. In a few moments, a hundred dwarves had emerged, and the mine shaft was cleared to its normal width.

The rest of the residents of New Compound and the mountain dwarves of Kayolin, came spilling out in a rush and, forming in ad hoc ranks, they moved quickly down the slope toward the town. Each dwarf carried a weapon, and each dwarf heart was filled with the race’s traditional hatred of ogres-and the burning desire to avenge the damage done to their once-peaceful town.

“Hurry up!” cried Dram Feldspar. He pointed at the ogres attacking the rear of the legion, identifying them as the most urgent threat. “Take them in the flank! Let’s roll the bastards right up!”

“Who’s the slowpoke?” cried Sally Feldspar, sprinting past her husband, hammer raised over her head, short legs pumping like pistons as she rushed down the hill.

Dram didn’t even try to talk her out of joining the attack.

Instead, he just did his damnedest to catch up.

Jaymes watched as General Weaver rallied his rearguard in the face of the ogre menace pouring down from the woods. The legionnaires reacted quickly, and the New City light infantry took the first onslaught of the attack on their shields, battling with short swords and giving ground only reluctantly so that the troops behind them would have a longer time to form a more solid line.

The men who had routed away from Apple Creek fought with tenacity, courage, and a high cost in blood and lives. Slowly they inched backward, falling by the score during the brutal fighting, but buying precious time for the rest of Weaver’s men to wheel around and better meet the surprise attack.

Inevitably, the sheer weight and numbers of the ogres drove the lightly armed men out of the way, leaving more than half of them dead or dying on the ground. The ambush was almost perfectly executed, Jaymes realized with a grimace. He had only himself to blame, having been fooled by that damned half-giant he had too easily dismissed as a barbarian. Weaver had his spearmen and halberdiers formed up; only to Jaymes’s eyes they seemed a thin, tenuous line facing a torrent of howling ogres.

If they had any chance at all, it was a very slim chance. Then Jaymes saw movement on the slopes coming from the direction of the mines. It was a fresh brigade of troops, doughty dwarves racing downhill on stumpy legs, beards flying, axes raised.

“For Kayolin!” came one battle cry; “In the name of Reorx!” was another, and Jaymes knew that the dwarves of New Compound somehow had freed themselves from their prison in time to join the battle.

The dwarves spilled from the rocks and tailings of the slope, surprising the attacking ogres on the flank. Immediately the ogre force wavered, the enemy tumbling all over each other as they tried to turn and face the fresh danger. Quickly the dwarf charge shattered the attack and forced the enemy into desperate defensive maneuvers.

That left the emperor to rally his own troops in the center of town. He ordered his archers to concentrate their fire against the goblin warg riders, firing in volleys to maximize the impact of each wave of arrows. Dozens, scores, finally hundreds of the savage cavalry were raked from their saddles. The wolves, maddened by pain and hunger, were as likely to tear at their own dismounted riders as they were to continue the attack, and that allowed the legion lancers, once more formed into battle line, to charge across the square and scatter their foes before them.

Through the waning afternoon and into the evening the fight raged-in long clashes between the dwarves and ogres and in pockets of furious skirmish in the streets, yards, and avenues of the town. Gradually Ankhar’s force was pushed back until it was compressed into a semicircle in front of the lake, with humans and dwarves pressing them from all sides.

The sun dipped toward the horizon, purpling the placid waters in a way that ought to have been beautiful-except that it was a valley of violence, suffering, and death.

The pace of the fighting slowed as warriors on both sides succumbed to fatigue mightier than any mortal opponent. Men collapsed from exhaustion; ogres stumbled to the lakeshore to immerse their heads in the cool water, uncaring of their unprotected backs. Horses swayed and drooped, unwilling to run any farther; saddle-sore riders dismounted to let their weary steeds drink and graze.

Still there were pockets of fighting. Dram led a band of dwarves into his own house and, room by room, cleared the enemy out. His heart was hardened by the battle, and that was a good thing; later it would break, he knew, to realize all the death and destruction.

Jaymes, too, was one of those keeping up the attack, rallying small groups of men, closing in on the shrinking enemy perimeter.

And so it was that, finally, Emperor Jaymes Markham found himself facing Ankhar the Truth. The two commanders came around the massive pile of coals on the plaza-all that was left of the burning bombards-and stood, weapons raised, while the troops of their respective armies seemed to step back and draw a collective breath.

The sword Giantsmiter blazed brightly even in the daylight, but the spearhead on the Shaft of Hiddukel shined with equal intensity. Jaymes and Ankhar cautiously approached each other, surrounded by the shattered and burned ruin of a town that had been a pleasant sanctuary just a few days earlier. The fighting between the ogres and goblins, legionnaires and dwarves faded almost to a halt as warriors on both sides watched the two champions.

For a few moments, the pair simply circled warily, each looking for an opening. Jaymes held the hilt of his weapon in both hands, the blade-with its fringe of flaring blue flame-extended before him, the tip a little bit higher than the grip. Ankhar, in turn, held the thick shaft of his spear in just one hand, with the weapon nearly horizontal, held just above his right shoulder. Twisting to present his left side to his foe, the half-giant wheeled and danced.

His left hand was protected by a heavy gauntlet, and he waved this hand with deceptive carelessness toward the man. Jaymes feinted and his hulking foe thrust down hard with his gleaming spear tip. The emperor bashed the rod of the spear to the side, the keen sword trying to bite deeply into the wood. But the protection of the Prince of Lies obviously extended even to the haft of his mighty weapon, for the fiery sword struck the wood and merely bounced off without chipping or even charring the material.

The ogres formed a semicircle on the side of the plaza with the lake behind them; the dwarves and humans gathered opposite, with their backs toward the ruins of their domiciles and businesses.

When Jaymes circled warily with his back to the enemy, one of the ogres sidled forward, raising a club. Rogard Smashfinger fired a bolt from his crossbow, striking the brute in the chest with enough force to drive him backward and down. When a dwarf raised a hand to aim a throwing axe at the back of the half-giant’s head, an ogre threw a skull-sized boulder that crushed the dwarf’s shoulder before he could launch his throw. In that way, it was decided that the two sides would settle down and watch, letting the matter rest on the outcome of the one-on-one combat.

Dram fidgeted and muttered, his hands clutching his axe with white knuckles, but he knew better than to interfere. Instead, he also watched, trying unsuccessfully to stand in front of Sally, to block her from any surprise volleys from the ogre troops. Naturally, she pushed through into the front rank, brandishing her hammer as firmly as Dram held his axe.

Jaymes made a sudden rush, swinging to the right then ducking left as Ankhar stabbed with the Shaft of Hiddukel and missed, sticking it instead into the ground. The human drove inward, scoring a hit on the half-giant’s knee, but the massive fighter moved with startling agility, swinging his foot in a roundhouse kick and sweeping Jaymes’s feet out from under him. He landed flat on his back and escaped a crushing stomp only by rolling desperately to the side.

In a flash the man was back on his feet, but the half-giant had the advantage. Ankhar was able to stab once, again, a third time, and with each attack Jaymes retreated. Blue fire met green, and sparks cascaded, swirling around the two combatants, searing the air with an acrid stench. With each blow, the blazing weapons grew brighter until even those at the fringe of the fight could feel the heat and had to blink past the brightness. Sweat lined the emperor’s brow, and the half-giant’s sinewy limbs were likewise slick with perspiration. For a long time, there was no sound from the crowd, only the grunting of desperate breathing and the scuffing of boots on the paving stones from the fighters.

Abruptly the human closed in again, raising his sword and whipping it downward with a sweeping blow. Ankhar stumbled over his own feet, spinning his spear sideways and gripping the haft with both hands. Once more Giantsmiter met the Shaft of Hiddukel, but the wooden haft resisted even that heavy blow. Fire surged from both weapons with explosive force, and the two warriors stumbled backward, Jaymes falling on his back and Ankhar going down on one knee.

Rolling to the side, the human rose into a crouch. His shoulders heaved with the effort of each breath, and the tip of his sword rested on the ground-as if he no longer had the strength to lift the heavy blade. Ankhar saw his chance and lurched forward, his movements awkward because of his own weariness. But the spear tip drove directly at the human’s pounding heart.

Except Jaymes was no longer there. From some unsuspected reserve, he found the strength to dodge nimbly out of the way, and the emerald head of Ankhar’s weapon sliced only the air next to his arm. Overbalanced, the half-giant fell sprawling.

Jaymes stood over him, sword upraised, keen blade aimed downward. Ankhar looked up and saw his own death writ in blue fire.