Of Limited Loyalty

Chapter Fifty-nine

4 June 1768 Octagon Richlan, Mystria

Prince Vlad took a deep breath as he strode to the chosen spot. He’d pulled on the uniform he could, by rights, wear in his capacity as Governor-General of Mystria. Though he would have much preferred to don the simple green coat and buff trouser worn by the Mystrian Rangers, he chose the white uniform with gold buttons and braid, full with a gold satin sash and gold satin waistcoat beneath it. Because snow still fell in thin curtains, or curled up off the ground, chased by winds, he had donned the corresponding cape and a tall white hat, with a plume up over his right ear, which made him look every inch a popinjay.

On the journey from Fort Plentiful, he had spent many long hours in conversation with Steward Fire and Chief Msitazi. Their discussions had confirmed many of the things he had thought to be true, and had opened doors for him to yet other realizations. The two men also learned from each other. A bond formed between them which pleased the Prince, but made him feel excluded, since they understood things between them which he was never sure he would fully comprehend.

The key thing which they both pointed out was that perception could become reality provided one put enough energy into making it so. He’d seen that in politics many times, in situations utterly divorced from magick. Men standing for office, or officers writing their memoirs, would create a picture which, naturally, elevated themselves and usually ran someone else down. The late Lord Rivendell’s book The Five Days Battle of Villerupt had left many people on either side of the ocean believing that Mystrians were incompetent cowards. Not only did that breed contempt into many Norillians, but it inspired shame in many Mystrians. One man’s poorly written and quite fictitious account of a war had caused people to think less of their own capabilities.

Similarly, the fact that most Mystrians came from redemptioneer or criminal stock sent to Mystria in an effort to rid Norisle of undesirables meant that many Mystrians thought themselves inferior to their cousins back in the Home Islands. While Prince Vlad certainly saw little evidence that this idea had any validity, the deference paid to Norillians by Mystrians-even on this expedition-proved that others held it as true. On top of that, Mystrians and Norillians alike obeyed him or Count von Metternin simply because they were nobility. They were primed to feel inferior, and Prince Vlad had to use that.

Because magick could transform perception into reality in a very material sense, a strength of will and confidence aided a magick user. Prince Vlad’s mentors encouraged him to think of himself as being Rufus’ better. Though Prince Vlad didn’t believe Mystrians were of a subrace, he did invest himself in the idea that Rufus was his inferior. What he knew of the man indicated that he was lazy, selfish, stupid, treacherous, a poisoner, given to drunkenness and wife-beating, and Rufus clearly had run after he tried to murder Nathaniel Woods. That marked him as him a coward. There was no doubt in Prince Vlad’s mind that he was morally superior to Rufus, and well beyond him intellectually.

This last point became a key for Prince Vlad. He accepted that somehow Rufus had opened himself to being possessed or controlled by another creature. That the Norghaest had magick which could enable possession was obvious given the way the cavalry controlled their wooly rhinoceri. No matter how powerful the sorcerer controlling Rufus might be, he would be limited by Rufus. Vlad was certain he could think faster than Rufus, and that he could understand concepts more complex than Rufus could. He counted on both of these things to give him an edge over his enemy.

At the chosen spot, Vlad dug down through the snow with his feet so he stood on bare ground. In learning about magick and perception, again it had become obvious that spells were shaped to transform magickal energy into something that men could control. This was all done through imagery. Visualizing the sun and its heat would allow a man to take magickal energy and alter it into the form he needed to start brimstone burning. Because men drew this energy from themselves, magick exhausted them and hurt them.

But magickal energy could be drawn from elsewhere. With his feet planted firmly on the ground, Vlad calmed himself and sought within. He sought a feeling, a tingle, the sharp crack of a static spark. He visualized it as lightning at first, then changed it into a sunbeam, which he changed again into a cool flowing stream. Once he defined that image, he sought it again, imagining that cool flow passing over his feet, as if he stood in the middle of a stream.

Which, in fact, he did. Thanks to Owen’s survey of the area, the Prince had selected a nexus point where two of the energy flows met. Though much smaller than the flow coursing around the Octagon, it sent a cold sensation up his spine. He defined it as invigorating, much as having icy water splashed on him would be. He let the sensation drench him and fill him.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, the world had changed. Blue was the river of energy that flowed to his feet. It coiled over him and around him, pooling in his hands. Off to the west, a golden glow defined the Octagon, as seen down a wooded hill and back up again to the crest of the valley. Half a mile away as he was, he could see the tops of ghostly towers, its pennants flying in a breeze that the material world did not feel.

A little tremor ran through the gold, humming as if it were a plucked string. It coincided with Rufus’ heartbeat, but pounded at a pace that no human heart could sustain for long. It occurred to the Prince that whoever was hagriding Rufus must be hoping to summon to the world a safe haven, so he could again walk beneath the sun. And my job is to see to it that he fails.

Vlad turned his head slightly, catching sight of Bethany Frost over his left shoulder. “Everyone is in place, yes, Lieutenant Frost?”

“Even the people at Fort Plentiful, Highness.”

“Thank you.” He nodded. “I would appreciate if, as we agreed, you would ride back there-get clear. Consider it an order, please.”

The blonde woman stared at him defiantly for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll be back at the Stone House, Highness.”

“Thank you, Miss Frost, for everything.” He let the crunch of snow beneath her feet fade before he raised his right hand. Ahead of him by two hundred yards, each atop a small hill, the expedition’s two cannons had been set up. The gunner for each raised a hand to acknowledge his signal.

Prince Vlad’s hand fell. The Battle of Octagon had begun.

A mile to the southwest, Owen waited with Kamiskwa and Justice Bone just beneath the crest of the hills surrounding the Octagon. Somewhere back toward the Prince, General Rathfield and the Fifth Northland Cavalry had set themselves up as a screening force. No matter what Rufus did, their job was to keep the Norghaest troops back and give Kamiskwa time to work. If they failed, the Prince’s effort would be for naught, and Mystria would be lost.

The twin cannonade allowed Owen enough warning that he could poke his head up and look into the valley. About a quarter of a mile away, a square berm had been raised and fifty wooly rhinoceri waited within, their breath steaming from their nostrils. Each wore the headdresses that allowed their riders to control it. As the cannon blasts reverberated over the landscape, trolls stirred beneath a blanket of snow. Armed with lances and their obsidian-edged warclubs, they made directly for their mounts.

The two cannon balls arced into the valley. One struck a rock beneath the snow and bounced off toward the north. The second bounded through the trolls. It caught one in the shoulder, ripping its arm off. The ball slammed into another, hitting it firmly in the chest. The second troll bellowed, but the ball bounced off. After a couple of sidling steps, the troll resumed his course for the enclosure.

Off to the north the ground quivered and mud poured up in thick bubbles, staining snow. A geyser blasted skyward, then a hole opened in the ground. Demons fluttered from it, swirling into a black cloud that headed east, and trolls crawled from the opening. Once they reached flat ground, they stood, arrayed themselves in open ranks, and began their slog toward the rising sun.

Rufus emerged, standing tall on a golden disk. It hovered a foot or two above the ground, clipping the tops of snowdrifts here and there. He bore a staff, looking identical to the one he’d carried at Fort Plentiful. His robe fully covered him, but as he flew forward, he slipped his left arm free to display his scars proudly.

Once he passed over the hills to the east, the air shimmered just upwind of the rhinoceros enclosure. Steward Fire emerged through the magickal portal first and ran up the hill as the trolls mounted their beasts. Fire’s hands glowed red as he crafted a sphere the size of a pumpkin. Gold highlights shot from within it, and red tendrils drifted up and out. He gave it a shove with his left hand and it floated toward the enclosure as if it were a soap bubble. Then it burst, spraying a red mist over the enclosure.

Though Owen had been instructed on what would happen, he had not let himself imagine it would work so well. Fire, using magick, had reversed the flow from rider to mount. The trolls had used their headgear to impose their senses on the rhinoceri, but now sensory information traveled in the other direction. The trolls, for the first time, perceived the world as did the rhinoceri, meaning that their vision became indistinct beyond fifty feet, and most of their impressions of the world came through their noses.

Which is why the Shedashee warriors who next came with Msitazi through the shimmering portal had painted themselves with dragon dung. Though the trolls could hear the war-whoops and see the Twilight People boiling over snow at them, they simply could not perceive them as a threat. The scent of a dragon meant safety to the rhinoceri, and staring dumbly at the Shedashee, the trollish cavalry met their fate without raising a hand in defense.

Owen could feel no pity for them. The Shedashee moved through the enclosure, their own warclubs blurring. A chop to a knee would topple one of the giants, then warriors would begin the bloody ordeal of hacking all the way through its thick neck. Dark blood splashed steaming over the snow. Trolls fell to the Shedashee butchery, and yet such was the nature of the enclosure’s berm that none of the trolls pouring out of the ground could see their comrades dying.

Owen turned back to where Kamiskwa and Justice turned away the last of the earth. “Is it there?”

Kamiskwa nodded, then sank to his knees and reached into the hole they’d carved into the hillside. “I can feel it, the stone and the magick.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled a cloud of steam. “Now, to make it work.”

Prince Vlad watched as Rufus Branch glided effortlessly down the hill. Behind him, trolls gathered, and above him, the demons circled. The stick, dammit, I should have gotten myself a stick. Vlad lifted his chin and drew his hands behind his back. If he wasn’t going to have a staff to brandish, he would hide his hands and affect an air of not being concerned at all.

Rufus hovered on a golden disk, keeping himself a bit above eye-level with Prince Vlad, even though four hundred yards separated them.

“You dare attack?” The pure effrontery of the action, and his affected outrage at it, almost completely covered his surprise.

Vlad lifted his chin. “I dare. I more than dare. This is not your land. It belongs to Norisle. You are an intruder here. The one you’ve chosen to use is singularly ignorant of the world and incapable of understanding the higher concepts at play here. He does not serve you well, except that you must have found his greed quite comforting, likewise his sense of grandiosity and narcissism.”

Vlad chose his words carefully, using longer terms that Rufus likely would not have heard before and certainly could not parse accurately. He sensed hesitation in his counterpart. In that moment of inner concentration, the disk dipped and the ordered advance of the trolls faltered.

But only for a heartbeat. The hands settled on the staff, together, at his navel, the orb glowing with a silvery-white light. “Then you have come to negotiate with me?”

“Negotiate? I hardly think so.” Vlad shrugged. “I have come to accept your surrender. That is the only way you can avoid your utter and complete destruction.”

Rufus’ eyes tightened, and his head canted to the side. “You have never before appeared to be mad. Clearly you must be if you have forgotten what I did to your troops so recently. My riders destroyed yours.”

“And I have destroyed your riders.”

Rufus looked back toward the valley and again the disk wavered for a moment. His head snapped back around and his eyes blazed. “You cannot stop me. You’re lost. Your people are lost. Your puny weapons cannot stop us. Your feeble sense of magick cannot stop us.”

He raised his hands and spread his arms. The trolls broke ranks and rushed into the forests. The demons plunged down through the evergreen canopy. “Your minions will soon all be dead, Prince Vladimir of Norisle. And I shall save you for the last, so you will know all hope is gone. Once your heart is broken, I shall crush your body and then sweep your people into the sea.”

Half-crouched in front of the battle line, Ian Rathfield drew his heavy cavalry saber before the echoes of the cannon shots died. “Steady, men, steady. Just as we planned it.” His heart pounded and his mouth went dry, not from fear, but anticipation and anger. These were the creatures that had destroyed his command. He and his men, just like the Rangers, had spent three days preparing the battlefield. As Rufus had caught them unawares at Fort Plentiful, so the Norghaest would find themselves paying for their lack of foresight.

Trolls came up over the hillcrest and fanned out into the woods. Their broad feet kicked up snow. They had to twist to shoulder their way between trees. As they rushed on, their ranks closed. They filtered into easy alleyways that allowed them to speed their advance.

Their clumping together made them simple targets. At thirty yards, a third of a battalion fired. Thirty musket balls blasted into the trolls. Most struck the one in the lead, stippling his fur with dark, bloody wounds. He went down and two others were knocked back, but the rest came on.

“First line withdraw.” Ian turned his back to the trolls and marched steadily toward the west as a second line of his troopers took aim. “Ready yourselves!” He glanced back over his shoulder.

“Fire!”

Brimstone smoke gushed out and balls zipped past him. He heard the thuds as they struck home. A troll thumped down behind him, a bit closer than he’d expected. He ran forward as his retreating men fell back to a third line, then stopped and turned. He slashed with his saber, opening a troll’s belly, then Ian ran off toward the northwest, as planned, while Captain Cotswold gave the orders to the third line to open fire.

A troll had decided to give chase, and Ian laughed despite the thunder of the thing’s footfalls. He ducked beneath branches and relished the crashing as branches whipped across the troll’s face. Ian ran for a fallen log which lay between two widespread trees. He leaped it, shearing closely to the tree on the left, then stumbled and rolled. His sword flew a short distance away, snow stained with troll-blood marking where it had fallen. He rolled onto his back and looked at his pursuer.

The troll bounded over the fallen log with ease, landing a good ten feet beyond it. His feet sank through the snow, then punched on through the branches which had been laid over a pit running five feet in depth. Normally that would have been a minor inconvenience for the troll, resulting in a bruise as he slammed against the pit’s end, but a handful of sharpened posts had been planted deep into that wall. Three of them impaled the troll, one through a forearm, the other two through the belly, popping free of his back.

More gunfire resounded in volleys as Ian scrambled to his feet. He grabbed his sword and swung it in a grand arc over his head, chopping a demon in half. More flew at him, but they discovered that the nets which had been meant to stop them at Fort Plentiful had been strung through the trees. Demons bit at ropes that had tangled their limbs. Soldiers with steel bayonets thrust up at them, killing them.

Here and there men screamed as trolls caught them or demons attacked, but the Fifth’s discipline held. They kept withdrawing, moving from prepared position to prepared position, loading and firing to command. In the woods, at close ranges, they had an advantage, but Ian wondered how long that would last. Most of his men could manage four or five shots before magick began to fail them. In combat on the continent, at that point, they’d be bayonet to bayonet with the enemy, or riding after them as they retreated. This sustained combat, while effective, would only win the day if the supply of trolls ran out before his soldiers’ ability to kill them did.

Ian ducked out of the way as a pursuing troll triggered one of many traps the Fifth had labored to construct. The bole of a stout tree had been chopped into a six-foot length. Its branches sharpened into stakes and it had been hauled into the forest’s upper reaches. It swung down on ropes, whooshing past him, and branches impaled a troll through the upper chest and neck. Off to the right a deadfall trap broke another troll’s legs. As it thrashed on the ground, men bayonetted it to death. Ian split the skull of a demon which clung on one of his men’s backs, then thrust the weary man west.

“Falling back, in good order.” Ian again raised his sword and laughed bravely. “By God they’ll remember tangling with the Fifth, men. Fall back, take aim, and send them home to Hell!”

In an effort to hide his nervousness, Prince Vlad idly studied the fingernails on his right hand. Over the top he studied Rufus. Golden energy trickled up through the ground and curved down, falling over him as if a gentle shower. The disk exuded small etheric pseudopods, keeping it elevated and moving forward. Before the Prince had studied with Msitazi and Fire, the amorphous feet would have been invisible to him. He would have taken greater heart in seeing them, save that the magick that allowed him to do so was the simplest thing he’d learned, and a prerequisite to the greater magicks he’d have to use against Rufus.

Prince Vlad immediately cautioned himself. You are a fool to think you can stand against him. That’s not the game. Unlike going to war-in which the Prince had always had an academic interest but no desire for glory-a magick duel appealed to him. The victor would be intelligent and have a very strong will-precisely things upon which he prided himself. Were he just fighting Rufus, he had little doubt he’d win. But it’s not Rufus I’m fighting, not yet.

Vlad made the tiniest gesture with a finger. The way energy flowed through the pseudopods formed a simple cycle, looping back on itself. Vlad cast a simple spell which, at first, joined with the pseudopod and flowed with it. Then, on the third revolution it fragmented, ripping through the cycling energy. A pseudopod vanished.

The disk dipped and that attracted Rufus’ attention. With little more than the half-closing of his eyes, Rufus reestablished the foot, and reinforced all four. Instead of flowing fluidly, now they developed a scaled shell, looking very much like Mugwump’s flesh.

Rufus momentarily inclined his head toward Vlad. “So, you have learned from the Shedashee, and from another tradition. Young magicks, unforgivably young. And you, so inexperienced.”

Vlad looked up, as if his enemy was an annoyance. “You presume much, and have me at a disadvantage. You are not Rufus Branch, not entirely.”

“You wish me to talk, to prolong your agony as your men die?” Rufus shook his head. “You could not pronounce my name. The very contemplation of it would damage you. Were I to force this one I wear to say it, his brain would bleed and his mind would shatter.”

Vlad shrugged. “Names have power in magick, so I understand your fear.”

Rufus threw back his head and laughed, but the laughter died as Vlad cut all four feet from beneath the disk. The right edge hit first, and Rufus staggered through the snow for a couple steps. He didn’t touch his staff to the ground to keep himself upright, but energy did stab down from the orb and accomplished the same goal.

Rufus drew himself up, then planted the staff in the ground. “You are bold. Foolish, but bold. Unlike the one I ride, I am not afraid of you. The Shedashee, they once had a name for me: The Sun’s Whisper. Think of that as a key, if you wish. See what it gains you.”

The Sun’s Whisper. The name made no sense to him, but Vlad came up with a multitude of ideas that fit. That first ray of sunlight at dawn, or the last at dusk. The beams of sunlight lancing through the green forest canopy, or a dust mote dancing in the light. None of these appealed to him as being the wholly correct idea, but they were pieces of it.

Rufus gestured. A scintillating blue ball arced in and around at Vlad. He raised a red shield on his left forearm and wove the sunbeam image into it. His arm came up and the ball hit heavily, knocking to the right. But it skipped off and splashed against the ground, draining into the earth.

Not my best idea to use my broken arm to block him.

Another ball arced in. Vlad reshaped the shield, flattening it, then stretching it and rolling it into a cylinder. He widened it at one end, then curved it down. The Norghaest spell rattled down into the cylinder at the top and shot out the lower end, heading back toward Rufus.

The Norghaest twisted his right shoulder out of the way, letting the ball sail past. It struck a pine twenty yards beyond him. In an eyeblink it ignited the tree into a torch.

Vlad stared, having only a moment to wonder what would have been his fate had the spell struck. Flames shot to the sky, the tree a living pyre, and a cold chill ran down Vlad’s spine.

Rufus’ hands and fingers contorted their way through a more complicated gesture. Energy gathered and crackled. A third blue ball shot toward Prince Vlad.

The tube won’t work again. Neither will the shield. Vlad called to mind the glacises used to deflect cannon balls from a fort, and conjured one of them.

Then Rufus’ spell split and split again and again. The eight smaller balls swerved sharply toward the north. The last two skipped off Vlad’s defenses, but the other six, each now the size of a musket ball, struck Vlad from ankle to shoulder and down to wrist on his right side, spinning him into the snow.

Each strike thrust pain into him without rending cloth or ripping flesh. It was as if he’d had burning thorns driven through his ankle, knee, and hip. His right shoulder, elbow, and wrist refused conscious commands, becoming leaden and useless. He couldn’t even stop himself from rolling in the snow. The fire in his limbs matched the burning where snow coated his face and embarrassment flushed his cheeks. His hat flew off, the feather burning. Agony jolted through him as he struggled to get back on his feet.

Rufus drifted forward, the disk renewed, and peered down at him. “Were you given four of your lifetimes to study, you might prove a worthy amusement, Vladimir. Your grasp of theory was good. You used my name to fashion counterspells. But you did not understand my name, so they could not work.”

Vlad slumped back, spirits sinking even as gunfire continued in the forests. “What Rufus does not know is that I am the least powerful of the Mages who have claim to Mystria. Defeating me will mean nothing.”

“But it means everything to me.” Rufus held out a hand, then closed his fist. Something tugged at Vlad’s throat, then snapped. The gold chain and locket snaked from beneath his uniform and floated to the Norghaest. His hand opened again and it came to rest in his palm.

He chuckled. “Names may grant power, but this is much more powerful. I can connect through this back to your wife. Ah, and she is with child. Perfect. I can let her know you’re dying, right now, your child, too. I can kill you slowly, and I can even give her the option of accepting your fate unto herself. Would she die to save you, Vladimir? Will she sacrifice herself and your child? Shall we find out?”

The Prince raised his left hand. “No, you can’t do that.”

“Why not? They will die regardless. As precious as your wife is to you, she would be nothing to me, not even a diversion were I to take her as the spoils of this paltry little war.” Rufus held his hand up, letting the locket dangle from the slender chain. “Yes, I think I will let her make that choice. I think I will let her die in your place. And do you know why?”

Vlad shook his head.

“Simply because, Vladimir, I can, and you have no way of stopping me.”

Movement through the trees alerted Owen to Ian’s ordered retreat. He glanced back. “How are you doing, Kamiskwa?”

The Shedashee looked up from the pit. “Almost there, but I need your lock.”

Justice Bone came forward as Owen fell back. Owen went down to one knee beside Kamiskwa and dug into the pouch on his belt. He pulled out a thick lock of the Prince’s brown hair. “Here.”

The Shedashee took it and twisted several strands into a slender thread. “This should fix it.”

In digging down they had uncovered the tip of the stone marker which the Norghaest had thrust up through the earth. It formed one of the points of the Octagon-the point through which energy entered the Octagon from the direction of the outpost. Once they had cleared enough dirt and snow away, Kamiskwa had drawn a crown using pine resin. He’d used the Prince’s hair to cover the symbol. The resin stuck the hair fast to the stone. The lock Kamiskwa took from Owen completed the base of the crown.

Owen nervously tucked the rest of the lock away. “Is this going to work?”

Kamiskwa took a deep breath. “It better.”

Owen looked up. “Report, Mr. Bone.”

“Rathfield’s men is drawing mighty close.”

Owen patted Kamiskwa on the shoulder. “It will work.”

The Shedashee closed his eyes. He raised his left hand to the design, letting his middle finger drift over it. Owen hadn’t been told specifically what Kamiskwa was doing, but he knew enough of the new magick to figure it out. The crown represented Prince Vlad. They’d used a similar design to designate his thaumagraph units. The way Kamiskwa touched the design, the directions his fingers took, the pressure, all of these things were linked to his impressions of the Prince. That and the hair, because of its link to the Prince, would combine with Kamiskwa’s magick. The spell anchored within the stone gathered power, then split it to other stones, each of which was represented by a symbol. Kamiskwa’s job was to substitute one for the other.

Ian’s voice echoed from nearby across the hill top. “Ready. Aim. Fire!” His men responded with a staccato rippling of gunshots. Trolls thudded to the ground, but more kept coming.

And we’re going to have to stop them.

Ian arrived, breathless, saber slick with blood. “Have we done it?”

Kamiskwa gasped, then sagged sideways. The stink of singed hair rose from the rock. Owen glanced over. The crown had been burned into the stone’s gray surface as clearly as if it had been branded into the rock. “It’s done.”

“Good.” Ian laughed aloud and pointed with his sword at trolls squeezing between the trees. “So, I fear, are we.”

Owen turned, raising his rifle, and fired a single shot. “Don’t give up yet, General. More trolls need killing and we’ve got plenty of fight left in us.”

Vlad stiffened, his back arched, as argent fire poured over his body. “No. I forbid it!”

“You forbid it?” Rufus smiled and made the locket dance on the end of the chain. “You can’t forbid it. You completely underestimate me if you think you can.”

“Not you. I don’t have your measure.” Vlad pointed his index finger at Rufus as the first trickle of magick streamed to him. “But I do have the measure of the man whose flesh you wear.”

Vlad shaped the energy flowing from the stone around the most basic spell he knew-the spell that would snuff a fire. With a tiny adjustment, it functioned to cancel magick, but to work, it required a key. It required the person using it to know his opponent so well he could wrap it around that thing which would paralyze his enemy. And while Prince Vlad had no idea what that might be for Sun’s Whisper, he knew it intimately for Rufus Branch.

Around that spell he wrapped the image and essence of Rufus’ mortal enemy, Nathaniel Woods.

Vlad stuck that essence on the tip of a spell like a spearhead on a shaft and stabbed it through Rufus’ left eye. The Norghaest’s hands rose to his face, an inhuman shriek rising from his throat. Sun’s Whisper staggered back a couple of steps. The locket still hung from between his fingers.

The Prince threw his head back and shouted loudly to the world. “Now, Mr. Woods, if you would be so kind.”

To be held back as guns cracked in the distance had all but killed Nathaniel Woods. Save for it being an explicit command from Prince Vlad, and its being described as the only chance they had to win, Nathaniel would have refused. He would have been out there on the right, leading the Northern Rangers in place of Makepeace. He would have been shooting trolls dead left and right.

But the Prince had other plans.

As Rufus reeled back not fifty yards away, Nathaniel tracked him effortlessly. Settling his thumb on the firestone, Nathaniel steadied his rifle, and formed the spell in his mind. He pushed it into the firestone.

He shot to kill.

The ovoid lead slug reached its target less than a second after leaving the rifle’s muzzle. It blew through Rufus’ left hand, burst his eye and shattered bone. It passed into his brain case and hit the back of the skull, cracking it, but it failed to punch all the way through. It ricocheted downward toward the base of the skull, and bounced again to crush the man’s first vertebra. It severed his spinal cord even as blood and brain squirted back out through the entry wound.

Rufus’ body pirouetted, arms flying out wide. The staff whirled away. The light in its orb died before the staff disappeared beneath the snow. Rufus went to one knee and for the barest of moments Nathaniel feared he’d get back up. The ruin of his face suggested that was an impossibility, but he knelt there, defying gravity even as brains ran down his cheek.

Finally, his body convulsed, then he collapsed in a motionless heap.

Beyond where he lay, trolls poured down the hillside and demons took wing. Nathaniel didn’t know if the Norghaest had somehow given them a final command, or had magickally ripped a gaping hole in the earth so more could avenge him, but the legions of Hell raced east. Nathaniel, having no time to reload, ran to the Prince. He knelt and handed him the rifle.

“I reckon you load and can get one shot off.” Nathaniel drew his tomahawk. “I got a throw in me, which means ’tween the two of us, we outta kill something.”

Ian slashed a troll’s thigh, opening a gaping gash. The man spun, bringing his saber back down, and wrapped both hands around the hilt. He aimed his cut at the back of the troll’s knee, preparing to hack that half of the limb off.

The troll twisted, roaring in pain, and backhanded Ian with a glancing blow. It sent him flying. He collided with a sapling, then spun into a larger tree. The impact numbed his back and leg. He rebounded from the tree and landed face-first in a snowdrift.

He rolled over and swiped a hand over his face to clear it. The troll, blood leaking from its thigh, loomed over him, paws raised and talons a glossy black. Ian tried to back away, but his right leg wouldn’t work. He raised the saber in his right hand to protect himself, but knew it would be to no avail. I’m done. Catherine, I’m done! He closed his eyes and thought of her as he waited for death.

But the troll never struck. A mighty shout cut through the din of battle, inarticulate but defiant. The troll roared in response, but a note of pain shot through its voice.

Ian opened his eyes, staring up. A man, he recognized him as Owen, had leaped onto the troll’s back. He’d tangled his left hand in the troll’s mane and yanked back. His right hand rose and fell, steel knife plunging into the troll’s neck. Blood geysered. The creature reached back, trying to pluck the man off him. Owen shifted from its attempts, then sawed the blade through its neck. The troll staggered and toppled. Owen rode to the ground and, standing on its back, lifted the severed head triumphantly.

And then, before Ian could recover his voice, Owen tossed the head aside and was off again.

Captain Cotswold ran to Ian’s side. “Are you hurt, General?”

“Get me up, Captain! All that matters is that I’m not dead.” Ian gained his feet, then found a carbine with a bayonet attached. “Go, man, kill things!”

His subordinate ran off and Ian snarled. He’d seen a look in Cotswold’s eyes, a questioning of whether or not he could continue fighting. And Owen… Owen must have seen the fear and resignation on Ian’s face. The man, both men, would think him a coward, a man broken, and he could not allow that.

Ian limped into the battle. With every heartbeat, he willfully abandoned civility and reason. It had no place in this battle. Leaving it behind had served him well before, in ways and at times he refused to consciously remember. He reveled in the scent of blood and the howls of pain. He looked inside himself and allowed the monster to emerge.

A monster to slay monsters.

Stalking through the forest, he stabbed and slashed, puncturing knees and cutting heel tendons. He thrust through throats and eyes, anywhere he could find an opening. He cut demons from the air. If one of his men fell, Ian was beside him in an instant. He slew the creatures preying on his men, and continued on, letting his soldiers believe he’d been there to save them.

It didn’t matter what they thought. Ian’s only intent was to prove himself the most lethal creature walking the woods that day.

Yet for all his energy, the battle would have been lost because the trolls kept coming. Though the tight spaces between trees limited their advances, men’s weapons could only do so much damage. Steel might hurt the trolls, but it took many wounds to bring one down, and many more to finish them. It became a battle of attrition, which the Norghaests’ endless host was bound to win.

Then from the hilltop came a shrieking which Ian was certain, by the chill entering his soul, meant the Norghaest had destroyed Prince Vlad and had unleashed some new horror. It took him a moment to realize he was mistaken, and happily so.

The Shedashee who had avenged the dead cavalry had arrived and attacked the trollish flank. With warclubs a blur, the Twilight People recklessly threw themselves at the trolls. The riders had been besotted and had fallen easily. The Shedashee clearly had to know these trolls were not in the same befuddled state, but that did not seem to matter to them. They, wearing paints that marked them similarly to the Prince’s dragon, swept into the trolls and through them. They slashed and smashed with abandon, using speed as their armor, sowing death and confusion in the enemy ranks.

Recognizing the chance to completely destroy the enemy, Ian picked up a discarded carbine and raised it high. “Fifth Northland, on me. Skirmish line. Advance!”

The men of the Fifth dashed forward, forming up into a tight group, the bayonets jabbing forward. Behind them the wounded men reloaded their carbines and snapped off shots here and there. If the line parted around an injured troll, the Fifth’s wounded would fall on it and finish it grimly, not gleefully.

The Shedashee made it through the trolls, then slipped back behind the skirmish line. There Kamiskwa joined them and then sprinted up the hill to come around and attack the flank again. The Fifth drove harder, pushing uphill, giving the trolls less and less space to fight. With the Shedashee coming in from the north, Ian stretched his line to the south where they joined Owen and Justice Bone and a few Rangers who had gotten cut off from Major Forest’s command.

“Now, damn you, we have them.” Ian stabbed a troll in the groin. “For Queen and Country, men. Kill them all!”

Prince Vlad levered the rifle’s breech closed and handed it back to Nathaniel. “Your shot will count.”

Nathaniel accepted the rifle, then pulled the Prince to his feet. “I’ll die on my feet like a man.”

Vlad smiled and looked at his hands as the trolls thundered forward. He could still see the magick swirling. He could feel it coursing through him, galvanizing his body along the same pathways that Rufus’ magick had used to inflict pain. The Prince directed the magick to quiet angry nerves, and it did.

“I wish I could do more.” He shook his head. “To kill Rufus, I learned really well how to cancel magick. Didn’t have time to learn much of anything else.”

“You did your job, Highness. Ain’t no reason for regret.” Nathaniel raised the rifle and took aim. “I reckon I’ll make the most of the magick I learned.”

Nathaniel fired and magick gave the Prince a whole new perspective on his friend’s skill. Golden curls of energy rippled through the marksman and shot down through his arm to this thumb. Brimstone ignited in the chamber and the bullet emerged in a fiery gout and cloud of smoke. A slender golden thread played out behind it, tracing a straight line for the lead troll. It struck its neck at seventy yards, shredding an artery. It bounced off the troll’s spine, rending more blood vessels as it caromed down into the beast’s body cavity.

That first troll pitched forward, leaving a red mist hanging in the air.

“Nice shot.”

“I can get one more in.”

The trolls stopped in mid-gallop.

Vlad shook his head. “What?” As good as that shot had been, there was no reason they should have stopped.

Then the ground shook as Mugwump landed between the Prince and the trolls. His claws dug deep, scattering ice and snow. He hissed furiously. His breath billowing out in a cloud which shot toward the trolls like an avenging revenant.

And yet even before it could touch them, trolls began to fall as, from the woods on both sides, shooters fired. The volley came raggedly, rippling out in a widening wedge that raked the trolls’ flanks. Old muskets and new, blunderbusses and a few rifles, spat fire and lead. It was not so much that any individual shot dealt death, but that the metal ripped the trolls to pieces.

Chaos reigned. Mugwump’s breath dissolved any trolls it could reach. Those that could, withdrew, scattering in all directions. Some, panicked, came straight for the Prince. Nathaniel dropped another one, and Mugwump gobbling up his fill.

Those which ran into the woods found men waiting with steel axes and scythes, pruning hooks and swords. The weapons gleamed from just having had layers of rust scraped from them. Vlad immediately recognized the axmen as his foresters. But how?

A horse reined up beside him and Count von Metternin cheered. “Yes, Highness, this is going exactly as you explained it would.”

Prince Vlad gaped up at his friend. “What are you talking about?”

“The thaumagraph messages you sent. They were in your hand, I know how you send. You told me to gather all the people who had come to Fort Plentiful and bring them forward. You told me how to deploy them on the wings, and you said they were to strike when Mugwump did.”

“I still don’t understand.” Vlad pointed east as people emerged from the forest, shooting trolls and hacking them to pieces. “Where did they come from?”

The Kessian smiled. “That’s all Major Woods’ fault. When he did his choosing outside Prince Haven, he made it clear what a man had to have to join this fight. And as men went home, they traded for supplies and spread the word. They were a week back of us, and came streaming into Fort Plentiful after you left. I was going to have them ready to oppose the Norghaest as we had discussed, but then your message came through and we came up, advancing this last bit when we heard the cannons go off.”

The Prince, his mind reeling, felt power surge through his connection with Octagon. He looked up and caught just the hint of a green-gold glow fading from within the valley. He wasn’t certain what it was, but it left him sad. “Nathaniel, find Kamiskwa. He’ll need you.”

Nathaniel lowered his smoking rifle. “Rangers are peeking on out of the woods both sides, and boys are back at the cannons.”

And Mugwump is gorging.

The Count laughed triumphantly. “The enemy is in full retreat, Highness. Some may escape, but we can hunt them down later.”

“Yes, very good.” Vlad advanced a dozen feet and dropped to a knee beside Rufus’ corpse. He pulled the locket and chain from the dead man’s hand, then kissed the locket and closed his own fist about it. He visualized his wife and found the connection Rufus had hinted at. He closed his eyes and used magick to convey a sense of relief. He knew she’d get it in a day or two, or perhaps already had it. When didn’t matter, just that she knew, did.

Then he opened his eyes again, trailed in his dragon’s wake, and began assessing exactly what kind of victory they’d actually won.