The Crown and the Sword

CHAPTER TWENTY — SIX

Jaymes saw the black vapors coalesce into the familiar humanoid shape, towering high above the raging battlefield. The lofty, clifflike face solidified, its cavernous sockets glowing with the fires of the Abyss. Those burning eyes swept across the field, flaring in anticipation of the killing to come. The sound of a whirlwind filled the air, a roar that kicked up dust and debris around the conjured giant’s lower extremities.

It was ghastly, terrifying. The monster, so long vanished, had returned in the service of the enemy commander, of that much Jaymes was certain. How Ankhar had regained control of the creature, or where it had been in the meantime, Jaymes did not know.

He did know that all of his plans for this battle would have to change. The huge column of black smoke that was conspicuous on the ridgetop marked the vulnerable spot where Coryn, Dram, and Sulfie had been directing the battery. And now this monster from the depths of the world, unassailable and incomprehensible, flicked his eyes in that direction.

The lord marshal had spurred his horse toward the front as soon as he discerned the looming shape. Now he rode directly toward the conjured monster, Giantsmiter in his hand, a look of cool detachment-utterly concealing his acute sense of despair-upon his face. He let his men see him ride past, their lusty cheers doing nothing to improve his confidence.

The struggle now raged along the front for a mile or more, the two armies entangled along that whole distance. The armored riders of the Solamnic Army, led by the Rose Knights of Palanthas, had formed close ranks to meet the charge of the wolf-riding goblin cavalry. In a bloody clash, the savage riders and their lupine mounts fell steadily back. Many riders and mounts fell on both sides. Wolves snarled and bit at the hamstrings of the knights’ warhorses, and the horses kicked and stomped their tormentors. Goblins and knights clashed desperately with clanging swords.

Meanwhile, the infantry of all three wings of Jaymes’s army drove into Ankhar’s force, pressing the hobgoblins and ogres hard. Arrows from archers on both sides plummeted into the melee, striking indiscriminately. Here a company of ogres pushed ahead, stretching the Solamnic lines; there, the Kaolyn Axers plunged through many lines of hobgoblins, gleefully hacking at their ancestral foes. The result, everywhere, was a great mass of fighting warriors with little organization or apparent pattern.

As yet, the elemental king hadn’t moved, and most of the men of Jaymes’s army-engaged in fighting enemies only a few feet in front of their faces-had not taken stock of the great figure behind them. Here and there Jaymes heard a groan of dismay or a cry of abject terror, and as these sounds grew more numerous, he knew it was only a matter of moments before the morale of his troops was shaken by the monster in their midst.

The cold hilt of the sword in his hand was not comforting-it could do little against the looming, otherworldly presence. His loyal Freemen, the two dozens knights of no sign who had sworn loyalty to him personally and now rode alongside him, did not show any hesitation to accompany their commander on his steadfast advance. Captain Powell had his own broadsword bared and held the blade across his lap, ready for use.

But Jaymes had no plan. He skirted the pockets of furious battle as much as possible, fixing his attention on the solidifying figure of the elemental. Now he could see the lashing tendrils of its liquid limbs, and he knew it was preparing for an attack. On the far side of the action, the lord marshal reined in, watching and waiting for the being to move.

“What can we do, my lord?” Powell asked, reining in close, his low voice urgent. “We Freemen are yours to command.”

“I know,” replied the lord marshal. “I wish I had an order for you. I fear that our only course will be to harry and flee, but that idea galls me more than I can say.”

Something glimmered off to the side, barely a dozen yards away. It was the Thorn Knight in the gray robe, blinking instantaneously into view. Jaymes saw that the man’s hands were gesturing, his eyes flashing hatred as his gaze focused on the lord marshal.

“Beware of sorcery!” cried Powell, wheeling his horse around and raising his sword. But he was on the wrong side of Jaymes and could only attempt to shoulder his commander out of the way as he spurred his mount into a charge toward the Thorn Knight.

“Kill the Gray Robe!” shouted another of the Freemen, spotting the enemy magic-user. He and a companion spurred their horses toward the man, who took little notice of them as they galloped threateningly toward him.

Instead, the Thorn Knight stared at Jaymes for the length of a breath then gestured and shouted a guttural sound. Jaymes’s roan whinnied and reared, and something solid struck the lord marshal in the solar plexus, knocking him from the saddle. The wind was driven from his lungs as he slammed to the ground.

The pair of Freemen reached the Gray Robe but, with a final gesture, the Thorn Knight disappeared a moment before they could cut him down.

Gasping for air, Jaymes sat up painfully as he tried to catch his breath. The roan was nearby, looking at him with upraised ears, nickering curiously. Sergeant Ian of the Freemen reached him, helping Jaymes to rise unsteadily to his feet and brushing the commander’s tunic.

Only then did Jaymes see the other knight, who was wearing the white tunic of his personal bodyguard. The Freeman was obviously dead, still and blue, his eyes locked open in an expression of… what? Not horror or fear, as the lord marshal would have expected. Instead, the knight’s dead face was frozen into a leer of great, almost inexpressible joy.

“He was killed by death magic,” Captain Powell suggested, dismounting and looking ruefully at the dead Freeman. “This was Sir Benedict. He tackled you, drove you from the saddle before the wizard’s spell could reach you. It was he who took the blow.”

“Taking the magic on himself instead,” Jaymes realized, shaken. “A very brave man.”

He wanted to say more, much more, but now the elemental king started to move.

Hoarst teleported back to the half-giant, who stood with his emerald-tipped spear planted beside him and the upraised wand in his meaty fist. Ankhar had been glaring in awe and consternation at the fully materialized elemental king and started slightly as the Thorn Knight appeared.

“Oh, there you are! Did you kill him?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Hoarst replied in his usual unflappable way. “I used a powerful spell, but he is very well guarded. It may be that the lord marshal survived.”

“No matter,” barked the half-giant. “I am ready to send the king against the knights!”

Ankhar swept the wand through a half circle, gesturing toward the elemental, forcing it to recoil, to lumber away from them. “See how it obeys my will!” he crowed exuberantly. “Go! Kill! Attack at once!”

The force of the magic caused the elemental king to roar and immediately turn away. It lumbered toward the enemy army, kicking through any soldiers hapless enough to find themselves in its path. The battlefield dissolved in terror as the troops of both armies scrambled madly to get out of the way, men slashing at men who stood in their path, ogres doing the same to other ogres. The panic was general and all consuming.

One cyclonic limb kicked through a group of dwarf axe men, sweeping dozens of them hundreds of feet through the air. A fear-maddened ogre was plucked from the ground by a pinch of vaporous fingers, lifted high above the ground, then dropped, screaming, into a knot of his fear-crazed fellows. Almost as if it were dancing with joy, the huge monster swept from one leg back to the other, spinning faster and faster until the twin tornadoes of its lower limbs melded into one screamingly powerful storm.

As many goblins and ogres as humans died in this violent vortex, and the line of battle was cleaved in two by the massive monster’s passage. All combatants fled, their petty quarrels forgotten in the face of certain extinction. Horses and wolves raced away at full speed, ignoring the commands of riders who tried to steer them. Back and forth along the front, the monstrous being wreaked its doom until a cloud of dust-shot through with lightning and stinging droplets of water-obscured much of the chaos on the ground.

Ankhar stood watching, his jaw slackened by awe, as the beast killed and destroyed and rampaged. Only after several moments did he remember the slender talisman in his hand. Finally he lifted the wand, waving it broadly before him and striding purposefully forward. The force of the magic device repelled the king of the elementals, and with a screeching roar-a sound unlike anything in nature-it began to move away.

Hoarst and Ankhar continued to advance, the half-giant still wielding his wand. The monster continued to move, and in moments it was wading into the bulk of the Solamnic Army, those units that had been held in reserve behind the front and had been observing, frozen and horrified, the irresistible onslaught of the elemental king.

Those valiant warriors-knowing they could do nothing against the monstrous presence-turned their backs and ran or put spurs to their steeds and galloped from the fight.

Dram picked himself up. His ears were ringing; he was covered with soot. The clear stream he had been drinking from was now a muddy sludge, and the green meadow had blackened around him. He looked up the hill and saw that all the trees had been flattened by some terrible force, the ridgetop itself swept clear of everything.

Groggily and in growing terror, he scrambled up the hill. He had to climb over the charred trunks of trees that had been knocked over to completely block the roadway that had been utterly clear when he descended a few moments earlier. Now the ridgetop was a hellish landscape, scoured clean of wagons, bombards, supplies-everything was simply gone.

He saw bodies scattered around, blackened and broken. Sulfie was there, charred and lifeless; only her diminutive size allowed him to recognize her. Gently he rolled her over, his tears falling on the tiny, blackened corpse.

“You deserved better, little gnome,” Dram said quietly. He thought of Jaymes, then, and it was not a friendly thought: his companion had used the three gnomes, taken their knowledge for his own purposes. One by one they had fallen in a cause that was not their own. As for Jaymes Markham, would he even take note of the sacrifices made in his name?

Dram knew that he wouldn’t.

There was a spot of whiteness in all the smoldering ruin. The Lady Coryn lay huddled in a ball, her white robe, somehow, still curiously unsullied. Dram knelt beside her, touched her, and gasped with surprise when the white wizard moaned.

Somehow she was still alive. Her eyebrows had been burned away, her face and hands were burned red, but her flesh, wherever her robe had covered it, seemed all right.

“Coryn-what happened?” Dram asked frantically. Her only reply was a low moan. He knelt, touched her hand, and her eyes flashed open. The cowl of her robe fell back, revealing that her black hair had not been burned. Somehow, the dwarf realized, she had cloaked herself in just enough protection to save her life in the midst of the blast.

Again she moaned, looking at Dram, her tongue appearing between cracked and blistered lips.

“Water! I’ve got to get you water!” he jumped up, looking around. There had been water wagons to the rear of each bombard, but those-like everything else on this ridgetop-had been blasted to oblivion.

Weeping in frustration, he ran all the way back to the stream. He filled the small waterskin he carried with him and ran back to the wizard. Dram brought it up to Coryn’s lips, giving her a few drops.

“Here,” he said. “Drink a little. Everything’s going to be all right.”

But the smoke had cleared enough for him to look at the battlefield, and even as he spoke them, he knew the words were a lie.

The four wings of the Army of Solamnia had fallen back before the irresistible monster. They had scattered from the field, troops simply trying to survive. The Army of the Rose was retreating to the north, while the Crowns and Swords were fleeing westward. There was little sense of formation or purpose-the men were terrified and wanted only to get away. The horsemen moved fastest, while the more heavily armed footmen threw away armor, equipment, even weapons in their haste. All of the army’s supply wagons were abandoned, and the wounded were left to fend for themselves.

The Palanthians, on the south flank of the original position, were forced to withdraw into a valley of the Garnets, moving to higher ground, and it was this wing that the elemental king pursued. Jaymes rode past the creature as it swept through a rank of crossbowmen, the cyclonic winds of its lower limbs tossing the armored humans around like chaff in a strong wind. It seemed to be loping along with these troops, crossing over a ridge and crushing a wide path through a forest of pines then settling back to the valley floor.

The lord marshal rode just ahead of the looming horror, sweeping into the valley where the legion had fled. He found General Weaver trying to organize a line of defense.

“Stand, you wretches!” the officer ordered his terrified troops, who retained enough discipline that many of them actually obeyed the order. They fired arrows at the elemental, but those arrows vanished, without effect, against the massive torso. A small band of knights charged with lances, but the elemental’s winds tossed them back.

“General!” shouted Jaymes, riding up to Weaver’s prancing stallion. “You’ll have to fall back; your men can’t fight this thing!”

“Run? By Joli, I cannot, sir!” he protested. “By the Oath and the Measure, we must make our stand here!”

“General!” barked Jaymes. “That’s an order-withdraw! Lead your men up into the mountains. Break them into small groups-see that as many survive as possible!”

His sorrowful eyes showing his frustration, the Rose Knight obeyed his lord marshal, pulling his men back from the elemental and urging them higher into the mountain range. They scrambled over the rocky ground, some of them splashing up the streambed, others sprinting through the woods as fast. As if toying with them, the elemental king hesitated, pausing at the mouth of the valley. The grim, lofty face scanned its helpless targets.

The men kept fleeing, completely abandoning all discipline, but the legion’s flight was thwarted a half mile away. The retreating troops rushed around a bend in the narrow valley and halted in consternation and panic. A sheer cliff rose directly before them, blocking any further progress into the mountains. Then the elemental king, his pursuit at an almost leisurely pace, came into view, striding resolutely forward.

Jaymes turned to General Weaver.

“We’ll stand here, my lord!” declared the general. “Est Sularus oth Mithas!”

“Yes,” agreed the lord marshal bitterly. There was no way out of this place, and it seemed certain many thousands of brave men would pay for that reality with their lives.

“Hey, Jaymes! Sir Lord Marshal! It’s me; I’m back!”

Jaymes whirled in his saddle, his jaw dropping in amazement as Moptop Bristlebrow came scrambling right out of a nearby rock pile to stand on a boulder at the foot of the cliff. The kender waved cheerfully then looked around at the soldiers he had startled with his sudden appearance. “You guys are a little jumpy, aren’t you?” he asked.

It was then that the elemental king uttered a thunderous roar that rolled up the valley, echoing between the cliffs and resounding through the air.

Moptop hopped down off the rock and sauntered toward Jaymes. He waved nonchalantly at the monster looming into the air barely a mile away.

“Oh, him again,” he said. “I guess I got here just in time.”