Black Wizards (58 page)

The prince stood and looked. The fire was the only break in the darkness. Moonlight reflected off the sea, but that was only a vague distortion of the gloom.

“Have you been up all night?” he asked.

Robyn nodded. “There’s something … something else out there besides the duergar and the Scarlet Guard. I felt it several hours ago, and it has been growing stronger. Tristan, I’m afraid. There’s something horrible here—every bit as horrible as the Beast or the undead!”

He held her against his chest, black thoughts running through his mind. She was right, he knew. And their chances had been hopeless enough earlier in the evening. He had brought her to face death with him on some remote and rocky shore. But for what? For a failed, short-lived cause. Damn his foolishness!

“Robyn,” he whispered. “I love you—by the goddess, I love you!”

He kissed her and pressed her close, and for a moment joy filled him. He felt a kind of invincible serenity that banished the real world.
But all too soon he remembered their situation. He could not let her go.

“I missed you so much when you were gone that I thought I’d go crazy. I was even going to come to the Vale and see you, if I could have found you—to try and bring you back to Corwell.”

She smiled at him through her own tears, and he continued awkwardly. “I can’t ask you to turn from your calling—you have a destiny that even I can see, to serve the goddess. But, if you have room in your life for a husband …”

She kissed him quickly, almost playfully. “I like the idea of being a queen,” she whispered. “A druid queen! Of course, you’ll have to win the kingship for me first.…” And they said no more for a time. The sky grew pink and then pale blue as the sun climbed toward the horizon.

Then they heard a sentry shout, and another alarm raised from a different quarter. The battle, it seemed, was beginning.

“By the goddess, what are those?” growled O’Roarke.

Daryth looked into the pre-dawn haze and saw movement at the base of the hill. Things that looked like humans emerged from the mist, stumbling forward. But they did not move like humans, nor did they make any noise. Among them, he saw the fishlike figures of sahuagin, their yellow scales ornamented with golden bracelets and headdresses.

“They’re dead!” gasped Pawldo, straining past Daryth to get a better view.

“No! That’s impossible!” gasped Pontswain. He stared in shock at the shambling forms, with their sightless eyes and grasping fingers.

The things had pasty white skin—where they had skin at all. Many of them were bare skeletons, clacking along like puppets, while others had swelled into bloated blobs of flesh from their long immersion. Patches of rotten flesh fell away from them with each step, revealing white bone or bleached sinews.

Beside the undead, so ominously silent, there suddenly appeared the berserk forms of a thousand charging duergar. Halfway up the slope, they started to howl. The shrill, unnatural sound carried across the
battlefield, chilling the hearts of all who stood in their path.

Waving axes and swords over their heads, the duergar pounded their stubby legs across the rocky slope, momentum carrying them up the hill like a tidal wave.

“Now!” cried O’Roarke. As planned, the men of Doncastle all along the south edge of the hilltop kicked loose the piles of boulders they had prepared overnight. The huge stones thumped and rumbled down the hill.

The dead of the sea took no notice of the rocks, except for those struck by the tumbling missiles. Corpses were spattered by heavy boulders, or knocked down and crippled by smaller rocks. Skeletons went down like tenpins, and many rolling corpses added to the confusion as they tumbled into their fellows below.

But this side of the hill was neither as steep nor as rocky as the other side. Daryth and the rest of the fighters pushed as many rocks as they could, but the all-consuming landslide that had tumbled onto the Scarlet Guard the previous day did not recur.

Soon the boulders were gone, and the duergar roared forward in all their fury. They were close enough now for the men of Doncastle to see their wildly staring eyes, their bristling beards, and dark, scowling brows. When their stubby legs finally carried them to the men of Doncastle, their axes and shortswords were met with spears.

Instantly the din rose to hurricane proportions, as the battles cries of the duergar mingled with the hoarse challenges of the humans, the screams of the wounded, and the crashing of weapon against weapon and shield.

Daryth stood upon a wide, flat rock with Pawldo. Eyeless sockets stared blindly upward as the skeletons reached their clawlike hands toward the defenders in an effort to rip them down. The Calishite slashed and gashed with his silver scimitar He cut the head from a soggy corpse and, with one vicious down-strike, cut a skeleton into two halves that fell, twitching, to either side of the rock.

Pawldo stood at his back, driving back a white, fleshy thing that tried to crawl onto the boulder. He stabbed it twice with no effect, but then kicked it in the head, gagging as his foot sank into the thing’s mushy face.

A skeletal hand reached out, grasping Daryth’s ankle. The Calishite
stumbled and slipped toward the edge of the rock, but Pawldo’s blade cut cleanly through the creature’s wrist, drawing sparks from the rock as the severed hand still clung to the Calishite’s leg. Daryth staggered back, twisting to catch his balance. He saw Pontswain’s face behind him still gaping in shock. The lord had yet to draw his sword.

The howling of the dark dwarves rose to a frenzy, and Daryth saw with rising panic that they had broken through the line of rebels. Screeching insanely, twoscore duergar raced for the hilltop.

But Hugh O’Roarke bellowed, his red beard and hair seeming to blaze like fire, as he led a dozen men to the breach. He wielded a great broadsword in two hands, roaring a challenge every time he killed a duergar. He roared very frequently, and soon the survivors fell back to their own troops. The outlaw lord charged forward and the gap was filled.

But still they came out of the mist as if they had no end.

“When will they come? I’m getting bored!” Robyn, go down and talk to them—tell them we want to get this battle started!” Newt scowled at the ogres, standing in a row at the bottom of the hill. Beside the brutes, the sahuagin slithered and seethed across the moor. The fish-men looked not like individuals, but like the giant, scaly surface of some unimaginable beast, so tightly were they packed.

Tristan, Robyn, Alexei, and Finellen stood at the crest, with Newt and the invisible Yazilliclick sitting on the ground before them. Canthus stood, tense and bristling, at the prince’s side. They all watched the attack begin. On the other side, they could hear the battle raging between the duergar and the men of Doncastle. The prince wanted desperately to see what was happening over there, but he could not be everywhere at once. He had left O’Roarke in command, and could only hope that the lord was capable of leading the defense. Daryth and Pawldo were fighting at O’Roarke’s sides, and their steady swords could not help but strengthen the defense.

He saw a flash of red hair to his side and looked down to see Fiona’s eyes flashing at him. “I will fight!” she stated, daring him to challenge her. Earlier, he had directed to her a place of some minimal safety—the top of the knoll. She clutched her shortsword, looking as able as many
of their fighting men, and more determined than most.

“Very well,” he said. She would have to take care of herself.

The sahuagin slithered forward, slipping toward the slope and up onto the rocks, though many of the creatures fell backward. They were unused to walking on land, let alone climbing, and this slowed their advance considerably.

But the ogres suddenly charged at the foot of the hill and lumbered easily up the steep grade. The dwarves sent a few more boulders tumbling toward them—but most of the loose rock had fallen from here the day before. The few ogres that fell to the boulders left small gaps in the lumbering line that were quickly filled by a second rank.

“This’ll be a pleasure,” grunted Finellen, fingering her axe as she trotted to her company. “Let’s go, dwarves!”

The stumpy creatures formed a line of their own, a single rank against the two of the ogres, and marched off the crest of the hill toward the charging monsters. The heavy creatures were slowing their climb, now grunting and panting as they pushed upward—and this was how Finellen wanted to fight them.

The sahuagin, Tristan was happy to see, were still slipping backward almost as fast as they advanced.

“The ogres—there are too many!” cried Robyn.

Tristan saw the ogre brigade spread into a line, one rank deep, but long enough to easily envelop both ends of the dwarven line. Finellen had placed her company line abreast to face the attack, but there were not enough dwarves to meet the huge ogres. The orges struggled steadily up the slope, now only two dozen yards away from the dwarves.

Suddenly the dwarves turned and marched to their right. “What’s she doing?” asked Robyn.

“She’s shifting the line so that only one of her flanks will be enveloped. It’ll help, but I don’t think it can save them!”

“Tristan, I might be able to help,” said Robyn, “since Yazilliclick saved this from the fire.” She held up the runestick.

“Let’s go!” Tristan cried. Twenty fighters of Doncastle followed them down the hill as they raced toward the left flank of the dwarven line.

“Charge! Get ’em!” cried a shrill voice, and Newt popped into view,
clinging to the bristled fur of the moorhound’s shoulders like a lancer riding into battle.

The ogres broke into a trot, counting on their massive weight to roll over the puny dwarves. As the companions reached Finellen’s line, Tristan could feel the ground shaking underneath his feet. For a moment he regretted their rash charge. Now they faced a company of dozens of ogres. The bestial faces of the attackers broke into grins at the sight of the impudent humans.

The prince drew his sword with a flourish and stood with his feet well braced. He sensed brave men to either side of him—but then his jaw dropped as Robyn darted past. She stood alone, not two dozen yards from the ogres. The monsters howled in glee and broke into a run.

The druid shouted something that Tristan could not hear and waved the carved stick at the ground beneath her. She sprang nimbly backward to stand beside the prince.

The rocky hilltop rose and buckled before him. Two hulking forms, far bigger than the ogres, rose from the ground to stand before them. Each was made of black earth and gray rock, molded into a vaguely manlike shape. Robyn pointed, and the two things shambled toward the suddenly tentative ogres.

“Elementals,” she said. “The magic of the Great Druid—stored in the runestick. That was Genna’s parting gift to me.” She could not conceal her awe at the might of this spell. Genna had crafted the strength to call
two
of the mighty elementals into the stick.

He watched, stunned, as the earthen figures plowed into the rank of ogres. Huge, rocklike fists smashed skulls and crushed chests as the elementals stood side by side to meet the charge. The company of ogres fell apart, many of the monsters clustering to fight the elementals, while a few circled around to attack the companions.

Tristan sprang forward and slashed his sharp blade through the forehead of an ogre. The monster dropped like a stone, and Tristan turned to stab another in the chest. The men of Doncastle and Canthus all joined in the melee, moving quickly among the clumsy attackers.

Six ogres stopped, dumbfounded, as a colorful fountain sprang from the grass before them. They stared transfixed at Newt’s illusion while the fight raged around them. An ogre with huge, drooling tusks
appeared to be in command of the company, snarling and snapping orders. The Prince of Corwell attacked like a berserker, knocking the club from the ogre’s hand with his first blow. His second cut deeply into the monster’s forearm, raised in defense, and the third spilled the ogre’s guts onto the muddy grass.

Tiny arrows sprang from the air to strike ogres in the eyes or lips as Yazilliclick hovered invisibly about. The missiles were too small to do anything except aggravate the brutes, but they distracted and confused the enemy.