Condemnation (42 page)

“A good place for a battle,” he said, nodding to himself with satisfaction.

His mount, vicious and stupid beast that it was, still seemed to dully sense the impending conflict. It hissed and pawed at the pebble-strewn floor, its tail twitching in agitation.

Nimor waited near the center of the scout line holding the gap between the Pillars, at the head of a force of almost a hundred Agrach Dyrr riders. Those among his scout force who had any other House allegiance lay sprawled among the rocks and crevices of the gorge below, where Nimor and his men had slaughtered them soon after reaching the Pillars of Woe.

Nimor ached to go riding up to greet Mez’Barris Armgo, Andzrel Baenre, and the rest of the army’s priestesses and commanders. He could see their pavilion, already rising in the center of the cavern.

The difficulty with a betrayal spanning a whole battlefield, he thought, is that one simply can’t be everywhere at once to savor the moment in its entirety.

He noted a lean runner-lizard pelting from the command pavilion toward where his company waited.

“It seems I am wanted, lads,” he called to the Agrach Dyrr soldiers waiting behind him. “You know what to do. Wait for the signal. When it comes, hold nothing back.”

Nimor kicked his war-lizard into motion and rode back a short distance to meet the messenger. The rider was a young fellow in the livery of House Baenre—no doubt a favored nephew or cousin, given a relatively safe task in order to gain a blooding without too much risk. He wore no helmet, allowing his hair to stream out behind him like a mane. A bright red banner fluttered from a harness secured to his saddle.

“You are Captain Zhayemd?” he called, slowing his lizard to greet Nimor.

“I am.”

“Your presence is requested at the command pavilion immediately, sir. Matron Del’Armgo wants to know where the gray dwarves are, and how best to dispose the troops.”

“I see,” Nimor replied. “Well, ride on back and tell her I’ll be along presently.”

“With respect, sir, I am to—”

Three great horn blasts, two short followed by one long, bellowed up from the space between the Pillars of Woe, echoing so loudly it seemed the rock itself had given voice to the cry. The messenger broke off and twisted his mount around, padding past Nimor to peer back toward the Pillars.

“Lolth’s wrath, what was that?” he said.

“That,” said Nimor, “would be the signal for the duergar attack.”

From the depths of the gorge beneath the Pillars of Woe came the ground-shaking rumble of an army on the move. Below Nimor’s line of scouts, hundreds of duergar lizard riders suddenly rose from beneath carefully arranged blankets of camouflage and pelted up and into the gap Nimor’s scouts were supposed to hold. Behind the duergar cavalry, rank upon rank of duergar infantry ran forward, shouting their uncouth war cries, hammers and axes raised high. The Agrach Dyrr riders scrambled to their saddles, taking position to bottle up the charge between the mammoth columns of rock—and, as arranged, they wheeled in unison and dashed to one side, leaving the line unguarded.

“The Agrach Dyrr! They betray us!” the messenger shouted, horror and shock on his face.

He wrenched his mount around, but Nimor leaned out from his saddle and ran the boy through. The young Baenre clutched at his wound, swaying, and toppled from the saddle. Nimor slapped his sword against the lizard’s rump and sent the beast bolting off back into the main cavern, the dead messenger dragging behind it with his feet tangled in the stirrups.

Nimor spurred his mount up onto an uneven shelf of rock about fifteen feet above the cavern floor, overlooking the Pillars. From that vantage he could see most of the cavern.

“A good view of the fray, my prince!” he called. “What a magnificent day for your triumph, eh?”

“I’ll tell you in a quarter-hour if we have a victory or not.”

From the shadows at the back of the ledge, Horgar Steelshadow emerged. He and his personal guards were warded by a well-crafted illusion, invisible to anyone below, unless one knew precisely where to find them.

“Do not come closer, Nimor,” the crown prince said. “I do not wish someone below to notice you disappearing into a wall, and become overly curious about what might be up here.”

“Surely you mean to join the battle, Prince Horgar? I know you are a dwarf of no small valor.”

“I will venture into the fray when I’m certain I will not need to issue any more orders, Nimor. In another few moments you won’t be able to hear a fellow shouting in your ear.”

Nimor turned his attention back to the battle. The Agrach Dyrr riders, well clear of the Pillars, charged madly in a circle, skirting the perimeter of the cave and avoiding the main mass of the Menzoberranyr army. Their task was to get to the rear and aid the Agrach Dyrr infantry in sealing the tunnel through which the Army of the Black Spider had just come.

Duergar cavalry streamed up and through the gap, overrunning the positions that had been supposedly held against them and spilling out onto the cavern floor. Several of the House contingents in the van of the march milled about in evident disorder, surprised to find themselves suddenly faced with a thundering charge in an open field instead of siege-work and camp-building behind a stout line.

Other Houses responded to the sudden assault with adroitness and valor. The huge Baenre contingent raised a fierce war cry of their own, and dashed forward to seize the pass before any more duergar could flood through it.

“A bold move, Andzrel,” Nimor said, not without admiration. “Unfortunately, I think it’s too late to put the cork back in that bottle.”

Nimor flicked his war-lizard’s reins and positioned himself for a better view of the cavern center. He’d expected the mad rush of motion, the sight of armored ranks surging forward to crash and retreat like the bloody surf of an iron sea, but the sound of the battle was intolerable. Caught by rock above, below, and to all sides, the roars, screams, and clang of weapons on shields became completely indistinguishable, growing into a single great thundering sound that continued to build and build as more and more warriors became embroiled in the fighting.

“The noise will stand to our advantage,” he cried over his shoulder to Horgar, though he could not hear his own words. “The commanders of the Army of the Black Spider must decide how to respond, and give the appropriate orders.”

“Aye,” the gray dwarf monarch answered. Nimor had to strain to understand him. “The middle of a fight is hardly the best time to draw up your plan of battle!”

A brilliant lightning bolt tore into the duergar ranks, followed by a thunderclap audible even over the din of the battle. Exploding balls of fire and scathing sheets of flame streaked across the battlefield, as wizards on each side began to make their presence felt.

Nimor frowned. A handful of powerful wizards could decide the issue, even in the teeth of the ferocious duergar assault and the duplicity of his allies in Agrach Dyrr, but there were wizards among the duergar troops, too, many of them disguised as common riders and infantrymen. As the drow mages struck at the attacking gray dwarves, they gave away their own positions. Duergar wizards answered each bolt of lightning, each blast of fire, in kind, and in moments the cavern was filled with flashes of painful light and ruddy fire, the air hot and acrid with the mighty magic thrown heedlessly from one side to the other.

Try as he might, Nimor couldn’t tell whose magic would prevail, as the whole terrible scene descended into complete anarchy. In the space of a few dozen heartbeats, the sheer mass of Menzoberranyr troops in the middle of the cavern checked the initial rush of the duergar charge, the two armies tangling in a long line of contact that snaked across the cavern floor for hundreds of yards. Standards waved and fell, war-lizards reared and plunged, as the great charge bogged down into a thousand individual duels.

Rushing columns of heavily armored duergar pressed through the seams where dark elf Houses met, streaming in and around their desperately battling foes. Nimor smiled grimly. The dark elves had very little notion of how to weld their companies together to make an army into a single weapon, but each House contingent was a small army of deadly, seasoned veterans by itself. The duergar assault had smashed the Army of the Black Spider into twenty smaller forces that swarmed and stung back like a basket of scorpions that had been kicked over.

“Our victory is still in question, Nimor,” Horgar called from above. “The cursed wizards have checked our first assault!”

“Yes, but you have forced the Pillars, have you not?” Nimor shouted back. “I’d thought the initial charge would break the Menzoberranyr outright, but it seems the House armies are not so easily swept away.”

As he surveyed the battle, Nimor thought the gray dwarves, with advantage of surprise, would most likely be able to defeat the Houses of Menzoberranzan in detail, but it would be a long hard day of fighting to reduce the dark elf force. House Baenre, in particular, had managed to close the Pillars of Woe for the moment, and the longer Andzrel held the pass, the better the dark elves’ chances were.

Fortunately, Nimor had taken steps against this very possibility. The Menzoberranyr seemed heavily engaged to the front with the gray dwarf assault. It was time to slip his knife between Menzoberranzan’s ribs while their swords were locked.

“Now, Aliisza,” he said into the raging air.

Nimor wheeled his mount around, drew his sword, and spurred his war-lizard down into the confused fray. Mez’Barris Armgo and Andzrel Baenre were somewhere near the center of the fight, and he intended to make sure they did not escape the destruction of their army.

A little less than half a mile away, crowded into a small tunnel that descended from the east toward the upper field at the head of the Pillars of Woe, Aliisza stood with her eyes closed, her mind focused on the spell that allowed her to observe Nimor. By virtue of the magic she used, she heard his every word as if he’d spoken clearly in a quiet room. She shook herself and allowed the spell to dissipate.

“It’s time,” she said to Kaanyr Vhok.

“Good,” the warlord said. His pointed teeth were bared in a fierce smile, anticipating battle. He glanced at the assassin Zammzt, who stood nearby. “Well, renegade, I suppose this is your lucky day. I will throw my warriors against the dark elves, not your duergar allies.”

Zammzt inclined his head and replied, “I assure you, you will not regret it, Warlord. Destroy this army, and Menzoberranzan will lie naked before you.”

Kaanyr strode past the alu-fiend and the dark elf to the place where his standard-bearers stood.

“Sound the charge!” he cried.

Instantly, a dozen bugbear drummers struck their instruments, sounding a simple three-beat ruffle, repeating three times. Thronging the tunnel below, the tanarukks of Kaanyr Vhok’s Scoured Legion howled in bloodlust and pressed forward, stamping their feet and clashing their axes as they poured down the tunnel. Kaanyr drew his own molten sword and joined his charging troops, as his guards and standard-bearers hurried to keep up. Aliisza caught her breath at the sight, and took to the air to wing after Kaanyr’s standard. A battle like this didn’t come along every day, after all.

Ahead of the charging tanarukks, one of the cavern walls on the flank of the Army of the Black Spider seemed to shimmer, and abruptly vanished, revealing a gaping tunnel mouth that had been concealed by a clever illusion. The screaming horde of slavering tanarukks poured from the hidden roadway, streaming out to take the drow army from behind while the great Houses were engaged by the duergar riders who had come up through the Pillars of Woe. Aliisza glimpsed Kaanyr’s red banner flying proudly at the head of the force, and the Scoured Legion slammed into the battle.

Only a handful of minor Houses stood in the path of the onrushing horde. The wave of bloodthirsty orc-demons overran them, a spear of red-hot iron punching deep into the army’s flank. Aliisza found herself whooping in exultation and terror, gripped by the terrible spectacle and helpless to express her excitement in any other way. The Army of the Black Spider was hopelessly entangled in the very battle it did not want to fight, a wild melee in open terrain against the combined armies of Gracklstugh and Kaanyr Vhok. Like islands in a swirling sea of foes, each House of Menzoberranzan stood alone against a tide of steel and spell, battling for its life.

The alu-fiend alighted atop a blunt stalagmite and stared down at the battle below her.

Ah, Nimor, she thought. What a great and terrible thing you have done!

Nimor Imphraezl, Anointed Blade of the Jaezred Chaulssin, waded through a scene such as all the devils in all the hells could hardly have imagined. The blood of dozens of highborn drow mingled on his rapier and splattered his black mail. His war-lizard was long gone, burned out from under him by a lightning bolt hurled by a Tuin’Tarl wizard, and his limbs ached with fatigue and a dozen minor wounds, but Nimor grinned savagely, giddy with the results of his deadly work.

“Who has accomplished something now, Revered Grandfather?” he laughed aloud. “Zammzt may have delivered Ched Nasad into your hands, but I have brought low the favored city of the Spider Queen!”

The battle had raged for several hours. Instead of holding an impregnable line between the Pillars of Woe, the Army of the Black Spider had found itself beset on all sides by a foe who’d picked the terrain and the moment to strike. Of course, like a great dumb beast with a mortal wound in its belly, a broken army could take a long time to die, thrashing and convulsing for hours as its blood slowly ran out. In the battles of the World Above, perhaps the defeated drow would have thrown down their arms and hoped for good terms from the victors. In the ruthless calculus of warfare in the Underdark, quarter was neither given nor asked. The gray dwarves had no intention of allowing a single dark elf to survive the day. The warriors of Menzoberranzan knew that, and they fought to the death.

Some of the smaller Houses were smashed apart and scattered throughout the cavern, leaving drow in pairs or threes to sell their lives as dearly as they could. Bands of duergar, bugbears, ogres, and other soldiers loyal to the Crown Prince of Gracklstugh roamed the cavern, drunk on slaughter as they hunted the wretched drow whose companies had been scattered by the assault. Some Houses stood where they were in the great cavern, fighting furiously as the duergar tide rose higher and higher, assailing them from all sides, and some of the Houses held together and tried to cut their way out of the fray, hoping to snatch survival from the specter of a catastrophic defeat.