Sunset of Lantonne (12 page)

“Take me to the front lines,” Therec asked the group, drawing confused glances from all of them. “I need to see what we’re up against. I need to know my people did not do this and find out more about the magic in use out there. How close can you get me?”

*

By mid-afternoon, Therec stood just north of town with two of the magisters and nearly two hundred soldiers at their back.

Whatever Kinet and the others had told the king had been motivational, Therec had to admit. The soldiers had been mobilized faster than the two magisters had been able to ready themselves. During the short wait, Therec sat on a loaned horse just outside the northern edge of town, watching the golems in the distance. From the ground, he could not see the undead army, but the golems could be seen for miles.

“You sure you wanna to go there?” Arlind asked gruffly, sitting atop a pony that looked as though it had been bred for war. The dwarven woman glared at Therec every time she looked his way. “It’s a good way to get killed.”

Therec smiled, still staring at the golems. “You’re afraid I might decide to change sides?”

“Once a necromancer, always one. I don’t give three shits which side you’re on, you’re still a necromancer.”

“I did not claim to stop being one, nor would I even consider it. Among my people, it is an honor, not a disgrace. They call me a preserver, though.”

Arlind spit on the ground, in what Therec had begun to believe was the local custom for even mentioning his profession in public. Yet another crude example of how these people lived, so far from Turessi. Then again, spit would have frozen in seconds during most of the year in his homeland. He also had to keep in mind that Arlind was from an even more crude people than Lantonne. The dwarves were hardly known for manners.

“Just remember that you’re supposed to be proving that your people are misunderstood,” Arlind told him gruffly, watching him with what Therec interpreted to be disgust. “Whether your people are helping that army out there or not changes little for me. All I think it really changes is whether the king sends those golems farther north once we’ve taken down Altis.”

“You’re threatening to invade Turessi?”

The dwarven woman squinted at him, saying, “I’ll be the first to tell him to sod off if you actually do help us. Not betting my braid on it.”

If Arlind had more threats to say, it was cut short by the arrival of Kinet and several heavily-armored soldiers. Unlike the majority of the forces behind him, these men wore custom-fitted suits of metal plates and had poles attached to their saddles that bore the blue-and-white standard of Lantonne flapping high over their heads.

“I’m not waiting out here all day,” snapped the lead soldier, flipping up his visor to reveal that he was far older than Therec. In fact, he was old enough that Therec was a little surprised to find him still leading soldiers. “I was told the golems would do our job for us, so if you people want to get a closer look, I want it done with. If I have my way, I’ll be back in the barracks before the sun sets.”

“We do not intend to engage,” Kinet assured the man, giving Therec a firm look that he took as a request to not make the man a liar. “A quick ride out and back. Nothing more. We are scouting the enemy forces.”

The soldier—commander, Therec thought he overheard from the soldiers behind them—nodded grimly and made a sweeping wave with his arm. As he did, the entire company lurched into motion as one, with only Therec and the two magisters faltering a moment before catching up.

The ride across the plains was a pleasant enough trip. It had been several years since Therec had ridden a horse, he realized with a bit of thought back over the time since he had earned the title of “preserver” among his people. From that time, he had been taken where he needed to go on wagons and other conveyances. Taking himself where he wished to go was a nice change.

About ten minutes out from the city, Therec’s opinion began to sour as the high sun cooked the plains. Dry grass crunched under the feet of horses and men alike, creating a cacophony of small crackling noises that was just different enough from the more familiar sound of snow or ice that Therec found it immediately irritating. He would have killed for a snowstorm or even a cold breeze.

Therec finally gave up on being open for the sake of the people he was visiting and pulled his hood up, hoping to spare his shaved scalp from further burns. Once again, he dearly wished he had been assigned to a diplomatic mission much farther north, or at least higher up in the mountains.

Soon, the sounds of the golems pounding away at the undead army overshadowed any other noise Therec could make out. All he could make out in the distance, aside from the old village ahead of them, were the heads and shoulders of the four massive animated statues. There was no sign of the undead.

“Are they in a valley?” Therec asked aloud, not really caring who answered.

Despite her obvious dislike of Therec, Arlind was swift to answer. “Big open pit mine. They pushed the undead in there so they can’t get away easily. Damned shame to do that to a mine, if you ask me. We figure if that doesn’t work out, we can always collapse the walls of the quarry on them. With the tunnels sealed, that shouldn’t be too risky.”

Therec turned on his saddle to look at the dwarven woman. “Tunnels? I thought you said it was open.”

“It is,” she explained, though she did not look directly at him. “The mine got deep enough that it was too damned slow to cart everything up and down. They used a dry underground river to make a tunnel straight back to the city. We closed it up before letting the undead in there. Just to be safe, there are a few hundred soldiers inside the tunnel, about halfway between the mine and Lantonne, ready to slow them down.”

Looking down at the dry ground around them, Therec was a little taken aback by the idea that there was a large passage far under their feet. It was a tactical risk to even have such a tunnel, but he could see the sense in using a natural structure in that manner. Left to his own choices, he would have collapsed the tunnel at the first hint of invasion.

Within a few minutes, they approached the outskirts of the mining village, though most of the soldiers who were on foot had fallen a short distance behind. There were no undead in sight, making it irrelevant that only those on horseback had arrived. They would not need their troops right away, if at all. If everything went according to plan, no one would need to draw a weapon.

Riding up to a gap between buildings, Therec stared in awe of the golems, their size having been given little credit due to the distance he had been seeing them from. Up close, he found himself smiling at the idea that a wizard of any land had managed to build such immense creations.

The golems were undoubtedly dwarven, judging by the detailed features of their faces, a kind of preservation of the long-dead that Therec found merit in. He preferred the idea of using the ancestor’s own body to look to, but such magnificence in a magical creation was not to be dismissed. He would have to describe these creations to the council upon his next report.

The mine itself was more than a hundred feet deep, but the golems rose head and shoulders above the top lip. They would occasionally disappear for a moment as they bent to attack the army at their feet, but then stood back up. Of the four, three were moving constantly, their fists causing clouds of dust to rise both from the quarry itself and the village’s old structures.

The fourth golem stood relatively still, wavering as it made small movements.

“Is that one broken?” asked Therec, looking to Arlind. Given that the golems appeared to be carved into the shapes of dwarves, he thought she might know better than others.

Squinting, Arlind tugged at her braids and looked around nervously at the soldiers that were boxing them in. The only way out of the area was through the tightly-packed troops. “I have no idea,” she admitted, though she sounded nervous. “I don’t think they can break…”

A low hum began to cut through the sounds of battle, rising in pitch and intensity until Therec had to cover his ears. As he did, Kinet ran toward the mine, waving some kind of etched metal rod. With each grand gesture of the rod, one of the golems would stop what it was doing and reached for the edge of the mine, attempting to climb out. Only the one golem, now openly shaking, did not make an attempt to escape.

“What is happening?” screamed Therec in an effort to be heard above the shrieking noise coming from the mine.

All around Therec, soldiers broke and ran. Horses that were held in place soon bucked their masters and fled the area as fast as they could.

Therec fought his own horse briefly, then gave it free reign, letting the beast turn and take off toward Lantonne with Arlind at his side and Kinet only a few feet behind. They raced through the fleeing soldiers, though even as they got farther away, the high-pitched sound made Therec’s head feel as though it were about to explode.

Without warning, the loud noise ceased abruptly, making Therec sit up in the saddle and look back toward the mine. The moment he turned, a bright flash of light washed out his vision and numbed his body. The last thing he had seen before the light was at least twenty other horses running close by him.

Therec felt weightless for just a second before painful impacts against his legs and shoulders flared as he hit the ground, having been thrown by his horse. With a groan, he swept his arms out as best he could, calling forth magic to shield his body against being trampled by the other horses.

The limits of Therec’s magical training were made obvious almost immediately as the jarring blows from the horses clipping him made his concentration waver. He knew many healers possessed the ability to completely deflect one or two strikes against their body, no matter how powerful, but he could shield against many to a far smaller degree. Every inch of his body hurt, but he kept himself covered with his magic and cloak until he had gone some time without being kicked or stepped on.

Ears ringing loudly enough to drown out nearly anything, Therec let the magic fade, feeling his strength dwindle to the point of near-collapse. Slowly, he lowered his cloak and felt as though he had been transported far from where he had been minutes before.

For as far as Therec could see in every direction, horses were running wild without riders. The soldiers themselves were mostly lying strewn about the plains in broken positions, though he could see some trying to stand—and fall again, more often than not. The faces of the few survivors he could see told him that they were screaming, though he could hear none of it.

Therec pushed himself upright, just barely able to stand. He turned around toward the quarry, hoping to get a better idea of what had happened. When he did, he wished he had just walked away without looking back.

The quarry emitted a column of dark black smoke and pieces of the same shining metal that the golems had been built from lay strewn across the entire region. Near each piece, he could see bodies—or parts of bodies—scattered about.

Much of the mining village was gone, having been flattened by the explosion in the quarry. The broken frames of a few of the larger structures stood, though somewhat lopsided. Despite the destruction, Therec saw a few survivors there, still stumbling around, trying to recover.

A rumble through the ground numbed Therec’s feet, and he dropped to his knees to keep from being forcibly knocked over. He lifted his head slowly as the rumbling became stronger, watching in horror as a wide crack opened in the ground, running in a zigzag path from the quarry back toward Lantonne. The crack raced past where Therec lay, the ground falling away into darkness, swallowing everything in its path, including most of the fallen soldiers and their horses.

Therec could only imagine the screams as the survivors plunged to their deaths in the falling ground. Within seconds, he could no longer see the end of the collapsing path, racing as fast as it was toward the city.

The tunnel had become the liability Therec feared, though he could never have imagined this.

Ilarra woke hours later, thankful for the silence that filled the basement. When she had finally drifted off, she could still hear the howls of the undead trying to reach her and Raeln, along with the mind-numbing thuds of the giant golems she had seen in the distance.