Swordmage (45 page)

The swordmage whirled where he stood, searching for more foes to engage. To his amazement he realized that the Bloody Skulls who’d forced their way through the gap in the dike had melted away. Dozens of duels and skirmishes continued around him, but the first great thrust was spent—the warriors of Hulburg had held the Vale Road, at least for the moment.

“They’re falling back,” Geran called to his cousin.

“Not for long,” Kara answered. She pointed toward the north, out to the fields beyond the dike. Geran followed the point of her sword, and his heart sank. A few hundred yards away, around the great black banners at the center of the Bloody Skull horde, hundreds of ore warriors stamped

and shouted and struck their spears to their shields. An armored wedge of lumbering ogres stood at their head, bellowing their crude challenges. Kara’s eyes glowed with their uncanny blue fire, smoldering in the shadows of her helm. “That was only the first attack. The next one’s gathering already.”

Geran shook the blood off his blade and turned to face the ogres and ores streaming back into the fight. He readied himself to sell his life as dearly as he could—and then a thin, cold breath of wind suddenly stirred the ground around him, turning the wet grass white with hoarfrost. Sinister voices whispered dark things on the wind, and a sense of icy dread clutched at his heart like a murderer’s hand. He shivered and faltered back several steps. The rosy glow of sunrise faded to dull gray, and streamers of pale fog seemed to coalesce from the very air, darkening the dawn. Stout-hearted dwarves groaned in fear and hid their faces, while men who had fought valiantly for hours let their futile blades slip from nerveless fingers. Even the bloodthirsty ores pouring across the fields slowed and stopped, halting well short of the sinister fog.

A dull scraping caught his attention, and Geran looked down at the black earth under his feet. Dirt buckled upward, stirred from beneath. Then a skeletal hand thrust up into the chill, deadly mists of the morning. He backed away from it, only to find another bony hand clutching at his heels. He kicked his foot free with a sudden burst of panic. Scores of the things—dirt-encrusted skeletons still draped in the rusted remnants of ancient armor—were dragging themselves up out of the ground.

“What foul necromancy is this?” Kara snarled into the freezing fog. Her horse Dancer shied away in panic, her eyes rolling. The ranger threw a panicked look in Geran’s direction. “We can’t fight the undead and the ores at the same time!”

“This is Sergen’s doing!” Geran snarled. The rogue Hulmaster’s undead allies had failed to kill the harmach at

Griffonwatch, so now he was trying again … and that meant that his cousin had to be somewhere near, since Aesperus had said that the wielder of the amulet could not send the lich’s minions far. Geran wondered if Sergen’s House Veruna allies were making their move as well. Doubtless Sergen would order the undead to spare the Verunas, but the rest of the Hulburgan army was in dire peril. “Stand your ground as long as you can, and protect the harmach!” he called to Kata. “I have to find Sergen before the dead overwhelm us all!”

Turning his back on the skeletal ranks assembling themselves before the defenders of Hulburg, Geran sheathed his blade and ran into the frigid mists.

TlVTNTY-NlNE

eran loped through the unnatural murk as night seemed to descend over the vale a second time. The eerie fog thickened by the heartbeat, closing in around him like a tomb of cold gray stone. It felt as if he were blundering through a damp gray vault, a spectral dungeon that was slowly becoming more substantial, more threatening, with every passing moment. Soldiers appeared like ghosts in the mist, dark forms that drifted past or simply stood where they were, shivering in terror. He almost ran onto the spearpoint of a shambling skeleton draped in the remains of a lord’s robes, and he retreated quickly from a pair of ancient berserkers whose jawbones hung open in silent howls of battle-madness and rage.

All around him in the mist he heard the battle resume in a dozen places at once, but instead of the bellowing of ogres and the war cries of bloodthirsty ores, he heard only the whispering of dry dead voices and the shrieks of human pain and terror. In the frost-heavy mists, sounds seemed distant and uncertain; Geran couldn’t really tell if he was moving away from the fight or circling around to stumble into it again. Why didn’t I make sure of Sergen when I had the chance? he berated himself. Perhaps Sergen’s mercenaries would have cut him down if he’d paused for the moment necessary to administer a killing blow, but it might

have been worth his life to make sure that the traitor didn’t survive to summon more undead.

Geran came to a low rise and scrambled to the top of a frost-slick knoll, hoping to get above the dense fog. From the top of the little hill, he thought that the fog directly overhead looked noticeably brighter, but he could see little else. He turned in a circle, searching for any sign of his cousin. “Think, Geran, think!” he admonished himself. Sergen was wounded and likely not interested in getting any closer to the fighting against the Bloody Skulls than he had to; he’d be somewhere on the south side of the old dike and well back from the battle—probably somewhere near the Verunas. House Veruna was over on the left flank of the line by Lake Hul, anchoring the western end of Lendon’s Dike.

He caught sight of a warhorse standing over its fallen rider, a young cavalryman of House Sokol. Geran hurried to the animal and caught its reins. The horse whickered and shied away, but Geran patted its muzzle to calm it, whispered a few words in Elvish, and then swung himself up into the saddle. His new mount snorted and pranced nervously, but he set his heels to its flanks and kicked it into a run. Fortunately the horse was well trained and eager for a rider to guide it; its hooves kicked up wet clods of turf as it cantered across the muddy fields.

A skeleton carrying a round bronze shield suddenly lurched into his path, its rusted sword ready to strike. Geran swept out his own blade and parried the ancient iron; a jolt of frozen fire ran up his sword arm from the impact, but he circled his point underneath the skeleton’s blade and rammed it home in the creature’s empty eye socket. Shards of bone burst from the back of the skull, and the thing staggered back. Geran wrenched his sword free and rode past. When he glanced over his shoulder, the skeleton was moving away to find another foe to fight, seemingly untroubled by the horrible wound he’d just dealt it. Necromantic magic knitted its dead sinews and yellowed bones together. What was a sword wound to such a creature?

Geran dodged away from several more encounters with the skeletal warriors. On one occasion he spurred his mount right over a skeleton in front of him. The warhorse knocked the horrid thing to the ground, crushing bones beneath its heavy iron-shod hooves, and that one did not rise again. Then he seemed to break out of the heaviest mist and found himself a few hundred yards west of the Vale Road, a short distance behind the old dike. The supernatural chill of the fog diminished a little, and he could see more of the sky graying overhead—the day would have been clear and cold, though he doubted it would have much power over the fell mists.

On that end of the line battered Spearmeet companies still held the dike, with a number of Veruna footmen stiffening their lines. More than a few men were gazing nervously toward the middle of the battlefield; Geran glanced back the way he had come and saw that the fog darkened over the center of the field like a stationary storm, weirdly still despite the strong, cold wind that swept the rest of the battlefield. A short distance behind the line on the dike, thirty Veruna horsemen and a handful of Shieldsworn riders formed the left wing’s cavalry reserve. They sat waiting on their mounts. The ore assault seemed to have retreated for now, likely because the Bloody Skulls were waiting to see if the army of Hulburg would still be standing against them once the evil mists lifted. Geran couldn’t fault the ores’ instincts. If some supernatural horror was cutting its way through your enemy’s ranks, then there was little reason to rush back to close quarters.

He wheeled his mount around, looking for Sergen— and then he found him. His stepcousin and a quartet of Council Watch guards sat on riding horses under a stand of hemlocks perhaps a hundred yards away, partially hidden by the ragged tatters of mist that streamed by. It was difficult for Geran to tell what the traitor was doing given the distance and the poor visibility, but he could see several Veruna officers in their tabards of green and white speaking with him. As the swordmage watched, the Veruna

men turned their mounts and cantered away, heading back toward their troops.

“What did you tell them, Sergen?” Geran muttered aloud. “Abandon the field? Turn against the Shieldsworn? Or wait and do nothing until the battle is lost?”

With no firm intentions in mind other than to make sure that Sergen didn’t get away with whatever he hoped to get away with, Geran tapped his heels to his horse’s flanks and broke into a canter, heading for Sergen and his guards. The wet ground and blowing mist muffled the hoofbeats of his mount, and the air grew steadily colder and more still as he drew closer. Sergen wasn’t looking at Geran; he was leaning forward in his saddle, looking out over the battle as scattered bands of desperate soldiers struggled to drive off the deathless warriors of the King in Copper. The fighting was fiercest around the banner of the harmach, where better than a hundred soldiers stood together against a ragged wave of skeletons who rose up out of the ground and attacked just as quickly as they were killed or disabled by the soldiers fighting to protect the ruler of Hulburg. Geran couldn’t see his uncle, not through the chaos and the murk, but he caught a glimpse of Kara on her fine white charger in the thick of the melee.

Sergen was still unaware of Geran’s approach, and now the swordmage was only thirty yards away. Distantly the swordmage noted that the Veruna officers riding back to their troops had caught sight of him. They wheeled and galloped to intercept him, but a desperate plan finally coalesced in Geran’s mind, and he spurred his mount into a headlong charge. He had little magic left after the furious skirmish at the Vale Road’s cut, but he still had a few words he could call upon. It would have to be enough. He stood up in his stirrups, sword bared in his hand.

“Lord Sergen!” the Veruna officers shouted. “Behind you!

The council guard closest to Geran turned at the warning. The guard snapped down his visor and drew his sword, shouting something to the men around him. Even as Sergen looked

around and the other guards began to turn their mounts to meet Geran’s attack, the swordmage raced up alongside the first guard’s mount and lashed out with his backsword. Bright steel glittered in the cold mist, shrilly clanging twice as Geran beat his way through the man’s guard. He disabled the fellow with a backhand flick of the point that creased its way through the guard’s visor. The man cried out and crumpled forward in the saddle, holding his hand to his face; Geran’s horse shouldered the guard’s mount out of the way, and he drove at his treacherous cousin. “Sergen!” he snarled.

“To me! To me!” Sergen shouted at his mercenaries. Geran ignored them. Sergen reached awkwardly for the sword at his hip with his unwounded arm, but Geran didn’t give him a chance to draw it. With a wordless roar of anger, he hurled himself out of the saddle and tackled Sergen, carrying his stepcousin to the muddy ground underfoot. The impact knocked Geran’s breath away, but Sergen cried out sharply as his damaged arm hit the ground. Their momentum rolled them over and over, Geran holding his stepcousin with a grip of iron.

“You fool!” Sergen hissed between his teeth. “You’ve interfered with my business for the last time, Geran! I swear that I’ll see you deadbeiott this is done!”

“Then you should’ve killed me when you had me helpless in a cell,” Geran answered.

Sergen reached for a dagger with his good hand, but Geran got on top of him and delivered two sharp punches to the jaw before he had to duck under a sword-swing from one of the council guards. He rolled again to put Sergen on top, using the lord as a shield against his own bodyguards, and then their struggle tumbled them both into the shallow ditch beside the Vale Road.

Sergen managed to wrench his jacket free and threw himself away from Geran, gaining an armslength of clear space. He rolled to his knees and floundered up out of the ditch. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he snarled at Geran. He motioned for his guards, who rushed to his aid.

Geran scrambled to his feet and retreated a few steps from the grim mercenaries closing in around him. Then he raised his hand and showed Sergen the amulet of Aesperus, which he’d wrenched away from his cousin during their brief struggle. The old copper amulet glinted in the dim light. “I think you’ve caused enough trouble with this for now, Sergen,” he said.

Sergen’s hand flew to his chest, and he looked down in horror. When he looked up again, his dark eyes blazed in fury. “Kill him!” he shouted to his guards. “Kill him now!”

Geran glanced around and summoned up what little magic he had left unspent. “Seiroch!” he shouted. Sergen’s guards thrust their blades through empty air where he’d been standing an instant before, and the teleport spell whisked him a hundred yards away in the blink of an eye.

He found himself standing close to the harmach’s banner, surrounded by Shieldsworn who fought desperately against the tide of skeletal warriors. Geran thrust his hand into the air, holding the amulet aloft, and shouted, “Warriors of Aesperus, halt!I command you!”

All around him, skeletons abruptly stopped moving. More than a few Hulburgans smashed their axes and swords into skeletal warriors who now stood still. Some of those fell while others suffered the injuries without response, standing motionless. The humans and dwarves out on the field raised a ragged cheer of astonishment and exultation, amazed to find theit attackers immobilized.

“I’ll be damned,” Geran said softly. “It worked!” He felt the empty eyes of the dead warriors settling on him, and the cold whispers in the air seemed to grow stronger, more sinister. He shuddered. If he was going to command these fell creatures, better to do it now before he lost his nerve. “Warriors of Aesperus, listen to me! You are to attack and destroy the Bloody Skull ores and their allies—ignore all who are defending Hulburg! Do you understand me?”