The Last Wizard of Eneri Clare (71 page)

He bowed low, a cryptic expression on his pale, bespectacled face – a face that all at once felt very familiar and dear to her. “I’ll do my best, my lady,” he said. For the briefest of moments their eyes locked, and all the armor fell away, all the veils of pride and formality and self-preservation, and they saw, each into the other’s heart. Then it was gone, carried away on a breeze, as the first rays of the rising sun reached over the distant hills, illuminating the valley below. The dawn revealed the Legions of Light – thousands of friends, subjects, supporters and colleagues waiting in perfect formation for a sign. Jorelial Rey sighed, turned and spurred Tashroth toward the cliff’s edge. The great, green dragon swung his head back around and gave the young wizard one last rumbled acknowledgement, before stepping into the air beside the cliff, and catching himself on a thermal with his huge outstretched wings. Tvrdik stood, watching them circle once, then wheel up and away toward the front lines of their army, which awaited them in the half-light at the mouth of the Yechtze. “So. It begins. Godspeed, Jorelial Rey. Godspeed,” he breathed after them as the dragon-shaped patch dwindled smaller and smaller on the shining horizon.

A flash of gold from the rising sun blinded him for a moment, and in the same instant, a blood-curdling roar from far below pulled his gaze from the sky and made the skin on his neck crawl. It was the horrible sound of thousands of frenzied, faceless monsters bent on tearing the Crown’s army to bits.

THIRTY–EIGHT
It Begins

D
ROGUE’S ARMY WAS ON THE
move. A dark sea of soldiers flowed into the valley with inexorable rhythm. Howling and roaring their rage, they approached the midpoint of the Yechtze, closer and closer, while the Legions of Light stood in formation and held their ground. Every jaw was clenched, every hand twitched, every unblinking eye peered into the near distant grey for a glimpse of the adversary. Five or six dragons circled overhead, sensing their moment approaching. Only one had a rider.

As the dark forces crossed the midpoint of the valley, that rider lowered her arm swiftly in a pre-arranged signal. A high, clear, unearthly sound pierced the dawn. Rising over the enemy’s shouts, its haunting line carried across the whole of the valley. Down a wistful scale it went and twisted around into a melody of such longing, it tore at the heartstrings of anyone with ears to hear. There were no words, but the undiluted emotion in every note spoke to the deepest anguish of human experience. For a moment, everything went still, as the voice of Nyree rose and fell in other-worldly arcs of song. The vanguard of Drogue’s force ceased their measured march, faltered, and halted in confusion, staring about at one another for an explanation. Then, the bardic veteran strummed a chord on her harp, and launched her wordless ribbon of sound once more, pure and clear. Other voices joined her, high and low and in between, adding their poignant beauty in the most exquisite harmony. Several of Drogues warriors dropped their weapons and put their hands to their eyes. Louder, and with more confidence, the singing rang out, harps and drums supporting the sound of trained voices, as more of Drogue’s army halted in confusion.

Tvrdik, looking on from the high ridge above, cast a spell of protection over the entire company of harpers and bards, brave souls who were now in the forefront of their company. He made it a self-generating invisible shield, which could not render them entirely immune to harm, but would help deflect a good deal of what might come at them for a time. He caught a motion out of the corner of his eye, and turned his attention to the right, to a place well behind the faltering front lines. It was an all too familiar gesture: archers – hundreds of them. Lord Drogue was on the ground, galloping back and forth alongside them, urging them to draw back their bows and fire. Only a second later and hundreds of lethal shafts had left their bowstrings, arcing up and ready to rain destruction on the vulnerable Legions. But, Tvrdik had already waved his hand and muttered a few words, and before the arrows could even crest and turn toward their intended marks, they all turned into geese, honking and flapping, and continuing their trajectory up and away.

A deafening cheer broke out from the defenders as they waved their arms and shields high. Drogue’ stupefied archers could only afford to be dumbstruck for a moment before their master, spurring his mount furiously along the lines, roared at them to fire once again. Another rain of arrows rose into the air, and transformed themselves into geese. This time, in an irony Tvrdik could not have planned, almost the entire flock decided to void their bowels over the archers who had released them into the wide blue sky. The results splattered on the upturned, befuddled faces which were watching the magical transformation. Chuckling to himself as more cheering and singing and drumming rang out from the defending army, Tvrdik raised his staff, and set the intention that all arrows should become geese and fly off without inflicting harm. That spell should serve for awhile at least, and disarm one of Drogue’s attack forces. But now, he noticed the foot soldiers in the vanguard regaining their composure, and beginning to advance on the Legions of Light.

Jorelial Rey circled over on Tashroth once again, dropped low, and signaled for a second time with her right arm. At that gesture, Verger echoed the signal to his special unit, lined up behind the bards with a collection of catapults. Cords were cut and the siege engines sprang into action, showering the fields with, of all things, buckets of gold coins! These were no illusion, but completely real, a fact that nearly gave the frugal Verger a heart attack. But, the Lady Regent had decided if they did not wish to create and court new enemies for the future, their peace offering had better remain what it purported to be, instead of changing back to a clod of earth or stone. As hoped, when the rain of gold coins fell clinking down on their heads, many of Drogue’s warriors – the poor, the desperate, the disenchanted and the plain greedy dropped their weapons in distraction and began scrambling about on the ground for their share of the loot. Hundreds of the first company gathered up all they could hold, and simply ran from the field. As these deserters scattered in all directions, searching for a safe egress from the valley, some of them ran headlong into their fellows, who were still advancing to what they thought was the fight.

From Tvrdik’s high vantage point, it looked as if the entire forefront of Drogue’s fighting force was roiling about in every direction, wrestling with itself, having totally forgotten their original purpose. Men were dropping to their knees to retrieve the coins as Verger’s catapults continued to shower the field at regular intervals. Tripping and colliding with one another, possessed with raw lust and desire, the soon began fighting with each other over the spoils. The Legions of Light stood fast, waiting in formation, Nyree’s bards still singing and drumming and playing their harps and horns. Drogue’s army began choking and wrestling one another to the ground, clonking their fellows on the head and twisting arms backward. With great difficulty, a determined few seasoned warriors, loyal to Drogue, or else more focused on their original purpose, broke from the melee and rushed upon the front lines of the defenders. Rel and Tvrdik both caught the motion at the same moment; at a gesture from her, the ordinary shields went up to form a near- impenetrable wall. At a gesture from him, the attackers found themselves lashing out with loaves of fresh-baked bread instead of swords, beating on shields with sausages instead of cudgels, and stabbing with cheeses on the ends of their once bladed pikes. Now these were, in fact, illusions, but such good ones in every sensory detail, that the half-starved rank and file of Drogue’s army again rushed upon their fellows to wrestle away a portion of the bounty.

It then occurred to the young wizard that perhaps he ought to make some effort to protect Drogue’s squabbling warriors from truly harming one another, and he began to systematically turn all the weapons on the field to food items, regiment by regiment. It was a rare and comical sight to see acres of foot soldiers scrabbling on the ground for gold and provender, smashing each other over the head and pummeling one another across the shoulders with bread and cheese and summer sausage. As one would expect at the tail end of summer, all of this sweaty activity coupled with pungent, appetizing, food odors attracted a swarm of flies to the scene, further contributing to the chaos at hand. Men flailed about everywhere, trying to shoo the biting vermin away from their cheese-covered heads.

The bards’ unflagging stream of music, and the noise from the trenches almost, but not quite, drowned out the high-pitched, hysterical screaming from Lord Drogue himself. Tvrdik could see him on the edges of the fray, mounted on Valour, half on the ground, half in the air, the magnificent ebony steed rearing up and galloping aloft in pointless acrobatics, while his rider shouted useless orders at the forces who had lost interest in him. The valley was narrow, and his vast army was, for the moment, impotent – trapped behind the scrabbling front lines. Drogue at length realized that trying to restore order to the vanguard was futile. Tvrdik observed him flying back to a grassy knoll on which his cavalry waited – hundreds of experienced riders on powerful mounts, awaiting their part in the battle. Tvrdik saw Drogue talk to the cavalry commander, pointing and gesticulating. An argument seemed to ensue. It appeared that the commander was questioning the wisdom of Drogue’s orders, but in the end, shaking his head, he relayed the orders to his men, and waved them forward. Drogue, it seemed, had commanded them to ride along the riverbank in a narrow column, circumvent the trouble at the front, and attack the Legion from an oblique angle. It was a strategy that would make any decent cavalry commander nervous, as his forces would be strung out in a long, narrow ribbon. But despite that disadvantage, it could take the defenders off guard and inflict a great deal of damage. Tvrdik and General Boone had foreseen such a move, however, and were prepared for it. Tvrdik raised his staff high, and with a thought, crowned it with a vibrant orange flame, pouring as much intensity into it as he could, until he was sure Jorelial Rey had caught sight of it. When he saw her reign Tashroth back and wheel away toward the river bank at a clip, he brought the staff down and extinguished the torch. Tashroth hovered close to the river, stretching his long neck down toward the waters, and then the dragon glided along the treetops of a wooded patch nearby before turning back to the defenders’ end of the valley.

The only corridor left to Drogue’s cavalry would take them straight through that wooded patch, and then, as it cleared, right along the river on the approach to their waiting foe. Tvrdik saw the anxious commander, on a fidgeting horse, line his men up four abreast, and then give the order to charge. Yard by yard, the horse company gained momentum, as they found their rhythm, gauging their space with care. They passed alongside the archers, who were still trying to coax their bows into shooting anything but live geese, and beside row upon row of brawling foot soldiers in disarray. When they came upon the woods to their right, they were at a full gallop, and so focused on not running into the mess of men and sausages to their left, that they never saw the trees pull back in preparation. They had no advance warning that hundreds of supple birches and leafy young oaks were about to slingshot their leafy tops over in front of them as they came on at full tilt. Nor did they expect scores of sturdy elms to twist their solid branches out into the path at the last moment. In fact, there was no possibility that fully half of Drogue’s cavalry could have reigned up in time to avoid being swept clean out of their saddles by tree branches that had not been before them only a moment earlier. Scores of men flew through the air or bounced about, clinging to branches for dear life. Their riderless horses, spooked and without room to flee, or anyone to guide them, bolted and ran amok in all directions, mostly straight into the remaining mounted riders. Horses panicked and reared up, in some cases throwing off riders who had not been caught by the trees. Somehow, the quick-thinking commander managed to keep his seat and rally what was left of his company forward. But they had not faced their last obstacle.

As instructed, Ondine, and her little group of naiads had poured their own magical intention into the river right at the spot where it ran past the battlefield. In mere moments, they were able to stir up the waters to a bubbling and churning brew, foaming and swelling until they overflowed their banks, all across the corridor where the horses were approaching, and well into the squabbling troops. The cavalry who made it past the woods intact had only seconds to sigh with relief before they ran smack into a slick of river water and mud. Travelling too fast, the terrified horses shrieked and slid across the muddy ground. Many went down, their riders pitched into the churning mess. Those that kept their footing were slammed into by the next wave of mud-surfing stallions unable to slow their forward momentum. From the cliff top, Tvrdik thought it all looked like a game of toppling dominos in very slow motion. He sent up a prayer that no creature would be injured in the debacle unfolding before his eyes. But he also had to acknowledge that Drogue’s army, so far, was being speared on the horns of its own attack. In a few moments, Lord Drogue’s impressive cavalry had been reduced to a pile of struggling arms and legs, tails, hooves and manes, tangled and slippery, rolling about on the soaked and muddy riverbank, gasping for air, neighing in discomfort, and desperate to avoid being dragged down, sat upon and smothered.

There was no question that stage one of the battle had been a rousing success for the Legions of Light, who had not yet needed to lift a finger in their own defense. They were jumping up and down and shrieking in delight, waving their hands and banners in triumph. Squinting, Tvrdik could just make out something, or someone, in the waters of the river, leaping and splashing about in glee, and he smiled to think of who that might be. Then he caught a glimpse of Lord Drogue, purple-faced, still mounted on Valour, flying about and shouting to what was left of his army to fall back and regroup. Rendered powerless for the moment, he was filled with fury and frustration that he had not yet struck a blow for his cause, and could not cross the valley to come any closer to his foe. It was proving a daunting task to restore order to his confused forces, even in retreat, and he had already lost hundreds of men and beasts and many more weapons. With persistence, he managed to corral, order, threaten, and cajole his remaining troops back to their end of the valley for a thorough reorganization.

General Rey was also pulling her army back to confer and reconfigure. From a distance, the Legions looked almost giddy with triumph. Tvrdik knew they had performed well against all odds, but that the struggle was far from over. Lord Drogue would not underestimate them again, and that also meant that they had now lost some of the element of surprise. Now they would be facing some of his more ruthless and devious tactics. It would not prove so easy to force their adversary to give up his cherished ambitions, and the drubbing he had just received at their hands would only serve to make him madder, and more determined. At least the Legions of Light still had a trick or two up their sleeves. Tvrdik sighed and decided it was time for him to join the action on the ground. In an instant, he was the white owl, mottled circles around his eyes, twig firmly grasped in his talon, as he flew down to take his place on the valley floor.