Mikahl’s dream about his half brother, Glendar, wasn’t far off the mark.
The ship that the young King of Westland’s undead body was on was drifting aimlessly at sea. The bodies that were being thrown overboard, however, were not willing to stay dead. Nor were the ones doing the throwing. The other two ships had abandoned the King’s plague-stricken vessel. They had gone so far as to pull down most of its rigging with a half dozen well placed harpoon shots, and even made an attempt to set the craft on fire, by hurling clay pots, full of flammable oil at it. No one wanted to chance the King surviving his ordeal, making shore, and then calling them out as mutineers or deserters.
Just as Mikahl had seen him standing at the prow of the doomed ship, Glendar, or Inkling, or some measure of them both, stood in the wind at the front of the craft. He was calling out desperately to Pael.
Pael was a thousand miles away, and too busy to notice the pleas. Even if he could have heard them, he was too preoccupied to care anymore about the fool, Glendar, and his bond with Inkling had fizzled to insignificance.
Glendar had gained a bit of control over the undead men by sheer force of will, but that meant that he could only keep them from attacking him. He couldn’t stop them from attacking each other. The tainted hellcat meat that Pael had let them eat, had left its bit of evil inside them, and chaos prevailed onboard the ship. Soon, it was all out battle for everybody just to stay out of the sea.
When the first of them went into the water, the sharks came. After the first man was hit, and shredded, into a rotted brown cloud of gore, the sharks fled in search of a more wholesome meal. The scavengers came though. A whole flotilla of crabs and sucker fish arrived and most of the undead men were skeletons, before their still animated bodies had hit the sandy ocean floor. Now, only a few of King Glendar’s men remained on the ship. None were really alive.
The sun overhead was fleecing them of their flesh, almost as fast as the denizens of the sea were consuming the fetid meat of their sinking comrades. For a half mile behind the drifting craft, a wake full of tattered clothes, and churning waters alive with fat, dinner-plate sized pink crabs, followed them. Further down, in the depths, a small group of bewildered skeletal soldiers roamed the seabed, searching for a place where they might climb back into the light of day. They were caught in a state of perpetual animation, doomed to wander the depths.
They won’t go wandering aimlessly for long, Glendar or Inkling thought, with a smile full of contempt. He would be forced to join them soon, and maybe, someday, he could lead them up out of the sea, and exact his revenge on Pael. Maybe, someday.
“Dragon guns?” King Jarrek asked, with equal shares of amazement and doubt in his voice.
He was looking at one of the huge crossbow-like mechanisms mounted along the top of Xwarda’s outer wall. Men were greasing its spindle with lard, and working over its other moving parts with intense scrutiny. The sun was about to set, and there was a great sense of urgency about. The morrow Pael had given them was almost over, and time for preparation was running out as swiftly as the daylight.
“They’re rigged to shoot flaming spears from up here,” General Spyra said with confidence.“And they’re rigged in pairs to loose simultaneously from thirty feet apart, down in the avenues. They launch with a taut wire strung between them.”
“A taut wire?” Jarrek asked.
This time there was nothing but doubt in his tone. Who do these people think they are up against? Hadn’t he made it perfectly clear what Pael alone was capable of. Had they even been listening?
“Look sir,” the General stopped their casual tour of the defenses, with an irritated scowl. “It comes off, like a thirty foot wide razor blade, flying at waist height. If those things get through the outer walls, they,” he indicated a group of his Blacksword soldiers, “need time to work their way back behind the secondary wall. There are whole sections of the city set to go up in flames, and most of the major avenues are rigged to cut the enemy, literally in two. We’ve got three Master Wizards, five magi, and three times as many apprentices, running around setting pitfalls and fire bombardments all over the place. Those things will wish that they never came here, if they win their way past this wall!”
To emphasize which wall he spoke of, General Spyra stomped his boot down heavily, and crossed his arms across his wide barrel-keg chest.
King Jarrek nodded away his doubt of General Spyra’s preparations. He hadn’t meant to rile the man. He still couldn’t help but feel that it was all for naught. Pael would level this wall, and then the next all by himself, just like he had leveled Castlemont. Xwarda’s palace might be spared that fate, but only if Pael chose to spare it. If it were only these undead soldiers that they were facing, Jarrek told himself, then no doubt they could find a way to prevail. There was no accounting for Pael though; at least no way that Jarrek knew of.
They resumed their stroll along with top of the wall. Jarrek scrutinized a catapult, rigged to sling barrels of oil and pitch into the formations outside the wall. Then he watched as a procession of chanting apprentices, led by one of Targon’s underlings, went by. They were sifting chalky, white substances through their fingers, and sprinkling what might have been goose feathers, as they went. The pungent smell of the powder wasn’t much better than the reek of the undead wafting up from below.
The long day of sunshine had ripened the air with the smell of them, to the point where a brigade of bucketeers had been put into service, so that the men on the wall might have a place to vomit. Now the evening breeze was helping to dissipate the smell, but earlier in the afternoon, the air had been thick with it.
“General,” King Jarrek called out to the busy man, who was now lecturing an archer on the placement of his loose quivers of arrows.
“I would like to prepare, if you’ll excuse me. My armor is back at the castle, and I would prefer to be here on the wall when it begins.”
“I’ll have a man show you the quick way back,” Spyra said, with a politic bow.
He pushed his hand back over his balding pate, as if there were still hair there, and let out a sigh of frustration. He then turned to a man, who was stacking javelins near one of the dragon guns.
“Gratton, finish this later. For now, King Jarrek has need of a swift return back to the castle.”
Turning back to King Jarrek, he added, “I’m amazed that we got the outer portion of the city cleared at all. Gratton here will get you past the choked up secondary gates, by way of an underground passage.”
Grattan led him down one of the long ramps that lined the inside face of the outer wall. Jarrek noticed a large wooden section of it that was rigged to collapse, if certain pins were knocked out. A few well placed hammer blows would leave any attackers who had gained the top of the wall with no way to use the inclines. There were switchback stairways, and narrow passages going all over the place inside the wall, though. They led to several levels of arrow slits and murder holes that opened up on the outside.
Bratton led them to a stairway, which went down several flights, before it opened onto a wide and busy tunnel. Crates of spears and arrows, along with barrels and boxes, lined the walls, and there were rooms full of other stored wartime goods, opening up off the main artery.
Inside one room, Jarrek saw men suiting up in their armor, like he was about to do. The long, slow process of strapping plate and chained steel to one’s body was ritualistic by nature, and none of the men in the rooms were trying to hurry. Further along, a knot of already armored Blacksword soldiers joked over a cup of ale by a barrel-keg. One of them recognized King Jarrek, and elbowed his fellows into a slight bow of respect.
Xwarda is ready for war, thought Jarrek, but are they ready for Pael?
All in all, the city would be well defended, if they were facing any normal foe. Come to think of it, no normal foe really stood a chance of getting past the outer wall, and with all of the city’s tunnels, and secret passages, a siege would be pointless.
The enemy that was outside the gates was anything but normal though. And the demon-wizard was worse than all those undead men put together. Jarrek hoped they would find a way to best Pael and his death brigade, but honestly, he reserved little hope of any of them making it through this night alive.
It was well past sunset, when Vaegon and Dugak came up through a trapdoor in the floor of a wine cellar, which was located in the lower part of the palace. The dwarf quickly emptied the water from the skin he had carried, and refilled it from a tapped keg of stout. He offered Vaegon a sip, but the elf declined, with a grin. He waited patiently, while Dugak gathered his wind and recovered himself, then asked him to lead the way to where Mikahl was housed.
Vaegon had a general idea of where the healers’ wing was located, but the castle was huge, and crowded with soldiers and refugees alike, and he didn’t want chance getting lost. Dugak drained off his skin in three big gulps, filled it again, and then started off into the castle.
The rooms and corridors were as crowded as the streets had been that first day when Vaegon and Hyden had come through with the ranger, Drick. These people weren’t filthy and poor though. These were the families wealthy enough to buy their way into the castle – the Dukes and Lords, the landowners, and the Mayor’s other favorites, so Dugak told Vaegon.
The rumor that the enemy was going to attack at midnight was being passed amongst them all. Both Dugak and Vaegon could tell that it was no mere gossip, so the dwarf quickened his pace.
The wing, where Mikahl lay, was far less crowded than the rest of the palace, but it was busier than it had been the last time Vaegon had looked in on his friend.
Mikahl lay just as he had before, seemingly peaceful, and still, save for his labored breathing. Only the rise and fall of his chest, and the slight rasping of his breath, indicated that he was still alive at all.
Fighting back a tear, a rare thing for an elf to be doing, Vaegon placed Ironspike atop Mikahl, just like it would be placed if he truly were dead.
The sheathed tip of the blade rested between Mikahl’s shins, and the cross-guard sat on his chest, near his heart. Vaegon gently took his friend’s hands, and grasped them to the leather wrapped hilt. They closed around it reflexively, and a moment of hope flared in the elf, but it was only a fleeting feeling. There was no strength in the grip; it was more like a baby’s hand grasping an offered finger, than anything.
Mikahl made no further movement. Vaegon stayed for a good while to make sure. He wasn’t sure why he did it, but the urge to slide the sheath off of Mikahl’s sword, was overwhelming. He was blinded with relief when the revealed section of the blade bloomed with brilliant blue light. It shone so brightly that it threw deep shadows across the magically lit room.
He studied his friend for a few more moments, hoping to see some sort of reaction to the reenergized blade’s magic, but none came. Feeling disappointed, but not completely so, because the sword had regained some, if not all of its power, the elf let out a long, frustrated sigh.
“I’ve got to find Hyden Hawk,” he said to Dugak.
The dwarf was slouched against the wall, finishing the last of his second bladder of liquor. When he was done, he tossed the skin aside and belched deeply.
“Be off then, elf,” he slurred. “I’ve had nuff runnin an’ frighting for one day. I’m old, and tiresome, and fleelin’ such.”
“And more than a little drunk, it seems,” Vaegon smiled, despite his sadness. “Don’t let anyone touch that sword.”
“That’s done, then. Iff’n ya see me lady dwarf, would you snend her my way, lad?” Dugak whispered, conspiratorially.
Vaegon could only laugh half-heartedly at the dwarf as he started away.
After fighting his way through the crowded hallways and corridors, Vaegon spotted the pixie-man, Starkle, hovering over an aggressive dispute among nobles. The sight of the strange looking, one-eyed elf coming down the corridor silenced Starkle, and drew the notice of the argument long enough for him to get the pixie’s attention.
“Can you tell me where I can find Hyden Hawk?” Vaegon asked.
“He’s gone into the Tower of Dahg Mahn,” Starkle replied.
A hushed whisper rolled out from the epicenter of the crowd. Everyone was focused on them. The sensation alarmed Vaegon, as did the way Starkle had made it sound as if the tower he spoke of was on the other side of the moon.
“How do I get there?” the elf asked.
Somewhere in the crowd, a woman said loudly, “The hawkman is lost.”
Another voice echoed in agreement, and the murmur turned into an argument of grim speculation over what Hyden’s fate might be.
“Only the wizard, Targon, can tell you that,” Starkle answered Vaegon’s question in an almost regretful tone. “Targon is on the outer wall, making ready for the coming attack.”
“Thank you,” Vaegon said, with a sinking feeling in his chest.
He squeezed into the crowd, and as he parted his way toward the castle’s main entryway, the lady’s voice echoed in his head: “The hawkman is lost.”
It took forever to work his way through all the people crowded in the torch-lit streets between the castle and the secondary wall’s open gates. From there to one of the many ramps that led up the inside of the outer wall, wasn’t so hard to manage.
The streets between the two walls were occupied primarily by soldiers, and the occasional magi. Even though it was dark, it was clear where one should travel, because there was a torch lined throughway. Everywhere else, there were men and soldiers posted, warning of places that had been booby-trapped to burn.
The physical exertion of his and Dugak’s run through the hills was taking its toll on Vaegon’s body as he started up one of the ramps. Men were starting to shout above him. It was clear that something was happening. Despite his exhaustion, he began to run up the ramp to see what it was. The excitement and fear of the moment filled his body with a rush as he went.
Just as he gained the top of the wall, a roar sounded. The call was terrifyingly deep, and Vaegon reflexively crumbled to his knees, like a frightened child might.
A bright and thunderous blast, a jet of orange flame, so hot that he felt its heat from over a hundred feet away, shot across the wall. Reflected in its own fire’s light, was the swooping plated head, and breast of a sparkling crimson beast. It was so daunting, that it could only be one thing: a dragon. Vaegon had thought the Choska demon they had fought in the forest a formidable creature. The dragon, which had just obliterated everything in the path of its fiery breath, could have bitten the Choska in half.
Thunder sounded in the distance, and rumbled closer with unnatural speed. In an explosion of blinding white energy, a not-so-distant section of the outer wall shattered, and crumbled away. The structure underneath Vaegon’s feet shook with the force of the blast.
Claret’s mighty roar sounded again from somewhere behind the elf. Men screamed and shouted in a cacophony of disorder. The deep “Thrum” of the machines loosing flaming spears sounded from nearby.
Vaegon managed to get back on his feet, as an explosion of fire erupted outside the wall. In its flaring light, he saw huge wooden towers rolling up close. The men pushing, and climbing them, seemed oblivious to the flames that threatened, and clung to them.
A barrel came down out of the darkness, into the throng below, and when it crashed, it splashed liquid in a great radius. A moment later, another flaming arrow went streaking from the wall, down into the huge circle, and a yellow-orange fireball erupted with a resounding “Whump!” The undead soldiers caught in the inferno, writhed and twisted on the ground. The ones only partially burned, came on as if nothing had happened.
Down the length of the wall, Vaegon saw one, two, no, three of the ladder towers, resting against it. The stench of sun-rotten flesh hung in the night air like a blanket of fog. The undead were swarming the wall already, and the battle had only just begun.
Vaegon searched around him in the wildly flaring light. There, some distance away, was a man in a white robe who might be a wizard. Vaegon charged along the top of the wall, heedless of all the arrows streaking by. A man at a crenel screamed, and fell back into his path, cursing. An arrow protruded from his head like a horn. Vaegon stopped, and helped the man tear it out of the skin. It hadn’t fractured the skull, but had pierced the flesh along his scalp, down to the bone. Vaegon took a moment to knit the skin together with his magic, but it was a poor and hasty job.
He saw ahead of him, between him and the robed man that he hoped was Targon, a group of pike-men, trying desperately to push off one of the ladder towers. Another man was throwing buckets full of oil down onto the attackers, who were scaling it. As he shot by them, the whole lot of them went up in a torrent of flame.
“Targon!” Vaegon yelled, as he came upon the white-robed man.
There was no response. The man was in the middle of a casting, and left Vaegon pleading with the air. The desperate elf was about to shake him, when a crackling bolt of yellow lightning shot forth from the man’s hands, down into a swarm of undead soldiers, who were trying to set yet another scaling ladder against the wall. The base of the wooden structure exploded, as Targon’s lightning superheated the sap in the fresh green timbers of the construction. The ladder began a slow tilting arc back into the troops below. When the spell had expired, Targon turned to the elf with clenched teeth, and a wild, almost insane, look in his eyes.
“If you can heal, then heal!” The black haired wizard shouted excitedly. “If not, then grab up a weapon! It’s all we can do here until Hyden Hawk returns!”
Vaegon started to ask, “From where?” but a great light began to fill the darkness out beyond the soldiers below. Out in the distance, a globe of reddish purple energy was forming over the head of a bald white-skinned figure wearing an ornately decorated black robe. The ball of swirling energy was the size of a wagon-wheel now, but it was growing steadily.
“Pael,” Targon hissed, then immediately began casting another spell.
Vaegon looked on, with his feet rooted to the plank walk, as the dragon passed at the edge of the evil wizard’s brightening lavender light. He shuddered with fear when he saw the beast’s huge horned head cut through the edge of the illumination. Several long seconds passed before its tail finally disappeared back into the darkness, but all he had really seen was the edge of a wing, a smattering of sparkling scale, and a huge undefined mass of slithery motion. By then, the sphere of energy building over Pael’s egg-like head was the size of a farmhouse. With a throwing gesture, and a psychotic, almost primal yell, he launched the globe into a comet-like arc, high up over the wall. It lit up the whole section of city as it started its way down. It’s churning, wavering glow, sent the shadows of buildings and towers sweeping around the city like dark swords. It was as if Pael had thrown up a miniature purple sun.
The piercing shriek of the Choska erupted far too close to Vaegon, and he dove to the side, just in time to avoid its snatching claws. He managed to pull Targon down by his robes as he went, and the demon beast’s razor sharp talons snatched nothing but air. The city quaked then, and a subsonic gut jarring boom effectively eclipsed the night.
The explosion caused by the impact of Pael’s comet was white-hot, and blinding. Orange-yellow blasts of flame and debris followed, as the traps and pitfalls set by the Highwander Mages, were triggered prematurely. The sounds of these explosions were merely pops and crackles in the near deaf hum caused by the concussion of Pael’s blast. Everything was unnaturally silent now, especially for Vaegon, who could see the mouths of the men around him moving, but couldn’t hear anything at all.
Targon and Vaegon both blinked away the spots from their vision, and then realized at the same time, that they had no chance now to get themselves back to the secondary wall. Not from where they were stranded. To make matters worse, a nearby section of the wall crumbled away, in a rumbling, flickering explosion of silvery white energy. Before the debris even settled, thousands of undead soldiers poured into the gap, and swarmed the city.
From somewhere in the sky, the dragon roared out again. When the sound of it subsided, a commanding shout cut through the chaos from behind them.
Targon grabbed Vaegon by the sleeve, and started back towards the ramp Vaegon had come up earlier. Below them, just inside the wall, and near the breach, a warrior in gleaming red plate armor had opened up the lane with his flashing sword. The soldiers of the Blacksword were rallying to his side. If they could get down the ramp, they might have a chance to make it back to the secondary wall. A slim chance, but a chance nonetheless. They had to hurry though. Already, a knot of rotting undead soldiers were heaving up and over the wall from a siege ladder just beyond the point they had to reach to gain the ramp.
Targon stopped, and cast a quick spell. Sizzling blue streaks leapt from his pointed fingers, not at the undead, but at the wood planking just in front of them. Loud thumping divots were shattered out of the wood, sending shrapnel-like splinters, and chunks, tearing through the decaying flesh of the undead. It slowed the foul things, but didn’t stop them completely.
Vaegon, with Targon on his heels, reached the ramp just before the enemy did. They charged headlong down the slope, but it was too late. Halfway down the grade, a hammer blow had already struck the pins that held the wooden section of ramp in place. The man who had knocked out the pin, looked up with regret as the section fell away. It was all Targon could do to keep Vaegon from charging into the now empty space before him. As Vaegon teetered on the edge of a thirty-foot dead fall, the thick, palpable smell of the undead came washing up over them from behind.
Hyden Hawk was brought awake by needle sharp teeth clamping down on his hand. He opened his eyes in a jolt of sheer terror. He felt hot, wet breath breathing down his neck, and he saw a skull face before him. With a scream, he jumped to his feet. His heart fluttered around his chest crazily.
Excitedly, Talon fluttered down from the tree above, the hawkling’s wing beats adding to the thrumming sensation in Hyden’s breast. He nearly bolted off into the endless expanse of grassy hills that surrounded the tree and all its dead visitors. Only the merry laughter of two young wolf pups prancing at his feet stopped him. He recognized them immediately, but it took him a few minutes to calm himself, and wrench himself free of the terror that had overcome him. He had healed their mother in the ravine the same day that Loudin had been torn apart by the hellcat. With his breath finally under control, and his heartbeat steadied, he smiled down and greeted them.
“Where is she?” asked Hyden.
“At the door,” one of the pups answered.
“Waiting for us,” added the other.
They didn’t quite speak with words like the squirrels had, yet what they said was perfectly clear to Hyden. And the differences in them radiated with each of their personalities. They were both boys, young adolescent male Ridge Wolves, healthier than most, and fearlessly sure of themselves.
“The Great Mother of the forest said you needed a guide,” the one called Rurran said.
“We didn’t have to come,” his brother Arrah added. “But we wanted to, because you saved our mother.”
“We would’ve gone hungry without her.” Rurran nuzzled against Hyden’s leg. “So you saved us too.”
“It looks like nobody came for them.” Arrah nodded towards all the skeletons that ringed the base of the great tree.
“Come, Hyden Hawk, follow us.”
“What’s that bird’s name?”
“Talon,” Hyden answered, with a hint of amazement and his voice.
Hyden tried to recite the riddle as he followed the two frisky wolf pups, but it was impossible. The two curious youths told him excitedly how they had chased, and killed a field mouse, and had chased a badger into its burrow. They wouldn’t let his attention wander too far from them. Rurran made fun of Arrah for getting scared, but admitted that the badger had turned on them fiercely, and had scared him a little as well.
Not long after he had healed her, the mother had led them to a cave up on the ridge. They said it had been full of the stink of men, but since they smelled that Hyden had been there, they knew they would be safe.
Their mother had taken a doe, and they had gotten their first taste of red meat, and oh, how they loved meat. It was what they lived for now; they were on an eternal quest for meat. Hyden couldn’t help but laugh at them, laugh with them. They were sly, imaginative, and so full of life, that the joy that radiated from them was contagious.
It took some time, an hour, half the day maybe, Hyden wasn’t sure. The only disruption of the landscape was a small stream-formed pond they came upon. Leaning against a boulder at its bank, was another skeleton, this one still garbed in a tattered scarlet robe. The pups only stopped long enough to drink, and then bounded off again. Hyden didn’t stop. There was nothing there that he wanted to see.
In between the casual banter, and excited bursts of thought from the curious young wolves, Hyden pondered why the kingdom folk all called the lovely and polite Queen of Highwander, Willa the Witch Queen. She didn’t seem like a witch to him at all. The old crone who had told him and Gerard their fortunes: now that was witchy woman.
He didn’t want think about how much he missed Gerard, it would only serve to spoil the fantastic mood the wolf pups had put him in, but he couldn’t help it. Luckily, they came upon the mother wolf, and his sadness didn’t get a chance to take root.
She was lazing beside an ivory door that was set in a golden frame, and standing alone on a hilltop in the midst of the sea of rolling hills.
He spotted a trio of skulls half buried in the thick turf, and a strange, crystal staff lay close at hand. Walking around it, Hyden couldn’t help but notice that the door looked exactly the same from both sides, but he ignored the odd portal, and the temptation to grab up the staff, and just enjoyed the company of the wolves and his familiar.
The mother wolf commented about the scent of the Great Wolves that lingered on him, and he had to tell the pups the tale of Grrr, and how he had died to save King Mikahl from the Choska. Telling the story made him feel like Berda, and he sort of liked it. The story was sad, yet it made the pups proud of their kind. The mother wolf sensed the underlying urgency burning inside Hyden’s spirit, and carefully tempted the pups away, with the promise of a fresh meal. Hyden hugged them, and let them lick his face, and then watched with a conflicting well of emotion boiling inside him as they casually trotted away.
Talon was perched atop the golden doorframe, patiently preening his feathers. The door inside the frame was slightly yellowed with age. Carved upon its face, was a glade set in a forest of tall pine trees, with mountains beyond them, and a little stream running through the foreground. As he stood there observing it, the trees might have swayed a bit, and maybe the stream gurgled and trickled. He didn’t let the hypnotic scene distract him though. His full concentration was on the riddle that the Dying Tree had told him.
“A pyramid, a patterned knock, made up of only ten,
If you start from the bottom, I will let you in.”
He hoped he had it right. He said it as he remembered it in his head. About the fifteenth time he recited it, the answer came to him. It was so easy, that it was startling. So simple, and yet so easy to complicate, that it was no wonder that no one had ever returned from this place.
A pyramid of ten: one, two, three, four, it added up to ten. From the bottom up, it was truly a pyramid: four, three, two, and one.
With confidence, he rapped four times on the door. After a moment’s pause, he rapped three times, then two, and finally one. With the final knock, Talon fluttered from the doorframe to his shoulder.
The door creaked open on a room, formed of the same white marble as the palace of Xwarda. The circular tower chamber was dark, but the cracks in the ill fitting window shutters were letting in the wavering orange glow of some distant raging inferno.
Hyden knew he was in Pratchert’s Tower now, for on the floor, was a thick, lush rug, made from the skin of an arctic bear. It was the same arctic bear that Pratchert’s father had killed for his King a few hundred years ago.