Dark Magic (41 page)

Outnumbered a thousand to one, the monster set about its task with unconcerned relish. Axe blades rose and fell with a machine-like rhythm. The rushing horde of gnomes and kobolds sought to bowl it over, but its weight was such that they could barely rock it. Setting its broad feet flatly, the sole of each stone foot the size of a Kindred warrior, the golem swung its axes in wide, irresistible sweeps. Dozens died.

As the fighting went on, various relationships became self-evident. Blades, pikes, darts and the like were worse than useless against the golem, be they ensorcelled or not. Heavy stone clubs and fists could chip away pits into the monster, however, and with luck dislodge an armored plate. Usually, however, the attacker was cloven in twain for his troubles. Soon, corpses mounded around the golem. Commanders ordered their troops to disengage and the order was followed without argument. They circled the monster and considered bypassing it entirely, but the thing headed for the breach, clearly planning to stand there and slaughter new companies of troops as they attempted to enter the cavern.

It was Groth himself, along with the kobold chieftain who had but one bright red eye, who came up with the solution. They distracted the monster into a charge, then ordered their troops to bring up a great length of black iron chain. The kobolds had planned to use it to link the necks of a hundred Kindred captives, who they would take down into their tunnels as slaves and sources of amusement.

Taking up either end of the rattling chain, they ran with it and caught the golem’s legs. The monster teetered, then went down with a resounding crash. A choking cloud of ash plumed up and the rock shuddered at the impact. They wrapped up the thrashing feet in the chain. Two kobolds were slashed down by the axes the thing still held onto when they got too close. Taking up either end of the dangling black chain, a company of straining gnomes and kobolds dragged the thrashing golem to the nearest river of lava and cast it in.

As they watched, the thing still struggled in the orange magma, not yet finished, but unable to escape.

The army of the Everdark, led by Groth himself, turned then to advance upon the central citadel of the Kindred. Even the coldest heart among them was concerned, however, and none could help but wonder what other grim surprises the Kindred had in store for them this day.

They advanced slowly and cautiously over the ash heaps. Finding the bridges had all been withdrawn by the Kindred mechnicians, their advance was slowed to a crawl.

* * *

Brand’s army marched all day from dawn to dusk. Night had long since fallen when Brand’s tired militia came out of the trees to the edge of Gronig.

The town, once proud and industrious, lay in ruin. A dozen fires were lit, and twice as many more spots smoldered and trailed black smoke into the starry heavens. Brand heaved a breath, and ordered Corbin and his cavalry to follow him. He rode his roan onto the shepherd’s fields and trampled the furrows of the Kindred. Dead were everywhere. The stink of far worse things clung to the night breezes, telling in advance of the slaughter ahead.

Tomkin, unasked, accompanied Brand and Corbin and their thundering horsemen. The manling’s Blue Jewel lay openly on his chest now. He did not hide it, and clearly planned to use it at the first opportunity.

Eyes wide with fear and shock, the River Folk farm kids that rode behind him now doubted their wisdom in joining the militia, he felt sure. Here they were, outside the Haven for the first time in their short lives, only to find themselves in a field of slaughter with unknown deadly threats lurking somewhere ahead in the dark landscape.

The night was moonless, but the few fallen elves they passed over still glimmered with the faintest pale radiance. It was impossible not to look upon those beatific faces, both ancient and young, both dead and yet still full of ageless vigor, and not feel sadness in one’s heart.

It was when they reached the town proper that they ran into the first of the abominations Oberon had seen fit to leave behind to greet them. It came out of a stone-walled barn, the roof of which had been burned away. Inside it had feasted upon the carcasses of slaughtered livestock. Upon sensing the approach of fresh meat, it came out into the scorched yard. As it shambled toward them, a dozen Kindred heads lolled atop the monster, their mouths grunting with collective effort as an unknown number of lungs within the rotund body sucked in air.

The cavalry troops paused, uncertain what they faced. Their horses however, were much less hesitant. They backed and reared, eyes rolling in terror. They threatened to bolt while the riders fought the reins.

“Blood magic,” said Brand aloud. He had never seen Piskin produce anything like this, but he was sure he recognized this flavor of enchantment. Brand felt that his expertise would be needed. He approached the monster, trotting his roan closer. At the smell of blood and rotting meat, however, even his veteran horse began to sidestep and grew skittish. Brand had Ambros in his hand now, and hardly cared about his mount. If the roan was too frightened to face this fiend, he would have to do it on foot. He launched himself from his saddle, unslung his shield and marched forward. In his hand, he held Ambros upraised. The Amber Jewel pulsed like an eye, filling the yard with throbbing light.

Brand’s men dismounted and followed him, despite their every instinct to flee this nightmare that lurched toward them. Worse than a dead thing filled with unnatural vigor, this monster was built of living flesh that had once died. It was the
reanimated
and reconstituted mass of living tissue. Lungs flapped with a horrible, audible gasping. Knees creaked with the impossible weight of it. Each hand carried some form of weapon. Swords, elven lances with shimmering tips, Kindred battleaxes and even farm implements such as iron hooks or dangling lengths of chain. More than a dozen rolling eyes sought victims to target. What central brain ran the mass of it? Was there a single mind, or a communion of many? One could only conjecture.

Brand engaged the monster warily. It was not fast on its many feet, but was essentially unstoppable. He dared not allow it to corner him, he must be able to retreat. He traded blows with the nearest weapon-bearing arms, but soon found that to be dangerous indeed. The arms up high on the mass of it carried implements of longer reach. He danced in close, slashing away an arm, only to find his shield grasped by a fist and a chain wrapped around his midsection. Only a frenzy of inhuman strength, donated by the axe, saved him and allowed him to withdraw.

He tried burning the creature next. Ambros winked with golden light. Mouths hissed and stinking flesh bubbled. Blackened blisters arose everywhere he had burnt it, but he had in no sense slowed it. Backing away, he found his men were poking lances at the far side, but it had fixated upon him. Many men stood back and peppered the monster with arrows and bolts, but with little obvious effect.

He backed into a stone wall then, and it almost had him. Only by rushing in low and slashing at the pumping jumble of legs did he escape. If it had simply sunk down and sat on him, he might have been crushed, but fortunately, it did not. Perhaps, he thought, it could not have arisen again if it lowered itself, so it did not dare to do so.

Free of the grasping hands, panting and bleeding, he ran to his line of lancers, who watched the thing shamble forward. They were at a loss.

“Let’s douse it with lantern oil and set it alight,” said Jak grimly.

Brand nodded to his brother, who he only then noted had joined the fight. He had to contain the fury of the axe, which still wanted to slash every limb from it, and after a brief struggle he managed it. He gave the order.

Even after they had emptied a dozen bladders of oil upon it and lit it, the thing shambled about, smelling of burning meat. Blinded and fully mad now, it tore up the barn from whence it had come, limbs churning with frantic strength. Kindred fingers worked alongside
Merling flippers to clutch and rip at bare stone, even as the flames had their way with the massive blob of flesh. When it toppled over and thrashed upon the ground, they left it to die eventually.

The rest of their visit to Gronig was equally unpleasant. They slew several more horrors, losing a screaming trooper now and then. They found groups of huddling Kindred here and there, and urged them back toward the edge of the Deepwood where they set up camps for refugees and the wounded. Food, water and medicine were distributed, and Brand thanked the River that they had had the foresight to bring plenty of each.

Up upon the ridgeway that led to the Great Gates of Snowdon, a series of flashes lit up the clouds. Brand, and a thousand others, gazed that way. Booms followed the flashing, and he had to wonder what transpired up there, upon that lonely strip of cobbled stone.

He felt sure that it was nothing pleasant.

Chapter Twenty

The Great Gates

Deep in the darkest hours of night, a pitched battle raged on the shoulders of Snowdon. Oberon had managed to catch up to the bombards before they could reach safety, and Gudrin had not sent out a task force to rescue them.

Oberon smiled, knowing what had distracted her. The gnomes and the kobolds must be within their cavern now, causing great destruction, and more importantly,
distraction
. Gudrin was weak in few ways, but he felt sure she would not allow wild looting, slaughter and rapine inside her own mountain kingdom. She may throw an outlying town to the wolves, but not her own stronghold, not the majority of her citizens. She must have turned her forces inward and left Thorkil’s troublesome little army to fend for itself on the ridges and fells.

Still brimming with these happy thoughts, he followed his latest abomination as it teetered over a rise and lurched down into a sunken part of the cobbled roadway. It was there that the first bombard spoke.

They had caught up with them, and their evilly effective commander had ordered the bombards turned when they were low, and the elves must come over a rise to see them. As soon as the shambling mass of flesh Oberon had crafted came tottering over the rise, a single shot boomed with a deafening noise and a terrific flash. The shot struck high, but fully half the horror’s mass was blasted away. A gout of gore splashed a hundred paces behind it, showering troops and Oberon himself with dripping bits of flesh. The legs buckled and the thing sagged down on the left side, while the right side struggled to straighten a collection of bent knees. Hands from a knot of arms reached out, dropping weapons, grasping boulders for support. Leg bones could be heard snapping as the monster struggled to rise, despite what had to be a mortal wound.

Oberon’s troops rushed past the monster and down the far side, but something gave him pause. The elf lord himself retreated one step, then three.

A second tremendous boom and flash shocked them all. The abomination disintegrated, struck squarely for a second time.

“Archers,” screamed Oberon, though his own voice seemed muffled as his ears still rang with the aftereffects of the bombard fired at such close range. “Kill the crews! Silence those bombards!”

The volleys were ragged, but effective. Oberon gathered what infantry he could and threw them into the charge. Slipping over the bloody pile of flesh that was his destroyed abomination, Merlings croaked hopelessly as they scrambled to obey the terrifying elf sorcerer.

The rest of the bombards cracked and flashed, firing gravel into the charging infantry, but once the elf arrows sizzled into their flesh and the infantry were among them, the weaponeers were quickly slain. The last to stand was the wild-haired commander known as Thorkil, a Kindred with orange hairs sprouting in every direction and eyes that were even more mad than usual. He simply would not die, and took a dozen wriggling lance points and black-tipped arrows to the guts before he cursed them all and sagged down, wheezing.

Oberon stood upon the blood-slick cobbles and thought that perhaps his curse had already done its dark work. They had lost too many.

Then he ordered his exhausted troops to take up the yokes of the great bombards and serve as beasts of burden. To aid them, he built smaller horrors with no more than a dozen limbs each. These applied their unfeeling strength to move the fantastically heavy bell-shaped metal bombards. They would drag the weapons to the nearest rise, and they would turn them on the gates of Snowdon itself.

They would pound the Great Gates to rubble and then Snowdon itself would fall.

* * *

Brand held a second council with his commanders. This time they had no tent, no roof, and it had begun to rain in cool, whispering sheets. Their heads dribbled water, and their hair hung in limp curls that clung to serious faces.

“Milord, the men are nearing exhaustion,” said a captain.

Brand whirled upon him. He was one that had, back in the Deepwood, urged them forward with great zeal. Brand leveled a finger in his direction. The axe shifted upon his back restlessly.

“You quail now? In the very face of the enemy? These men know nothing of exhaustion. Not yet. They have not even lifted their swords against a charging line of foemen.”

“But, milord,” said the captain, his eyes hollow. Brand eyed him. He was a few years older than Brand, perhaps thirty. But he had not seen the things Brand had seen. Not a tenth of them. Not a twentieth. By that measure, he was a stripling.

Brand lifted his arm upward, to where the bombards flashed and boomed every half hour or so. They fired at something, but none who stood at the foot of these mountains knew what.

“A great battle is being waged up there. At the very entrance to Snowdon itself. For all we know, the Kindred are falling as we speak. We’ve had no word. Gronig has been erased, its people slaughtered and turned inside-out into hideous monsters.”

Brand began striding among them now, his hands balled into fists. The axe was safely away, but it still had a grip upon his mind. As well, he truly felt for the Kindred.

“Always, we have called upon the Kindred for aid. They helped us when the Fae hunted us for skins in the forests. They helped us in the swamps of the Dead Kingdoms. Today, if we had called them to Riverton to aid us, they would have come without hesitation. So why do we hesitate?”

He glared at each of them in turn. Only Corbin and Jak, who still wanted to rush up that black stony path to an unknown ridge and an unknown battle, dared return his gaze.

Brand nodded. “Gather every man you can. Arm any Kindred survivor who might march with us. We will leave in one hour. I will personally decapitate any man who cowers and shames the Haven.”

Tomkin whistled long and low as he walked away from them. He hopped close and winked at Brand.

“What do you want?” demanded Brand.

The manling grinned and pointed up at the night-shrouded ridge. Rain lashed the peaks and cobbled roadway alike. “I want to march my Rainbow along that lovely pathway. Can you imagine the destruction?”

Brand paused and blinked rainwater from his eyes, staring at Tomkin. He slowly smiled. “That would be a lovely start to the day for the elves. You need a bit of sunlight and rain to form up a good Rainbow, don’t you?”

“Indeed,” said Tomkin, grinning as widely as only one of the Wee Folk could.

“Would dawn do the trick?”

“Aye, that would serve very well,” chuckled Tomkin.

Brand, feeling heartened, rushed to find his roan and to gather his forces for the ascent.

* * *

As dawn tinged the skies pink over the Black Mountains, Snowdon shook with the impacts of multiple strikes against the Great Gates. They held yet, but for how long?

Dust sifted down from overhead. There was dust everywhere, and Gudrin could taste it in the air. Heavy thuds came up through the stone tiles right into her boots. She could feel every strike with her toes.

The bombards spoke again. Gudrin walked unsteadily to the viewing mechanisms. Built with ancient wisdom, tubes ran from the battlements over the Great Gates to spy on the external world. Using mirrors, prisms and carefully polished lenses, the viewing mechanisms allowed her to survey the outside world. Drilled holes, carefully hidden here and there amongst the cliffs and scrub growths of Snowdon’s face gave her many secret sights. Possessing the many glittering eyes of a spider, Snowdon could not easily be blinded. As Gudrin worked a series of wheels and gears, she reflected once again that in the end, the stoic mechnicians were perhaps the greatest heroes among the Kindred. Few songs were sung of them, not even among her own folk. But their fantastic works had, in many cases, been the cause of Kindred triumphs.

She watched Oberon and his unholy throng of allies. She had ordered her own troops to retreat behind the safety of the Great Gates, and closed the mountain behind them. No army since the stronghold’s construction had ever managed to breach the gates. She hoped that they would stop Oberon.

Inwardly, she chided herself. The bombards might break through the gates, and her own orders had given those weapons to her enemies. There would have been no chance of the gates falling if the enemy not taken the bombards. She did not blame Captain Thorkil, however. She had sent him out to fire upon the elves and distract them from their grim work in Gronig. He had fought well, and retreated exactly as she had ordered. But the elves and their new monsters, work clearly of the Red Jewel, had been a nasty surprise. They had caught Thorkil, when he should have been able to escape.

It had been a grave miscalculation, and it was entirely her fault. She had not known Oberon wielded the Red. In retrospect, she realized now she should have let them utterly destroy Gronig. That would have been the safe move, but she had not in her heart been able to abandon so many of her people to slaughter. She had none to blame but herself for the capture of the bombards. Hopefully, that mistake had not cost her people their existence. Without them, even the abominations had not the strength to hammer their way through the Great Gates.

“My queen,” said the chamberlain behind her. There was open worry in his voice, as she had scorched him earlier upon learning the bombards had been captured.

“What is it?”

“I would suggest you gaze upon Gronig.”

She blinked and glanced at him. “What new hellish news do you bring me?”

He smiled hopefully. His fingers waggled in the air. He was a diffident member of the Talespinners, one that she had never liked much. “If you would but look,” he said. “I think you will find the news pleasing.”

She sighed and stumped over to the viewing apparatus that gazed eastward. There she worked the wheels until a vision of the smoking ruin that was once the thriving town of Gronig came into view.

“I fail to see what—” she began, then she broke off. “Are those horsemen? They mount the ridge. The River Folk! Brand has come at last.”

“Yes, milady, that was our conclusion,” said the Chamberlain, effusing at having pleased her. “Now that the sun is rising, you can see clearly that the River Folk have a serious force and are marching up to trap the elves on the ridge.”

Gudrin hooted and laughed. It was a sound she’d not made in a weeks. “If we can hold here, we have them.”

She hammered her fists upon walls around the viewing apparatus and stared into the mechanisms. Her fists ran with flame and blackened her already crispy leather coat, but she took no notice.

She turned away then, calling for her captains and for messengers. They would relay her orders throughout the caverns, transmitted to her troops via flashes of light generated by lantern-like devices built with mirrors, lenses and flame. Using these communication systems, they were able to send coded orders over great distances to troops in the field, so long as there was nothing blocking the beams.

She had distributed her troops as best she could, given the circumstances. The kobold raiders ran about burning lichen farms, breweries and mining operations. She had companies of scouts armed with crossbows hunting them, but they were not her primary concern. They were an irritant and a distraction, this she knew. The real threat came from the concentration of gnomes and kobolds that had boiled out in the dusty wastes near the vents of the Earthlight itself. They could not be allowed to destroy the works there, nor could they be allowed to take the citadel. So far, they had not made their move. They had spent the hours since breaking through the plug gathering their numbers and organizing. Soon, however, she knew they would move. She suspected they waited until the gates were breached. Then, they planned to strike her army from both sides at once.

She and her Kindred regiments had not been idle, however. Between the gnome army and her own city, at the center of which stood the broken citadel, she had gathered the majority of her forces. Fully five regiments, each led by a squadron of three crawlers, stood at the ready. In reserve, she had the golems, called back from guarding the plugs. They had proven to be the most difficult for the enemy to defeat.

Now, however, with Oberon at her gates, she wished she had a greater force up here. If those five regiments or the golems were available, she could sally when Brand arrived and crush the elves between two armies with no retreat.

Chewing on her hand, she felt flames tickle her nostrils. The bright orange light of them, dancing up from her hands, did not burn, but made her squint. It was odd, she thought briefly, how accustomed she’d become to the gentle licking of flame. As the master of the Orange, flame did not burn her, but it did feel as if the finest gauze was being fluttered over her skin by a mischievous child.

She nodded to herself, coming to a conclusion. She would order her remaining five golems to march up the long walk to the gates. The good thing was that when they arrived, they would devastate the elves. But she had to hope that five regiments of heavy troops with crawlers leading them were enough to stop the gnomes and the kobolds.

The mountain shook with another impact, as the bombards snapped and hurled another volley. There was no time for further dithering. Still chewing upon her flaming fingers, she shouted out her orders.