Authors: Richard Baker
at random.
“It’s a clear night,” Methrammar remarked. “That favors us greatly. As long as there’s any light at all, we’ll see as well as the orcs, and the moon shadows will help to hide us from unfriendly eyes.”
The commander of Silverymoon’s legion stood dressed in his great crimson cloak, his mithral mail gleaming like starshine beneath his mantle. All around him, hundreds of Silverymoon’s Knights in Silver and their dwarf comrades from Citadel Adbar’s Iron Guard filled the Dagger’s mouth, standing in easy ranks to guard the narrow trail winding along the swift white stream.
Faint lanterns had been positioned high up on the rocky walls of the trail and the lower vale, throwing soft verdant light over the way the enemy must come if he came on foot. But Gaerradh thought that the dense ranks of waiting soldiers would make an excellent target from the air.
“The orcs do not concern me,” Gaerradh murmured. “It’s the daemonfey I fear. If they do not enter the vale …”
“If they do not enter the vale, they’ll never get us out of here,” Methrammar finished for her. “We can stand a siege of a month or more if we have to, and the mages of Evermeet tell us their army is marching here next. No, the daemonfey want to take the Dagger by assault. They don’t have the time to starve us out.”
“Your soldiers are too exposed. I don’t like this.”
“They’re where they need to be.” The half-elf turned to look Gaerradh in her eyes and said, “Our warriors are best suited for this task, Gaerradh. We’ve got heavier armor than your wood elves, and we’re trained to fight in ranks. Holding this trail is our kind of fight. The rest of it is up to you.”
“I know,” she said.
She studied Methrammar’s clean visage and fine features, finding no trace of fear in his eyes, only a shadow of anticipationnot that she should have expected less from a son of Alustriel. Still, the Argent Legion bore the greatest hazard, and that meant Methrammar did as well, since the high marshal was not in the habit of leading
from the rear. He would be in the forefront of the fighting, his banner flying behind him, and Gaerradh knew what a prize he would be for the daemonfey and their allies. She did not want to see him wounded, or worse.
“Be careful,” she managed.
Methrammar rolled his eyes and started to answer, but then a harsh, brazen horn blast sounded in the darkness beyond the vale. Red torchlight bobbed up and down in the darkness beneath the trees, and the rumble and clatter of iron-shod feet filled the echoing gorge.
“I told you they wouldn’t wait,” Methrammar said. He stepped out and called to his soldiers, “Get ready, lads. We’ll hold them here until the mountain itself cries for mercy. Iron Guards, take your position!”
The dwarves of Citadel Adbar raised a hoarse cheer and jogged forward, forming a wall of dwarven steel across the trail, with their right flank bending back along the streambed in case any foes came at them by climbing up the cold, rushing stream. Fitted head to toe in heavy dwarven plate, with big steel shields and deadly war axes, they were an unshakable obstacle in such a small space. The humans and half-elves of Silverymoon’s Knights in Silver stood back a short distance, fighting afoot since there was no room for mounted troops. Dozens of seasoned Spellguards stood within their ranks, alongside a handful of the crusade mages sent to aid the beleaguered wood elves. It was their job to protect the dwarves under the brunt of the first assault.
The orc horns sounded again, along with a rising chorus of war cries and screams, and the ground shook with the thunder of the orc approach. The savage warriors appeared at the far bend of the Dagger’s trail, rushing up the old road in a reckless, screaming mass. Gaerradh recoiled a step despite herself, and started searching for targets worthy of arrows.
An instant before the orc berserkers crashed into the dwarven line, the air itself seemed to lurch and thunder as dozens of demons teleported to the mouth of the Dagger, behind the Iron Guard dwarves.
The sheer violence of the collision staggered Gaerradh. The dwarves had expected demons to show up behind them, and with uncanny swiftness the powerful company turned turtle, sealing the road like a cork in a bottle. Demons shrieked and clawed, trying to tear into the dwarven ranks from behind or scour the sturdy fighters with their terrible spells of hellfire and destruction. But Silverymoon’s Spellguards countered many of the spells or threw hasty defensive wards over the Iron Guards, while the rest of the knights-led by Methrammar, who brandished his sword and bellowed commands-charged against the vrocks, hezrous, and babaus who sought to surround and overwhelm the dwarves. The whole time, the orcs roared and hacked at the front line of the dwarf fighters, while the dwarves roared their own challenges back and hewed down orc berserkers like farmers threshing grain.
Gaerradh calmly nocked an arrow with a point of blessed cold iron, a weapon no demon could shrug off, and sighted carefully to make sure that she would not strike an ally. She spotted a hulking hezrou laying about itself with its long, powerful claws, froglike mouth gaping with needle-sharp teeth. She buried two arrows in its thick neck, her hands blurring with the speed of her shot. The creature coughed black blood and disappeared at once, teleporting away from the battlewounded or dying, Gaerradh did not care. She sighted another demon and fired again, slipping her arrows through lightning-quick openings and shifting, battling figures as a master duelist might wield a rapier.
Silverymoon’s knights counterattacked the demons who’d thought to surround the dwarven company with such ferocity that the foul creatures were forced to turn away from the Iron Guards. In turn, the demons hurled themselves against Methrammar’s soldiers with blind fury, claws rending and jaws tearing, all the while blasting and scouring any warrior who stood against them with sickening blasts of evil power, great gouts of clinging hellfire, and billowing yellow clouds of poison vapor.
Human soldiers died screaming under the claws and fangs of the hellspawned monsters or staggered down into death, bodies charred, poisoned, or ruptured by demonic spells. Methrammar stood in the center like a shining silver tower, cutting down any fiendish creature who came against him and hurling blasts of his own magic at demons who avoided him. Around their high marshal the knights of Silverymoon rallied, and held.
Gaerradh shot and shot until her quiver was empty, then she slung her bow across her shoulder and drew out her paired fighting axes, looking for a way to help. The furious melee around the Iron Guard dwarves and the demon-battle among the Knights in Silver were fights she wanted no part of. She was at her best with her bow, and did not wear anywhere near enough steel for that sort of brawling. She held back and waited, axes in hand. Sheeril growled anxiously at her side.
“Patience, girl,” Gaerradh told her.
A streaking ball of fire arced down from overhead to detonate amid the Iron Guard dwarves and their orc adversaries. The vale thundered with the sound of the blast, and dwarves and orcs flew through the air like ninepins. The dwarves in their heavy armor and defensive enchantments fared better than their adversaries. More fireballs streaked down into the battle, filling the mouth of the valley with orange and red blasts of flame that charred the very rocks black. Gaerradh threw herself behind a big boulder and ducked under her cloak, trying to stay out of the worst of the flames.
“Methrammar’” she cried. “The fey’ri are in the valley!” “Up and at them, lads!” called Silverymoon’s champion.
Shielded by his defensive magic, the fey’ri spells washed over Methrammar with no more effect than a gentle shower. Other Knights in Silver stood by as well, likewise protected by their spells and enchantments. Some of their comrades did not rise, but more stood than fell. Gaerradh quickly looked over to the open trail where the Iron Guards had been fighting. The dwarves lay in a great crumpled mound, scorched and still. She stood on the edge of black, dizzying despair, but then she saw the tangled mass of dwarves shift and move. Awkwardly, the heavily armored warriors of the Iron Guard contingent picked themselves up, disentangling themselves from their comrades, and set their shields and weapons right, reforming their turtle-like formation.
“Is that your best?” cried one dwarf sergeant, shaking his axe at the sky. “Is that all you can do?”
Gaerradh looked up, waiting for the fey’ri reply. A great company of the bat-winged demonspawn descended into the gorge, hurling spells and iron javelins at the Argent Legion troops below. There were hundreds of them, and the air between the walls of Daelyth’s Dagger seemed to broil with magical energy and supernatural power. Dressed in armor of scarlet and gold, the daemonfey wheeled overhead like sinister angels.
Exactly where they were supposed to be.
“Let’s see how you like the marksmanship of the wood elves,” Gaerradh murmured.
A clear horn call echoed high up in the rocky walls of the vale, and the air between the gorge’s sides was filled with a black storm of arrows. From a hundred perches high up on the cliffs overlooking the narrow valley, wood elf archersincluding a score of Evermeet’s best spellarchers, brought to the Lost Peaks only hours before-threw aside their concealment and loosed a terrible fusillade of arrows against the flying fey’ri warriors. Many of the archers were actually shooting down on the airborne fey’ri, as the daemonfey company had descended past the uppermost shelves of hidden archers in their rush to eradicate the dwarves and humans who held the valley mouth.
Fey’ri wheeled and fluttered in desperation, pierced again and again by the merciless onslaught. More than a few arrows blazed with holy spells or crackled with whispered enchantments as they sped on their way, finding fey’ri chests and throats. In a single deadly volley scores of the fey’ri died in midair, wings folding as they
plummeted to the boulder-strewn floor of the valley.
Those who survived the first volley searched wildly for escape from the killing zone, but even fey’ri flying over the center of the valley were not more than one hundred yards from one wall or the other, and that was well within the wood elves’ range. To descend was to brave even more arrows, to climb would be murderously slow, and to seek cover on either wall was to simply come closer to one nest of archers or another. So the fey’ri struggled and flew east along the vale, fleeing for the mouth of Daelyth’s Dagger as they ran the terrible gauntlet. A few quickly worked spells to turn themselves invisible, or cover themselves in obscuring darkness, or simply teleport to safety. But with every beat of their wings, more daemonfey warriors crumpled and fell to the hard boulders below.
“It worked!” Gaerradh cried, elated.
She had thought Methrammar was insane to offer his soldiers as bait to draw the fey’ri spellcasters, but the high marshal’s plan was proving to be nothing less than pure genius. Broken and pierced, the demonspawned warriors littered the valley floor.
Avoiding the arrows and debris clattering down from the ambush overhead, Gaerradh sprinted over to where Methrammar stood. Sheeril flashed at her heels, growling. The Knights in Silver had beaten off the worst of the demon assault, though a few savage skirmishes still continued around the edges of the company. Methrammar watched the fighting in the air, blood streaming from a nasty bite on his left arm and a sword-slash on his thigh.
“Great work, friends!” he cried. “That will teach them some wisdom!” He looked down as Gaerradh reached his side, and he offered her a fierce grin. “I knew that all we had to do was to get the fey’ri in front of wood elf bows!”
“What now?” Gaerradh called.
“We finish this,” Methrammar said. “We can drive these orc marauders all the way to Hellgate Keep if we strike now.” The son of Alustriel laughed with delight, and whirled away to dash up the road, brandishing his blade. “To me! To me!” he cried. “We’re taking this fight out of the valley and into their teeth, lads!”
The Knights in Silver rallied to Methrammar’s cry, and the dwarves of the Iron Guard as well. With a deafening clamor of battle cries and roars of challenge, the warriors of Silverymoon and Adbar clattered forward, battering their way back down the Dagger’s trail to meet the oncoming orcs head-on. Gaerradh shouted in martial fury and followed, axes in hand, Sheeril snapping and slashing to guard her back.
At dawn the orcs broke and fled.
*****
Araevin plumbed the lambent depths of the Nightstar for what seemed like hours, examining the spells Saelethil had stored within, cataloging the deep reaches of hidden lore for later study, confronting the fiery secrets of high magic and mythalcraft preserved by the Dlardrageth high mage. He could sense Saelethil’s cruel persona graven in the very substance of the high loregem, observing his fumbling explorations with a sneer of disdain, though he decided he did not care what the sinister apparition happened to think of his efforts. It would take some study yet before he could master many of the secrets waiting within the selukiira, but he knew enough to comprehend mythals and other such wards of high magic in a way he had never dreamed possible. Araevin suspected that some at least of the things Saelethil taught him had been forgotten-or shunnedby other high mages for many centuries.
More importantly, the Nightstar offered him the chance to turn the tables on his captors. Nurthel had likely thought that he posed no threat so long as his spellbooks remained out of his hands, but like the telkiira, the Nightstar itself also served as a spellbook. The three telkiira stored twenty spells between them, and the Nightstar by itself recorded more than seventy. Of course, many of the spells were difficult or impossible for him to cast until he acquired the correct materialspinches of
reagents, herbs, tiny charms carefully readied under the right conditionsbut Araevin had found a number that he could manage. An hour’s study sufficed to fill his mind with spells, ranging from insignificant cantrips to mighty dweomers he never could have managed before Saelethil’s lore had burned itself into his brain. He was as well-armed as he could possibly hope, and then some.