A huge section of the city to the west and south was burning away. She stood there, feeling helpless, as portion after portion of the outer wall crumbled and was breached. The enemy was inside now. Her soldiers were trying desperately to get back to the secondary wall, but many of them couldn’t.
Large groups of her Blacksword army were trapped in the city, fighting for their lives. It was all she could do to keep from rushing out to them on some wild magical spell to join them in their fight. Already, she was using her witchy spells to throw great blooms of light into the sky, so that her people could see the airborne enemies, and have the chance to defend themselves from them.
Suddenly, from the ground directly below the tower, a bright light flared. She prayed to all the gods that Pael hadn’t blasted the castle proper already.
She climbed up into a crenel, leaned out, and looked down to see what it was, but couldn’t gain the vantage point she needed. From behind her, the guardsman who was posted at the roof landing of the stair house indicated that a message was being called up. She climbed down, and ran to the small hut that kept the weather out of the stairwell, and strained to listen. She couldn’t make out the words, but knew that they had something to do with whatever it was that had illuminated the front of the castle so brightly.
Impatiently, she hurried back over to the edge of the parapet. Whatever it was, it was shining so brightly now, that the forested park, and the fountain pond were almost fully illuminated and throwing long shadows out, and away from the castle. She saw groups of her reserve soldiers crouching from the radiance among the trees and pathways in the park. They were meant to be hidden, and now they squirmed to find the shadows the light cast through the trees.
Instinctively, like a protective mother, Willa scanned the sky, and was relieved to see that neither the Choska, nor the dragon was overhead at the moment to see them.
The guard at the top of the landing called out to the Queen, repeating the message he’d just gotten from the man posted below. His voice betrayed his hope and excitement.
“The young western King has ridden through half the castle on the back of a winged horse made of lightning and flames!”
She wouldn’t have believed it, had she not been looking down upon Mikahl and his impossible steed as the words were being spoken.
It wasn’t exactly as she had dreamed, but there he was, racing around Whitten Loch on one of the cobbled paths. Mikahl spurred the horse into a leap, shimmering wings of white-hot fire unfurled, and the flaming Pegasus took flight. Raised high in Mikahl’s right hand, was the radiant sapphire blade of Errion Spightre. She couldn’t help but feel the hope his presence brought with it. As if to give that hope substance, as if the whole world rode with the young King of the Realm, dawn broke behind her, lighting the tips of the world beyond the castle’s long shadows, in hues of coppery gold.
Mikahl cleared the innermost wall, and winged off to join the battle, then all of a sudden, all the hope that Queen Willa had just been feeling, was sucked from her chest, leaving behind an empty void of despair.
The dawn’s light had revealed something else in the sky that glittered. The massive red dragon, bearing a tiny, black haired feminine figure, came swooping down out of the sky towards Mikahl, like a striking snake. Its intention was so obvious, and its bearing so true, that Willa had to look away.
The young King seemed but a fly to a falcon, compared to the massive beast that was about to consume him with its fiery breath.
Vaegon whirled, using the grip Targon had on his shirt, to help keep him balanced. He had almost fallen into the gap left by the missing section of ramp. Once he was steady, the wizard released him, and began casting a spell.
Vaegon put himself between the handful of stinking attackers, and Targon’s prone stance and readied himself to protect them both, with his bare hands, if necessary. A flurry of friendly arrows came streaking up from below, but only served to slow the charge of the undead for a few heart beats.
Vaegon resolved himself to fight to the death – not an easy resolution to make for an elf. He went to punch the unprotected, half melted face of one of the things raring to swing a blade at him, but once again, Targon yanked him out of the way.
The undead soldiers had been struck still in their present postures, but their forward momentum was still carrying them ahead. Their bodies were as stiff as statues, and they couldn’t stop themselves. Two of them hit the ramp, and slid to a grinding halt. The others went tumbling over them, and fell into the dark, crowded area below.
“Push the others over the ledge, elf!” Targon yelled. “The spell will only hold them still a moment more.”
With that, he raced off towards the nearest scaling ladder, which was being topped by another wave of undead men.
The wizard had been correct. Even as Vaegon rolled the last stinking corpse over the edge of the ramp, it was starting to move again. Before the thing toppled over, Vaegon put his foot on the man’s blade. It was a long sword, like Ironspike, and looked to be well kept. As the man’s grip let loose and he fell away, Vaegon took up the blade, and charged over to help Targon. He got there too late though, or maybe not getting their quick enough saved him from meeting the same dismal fate as Targon did.
The Choska demon came swooping down out of nowhere at breakneck speed. Its clawed feet latched onto Targon and yanked him screaming up into the darkened sky.
As if it were connected to the Highwander wizard by some unseen magical rope, the siege ladder nearest him was yanked away from the wall. The sudden sideways movement toppled the undead climbers back into the darkness below, like droplets of water shaken from a wet tree. Only two of them had gotten to the top of the now island-like section of wall though. Vaegon readied himself to take them on, as dawn’s light reached up over the mountains behind the castle. He and the two decaying men were alone atop the isolated section of structure. All around them, some sixty feet below, raged a sea of bloody battle and searing flames.
Vaegon hacked, slashed, blocked, and parried with the sword. Moving from one edge of the crumbling plateau to the other, he fought furiously, but the undead neither tired, nor relaxed their blades. Nearly at the edge, the two living corpses split up, thus putting Vaegon in an extremely vulnerable position.
The first blow he took, caught him in the arm and split him from wrist to elbow. He dodged, and spun, slinging fat droplets of his elven blood. He even leapt like a tree cat, trying to get out from between them.
The second blow he took, caught him on the back of the leg, and made him crumple to a knee. He didn’t give up though. He blocked, and spun, grinding his kneecap into the rough, gritty surface of the plank, and somehow managed to take an undead fighter’s leg off at the calf. When he turned to find the other though, after finally narrowing it down to one against one, he saw the undead soldier’s sun-tipped blade coming down in a gleaming speeding arc. All he could do was dive forward, and he did. He heard the “whoosh” of the steel as it passed a hair’s breadth over his scalp, then heard another sound – a harsh thumping grunt.
He rolled to his back to see where the death blow was coming from, so that he might have a chance to avoid it, but what he saw was as baffling, as it was terrifying.
The back end, and streaming tail of a horse made of silvery white flames, shot out of his vision. Apparently, it had swept the undead swordsman from the wall. He started to get up, but the huge red dragon came swooping over him, in pursuit of the flaming steed. Its jet of scorching hot flames went right over Vaegon. It was so hot, that he felt his skin blister, and could smell his hair burning. He was lucky, he decided. The blast could have easily been a little lower, or he could have made it to his feet. If either had happened, he would have been left a smoldering husk.
He sat up, and tried to catch his breath. A few feet away, the one-legged corpse was still trying to come for him. It was pulling itself hand over hand towards him. It was close enough now to chop at Vaegon’s legs with its sword, but was intent on getting closer. Its eyes were dark, emotionless, and set in a decomposing face, that appeared to be smiling a smile of long, greenish-yellow teeth.
Vaegon gritted his own teeth together, and gained his feet. The pain of his wounds brought out a harrowing yell. Sensing the elf’s moment of weakness, the undead came scrabbling forward quickly, like some sort of grotesque three-limbed crab. Deftly, but painfully, Vaegon sidestepped, and dispatched the undead man, by shoving his blade tip down through its neck, and severing its spine.
He looked out to see what the flaming horse was all about, and barely had time to register that it was Mikahl who was sitting proudly on its back, before the Choska demon caught him full in the chest with both of its razor sharp claws. The last thing that Vaegon saw, before the world went spinning away in a crazy dizzying whirl, was Mikahl sending a wicked blast of magical blue lightning out of the end of Ironspike’s blade towards the dragon.
Pael moved through the city by gliding just above the cobbles as he went. The sudden presence of the sword, and the bastard Squire, had scared him, but not enough to deter him from his conquest.
No one dared approach him, though several arrows came at him true. Those were deflected, shattered, or blown off course, as if they were merely pieces of straw in the wind. He spied what he was looking for, and hurried his pace until the secondary wall stood before him. There was no gate along this section of wall, only a mercantile neighborhood in the inner city. It had wisely been abandoned in anticipation of his coming.
A large trading house had been built against the wall at the end of the block. Pael wanted to breach the wall here, so that the Highwander soldiers might pour out to aid their trapped comrades. His undead were concentrated on blocking and attacking the areas around the gates. He was doing this because of his wish to keep the battle away from the palace itself. The more soldiers that died out here, between the secondary wall and the outer crumble, the less resistance he would meet inside the castle’s inner wall. He didn’t want to have to tear the palace down to take it. He wanted its splendor for himself.
He stood carelessly in the street, and cast his spell. A static pulse of energy left his hands, growing in size and strength as it went. The building smashed flat back against the wall, and then the wall itself exploded in a thunderous shower of brick, glass, and wooden shards.
Satisfied that the breach was large enough, Pael glided away, debating whether not to kill Mikahl in the air, or force him to the ground first. With a long look at the morning sky, he decided on the latter. With a thought, he ordered the Choska to swoop in, and relieve the Squire King of his magical seat while Shaella and her pet dragon were still holding his full attention.
Hyden burst up onto the roof of the Royal Tower with a rushing bustle, and a few deep heaves of breath. Had Talon not just preceded him, the guardsmen might have blocked his way. Instead, they let the wild-eyed young man pass. Everyone had heard the rumors of where he had gone, and the sight of him, gave even the most hardened guard a little pause. Besides the fact that he had just returned from Dahg Mahn’s Tower, the look of intensity on his face warned that he couldn’t afford to be detained.
“Your Highness, milady, or whatever it is I’m supposed to call you. I need you!”
He took a breath, noticing the wide-eyed expression on Queen Willa’s face. He hoped he wasn’t scaring her. In his pack was the big, heavy Night Shard crystal. In his left hand, was the elven longbow Vaegon had gifted him, and a full quiver of arrows hung at his hip. He had no idea how long he had been inside the Tower, or how shocking it was to everyone that he had survived it.
“Targon said you could summon him with a spell. I… We need him.”
“You survived Pratchert’s Tower?” The Queen was awed.
“Aye,” he nodded.
His air was finally coming back to him, after the incredibly long dash up the four hundred circling steps of her tower. He couldn’t help but smile, and push out his chest a bit proudly. He had seen how many men had failed Dog Mahn’s trials before him.
“No one has ever returned from beyond that door. By right, the tower, and everything in it, is yours now.”
Hyden shrugged, and Talon gave an urgent squawk from somewhere nearby.
“Targon?”
She shook her head slightly at the impossibility of it all; bastard Kings with horses of fire, an unsophisticated young mountain man, who befriended elves and hawklings, and spoke with Great Wolves, winning his way into Pratchert’s Tower. The only thing that would be surprising now, was if the might of Doon, the dwarven aid promised eons ago, came bursting out of the earth, to answer the call of the horn she had recently blown. She had to chide herself, for thrilling like a maiden, over the wild hope that Hyden and Mikahl instilled in her. Now was not the time to wonder about how and why though. It was the time to do.
She cleared her head, and cast the spell that would summon her High Wizard, but there was no response. Thinking that she misspoke the words in her haste, she spoke them again, only this time in an urgent and commanding sort of way.
The wizard’s horribly twisted form flickered on the tiled deck at her feet once, twice, and then the third time it held there. Targon was covered in blood, and his head hung at an odd angle, the neck stretched, and canted unnaturally. He was ripped open from groin to chest, and part of the cavity where his innards should be, was empty. He looked dead, and was most undoubtedly beyond saving, but his eyes fluttered open when Queen Willa spoke his name.
She knelt by his side, wanting to cradle his head in her arms, but was afraid to cause him pain.
Hyden stood there, slack-jawed. What were they going to do now? Targon was supposed to provide the means of getting the Night Shard all the way to the Seal. The plan was doomed. The High Wizard couldn’t even speak, to relay his idea to Queen Willa, so that she might play his part. Hyden was overcome with a dreadful sense of defeat, but only until he heard the dragon’s powerful roar fill the morning sky.