Return of the Damned

17

A lull in the fighting brought an eerie quiet over the center of the battlefield. Lindroos pulled her forces back to regroup. The elite guardsmen hadn't given chase, instead holding their line to protect the duke. At the edges of the open field outside of New Koratia, the battle raged on.

Regdar looked across the field at the blackguard and her slowly forming unit of soldiers and jann. He turned to Alhandra.

"What do you think she's up to?"

The paladin shrugged. "Evil. What else?"

"I mean, besides the obvious."

"Well," replied Alhandra, "my guess is that with the backing of the jann, she didn't expect to encounter this much trouble with the army of New Koratia." The paladin turned and looked Regdar in the eye. "She's probably all out of plans, and now she's improvising." She put her free hand on his shoulder. "Which makes her very unpredictable and even more dangerous."

Regdar nodded. "You know her better than any of us," he said. "What should we do?"

Alhandra looked over the battlefield. "We wait for her to make the next move. If she's making this up as she goes along, that means she's out of surprises."

As if Lindroos had heard their conversation, she and her newly reformed unit charged. Regdar could hear their booted feet pounding the hard ground as they advanced, and he could feel the soldiers around him tensing up.

Tasca fired two arrows, then his string went silent. He dropped his bow and empty quiver on the ground and unsheathed his rapier. Whitman stood beside him, a grim smile on his face. The head of his hammer rested casually on the ground with both his hands wrapped around the hilt.

"You know, Whitman," said Regdar, studying the smirk on the dwarf's face, "someone who didn't know you might think you were enjoying yourself."

The dwarf shifted his glance to look at the human out of the corners of his eyes. "Someone who did know me would know that I am."

The first four jann leading the charge impacted the front of the duke's line, and the sounds of battle filled Regdar's ears. Metal screeched as it bent and was ripped open. Men screamed as their guts were torn from their bodies. Grunts of exertion and the clang of weapons colliding mingled into a new sound, startling in its familiarity and unnerving in its foreignness.

Then the sky began to darken. At first Regdar thought it was rain clouds or the beginning of some magical effect. Looking up, he saw a dozen jann flying high into the sky, each of them holding one of the duke's elite guardsmen in his grasp. A chill ran down Regdar's spine as he realized what was happening. In the next heartbeat, the jann dropped their captives, hurling them like stones from the height of a castle wall.

Bodies rained down on Regdar and his men. Several New Koratian soldiers were hit by the grisly bombs, smashed into piles of goo by their falling comrades. The sounds turned Regdar's stomach. He was almost grateful for the screams of horror that nearly drowned out the sounds of impact.

Another host of jann lifted off into the sky. This time the soldiers fought back.

"You're coming down with me, bottle boy," shouted an elite guardsman as he soared into the air.

The man jammed his dagger deep into the janni's stomach when they were no more than ten feet in the air. The outsider growled and let the man fall back to the ground unhurt.

Others weren't so lucky. As more bodies plunged earthward, the elite guardsmen broke their ranks to get away from the danger zone, and enemy soldiers flooded through the gap. What once had been an orderly, organized resistance turned into a frenzy of individual fights. Pockets of guardsmen fought against cultists and their jann counterparts. As men scattered everywhere, Lindroos marched forward through the chaos.

Regdar grabbed Whitman and Tasca. "Protect the duke," he shouted, and the three warriors turned around.

As they closed in on the duke, another body fell to the ground before them. The heavily armored soldier crashed into the only organized unit in the area-the duke and his personal bodyguards. A number of guardsmen were struck down, and those who remained were watching the sky as much as the ground.

A handful of black-clad soldiers closed in to attack. The guardsmen were outnumbered and shaken, their ranks diminished and demoralized by horror. Regdar watched the duke draw his own weapon and wade into the fight.

Three of Lindroos's men crowded the duke. The old warrior narrowed his eyes and whipped his keenly honed, magical battleaxe around in three quick, perfect strikes. Three cultists dropped to the ground, each in his turn-one with a head wound, another with a freshly opened belly, and the third missing his privates. The sight of the old man laying waste to a pack of evil soldiers brought a smile to Regdar's face.

"That's why he's the duke," said Regdar as they closed in.

"No," said Whitman, lifting his hammer, "he was born to the title."

Tasca shook his head, looking at Regdar. "It's a dwarf thing."

The three fighters fought through the crowd of enemy warriors. They covered ground quickly. The duke mowed down enemies on all sides. Regdar, Whitman, and Tasca cut up anyone wearing black who stood in their path. In less than a minute they fought through the last line of evil soldiers separating them from the duke.

Several paces away, Captain Masters was joined by Jozan, Alhandra, and one of the holy avengers-Regdar didn't see the other one anywhere.

"Seems you have things under control, my lord," Regdar said, admiring the duke's bloody axe.

The duke smiled. "Did you think I carried this beautiful axe just for show?"

Over the duke's shoulder, the air shifted and wavered, rippling like the surface of a pool disturbed by a tossed stone. A form took shape rapidly out of the shimmering air and wrapped its arms around the duke.

"Janni," shouted Regdar. He grabbed one of the outsider's arms and tried to pry it off the duke.

The genie jerked away, pulling itself and the duke out of Regdar's reach, then it launched into the air, taking the duke along.

Tasca bent his legs and leaped, dropping his rapier in the process. The elf soared high over the other guardsmen's heads and grabbed hold of the janni's foot. The monster's ascent slowed from the added burden. The bare-chested outsider glared down at the elf dangling from its ankle. It shook the leg, trying to kick off the unwanted passenger.

Meanwhile the duke struggled against the janni's grip. Shifting his weight from side to side, the old fighter slowly slipped down through the outsider's arms. Between Tasca hanging from its foot and the duke's flailing, the janni had a hard time keeping its balance in flight. The trio twisted sideways in the air. Duke Ramas slipped free of the janni's arms, and Regdar bolted forward.

Regdar hoped only to break the duke's fall somehow, but before the man struck the ground, another janni swooped in and grabbed him from the air, then surged back up toward the clouds.

Regdar stopped only a step from where the duke would have landed. He watched in growing anger as the janni flew with the duke toward the eastern wall of New Koratia. In the distance, Regdar could make out another janni hovering above the city, a figure in its grasp as well. He squinted.

"Is that-?"

"Lindroos," said Alhandra. She stepped up beside him and was looking at the same janni. "Yes, it is she."

"Then she has the duke." Regdar looked around, taking stock of the situation. The fighting had slowed. The final surge made by the invaders was no more than a last ditch effort to grab the duke. When Lindroos left the field, the jann also departed. Deprived of their leader and their strongest shock troops, the cultists were no match for the rallying New Korations. Most were already dead, in custody, or fleeing for their lives.

Naull ran up, pointing at the duke and Lindroos, both being flown over the wall of the city by jann. "We can't let her get that bottle."

Regdar nodded. "When I retrieved it, the duke seemed quite relieved to have it in his possession. I'm sure it's well hidden."

"Still," said Alhandra, "Lindroos can be quite persuasive. We need to get to her before she gets to him, or retrieve the bottle ourselves."

Regdar agreed. "But who knows where he's hidden the bottle? The keep is a labyrinth. Something as small as a bottle could be anywhere. Just finding the duke and Lindroos could take us days."

"The bottle is in a warded vault," said a voice.

Regdar turned to see Captain Masters nursing a wounded leg as he limped toward him. "It's in his bedroom, behind the picture of King Ramas."