Swordmage

NINE

19 Ches, the Year of the Ageless One

Orange pillars of smoke filled the night sky above the mining town of Glister. It was not much of a town by human standards, of course, little more than a permanent camp and trademeet in the foothills bordering Thar. Few women or children lived there; it was a place where hard and desperate men came to work and wring gold from the ground, gold that they could then carry back to the so-called civilized lands and use to buy better lives. That did not diminish Warchief Mhurren’s pleasure at Glister’s pillage. His nostrils flared wide as he tasted the hot reek-wood, grain, straw, and wool burning in the ruin of the town, and the sweet smell of burning flesh too. That was livestock, of course; the townsfolk had abandoned the town to the Bloody Skulls and their allies. A few screams echoing through the muddy, smoke-filled streets suggested that not all of the town’s inhabitants had fled in time, but that sport wouldn’t keep Mhurren’s warriors entertained for long.

“A good beginning,” Sutha said to him. She stood behind him, dressed in chain mail with the symbol of Luthic, the Cave Mother, hanging on a chain around her neck. The Skull Guards surrounded them both, watching for any danger. Mhurren had reluctantly left Yevelda at Bloodskull Keep. He couldn’t have left the two of them alone while he went off to war, or he was sure that he would have returned home to find one or both of them dead. And Sutha’s priestess-magic was unquestionably useful on the battlefield. “The weaklings fled at the mere sight of us!”

Mhurren shook his head. “They were wise to give up the palisade and the town. We outnumber the humans and filthy dwarves ten to one. We would have slaughtered them all in an hour.”

He pointed to the unconquered stronghold at the top of the steep-sided hill on which the town stood. It was a crude stone fort known as the Anvil. Little more than a thick fieldstone wall enclosing the hilltop, it had a strongly defended gate and a single squat tower. “That is where they will stand and fight. Other tribes before us have plundered the town, but none have taken the Anvil. Glister is not destroyed until it falls.” He grinned at the challenge of it and shook his spear. “Come on, Bloodskulls! I want to hear for myself the bleating of the sheep in their little stone pen.”

He led the way beneath the open gate of the palisade and up through the town’s rough, muddy streets. Glister stood on a rocky prominence in the center of a steep-sided valley in the shadow of the Galena Mountains. The buildings were thick-walled bunkhouses and storehouses of fieldstone and turf, with a few ramshackle wooden buildings scattered here and there. Those accounted for most of the fires, since the stone-and-turf buildings did not burn well at all-one more measure of defense in a town whose location was decided by defense instead of comfort. Mhurren doubted whether there was much worth looting in the parts of the town that had been abandoned to the Bloody Skull horde, but for the moment he was content to let his warriors and their allies have their fun. Soon enough there would be real work at hand.

He heard heavy footsteps and snarling curses approaching from a side street and suppressed a growl of annoyance. The one-eyed priest Tangar stormed up to him, his fangs bared in fury. “We are betrayed!” the servant of Gruumsh roared. “Where are the old, the weak, the women, the children? They have escaped us! The Vaasan warned them of our attack!”

Mhurren scowled, careful not to allow his canines to show. As much as the priest irritated him, he couldn’t risk an open break with Tangar and his followers. “I did not think to surprise them, Tangar,” he answered with more patience than he felt. “We have many spears. Of course the rock-diggers and goat-herders heard of our march. But do not fear-they did not run far.” The scouts told Mhurren that a number of the Glister-folk had fled along the trails leading south to Melvaunt and Hulburg, but Mhurren’s new Red Claw allies were watching those paths. Those humans who hoped to carry their families or their gold to safety would be easy prey for the wolf riders. He pointed up at the fortress with his spear. “Most of the Glister-folk hide behind the walls of the Anvil with their gold and their women. No, they did not run far at all.”

He came to a broken storehouse at the upper end of the town, not more than eighty yards or so from the Anvil’s gatehouse. From there he had a good view of the challenge ahead. A narrow path led up to the sturdy iron-riveted timber gates. The walls of the stronghold were not very tall-twenty feet or so, it seemed-but, other than the path leading to the gatehouse, it was a steep scramble up a bare and open slope to reach the foot of the walls, and Mhurren could see the dark shapes of bowmen and spearmen hiding behind the crenellations, waiting to repel an assault. No doubt the Glister-folk had food and water enough to withstand a siege of a month or more. The humans and dwarves who lived in this remote place had waited out more than one orc or ogre tribe, hiding behind their walls until the besieging forces grew hungry, or bored, or turned against each other.

Mhurren did not intend to repeat the mistakes of chieftains before him. There would be no siege against the Anvil. Instead, he meant to storm the stronghold before dawn.

“Bring the Vaasan here,” he told his Skull Guards. One of the warriors dipped his spear and jogged off into the smoke and darkness. A few minutes later, he returned with the Warlock Knight Terov. The human wore his battle armor of black plate with the ram’s head helm, but he seemed to handle the weight of the steel well. Several Vaasan knights accompanied their lord-likely to protect him from any sudden misunderstandings with his Bloody Skull allies.

The human glanced up at the walls, measuring the likelihood of an arrow from the ramparts, and then turned his back on the defenders contemptuously. “Well done, Warchief Mhurren,” he said. “You have boxed the badger in its den. Will you smoke him out, or do you have something else in mind?”

“We have not yet tested our new Vaasan mail,” Mhurren answered. He had kept his own armor, which included heavy plates worked in the form of snarling demon faces over the mail he routinely wore, simply because he didn’t want his warriors to think he’d become too close to the Vaasans. But eight hundred of his best spearmen had traded their leather jerkins and crude scale shirts for the strong Vaasan hauberks, helms, and greaves. Since the Glister-folk had not defended their palisade or town, Mhurren hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see how it stood up in battle-but he knew good steel, and Terov hadn’t stinted on his promise. “I will take the Anvil before sunrise.”

Terov nodded. “Your warriors came here for a fight, and they haven’t had one yet. Better to give them one before they decide they’re content with burning the town.”

“You understand us well,” Mhurren answered grudgingly.

“How can I help?”

Mhurren pointed at the gatehouse. “First, I want them blinded. Use your magic to conjure a fog or smoke before the gate, so that Guld and his ogres can get close without being feathered with arrows. Then, when I signal, I want your manticores and wyverns to rake the defenders from the walltop to the north, there.”

The Warlock Knight nodded. “What of the giants?”

“With my Bloody Skulls. Guld might force the gate, but the north wall is the attack that will carry.”

“As you say, then. I will conjure you a fog. Send your orders to our monster handlers, and they will see to it that the flyers do as you command.” Terov glanced once more at the battlements and strode away with his guards in tow.

Mhurren growled in approval and turned away from the stronghold. “Messengers!” he called. Young warriors not quite grown enough to stand shield-to-shield in the tribe’s muster leaped to their feet, ready for their duties. Mhurren quickly gave his commands, made each messenger repeat his orders twice, and sent them on their way-most to Bloody Skull warbands, two to Guld the ogre, two to Kraashk of the Red Claws, others to the Vaasans’ monsters. Then he settled down to wait. He would do nothing until he received word back that his orders had been delivered.

One by one, his messengers returned. In the town below he began to hear the sounds of movement amid the roaring and crackle of the flames, the heavy tramp of armored feet, and the shouts of harsh voices. Sharp whipcracks echoed through the darkness as leaders and priests beat and bludgeoned overeager pillagers away from the meager prizes they had already found and brought them back into battle order.

“Dawn approaches,” Sutha said. Mhurren glanced eastward. Pearly gray streaks were beginning to lighten the sky. Sunrise was not more than an hour away.

“No matter.” He looked over to his drummers and said, “Beat the first signal.”

The drummers seized their mallets and struck a long, slow roll on their massive instruments. Each wardrum was a good five feet across, its voice so deep and powerful that it could carry for miles in the right conditions. In Glister’s narrow vale the high stone cliffs surrounding the town caught the heavy thoom-thooooom beats and threw them back until it seemed the whole town quivered in response. Then Mhurren slashed his hand, and the drummers fell silent.

From somewhere off to his right, he heard a human voice calling out some sort of invocation. A single torch came hurling out from the shadows of the buildings in that direction, clattering to the ground a short distance in front of the gatehouse. For a moment the torch simply guttered there on the ground, and Mhurren’s brow furrowed as he wondered if that paltry gesture was all that Terov could provide in the way of magic. But then the torch began to smoke, to smoke heavily, and in the space of a few heartbeats it began to produce immense, thick, yellow-gray billows that heaped up over the spot where it lay, quickly hiding it. Two more torches arced through the night and landed on the hillside by the foot of the wall and began to smoke as well. In moments the whole wall facing Mhurren was obscured by the growing cloud. Cries of consternation rose from the dwarves and humans defending the wall.

“Now for Guld’s part,” Mhurren said. “The second signal, now!”

Again the drummers began their ominous beat and scores of great, bellowing roars erupted in response. The Skullsmasher ogres rushed out into the open from where they had waited, swarming up the path to the gatehouse. Each ogre stood almost ten feet tall, with long, powerful arms and short, crooked legs. Many carried huge hide shields larger than a full-grown man or orc, and these led the way for their fellows. None of the Skullsmashers wore much armor, trusting instead to their size and thick hides to protect them from arrows and spears. In the middle of the ogre assault, a dozen of the hulking beasts carried a crude ram-a tree trunk thirty feet long. They vanished into the smoke, and a moment later the first great thudding boom! echoed from the Anvil’s gate. Stray arrows hissed out of the smoke, some finding ogre flesh, others simply disappearing into the night.

“Get ready,” Mhurren told his Skull Guards. Then he shouted to his drummers, “The third signal, now!”

The wardrums shifted from their slow, heavy beat to a fast, frantic double-time as a second drummer joined in at each, striking furiously. Mhurren leaped out and began to run toward the wall, his guards following him. From the dark streets north of the Anvil, hundreds of Bloody Skull orcs poured out in a black river, slipping and scrambling as they swarmed up the steep hillside toward the fortress wall. Five hill giants strode ponderously alongside the orcs. If Mhurren had timed it right, the ogre assault on the gate had drawn off many of the defenders, while on the south side of the Anvil-where its tower stood-the Red Claws showered the ramparts with arrows, giving a demonstration of their own and leaving the walls in front of the Blood Skulls with a perilously thin garrison. Those who remained raised more shouts of alarm and began to loose arrows as fast as they could at the oncoming horde, and the orcs answered with a wild sea of battle cries, shouts, and screams of murderous rage.

A wild arrow whistled out of the darkness; Mhurren caught it on his shield and kept going. Nearby, one of his Skull Guards suddenly screeched and dropped kicking to the ground, shot through the eye by a lucky or skilled archer. The defenders began to drop heavy stones from the battlements; even if they found no orc directly underneath, the stones bounced and rolled down the steep hillside with enough force to snap the legs or crush the ribs of those warriors who didn’t see them coming.

The warchief reached the relative safety of the wall footing, holding his shield over his head. “The grapples!” he shouted. “Hurry up, you dogs!”

The steep hillside made scaling ladders almost useless against the Anvil’s walls, so the Bloodskulls carried grappling hooks and knotted ropes instead. Dozens sailed up and over the walls. The hill giants-some fairly well pincushioned by arrows by then and furious on account of it-carried much heavier hooks affixed to chains that no mere sword blow would sever. They hurled their own hooks, and in moments dozens of orcs were swarming up the ropes and chains, pushing their way up with feet against the stone wall. The first few warriors to begin their ascent were cut down by arrows or crushed by stones dropped from above, and Mhurren swore viciously to himself. It was a good plan, but it could still go awry if…

“’Ware the manticores!” a panicked human voice shouted from over his head.

The warchief risked a look from under his shield, just in time to see three of the great bat-winged monsters swoop down out of the darkness overhead. Each snapped its wings out to full extent and arrested its flight for an instant as its long, barbed tail whipped beneath its body, unleashing a hail of metallic spikes as deadly as crossbow quarrels. A few hasty arrows shot back at the flying monsters as they flapped away, then a pair of wyverns streaked over the battlements low and fast, snapping with their powerful jaws and knocking men down with their thickly muscled tails. One unlucky human was caught by a claw and carried away screaming into the night sky. Mhurren grinned at the sight and threw away his shield to grasp the grapple line closest to him and begin his own ascent. The whole time the flying monsters were harrying the defenders, the Bloody Skulls continued to climb.

“Up the ropes, Bloody Skulls! Don’t give them a chance to recover!” he shouted and pulled himself upward. A handful of defenders returned to the walltop and dropped more stones on the orcs milling at the foot of the wall. The grapple line next to his was suddenly severed, dropping several warriors back down to the ground-not a lethal distance, but more of a fall than Mhurren would care to experience. Then two of the manticores swooped by again and loosed another fusillade of their tail spikes. Iron clanged and clattered against stone or sank into flesh with an awful sound.

To his surprise, Mhurren reached the top and clambered over unmolested. He quickly moved away from the rope to make room for the Skull Guards following him and drew a short fighting-axe from his belt, since he’d had to leave his shield and spear on the ground below. Dozens of Bloody Skulls were already on the battlements, with more swarming up over the edge every moment.

“We have them,” Mhurren snarled.

“Die, orc!” a dwarf shouted near him and sprang forward to bury his axe in Mhurren’s neck with a powerful two-handed swing.

The warchief leaped inside the dwarf’s axe swing and rammed the spike of his own fighting-axe into the dwarf’s face. Bone crunched, and blood spurted. The dwarf howled and reeled back, but Mhurren followed and butchered him with a hail of short, furious strikes, hacking the dwarf again and again. He roared in triumph and let the blood-madness take him, throwing himself headlong into the first knot of struggling warriors he saw. He struck with axe, with mailed fist, with kicks and punches, and even one frenzied bite when a luckless human was pushed into him. He sent the poor wretch screaming away from him, missing an ear that Mhurren spat out on the ground.

He looked around for another foe, but no more warriors stood against him. Mhurren roared in frustration, then slowly shook himself out of his rage. There was no one left to fight because the Bloody Skulls had taken the wall. His warriors were streaming into the Anvil’s crowded bailey, where the Glister-folk shrieked and ran and wept in terror. Across the way, Guld’s ogres had broken through the gate and were already at work on the small keep-whose rooftop had been left undefended, because the wyverns had alighted there to feast. “It’s done,” he said aloud. “By Gruumsh’s black spear, the Anvil is ours!”

Mhurren descended into the courtyard. Blood ran down his arm and dripped from his fingertips. Somewhere in the melee he’d taken a stab in the meat of his left arm, though he couldn’t remember being wounded. That was the nature of the battle-madness. Well, it would serve to increase his already considerable standing with his warriors. They would not forget that he had left some of his blood on the Anvil’s walls, just as they had.

“You have your victory, Warchief. Glister is yours.” Warlock Knight Terov approached, picking his way through the dead and wounded. The Vaasan’s face remained hidden beneath his horned helm, but Mhurren could feel the man’s confidence. “Are you satisfied with our bargain?”

“You have done all you said you would,” the chief answered. “But I think now that I could have taken Glister with the Bloody Skulls alone. It was weak.”

“Possibly,” Terov conceded. “But how many more of your warriors would have died taking this stronghold, I wonder? No ogres to break down the gate, no manticores to scour the walltops, no Vaasan magic to blind the defenders at the crucial moment? I think you might have found it too costly for your taste… especially if the Red Claws were still your rivals and perhaps jealous of your success.”

“Enough,” Mhurren said. “I know what you have done for me, Terov.”

“So, I ask again: Are you satisfied with our bargain?”

The warchief looked at the carnage of the taken fort, and smiled coldly. “I think I have a taste for more. We could be at Hulburg’s doorstep in a tenday, and that is a town worth pillaging.”

The Warlock Knight nodded. “And you may-if they refuse you tribute. But I have use for Hulburg, so if the harmach accedes to your demands, you will not destroy it.”

Mhurren scowled. “And if I refuse you?”

“You and your Bloody Skulls may go your way, but I think you will find that the Skullsmashers and the Red Claws no longer answer to you. Nor will the giants, the manticores, or the wyverns. I doubt that you have the strength to overwhelm Hulburg without the aid I can provide.”

Mhurren did not like the idea of submitting to the human, but Terov did not lie. Like it or not, he needed the Vaasan’s aid if he hoped to continue his conquests. “You have whetted my warriors’ appetites for plunder, Terov. Now that they have tasted a victory such as this once, they will demand another.”

The Warlock Knight remained motionless. “As I told you, Mhurren, I have need of Hulburg unless it refuses to yield. But I have no use for Thentia. I cannot promise that you will be able to march against Thentia this year, but if the orcs help me to master Hulburg, I will deliver you Thentia soon enough. Now, I ask for the final time: Are you satisfied with our bargain?”

The chief of the Bloody Skulls glanced to the east. The sun was coming up. Already his warriors were choosing new trophies for the great hall in Bloodskull Keep. More were almost within his grasp. He squeezed his left fist and watched the blood drops spatter on the ground.

“All right, Terov,” he finally said. “I am satisfied. I will swear your oath.”