Beyond the High Road c-2 Read online

  When Vangerdahast finished his spell, a wall of flashing color sprang up before him, stretching across the peninsula and well down into the water. It would not stop the flying ghazneths, of course, but the orc army would be forced down into the marsh to circumvent it. Any warrior foolish enough to try scaling it would be spit back at his fellows, mangled beyond recognition.

  By the time Vangerdahast turned back to the mud keep, a steady drizzle of ore arrows was flying down from the arrow loops. The Royal Excursionary Company was beginning to recover from its afterdaze and return fire, but without much effect. The pall of darkness that seemed to cling to the place prevented them from seeing their targets, and so their arrows were about as effective against the swiners as those of the swiners were against their magically shielded armor.

  Vangerdahast rode forward to his subcommanders, who stood together taking orders from Owden. Scowling at the priest’s presumption, the wizard dismounted, leaving Cadimus with a young dragoneer, and joined them.

  “Stop wasting time with this groundsplitter!” Vangerdahast shoved the commander of the Purple Dragons toward the wall. “The ghazneths will be here in two minutes. Get your archers ready.”

  The man paled. “As you command.”

  He ran off to obey, shouting for the dragoneers to form their squares. Vangerdahast turned to the master of his war wizards and pointed at the keep’s gate. To his surprise, it was coated in black iron. He could not understand why he had failed to notice the dark metal from the hilltop.

  “Can you tell me why that is still standing?”

  The young wizard paled. “No. We’ve hit it with fire, lightning, and warping. Nothing works.”

  “In fact, spells only make the gates stronger. The iron was not there until your wizards started their work,” added Owden.

  “Then try the walls!” Vangerdahast stormed. ‘We’re in a hurry!”

  As he spoke, the royal magician pulled his lodestone from his pocket and scraped a pinch of dust off Owden’s weathercloak. He rolled the lodestone in the dust, pointed to the base of the keep, and uttered his spell. A ray of shimmering translucence shot from his finger, blossoming against the building in a circle of rippling energy. The mud wall turned dark and smooth and seemed to melt as the wizard’s magic faded, finally coalescing into a smooth disc of black marble.

  Vangerdahast cursed, then an orc’s arrow corkscrewed down to bounce harmlessly off his breast.

  “The same as the gate,” said Owden. “I fear Alaphondar is more right about the nature of the keep than he knows. It seems to be using your magic against you.”

  “Obviously,” Vangerdahast snarled.

  Deciding to try the opposite tactic, he waved his hand at the wall and uttered a quick incantation to dispel the magic. The dark circle only grew larger.

  A flurry of throbbing bowstrings proclaimed the arrival of the ghazneths. Vangerdahast glanced toward his prismatic wall and saw all five phantoms wheeling toward the marsh, their breasts and wings peppered with iron-tipped arrows. Two of the creatures seemed to be flying a little more slowly than usual, and one was trailing a syrupy string of black blood.

  “If magic won’t work, hard work will,” said Owden.

  The harvestmaster snatched an iron-tipped spear from a dragoneer and charged the keep, angling away from the dark circle that Vangerdahast had created.

  A cloud of crooked shafts wobbled down from arrow loops to meet his charge. Most missed broadly, but even those that found him bounced off without causing harm. Vangerdahast scowled, then finally realized what the priest was doing and waved a troop of men after him.

  “Get over there and help the fool! Tanalasta will have my ears if something happens to him!”

  A dozen dragoneers grabbed their spears and rushed after Owden. They were joined by a handful of war wizards, who quickly raised a floating ceiling above their heads to deflect the annoying deluge of orc arrows. Vangerdahast remained a moment to watch the enemy response, but the aura of darkness clinging to the keep precluded any possibility of seeing inside. The only reaction was a slight slackening in the rain of crooked shafts as the swiners within realized the futility of their attacks.

  Pulsing volleys of bowfire began to sound from all directions. Vangerdahast glanced around the peninsula to find the dragoneers arrayed in single ranks along the shoreline, filling the air with arrows as the ghazneths came in low and fast. Behind each rank of Purple Dragons stood a war wizard, pointing over their heads and uttering the incantation of a wall spell.

  As the sorcerers’ voices fell silent, rippling curtains of force sprang up around the edge of the peninsula, enclosing it in a castlelike perimeter of magic walls. A pair of ghazneths slammed into these barricades headlong, filling the air with blood-curdling shrieks and looking more surprised than hurt as they lay splayed against the invisible walls. The other three phantoms streaked across the shoreline just ahead of the spells, tearing through the single thin rank of dragoneers in a dark flash and sinking their talons into the wizards waiting behind.

  One sorcerer got off a quick web spell, binding himself and his attacker together in a cocoon of sticky white filament. The other two wizards were jerked from their feet, screaming and flailing as the ghazneths arced into the sky. A cloud of arrows chased the phantoms over Vangerdahast’s prismatic wall, but that did not keep the creatures from dropping their victims into the heart of the orc army. After a brief tumult of crackling magic and screeching swiners, a round of raucous victory snorts announced the fall of the wizards to superior numbers.

  On Vangerdahast’s side of the wall, a dozen dragoneers rushed over to the web-tangled ghazneth. The filaments were already beginning to lose their color, and the men seemed uncertain quite how to attack. Finally, one grabbed his sword with both hands and drove it into the cocoon with all his might. The attack drew a muffled bellow, but when the soldier tried to withdraw his weapon and attack again, it remained lodged in the sticky filaments. He began to work the hilt back and forth, hoping to enlarge the wound and cause as much damage as possible. When this evoked a long roar, several of the warrior’s fellows plunged their own blades into the web and imitated his tactic. The ghazneth howled in rage and pain, thrashing about so madly that the dragoneers had trouble holding their weapons.

  Abruptly, the phantom stopped struggling. A tremendous boom knocked the dragoneers off their feet, then the ground opened under their feet, belching forth a column of stinking yellow fume that hurled them high into the sky. They swirled about in a strange airborne dance, shrieking and flailing at the phantom with blade and fist, bound to their foe by the web spell. Their voices grew raspy and broken from inhaling acrid fumes. A pair of warriors came free of the sticky tangle and crashed to the ground, and the smoke vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

  The cocoon plummeted into the abyss with its tangle of men and weapons, only to reappear a moment later when a pillar of flame hurled it back into the air. The web spell dissolved in a flash of crimson. The dragoneers disintegrated into lumps of scorched armor and howling ash and plunged back into the chasm. The ghazneth erupted into a flaming silhouette of itself and remained in the air, spreading its wings and letting out a long, spiteful cackle. It wheeled around trailing tongues of crimson fire and streaked down to catch the nearest war wizard in its burning talons, then disappeared over Vangerdahast’s prismatic wall.

  The other ghazneths came swooping over the walls from four different directions, talons extended and trails of dark blood dribbling from their wounds. A flurry of spells and iron-tipped arrows drove them away almost instantly, then the ground started to tremble. Small curtains of flame sprouted along the spine of the peninsula. The stench of brimstone grew suffocating, and men began to cough and choke and clutch at their throats. The company’s panicked horses broke free of their holders and galloped madly along the shoreline, bouncing off the invisible walls and searching in vain for some way to escape the peninsula.

  The war wizards cleared the air with a flurry
of magic winds, but that did not prevent Vangerdahast from cursing.

  Until now, the ghazneths had never used such powers against the Royal Excursionary Company, and he could not help wondering what other surprises they had in store. His whole strategy had been predicated on holding the creatures at bay long enough to enter the keep, but it was beginning to look like even that modest goal was not achievable.

  Vangerdahast glimpsed a blazing ghazneth arcing over the prismatic wall and drove it back with a magic ice storm, then rushed forward to join Owden and the others at the keep. The harvestmaster and two other men were standing side-by-side, madly jabbing their spears into the dried mud and scraping loose small sprays of material. They had already managed to tunnel more than two feet into the base of the tower, and the wall flexed each time they struck. Determined that the first rescuer to enter the keep would not be a priest of Chauntea, Vangerdahast reached into the tunnel and pulled Owden back.

  “Let the Purple Dragons lead the way,” said the royal magician. “Tanalasta would never forgive me if something unfortunate befell you.”

  “Indeed, that would be almost as unfortunate as letting it be known that someone else had freed her.” Owden pulled free of Vangerdahast’s grasp, but shrugged and made no move to return to his digging. “Play your games if you wish. They make no difference to the princess.”

  Vangerdahast resisted a sharp reply, knowing that a stinging retort would only confirm how much he feared the priest was right. Tanalasta had always been a perceptive woman, now that she had become a stubborn one, it would take more than a simple rescue to make her reconsider her convictions.

  The diggers broke through with a hollow clatter, opening a pair of head-sized holes into the swirling darkness inside. The musty scent of damp earth filled the air. A strange drone echoed out of the keep, then the dragoneers screamed and stumbled back, their heads lost under a cloud of black wasps.

  Vangerdahast raised a hand and blew across his palm, scattering the wasps with a quick wind spell-standard defensive magic for any war wizard. The two dragoneers fell and lay on their backs, covering their eyes and screaming in agony. Owden and several dragoneers managed to pry their hands away from their faces, revealing a swollen mass of red boils. The priest called on Chauntea’s mercy and began to pray.

  Vangerdahast caught him by the shoulder. “Save your spells for Tanalasta. As much as I hate to share her gratitude, the princess may have need of your healing more than these soldiers.”

  Owden looked torn. Vangerdahast gave the priest no choice in the matter, pulling him to his feet and turning to face the keep, where a steady cloud of wasps was pouring from the two holes. A half-dozen dragoneers pulled their weathercloaks over their heads and charged into the swarm at a sprint, hurling their armored shoulders against the weakened wall.

  The holes collapsed into a single windowlike portal nearly four feet across. Two warriors fell headlong into the darkness, their shins resting across the bottom edge of the breach. Wherever their legs touched the wall, little circles of dark marble began to fan outward as the keep absorbed the magic in their weathercloaks and shielding spells. The wasps descended on them, and the men began to scream and thrash about.

  A war wizard directed a magic gale into the hole. The edges turned to black marble, but enough of the wind endured to drive the wasps into the depths of the tower. Several dragoneers rushed forward and grabbed their screaming comrades by the ankles.

  A tempest of orcish arrows flew out of the darkness to meet them. The shafts clattered harmlessly off the rescuers, but the two victims cried out in pain as they suffered hits. When their comrades jerked them from the keep, one man had an arrow lodged in his shoulder, the other in his neck. Vangerdahast pulled a commander’s ring from his pocket and slipped it on long enough to activate its light magic, then removed it and tossed it inside.

  The ring passed through the breach still glowing, then hit the stone floor and began to fade. The light lasted long enough for Vangerdahast to see a cloud of wasps swirling along the far wall and a dozen orc archers edging toward a door.

  When Vangerdahast detected no sign of Tanalasta in the room, he commanded, “Fireballs!”

  “Fireballs?” Owden gasped. “But that’s what they want! That kind of magic will turn the whole tower to stone.”

  Vangerdahast shrugged. “What do we care? We’ve already breached it.”

  As his war wizards prepared their spells, Vangerdahast saw that the battle on the peninsula was turning against him. A dense cloud of smoke, glowing in a hundred places with scarlet fire curtains, blanketed the battlefield. Dragoneers lay on the ground by the dozen, clutching at their throats or not moving at all. The few who remained on their feet could barely be seen through the flames and the fumes, standing along the shoreline in ragged lines, coughing and gagging on the poison air. There was no sign at all of the sorcerers assigned to support them, and the company horses were galloping along the shoreline more madly than ever. Cadimus, of course, was leading the charge. When Vangerdahast did not see any ghazneths swooping down from the sky, he dared wonder if the phantoms had finally fallen to his dragoneers’ iron weapons.

  That hope was shattered when he noticed the magic shimmer of a force wall beginning to fade. Though his own troops blocked his view of the other side, he felt certain that the ghazneths were pressing themselves against the wall, absorbing its magic into their own bodies. Behind them, there would be a horde of orcs milling about, waiting to wade ashore and slaughter what remained of the Royal Excursionary Company.

  Vangerdahast did not think the swiners would find the battle difficult. There would be a moment of confusion as Cadimus and the other horses charged through the opening, then victory would come quickly for the orcs. There were not enough dragoneers left to hold longer than it would take the swiners to trample them.

  The rumble of a tremendous fireball erupted from the keep. Vangerdahast looked back to see a long tongue of flame licking out of the portal. The mud walls were instantly transformed to black marble as high as the second story. He took a small scrap of parchment from his cloak, then rolled it into a small cone and held it to his lips. He whispered a quick incantation and turned toward the survivors of the battle.

  “Retreat to the keep!”

  Though even he could barely hear his voice over the battle rumble, the remaining dragoneers broke ranks and ran for the keep at their best sprints. Half a dozen fell almost immediately to tendrils of poison fume or curtains of leaping flame. Vangerdahast guessed that half their number, perhaps twenty soldiers, would survive long enough to reach the keep.

  The royal magician grabbed the nearest war wizard. “When I enter the keep, you are to take command. Block the breach with an iron wall-not touching it, mind you, but only a hair’s breadth away-then take the survivors and teleport back to Arabel.”

  The sorcerer’s relief was obvious. “As you command.”

  “What about Alaphondar?” asked Owden. “You haven’t sent up the shooting star.”

  Vangerdahast glanced at the carnage around him. “Alaphondar’s safer in his hiding place. We’ll teleport from Arabel and fetch him.”

  Vangerdahast returned his attention to the keep, where the last flames of the fireball were just dying out. He pulled a crow feather from his cloak pocket and brushed the vane up and down his body, uttering a low incantation. A warm prickle crept up his arms. He started to feel very light, then his feet left the ground, and he was floating.

  As Vangerdahast completed his spell, the first dragoneers staggered in from the shoreline, stinking of brimstone and coughing violently. To a soldier, their faces were swollen and red with insect bites, and many had the glassy-eyed expressions of men ill with the ague. Seeing Vangerdahast floating in the air, one warrior stumbled forward to clutch at his robes.

  “Where are you going?” The man’s voice was shrill and unbalanced. “The Royal Excursionary Company doesn’t desert!”

  “Coward!” accused another. “Come back
and make your stand!”

  Several more took up the cry and lunged forward, all reaching up to grab hold of the wizard’s cloak. Vangerdahast tore his arm free and flew out of their reach with a quick flick of his hands.

  “Who are you calling a deserter?” Vangerdahast demanded, growing furious. He pulled a wand from inside his cloak. “How dare you!”

  Owden stepped forward, raising his hands to stop the attack. “Vangerdahast, it’s ghazneth madness!” The priest waved at their swollen faces. “They’re wounded and sick, just as you were in Arabel.”

  “Then get them under control!” Vangerdahast snapped, feeling foolish-and more than a little frightened by all he did not know about the ghazneths. “I’ll see you in Arabel.”

  “Me?” Owden looked shocked. “What do you mean? You need someone to watch your back.”

  “How?” Vangerdahast flapped his arms and floated toward the smoking breach in the keep’s black wall. “Unless you can fly, you’ll only slow me down-and lose your weathercloak’s magic to the keep.”

  “Wait!” It was the wizard to whom Vangerdahast had given command. “I can help.”

  The royal magician looked back to see the war wizard and Owden scurrying after him, the sorcerer brushing the vane of a pigeon feather over the harvestmaster’s arms. A handful of mad dragoneers were stumbling along behind them, cursing Vangerdahast for a coward and promising to take vengeance in the afterlife. Behind them, on the near shore of the peninsula, the ghazneths had finally drawn all of the magic out of the force wall. Cadimus charged through the gap, leading the rest of the horses along behind him and bowling the astonished ghazneths over backward.