“Waddya THINK I’m gonna do? RUN!” Foxglove
whistled for Horndog and was off like a spring breeze, as Kitsune and Zohar
managed to unite their strikes to bring down one of the support columns.
Chapter 41 The Longest Night
Foxglove’s mind raced at a hundred miles an hour
as Horndog sped through the night. Out of sheer reflex, she headed back for
Theocles' camp, where at least she could be sure of finding someone.
Theocles and a few other clerics were the only ones there. They were pouring
over a map, trying to figure out a stunning strategy to turn the situation
around. The real soldiers had already left, realizing that the ancient law
about no plan surviving contact with the enemy was in force. “Foxglove! Did you
destroy the Plandury bridge?”
“We gave it our best shot, so we tried to break
it out from under the juggernaut. But it turns out that that thing has some
sort of anti-magic field around it, so Zohar and Kitsune’s blasts didn’t work.
And, I’m afraid that we blew ‘Martos’ cover in the process.”
“WHAT?”
“Hey, I was improvising! You had over a week
to plan this debacle!”
“Do you mean to tell me that the Army of
Darkness is pouring across the Plandury bridge, even as we speak?”
“It’s not quite as bad as that. Zohar and Kit
managed to break one of the support pylons, weakening the bridge. The
juggernaut shouldn’t be able to make it across, and the army will have to get
its men over in single file. If the Horseman is any kind of general, he’ll send
scouts out, but keep most of his forces inside Plandury until the crossing is
complete. Depending on how daring he’s feeling, he may try to fortify Plandury
and begin taking towns and hamlets one at a time, instead of striking directly
at Seth-Barak.”
Arimasal snapped, “Send couriers to the
commanders, make sure that they’re aware of this development.”
As the clerics scurried about, Foxglove found
herself more or less alone with Arimasal, and it struck her that he was the
Prelate of Seth-Barak. As such, he was privy to the whereabouts of the Doom
sword. The Doom sword was what the Horseman was really after. The rest of the
Army of Darkness was after blood, pillage and plunder, but if she was right
about him, all that was just his way of paying the butchers’ bill. He’d merely
set the darklings to razing the entire countryside of Barak to get it; it’s not
like they’d complain. But what if she contrived to remove his true objective,
say to another kingdom or principality nearby? He’d have to either somehow
convince them to suddenly turn from their promised sack and rape with the prize
within sight, or he’d have to let them gut Seth-Barak and then go for the Doom
sword. The latter would mean taking the chance that this would give the Empire
the time to arrive with real troops, to join with the fresh troops of the
sword’s new host, along with what was left of the Barakan fighters. If
anything, the time that she could buy Pildash and Rhysmarek, as the Horseman
considered his options, would be critical.
Arimasal was intent on his maps. Foxglove pulled
the Hag’s Eye from her belt and held it up to her eye. “Your Worship, I think
it's imperative that we take the Doom sword from its place of hiding and remove
it to a neighboring realm. Not only that, but that we INFORM the War Horseman
that we have done so. I am an agent of the Patriarch, I demand that you inform
me of its whereabouts, and what security there is!”
Unwittingly, an image of a glade, just south by
southwest of Seth-Barak, came to Arimasal’s mind. “The Doom sword is too
dangerous to be removed from its sequestration.”
“That is precisely my point, your Grace,”
Foxglove prodded. “The Army of Darkness WILL find the Doom sword, if the War
Horseman has to have them burn the entirety of Barak to the ground!”
“They won’t find it.”
“Are you sure about that? What keep is THAT
secure? What glade is THAT well hidden? What cave is THAT remote? What well is
THAT deep?”
Images of an invisible road that concealed both
itself and anyone traveling on it bobbed to the surface of the Prelate’s mind.
A road that lead to a concealed dell, and which could only entered by entering
between two cairns that stood on the grounds of an abbey a few leagues to the
east, was also part of Arimasal’s thoughts. “I assure you, Foxglove, they won’t
find it.”
Foxglove put a frigid spin to her voice.
“Really? Are you willing to kill the Prior of the Archives to keep it a secret?
And, more to the point, after you do so, are you willing to then throw yourself
on the tip of that sword, still wet with the blood of an innocent man?”
Arimasal looked up, puzzled. “WHY would
I...?”
“Your Grace, I know that you and the Prior of
the Archives are the only ones who know of the Doom’s whereabouts. But, as I
know it, do did Osdorin the Vampire and Rasfin, his thrall. And if they know
it, then the War Horseman knows it. While his first plan for securing you and
the Prior probably lay with the corrupted Inquisitors, can we really
presume that a general of his proven skill and cunning doesn’t have a couple of
contingency plans laid? And if he doesn’t he can still whip up a few nasty bits
to get his hands on one or the other of you. If the War Horseman gets to
Seth-Barak, the only way that the secret of the Doom sword’s sequester will be
safe, is if both you and the Prior are dead and cremated. Bishop Arimasal, I
leave you to your contemplation, and I don’t envy you the decision.” With that,
Foxglove wrapped her cloak around herself and stalked out of Arimasal’s
pavilion.
She whistled for Horndog, and she was almost
immediately off like the wind. She alerted Kitsune and Zohar, and guided them
to the abbey. J’Mira was riding along with Zohar on his carpet. “What are you
doing here, ‘Mira?”
“The other side of the river is WAY too hot
right ‘bout now. Justin and the Nachonites managed to chew up the forward
guard, but the Horseman just sent the middle and rear guards with the
Juggernaut to-”
“Yeah, I know, I know,” Foxglove groused. “We were
there when Big Red rolled into town. Theocles’ big plan is pretty much screwed,
and my bridge burning didn’t go over very well, either. So, here’s Plan C-” she
outlined her plan to try and throw a wedge between the Darklings and the
Horseman. “The entrance to the glade where the Doom sword is kept is through an
invisible road that starts between two cairns somewhere on that Abbey’s
grounds. Kit and I will search the grounds and find them. If anything goes
wrong, we let out a scream, and the others come find the one that yelled. If we
find it, we come back here, and we ride through before the Brothers can do
anything to stop us.”
Zohar raised an eyebrow. “And WHY didn’t you
just ride in by yourself, Foxglove? That rather IS your style.”
Foxglove started a smart retort, but accepted
the criticism. “Okay, it’s a hidden glade, all right. But if this Doom sword is
as much a much as they let on, there’s gotta be some sort of guardian of some
sort on duty. And, okay, I’m arrogant, but there’s no way I’m arrogant enough
to take on something that they’d set to guard something like the Doom sword.”
Zohar accepted her explanation with grim
satisfaction. “And what do we do when we GET this Doom sword?”
“Kit takes it to the nearest scene of battle,
wipes up a few hundred Darklings with it, and lets the Horseman know that the
Doom sword is in play. Then we make a production of heading like bats out of
hell to the largest neighboring population center. Which is...” Foxglove
trailed off, realizing that she’d come to the end of her improvisation’s rope.
“Kor-Chrysene to the south, and Seth-Cthall to
the north,” J’Mira offered. “I’d take it to Kor-Chrysene. There’s a LOT of
Elven country between Seth-Barak and Seth-Cthall, and Kor-Chrysene has a major
cathedral of the Holy Church in it. We can drop the Doom sword off there, and
not get in too much trouble, as we’re just shifting it from one hand of the
Church to another.”
“Maybe,” Zohar mused, “but it strikes me - what
if all of this is just to move the Doom sword from Seth-Barak to Kor-Chrysene?”
Foxglove stopped short. “Y’got me there, Doc. I
don’t know WHY the World-Keeper - or the Thaumaturge, for that matter - be all
that interested in moving it from one place of safekeeping to another. But
you’re right - we ARE being herded into this.”
“True,” Kitsune agreed, “BUT there’s no getting
around the fact that if the War Horseman gets his hand on that sword, he’ll be
ten times as dangerous. If we just step back and refuse to play ball, he’ll
just mow us down, and I kinda doubt that the World-Keeper will bother to bring
us ALL back from the grave.”
Zohar shuddered. “No thank you, that’s something
that I’ll beg off doing again, if I can possibly avoid it.”
Kitsune and Foxglove slipped into the Abbey and
split up. Foxglove handed Scintilla over to Kit, so they could communicate with
each other. The Abbey was very busy at night, for a religious order in a
culture that tended to go to bed as soon as darkness fell. The monks were
drilling with spears in a very non-pacifist way. Still, Foxglove was gratified
that at least they hadn’t grafted Asian martial arts onto an essentially
European monastic tradition. Now, how to find those stupid cairns, on an estate
this size at night? Foxglove wished that she had gotten a better image of where
they were from Arimasal... Then she almost kicked herself. What do you do when
you’re lost? You ask directions! She ducked around a bit, and found the Abbey
laundry, where she found a habit waiting to be washed. Apparently the Holy
Faith hadn’t bought into the ‘mortifying the flesh’ nonsense that had plagued
so many early Christian monastics. Then she spotted a lone monk with a lantern
on his way somewhere. She walked up to him and asked in a gruff voice, “I’m
slated for guard duty, and I’m all turned around. Which way to the two cairns?”
The monk pointed her in the right direction.
Sure enough, there was a squad of six monks guarding the two cairns. Once she
knew where it was, Foxglove spent about a half-hour getting a sense of the
layout of the Abbey, and then she contacted Kit, who’d done the same from
another angle. When they got back, Foxglove and Kitsune drew a map in the dirt
and started plotting how to get to the cairns unseen.
“You’re over-thinking this, Foxglove,” Zohar
said with asperity. “You go in full-blast on the unicorn. You should be able to
get past them before the guard even knows you’re there. We follow from on high;
you’re the only one that they would be able to stop, so you’re first.”
“And what about when we come BACK?”
“We’ll either have the Doom sword, or we’ll be
dead; either way, it won’t be a problem.”
Foxglove looked at Kitsune, who just shrugged.
“Hey, it’s not like you could really sneak a unicorn in there, in the
first place.”
Foxglove bowed to necessity and mounted Horndog.
“Well, plushie-face, it’s time to see exactly how fast you really ARE.” She
urged the unicorn on, and it took the stone wall in a single leap. Foxglove was
past and gone before any monks who saw her could raise an objection, let alone
try to stop her. They still raised an alarm as she sped through the compound,
and the sentinels at the cairns were on their guard. Kitsune scattered them
with a bolt of lightning from her cloud, and Foxglove steered Horndog through
the cairns, followed closely by Kitsune and Zohar.
Beyond the cairns was a passageway that rather
reminded her of those ‘glass tunnels’ that some aquariums have, where you walk
through the water, surrounded by the fish. There was that definite sense of not
merely riding along a road, but passing through something, while not being a
part of it. They rode through it silently, losing a sense of where they’d
begun, without an end in sight. Then here was a sense of something else, and
end to the tunnel.
Then Zohar and J’Mira were suddenly thrown from
his flying carpet and they sprawled somehow suspended spread-eagle in midair.
Foxglove stopped Horndog short and shouted, “KIT! Zohar! What happened?”
“I don’t know! I’m stuck to something!” Kitsune
said, “I can move...sort of...but I don’t know what!”
“Don’t worry!” Zohar said, “I’ll blast us free
with...” he fumbled for first his wizard’s staff and then the Drakylon’s pearl,
both of which fumbled out of his hands as he jerked around with them.
As the staff dropped to the ground, J’Mira
muttered, “Oh, smooth move...”
Foxglove muttered, “Okaaayyy...first things
first, always know what you’re dealing with...” she gestured with her hands,
and “FOXFIRE!” Tongues of pale blue flame flew from her hands and covered
Kitsune, J’Mira and Zohar. The foxfire spread out from them along straight and
bowed lines that eventually filled out to outline a huge invisible spider’s
web. And then it ran up the strands of the web, to delineate a glassine spider,
of a size to match the web.
Foxglove urged Horndog forward as she unsheathed
her sword and struck at one of the web’s anchoring points. The web shook, but
it remained intact. The spider reacted and started moving down the web.
Foxglove cornered Horndog and made another pass, but instead of striking at the
web, she leaned way over, reached down and picked up the Drakylon’s pearl from
where it lay. The huge, not-quite-invisible spider scuttled and dropped, trying
to put itself between Horndog and its web. Foxglove sent a burst of dragonfire
at the spider, sending it flying back. But the unnatural arachnid didn’t catch
on fire, and while it didn’t seem to particularly enjoy the blast, it wasn't
particularly harmed by it, either.
“Okay, so much for that tactic,” Foxglove
muttered, “let’s try making things harder, instead.” She aimed the Drakylon’s
pearl at the web and destroyed two of the anchoring strands. The web sagged,
and the angle at which J’Mira, Kitsune and Zohar were hanging from it changed.
“Good going, Red!” Kitsune called. “That was
just what I needed!” The kunoichi seemed to disappear within the folds of her
saffron robes, and crawled out of them onto the top of the web. She oiled one
of her knives, and used that to move the sticky blobs of adhesive that kept her
shinobi-zui stuck to the web. Once she had her staff free, she oiled the
swinging blade and made her way across the web to J’Mira.
“Hurry up, Kit!” J’Mira urged her. “Get us out
of here, before Peter Parker’s roommates show up!”
“Not to worry, Jam-pot!” Kitsune assured her. “Spiders
are solitary critters, they don’t share their webs with-”
“Kitsune,” Zohar interrupted her, “I don’t think
they get the Discovery Channel here! Look!” Another huge spider was scuttling
in their direction from out of the gloom.
Kit spared an aggravated look heavenwards.
“That’s right, MAKE a liar out of me!”
The glassine spider came charging down the web
at Kitsune. She barely managed to parry its mandibles with her shinobi-zui
and get out of its reach. They danced a deadly ballet on the web, both of them
all to aware that the web was studded with hundreds of beads of glue, and that
stepping in any one of them would give the others the winning advantage.
Kitsune tried cutting the strands of the web, but her precariously balanced
stance on the web wouldn’t give her enough leverage to make a real blow. Below,
Foxglove and the first spider were waging a similar duel on the ground, with
the spider moving in staccato jerks and leaps, while Horndog flowed in long
sweeping charges. It came to Kitsune that this wasn’t getting them anywhere,
and the longer that they screwed around, the more people were dying back at
Seth-Barrak. “FOXGLOVE! Switch Opponents!”
“How?”
“Just get your spider DIRECTLY BENEATH ME, and
then use the Drakylon’s Pearl on my spider!”
“Gotcha!” It was more easily said than done, but
Foxglove had Horndog herd the transparent horror into the spot just under
Kitsune. “KIT! NOW!” Kistune leapt off the web, and when she was sure that her shinobi-zui
was aimed right at the lower spider’s thorax, she wrapped herself around it.
The spear hit the lower spider dead in the middle, and Kitsune’s weight added
to the strike, pinning the abomination to the ground. Even as Kitsune jumped
from the web, Foxglove used the Drakylon’s pearl to shoot through the web,
knocking the upper spider for a loop, and getting it stuck in its own web.
When she was sure of the upper spider, Foxglove
told Kitsune to get away from the lower spider. Then she had Horndog finish the
arachnid off by kicking in its head with his rear hooves. Kitsune called her
cloud and used it to fly up to free Zohar and J’Mira. “Why didn’t you just use
that thing when you were fighting the spider?” Zohar asked.
Kitsune blinked. “Just never thought of it.
Fighting the spider on its own web just seemed like the natural thing to do.”
Once he had his regalia back, Zohar cast a Light
spell that illuminated the glade. In the clearing in the center of the glade
was a high, grassy mound. Jutting out from a patch of pale stone was the hilt
of a sword. “A sword in a stone,” J’Mira muttered, “how original. Okay, which
wunna you is rightful born, the King of all England? C’mon, ‘fess up!”
As they approached the hillock, Foxglove noticed
something. “There’s something written in the stone around where the sword’s
stuck in. Can’t make it out, hold on- hanh? Now I can make it out…” Leaning
over, she recited:
“Doom and
Destruction, we cry and weep
Render each other,
to bind and keep
Each holding the
shackle and chain
Arrest and Remain
Molder together in
sleep.”
Zohar made a disgusted noise. “Really! It’s not
bad enough to write bad poetry, but to carve it in STONE? And a limerick
at that?”
“Thank God - whichever god applies here - that
Avon wasn’t here, or we’d never hear the end of it,” J’Mira muttered.
“That’s weird,” Kitsune mused.
“What?”
“It rhymes.”
“Barely.”
“No, it rhymes!” the monkess insisted. “And it
rhymes in English!”
“So?” J’Mira asked, not getting the point.
“If we were somehow gifted with a knowledge of
the local languages,” Foxglove spelled it out as she WAS getting where Kit was
getting at, “then we’d be reading it directly in that language, not translating
it in our minds. And, even if we were translating it unconsciously, then it
would translate to the words with the nearest meaning to the original, and the
rhyme and limerick pattern would be lost. Also, I couldn’t read it at first,
but then, suddenly, I could.”
Zohar paused. “You’re right, that does mean
something. What it means, I have no idea. Foxglove, write that down for later.
Right now, the longer we take with this, the more people die.” He strode up,
copped his best ‘King Arthur’ stance and gripped the sword.
“Yo, Z- don’t you think that we ought’a figure
out what this bit here MEANS, before we get all T. H. White?” Foxglove asked.
“Yeah, IF it’s relevant to getting the sword out
- otherwise, it’s just a waste of time.” Zohar braced himself and pulled. It
was like pulling out a tooth, but the sword did give, and it slowly drew out of
its sheath of centuries. “See? No need to waste hours that cost lives.”
“Odd,” Kitsune mused, “why would anyone go to
the bother of chiseling a particularly lame bit of doggerel into stone, if it
didn’t have anything to do with keeping that stupid sword in?”
The Doom sword was long and thick, and made of a
dark grayish material, but aside from that, it wasn’t very spectacular. There
were no ominous runes, or glaring visages, or dramatic flares of energy or
anything. It was just a big, functional looking sword, and that was it. And
yet, for all of that, it was impressive. It didn’t need the runes or the visages,
or flares of energy. It was the primal image of a sword as an instrument of
death, and it didn’t need any bells or whistles.
“Okay, so we got the fool thing - now, what are
we gonna DO with it?” J’Mira asked.
“Well, my idea is to let the Horse Swordsman
know that we’ve got it, and that we’re moving it from Seth- Bar---- ACK!”
Foxglove let out a squawk as the ground under their feet shook. Scrambling for
some footing, she glared at Zohar. “I TOLD you that we should have studied that
stupid poem first!”
The hillock shuddered and rose up. Moss and soil
fell away from the white stone. But the white stone wasn’t stone - it was bone.
It was a huge long skull, and red fire blazed out of the eye sockets at them.
More and more bone dug itself out of the ground.
“Oh, SHIT. It’s a dragon,” Foxglove said almost
flabbergasted.
“Yeah, but it’s only the skeleton of a
dragon, right? Nowhere near as dangerous as a real dragon, right?” J’Mira
asked, more hoping for confirmation than really stating an argument.
“Nope,” Foxglove said as tendrils of flesh began
to form around the bones, “it’s MORE dangerous. I don’t think you can kill this
thing.”
“What makes you think that?” J’Mira asked as she
nocked an arrow into her bow.
“It’s had a sword lodged in its noggin for how
long? And a sword named ‘Doom’, at that! And the second that we pull the damn
thing out, it just leaps up out of the ground?”
“This isn’t a hiding place for the Doom Sword!”
Kitsune explained from her cloud as she made a carving pass with her naginata.
“The Doom Sword is here to keep this thing imprisoned! That’s what the poem in
the stone means!”
“Well, why didn’t they just SAY that?” J’Mira
snapped as her arrow deflected off an eyebrow ridge.
“The poem isn’t a warning!” Zohar said as he
blasted away futilely at the dragon. “It’s probably part of the spell that kept
the dragon down. Besides, a warning probably wasn’t necessary. This place is
hidden and a top secret, so the only people who’d know to come here, would know
better than to yank the damn thing out!”
“That IS - until you came along with your big
ideas,” J’Mira looked sourly at Foxglove.
“Hey, not to worry, I've got another, even
BETTER idea!” Foxglove exulted. “LISTEN UP! Zohar, put that fool thing back
where it was! When the dragon’s dormant again, we cover it up, like all this
never happened! Then we go, find the War Horseman, and feed him the information
as to where the Doom Sword is - less the bit about the dragon, of course. We
lead him here, he pulls the sword free - hey, if you were him, would YOU let
some flunky do the ‘King Arthur’ bit? - and then the Unkillable One here chows
down on him! We get the sword back, put Wyrmy here back to his eternal slumber,
and we’re down one War Horseman, and a lot of his flunkies!”
“It’s a lot hinkier than I like my battle
plans,” Zohar called, “but it’ll have to do for the moment! First problem - I’m
not a warrior! HOW am I supposed to give Big Boy here his magical lobotomy?”
“Pass it over to me!” Kitsune called, “I’m
trained in using blades!” Kit jinked around to the back of the quickly
regenerating dragon’s head to meet with Zohar and accept the Doom sword.
Nice plan - pity it didn’t work.
The dragon-thing whipped its half-flesh-clad
head around, not really bothering to aim. Kitsune barely made it out of the way
by the virtue of her cloud’s nimble speed. Zohar wasn’t as lucky. The broad snout
caught him squarely in the midsection and knocked him off his carpet. Zohar
went flying, and the blow knocked the Doom sword, the Drakylon’s pearl and his
sorcerer’s staff out of his grasp. He landed hard, but scrambled immediately to
his feet and grabbed the first thing that he could find to jab into the
draconic visage that darted for him. Unfortunately, out of sheer habit, he
grabbed for his staff first, and he was aiming it in expectation of blasting
the unholy thing, when he realized that the Drakylon’s pearl would have been a
much better choice. That realization was the absolute worst thing that he could
have done. He reflexively looked for the pearl, when he should have been using
a blast powered by his own energies. The huge maw snapped down around him, and
bisected his torso neatly between the seventh and eight thoracic vertebrae.
As blood geysered from Zohar’s lower half,
Kitsune screamed, “Zohar!” and came at the head with her naginata. She just
barely managed to avoid the snapping jaws, but she did manage to distract the
still regenerating monstrosity for Foxglove.
Foxglove came riding in like the wind, and
snatched up the Drakylon’s Pearl. “J’Mira! Get the Doom Sword!” she yelled as
she tried to distract the dragon-lich further with blasts from the pearl.
“No can do!” J’Mira yelled back. “It’s covering
it too well! I think it knows what we’re gonna try to do!”
“Yeah, well, a few centuries with the Excedrin
Headache from Hell will do that to you,” Foxglove admitted. Then she saw Zohar’s
carpet lying in a heap a bit away from her. “I got an idea!”
“WHY do I get these horrible cramps in my
stomach, every time that I hear her say that?” J’Mira asked the universe.
“Cover me!” Foxglove leaped nimbly off her
unicorn and onto the carpet. Urging the rug up into the air, she zipped around
the dragon-lich’s back, under its flank and managed to snatch up the Doom sword
on the fly.
“FOXY!” Kitsune screamed. “Get the sword to me!”
But it was no use - the dragon-lich managed to keep them from getting together.
Foxglove tried throwing the sword to Kitsune, but the dragon-thing managed to
deflect it in mid-flight.
Foxglove just barely managed to get the sword
back by the lucky stroke of it landing point first. Then she noticed something
- the dragon-lich seemed to be all too interested in getting at the sword
itself. Well, of course! It knew that the Doom sword was the only thing that it
had run into that had managed to put it down - it wanted the threat posed by
the sword removed from whatever equation it was calculating.
But again, it also didn’t seem to be pulling any
real slick moves; it seemed to be operating on pure instinct. Maybe its brain
was still regenerating. It just knew that the sword meant pain and
imprisonment. Maybe she was going about this the wrong way. What would the
Dragon-thing do, if the sword weren’t in its immediate presence? “Hunker down!”
she yelled, “I got an idea!”
“ANOTHER ONE?” Kitsune asked plaintively.
“Just don’t get in its way!” Foxglove steered
the carpet towards the tattered and scorched remnants of the glass spider’s
web. Shit, they’d done too good a job on the glass spiders; if they were a part
of the containment system, she and the others had unwittingly wrecked it. She
looked back, and she could see that the dragon was pausing, its instinct urging
it to track down the source of its ancient pain, its growing intellect warning
against exposing its flank. Foxglove helped the sinewy lizard making up its
half-grown mind with a bolt of fire from the Drakylon’s pearl. The Dragon-lich
rose to the bait and came screaming after her into the odd tunnel.
‘In-fucking-credible,’ Foxglove thought to herself, ‘I’m on a flying carpet,
being followed by an undead (I think) dragon, and I’m not putting the pedal to
the metal, ‘cause its wings haven’t grown back, and I need it to follow me.’
Even as she formed the thought in her head, it
occurred to Foxglove that she didn’t really have a plan. She’d just wanted to
get the Dragon-lich away from J’Mira and Kitsune before she lost another
friend. But what was she gonna do once she got the wyrm-thing away from them?
The damned thing was disaster of Biblical proportions on legs! She could
probably get away from it, but she’d have to shuck the Doom sword in order to
do it. And once she’d done that, the Dragon-lich would turn all of Barrak into
a desolation. And if she were honest with herself, she couldn’t be sure that
she could get free of it, even if she ditched the Doom sword. The damned thing
was even deadlier and more evil than the Drakylon, and she didn’t have a-
-hold it-
-Draklyon-
A sneaky grin spread over Foxglove’s face. Her
chances still weren’t good, but at least now she had a plan.
Chapter 42In Hurt’s Way
When she came darting out from between the twin
cairns, Foxglove was greeted by the entire contingent of the Monastery. Well,
she was, if you stretch ‘greeting’ to include a phalanx of pikemen in heavy
chain with halberds, standing in front of lines of vested monks swinging censors,
followed by another line holding candles chanting, and another line standing
ready with rather hefty scrolls. A final line of men with heavy crossbows
completed the formation. She jinked to the left and managed to get behind one
of the buildings for cover before the crossbow archers could react.
Then the Dragon-Lich stuck its massive head
through the cairns, and the monks forgot all about her. Showing that their
faith wasn’t of the namby-pamby variety, the monks with the pikes surged
forward with their polearms, as their brothers began casting magics from the
scrolls. The Wyrm-thing battered the pikemen aside, ignoring the shower of
crossbow bolts, but not in time. In near perfect unison, the monks with the
scrolls completed chanting the contents of the spells, and twenty-four Bolts of
Divine Retribution came down in a single shattering strike.
Golden lightning lanced down from the heavens
and tore through the Wyrm-thing, searing its flesh and sending it crashing to
the ground in a heap. A muffled cheer rose from the ranks of the monks, which
died as the charred reptilian began regrowing its scaly skin. The
scroll-readers fumbled for their backup copies, and were getting the scrolls
unrolled just as the Dragon-lich began to stumble to its feet. The
scroll-readers launched another volley of Bolts of Divine Retribution, but they
couldn’t get that perfect symmetry this time, and there wasn’t the synergistic
effect of the previous unified strike. The Dragon-lich screamed and stumbled,
but didn’t fall. As it clawed its way through the ranks of the pikemen, and
then censer holders, the candle-bearers showed their own contribution, and the
flickering flames of their tapers rose to become a wave of fire that engulfed
the Wyrm-thing, surviving pikemen and censer-holders alike.
The inferno-wave charred the Dragon-lich’s skull
to the very bone, and the huge abomination faltered. But the naked skull lashed
out at the candle-bearers before they could let go with another wave and
scattered them. The scroll-readers began reading their scrolls as best they
could, synchronization be damned. Bolt of Divine Retribution after Bolt of
Divine Retribution came lancing down, striking as best they could. The monks
did the best they could, fighting over the burned, battered and broken bodies
of their brothers. The Wyrm-thing just waded through them like a bear ignoring
bees defending their honey.
Foxglove watched all of this from Zohar’s flying
carpet, her jaw dragging on the carpet. She gave her plan some serious re-thinking.
Finally, as the scroll-readers used up the last of their Bolts of Divine
Retribution, she came to a decision. It was still a good plan; she didn’t need
it to kill the thing - indeed, how CAN you kill Destruction? You can’t. Even
with Doom itself planted in its noggin, Destruction was only temporarily kept
at by. So, all that she needed, was an opportunity to get Doom back in its
sheath, and her plan seemed as good as anything.
The monks finally broke and ran, leaving
Destruction a clear path toward Foxglove. She headed for the main gate, hoping
that the guards would have the good sense to open them. Then she made a point
of flying just out of the Wyrm-lich’s reach. Maybe if she taunted it enough, it
would put more effort into re-growing its wings than in its brains.
Rising beautifully to the bait, Destruction grew
webs of tissue between the bony appendages and used them to add to its running
speed at first. Foxglove steered Destruction into a thick copse of trees, which
it ripped to flinders in its rage. Finally, she provoked the Dragon-lich into
taking flight, and the chase took to the air. Not wanting the Dragon-thing to
develop its wings for real speed, Foxglove finessed it into a dogfight. She
threw in a ‘Mirror Images’ set of decoys, which it spared any attention at all.
It knew where Doom was, and it would follow it down into the very Pit itself.
Which was exactly what Foxglove wanted.
After enough zipping around, Foxglove steered
the rug into the steepest dive that she could possibly make it do. Destruction
put everything it had into keeping pace. Then, when Foxglove figured that the
carpet couldn’t rise any higher, she put it into as close to a vertical drop as
she dared. Sure enough, the Wyrm-thing dived right after her. Holding onto the
carpet with every ounce of strength that she had, she could just barely manage
to cast an illusion, a version of the distance-foxing illusion that she’d used
on the Draklyon. The ground was now about 500 feet higher than it appeared. She
cut as close to the ground as she dared, and then pulled out of the dive.
Destruction couldn’t pull out, and hit the
ground with a resounding thud. Foxglove spiraled the carpet to shed the
momentum and headed for the Dragon-thing. She got the Doom sword ready. If she
timed it right, Destruction would still be dazed enough for her to-
SHIT! The Wyrm-thing reared up and snapped at
her, barely missing her by inches! Damn, it served her right, for thinking that
that thing operated by anything even resembling the normal laws of nature! She
tried evading it more, but the only thing that even slowed Destruction down,
was weaving through another woods, and ripping up more prime lumber in doing
so. ‘Damn! No wonder the Barrakai were so afraid of this thing!’ Foxglove mused
to herself, rummaging through her brain for another clever plan and coming up
with bupkiss. ‘It would take an ARMY to stop-‘ then J’Mira’s words came back to
her: ‘Armies scare goddamn dragons.’ She grinned her sneaky fox-grin
again. Fortunately, there was no one around to remind her of what had happened
the last time.
Foxglove wasted several precious minutes getting
her bearings back. It was night, and she’d done a lot of twisting around, so it
was hard to tell north from south, or east from west. She took her carpet way
up again, and Destruction followed her again, though not as closely as it had
before. That was bad - it was getting smarter. Maybe it was re-growing its
brain. A hundred feet above the following Lich-wyrm, Foxglove managed to get
sight of two lines of lights and several bright spots of light that suggested
large fires. She swooped down in a more gradual dive in the general direction
of the battle. As she traveled, she wove an illusion around her. An illusion of
a dragon. As she neared the scene of the battle, Foxglove dove down into a wood
to slow down Destruction, which was nipping at the fringe of the carpet.
Between the woods, which did slow the
Lich-dragon down, and her Mirror Images, Foxglove managed to get away from
Destruction, and flew straight up. She got well up, and then swooped down at
the line of lights. As she neared, she could just make out the two braziers
that flanked the Juggernaut as it moved in pursuit of the battle. She could
just make out a double line of horsemen, with a small clutch of riders between
them. Definitely, a traveling array for protecting the warlord. Foxglove
grinned. If she timed this right, she just might be able to take out the War
Horseman and the Juggernaut with the ploy.
She swooped down low, spraying drakylon fire on
the riders. The horses may have been undead, but their equally undead riders
still had a glimmer of the old survival instinct, as they broke enough to give
Foxglove a decent shot. As the Horseman was just beginning to react, she broke
the illusion, and shouted. “HERE! You want this so badly? You can HAVE IT!” She
them threw the Doom sword straight at the War Horseman’s chest.
It was a lovely throw. It would have gone
straight through him, if the War Horseman hadn’t calmly reached over, grabbed
the rider just next to him, and pulled him in front of himself as a living (?)
shield. The Horseman’s unwilling savior stiffened and turned immediately to
dust within his chain mail. Foxglove whipped up another bevy of Mirror Images,
and skedaddled. As she looked over her shoulder, she saw the Horseman pull the
Doom sword from the empty mail hauberk and hold it on high.
Foxglove used her mirror to find Justin and the
Nachonite command behind the Barrakai shield wall. “Foxglove!” Justin shouted,
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, the Unfaithful are rejoicing - the War
Horseman has the Doom sword, and he’s showing off his new toy to all his little
friends.”
“WHAT?” Dralmeres, the Nachonite commander,
sputtered, “THE DOOM SWORD? How did he get his hands on THAT?”
“Oh, I gave it to him.”
The sound of the Nachonite Commander’s ‘WHAT?’
resounded throughout the field.
“WHY?” Justin pleaded. “WHY would you do such a
thing?”
“Oh, this from the man who blew an
over-elaborate and amateurish, but fundamentally workable plan by dragging THAT
out of the armory?” Foxglove glowered at Glory, which was still in Justin’s
hand. Justin was noticeably worse for the wear, but Glory looked like it had
just been polished. “And as for why...five, four, three, two, ONE...” Right on
cue, Destruction came barreling out of the night sky, screaming.
Even in his helmet and armor, you could tell
just by his body language that the Horseman’s reaction to this was something
along the lines of ‘Oh, really, haven’t we seen this trick BEFORE?’
Then Destruction plowed through the mass of
gathered darklings, and it wasn’t funny anymore. The huge Lich-drake clawed its
way through a wall of flesh in its drive to get the Doom sword, and this wall
wasn’t set and ready to repel it. The darklings scattered as best they could,
and the War Horseman set at the dragon-thing with the one thing that had ever
so much as slowed it down - the Doom sword. To give him his due, the Horseman
went at it with a will, and he was inspiring his men with his show of courage.
The darklings began to surround the Lich-wyrm with pikes and shield wall, and
they at least started a plan of containment.
Back with the Nachonites, Dralmeres snarled,
“What have you DONE?”
“Hey, I was improvising!” Foxglove
protested.
“You unleashed the Wyrm of Destruction?”
“Yes! The best way to handle a problem is to
make it someone else’s problem!”
Then Kitsune flew up on her cloud. “Wwhhooo!”
she exulted, looking at the scene of mayhem. “Tell me, Foxy, was this your big
idea, or did you just luck out again, big time?”
“Okay, it wasn’t my FIRST plan,” Foxglove
confessed, “but y’gotta admit - it’s working out nicely. Hey, where’s J’Mira?
And come to think of it, where’s Horndog?”
“Oh, ‘Mira’s coming, unicorn-back. She should be
here soon.”
“What? He’s letting her ride him?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think that he’s exactly happy
about it.” Kit looked out at the mass of confusion a half-mile away. “So what’s
the plan?”
Foxglove rubbed her chin. “Okay, the optimum
solution here is that the dragon destroys the Juggernaut, and as a last ditch
remedy, the Horseman puts Wyrmy there back to sleep by planting the Doom sword
back in its head. If that happens, you Nachonites just charge in and mop them
up before they can restore their ranks.”
“Don’t lecture me Tactics, girl,” Dralmeres
snarled. “What we need is a plan for when Fate plays us all for fools again,
and the War Horseman makes that Drake-lich his personal steed.”
“He’s gotcha there, Red,” Kitsune agreed. “Just
because WE didn’t know about that thing, doesn’t mean that Horsey and his buds
didn’t. And what are the chances that Horsey’s got another mage who
conveniently happens to have has a scroll of Dragon Control, or whatever, on
tap?”
“OR his pet Evil Cleric has something like that
up his over-embroidered sleeve,” Foxglove nodded. “Yeah, that makes way too
much sense.” She looked at the ninjette. “Still, that’s a pretty major working.
What say we take measures to make this job as hard as possible?”
“HOLD ON!” Dralmeres roared. “You’ve done ENOUGH
damage for one night!”
“Sorry, general!” Foxglove called as she and
Kitsune lifted off. “But seeing as how I’m not a part of your command, I’m not
obligated to obey your orders!”
“So, do we do this the simple
way,” Kitsune asked, “or, do you have another plan?”
“What IS this?” Foxglove asked the universe.
“Gang up on redheads night?”
“No, it’s ‘remind the Mad Thinker that this
ISN’T a computer game, and people are getting KILLED’ night. Hey, heads up!
Down there... Looks like someone’s trying to pull something...” From way up,
they could just make out that a squad of darklings had formed a protective
circle. A light went up.
“Just a sec...” Foxglove pulled out her mirror.
“Someone’s set up a tripod lecturn. A guy in a really tacky robe with lots of
feathers and jewels and bones is setting a really BIG book up.”
“He’s not gonna start reading ‘How to make
friends and influence people’, Foxy!” Kitsune snapped. “I’ll jolt him
with some lighting, you grab the book, and I’ll cover your exit.” They went
down, and for once it went off as planned. Kitsune even took the head off the
reader on her way out as a bonus. Foxglove covered their exit with some
drakylon fire, and then they were out of the range of the Horseman’s archers.
As they hung in the air, Foxglove asked, “So,
how long do you think we can keep those two at each other, before someone does
something stupid?”
“Or worse,” Kitsune amended her, “one of them
does something smart? Hey, where’s the book?”
“I’m sitting on it. In this nutzo world, I don’t
wanna go reading any books that the likes of them would have on their coffee
table. Someone might’a snuck the Necronomicon in somehow.”
“What’s this?” Kitsune said in a fruity
faux-British accent, “It bally well looks like Jerry is up to some mischief.”
The acolytes of the Juggernaut shrine had lit
all the braziers and were heaping the coals high with everything that could
burn, sending the flames high. The Anti-Cleric was screaming something, and
cutting himself with a nasty looking obsidian knife, between impaling slaves on
the spikes that surrounded the revolting idol.
“Oh, this SO does not look good,” Foxglove
moaned. “He’s gearing up for something really nasty. And from what happened at
the Plandury Bridge, we can be reasonably certain that neither your lightning
nor the fire from this pearl is gonna so much as slow him down.”
“Very well, then it’s hunting time. TALLY-HO!”
Kitsune peeled off with her cloud and dived at the Juggernaut, shinobi-zui
blade extended.
“Oh, lovely,” Foxglove groaned, “the last charge
of the RAF...” But she drew her sword and dived right after her. Acolytes threw
themselves in front of the High Priest, and Kitsune was almost pulled off her
cloud when her shinobi-zui imbedded itself. Not that the High Priest
appreciated their sacrifice. As the acolyte staggered from the wound, the High
Priest grabbed him, hefted him over his head in a display of undead might, and
chucked him into the maw of the blasphemous icon. The jaws closed and crushed
the acolyte, and swallowed him with a juicy gulp.
Then the Juggernaut was wreathed in dark flame.
“Aaawww...Shit!” Foxglove moaned, “The other shoe is dropping -
with an atomic bomb in it.” The arms of the huge idol began to thrash about
furiously. Ponderously, it shifted from its kneeling position, one leg at a
time. It stepped off its rollered platform and began a slow, earth-pounding
dance, in rather the ritualized style of Balinese temple dancers. As it
thrashed around, it grew and its movements became more fluid and sure.
“Foooxxxyyy...” Kitsune moaned, “what the hell’s
going on?”
“Well, unless I miss my guess, we’ve just been
graced - if that’s the word - by a visitation from Vorax the Devourer in
person."
Destruction, the Wyrm-lich, seemed to be aware
that it was being upstaged and its writhing rampage through the ranks of the
Army of Darkness became more measured and defensive. Destruction and Vorax
regarded each other over a heap of broken and shredded undead. Dragon-thing and
Demon-god shifted their balance and tensed for battle.
The War Horseman seemed to sense that the he was
stuck between two titanic forces that were only peripherally aware of him at
best. He waved the Doom sword in the air and called for his forces to pull
back. The darklings pulled away, but doing so in an orderly manner cost them
precious time. On some imperceptible cue, Vorax and Destruction went at each
other, and the air rang with the fury of their collision. An entire division of
darklings was caught between them, and was crushed by the impact. The surviving
darklings were thrown to the ground, and those that weren’t, stayed on their
feet by breaking ranks. The War Horseman spurred his steed, and waved the Doom
sword to bolster his troops with both the promise of its protection and the
threat of its displeasure.
Even a half-mile away, you could make out the
impression that the Doom sword was having. And Glory wasn’t happy.
*****
As they flew over the scene of the combat, a
‘Dragon Ball Z’ quip was coming to Foxglove’s lips, when a chill ran up her
spine. “What’s the matter, Foxy? See an opening?”
“No,” Foxglove shuddered, “I just got one of
those ‘someone walking on your grave’ feelings.” She dug at her ear with a
finger. “And I got this really annoying buzzing in my ear.” Then she realized
that the buzzing wasn’t in her ear. She followed the sound to the edge of the
battle, where a chevron of light had appeared. The chevron moved from the edge
of battle, towards where the darklings were regrouping.
And then Foxglove could just make out the tinny
whine over the muted roar of the battle: ‘Glory, glory, gloooo-reee!’
“Oh NO,” Foxglove moaned, “It CAN’T be! Not in
one NIGHT!” Foxglove pulled out her mirror and peered into it.
*****
The Norman Charge was one of the most fearsome
maneuvers in military history, a surging wave of soldier, steed and steel, all
coming together to deliver thousands of pounds of force at over thirty miles an
hour on an area the size of a man’s thumb. The Norman Charge ripped through
almost everything that was placed in front of it for almost 300 years. The
Nachonites had added their own distinctive touch to this - the tips of their
lances burned with holy fire, and what the impact of the charge didn’t smash to
pieces, the divine energy would sear to ashes.
The Nachonites’ charge caught them squarely so
that if the Horseman retreated, he’d be leading his men into the field of
devastation caused by Vorax and Destruction’s private battle. His forces were
in the worse combination of array and disarray, too loose to form an effective
pike-and-shield wall, but too tightly packed to scatter and flow around the
charge. The wedge dug into their forces, burning away the undead like dry grass
before a raging fire.
*****
“Aaahhh...ssshhhiiittt...”
Foxglove moaned.
“What’s the matter, Foxy?” Kitsune asked. “It
looks like they’re chewing up the badguys bigtime!”
“It’s a cluster fuck!” Foxglove snapped. But she
immediately relented. “Oh, right - Jam-pot’s the one who’s a Poli Sci student.
A Norman Charge is only a shieldwall breaker. It’s only any good, if you have
infantry on hand to go in after the cavalry breaks the enemy line. If the
infantry isn’t there picking up the slack, the cavalry can get caught in the
enemy ranks and chewed up. And Rysmarek’s pikes are on the other side of the
river, and the Barrak house troops are still back there without orders, I’ll
wager. By the time that one of their officers gets the nerve up to go send his
men in there, Justin and the Nachonites could be half-chewed up, and they’d be
completely chewed up by the time that the house troops actually GOT there.”
“Well, what if Justin and the Nachonites manage
to get free of the darklings? They could-”
“Kit, neither Justin nor Dralmeres are in charge
of the Nachonites at the moment. Glory is. And the paths of Glory lead naught
but to the grave.”
“Okay, aside from a chance at throwing a classy
literary reference around, what are you talking about?” Kit said wryly.
“Glory! That thing doesn’t care who wins, or if
Justin gets killed, or anything! If anything, it would probably prefer that
Justin die gloriously right here. It’s a stainless steel drama queen from Hell,
and all that it wants is to hog the spotlight. And right now, the biggest
spotlight - after Destruction and Vorax, of course, is on Doom. It’s gonna drag
Justin into a man to man fight with the War Horseman, and the Doom sword!”
Chapter 43 Where
Egos Dare
Justin’s wedge crashed into the mass of living
darklings with a satisfying jolt. Their lances snapped, as lances are apt to do
when then they absorb that much impact. Military sense would have dictated that
the Nachonites wheel their mounts around and retreat to let the infantry mop
up. But neither military sense nor discipline was calling the cadence - Glory
was. ‘Glory, glory, glooorrryyyy!’ Despite being so off tune that even
from a mile away Avon Galliard was wincing, Glory’s siren song inspired Justin
and the Nachonites to further heights of glorious slaughter. Throwing their
lances, broken or not, aside, the Nachonites drew their swords and started to
hack away at everything that they could lay their blades on. Was it not War?
Was it not Victory? Was it not Glory?
Justin heard a voice looming over the clangorous
din of battle, and he turned to see the War Horseman, flaming sword banner
flying proudly from his saddle, rallying his men to order. The Horseman held
Doom up high, where the darklings could see it, and know that Doom rode on
their side. Justin didn’t need to be urged on by Glory to know that the War
Horseman was the key to this battle. The Horseman probably had lieutenants and
other people who could take over the leadership from him, but losing so
prominent and proven a leader had broken better legions than these. Justin held
Glory up on high, gave a lusty battle cry, and spurred Thunder in the direction
of the Horseman.
Together, leaving even the Nachonites behind,
Justin, Glory and Thunder plowed through a sea of unclean flesh toward the
Horseman. The Horseman heard Glory’s song and saw the flashing blade coming
toward him. And, even through his occluding helmet, he smiled.
The Horseman steadied his unbreathing mount, and
gestured for his shield. His guards saw their master’s reaction to Justin’s
approach, and cleared away from him, to give him room to practice his craft.
The darkling legionnaires noticed this as well, and ebbed away from both of the
great champions. They formed a clearing for the battle of champions that
everyone knew was about to happen.
For a moment, the two paladins paused,
considering each other. Almost as one, they presented their blades in a salute.
And then, on an unspoken agreement, they spurred their steeds at each other.
They met with a crash like thunder, and went at each other with absolutely no
restraint. The Doom sword battered down on Justin’s shield, which flared with
divine refuge. There was no such dramatic response when Glory hammered away at
the Horseman’s shield, though Glory did do a better job of carving away at it. Again
and again, they went at each other, pitting their wills and faith against each
other.
Then the Horseman showed what he was really made
of. Risking a slash from Glory, the Horseman bound Justin’s shield with his
own, and instead of striking at Justin, he stabbed at Thunder’s neck. Thunder
reared in pain, and the Horseman struck at the horse’s undefended underside,
gutting the beast. Thunder went down, taking Justin with him.
A great roar of victory rose up from the
darkling legions. The War Horseman readied himself to strike Justin down when
he pulled his leg out from under Thunder’s side. But Justin decided that two
could play at that game. Only bothering to partially pull himself free, Justin
put everything into a strike at the Horseman’s steed’s belly. But trying to
disembowel a dead horse is foolish; he slashed at the girth-band that kept the
Horseman’s saddle on the horse-lich’s back. The Horseman took a swipe at
Justin, but his lack of a secure seat turned the blow into a graceless
pratfall. By the time that the Horseman got to his feet, Justin was out from
under Thunder’s piteously whinnying body and ready to resume the attack.
Again and again they went at each other, too
evenly matched for either to take the advantage. Then the War Horseman changed
his tactics again. He melodramatically dropped his shield, and presented the
Doom sword with both hands in a challenge. Justin paused, but Glory pressed the
attack! Attack! What is Doom, before eternal Glory?
Justin slung his shield over his back, and held
Glory before him with both hands. And again they went at it. This time, the
superiority was obvious. Doom hammered at Glory, brutally knocking the trivial
thing about like a waterfront bully beating up a perfumed dandy. Finally, as if
tired of a game, the Doom sword knocked Glory from Justin’s hand. As Justin
scrambled for his shield, the War Horseman kicked his legs out from under him.
Justin tried to get to his feet, only to face the War Horseman holding the Doom
sword over his head with both hands, setting for a killing blow.
Then a torrent of purplish flame flowed down
from above onto the Horseman’s head. The Horseman was burned but only slightly.
Still, he broke his strike to face the new threat from above. Which was all
that Kitsune needed. She flew at him from the far side of where Foxglove had
struck from, and emptied the espergium of Water of Retribution into the
Horseman’s face through the slit in his helmet. While the Horseman wasn’t
immediately destroyed as advertised, he dropped the Doom sword and clutched at
his face in mortal agony. Justin seized the Doom sword and with barely a
thought, swung it with both hands in a deadly arc at his arch-foe’s head. The
Doom sword took the Horseman’s head off as cleanly as snipping the bud from a
rose. The helmet bounced away from the scene, and the Horseman’s armor was
empty, save for the dust of ages.
Another roar rose up from the darkling legion,
but this time it was a roar of outrage. Outsiders had interrupted a battle of
champions! How DARE they!
As the circle of darklings closed in on Justin,
Foxglove swooped down on Zohar’s carpet, sending a spray of drakylon fire at
one side of the collapsing circle. “Justin! Get on!”
“But...but... Glory... It’s out there
somewhere!”
“Great! Good riddance to bad rubbish!”
From behind, Kitsune pushed Justin onto
Foxglove’s carpet, and they were up and away before the dark wave of morally
outraged evil fell on them.