Margaret Weis - Dragons of a Lost Star

Soldiers on the right flanks began to shout and point. Gerard turned to look to see what was happening.

A thick fog rolled out of the west. The strange fog advanced swiftly, roiling over the grass, obliterating all it touched, blotted out the stars, swallowed the moon. Those watching it could see nothing within the fog, nothing behind it. Reaching the city’s western walls, the fog boiled over them. The towers on the west side of Solanthus vanished from sight as thoroughly as if they had never been built. Faint cries came from that part of the city, but they were muffled, and no one could make out what was going on.

Watching the advance of this strange and unnatural fog, Lord Tasgall halted the charge and, with a wave of his hand, summoned his officers to him. Lord Ulrich and Lord Nigel left the ranks and galloped forward. Gerard edged near enough to overhear what they were saying.

“There is sorcery at work here.” Lord Tasgall’s voice was grim,

“We’ve been duped. Lured out of the city. I say we sound the retreat.”

“My lord,” protested Lord Ulrich, chuckling, “it is a heavy dew, nothing more.”

“Heavy dew!” repeated Lord Tasgall, with a snort of disgust. “Herald, sound the retreat!”

The herald lifted his horn to his lips, gave the signal to retreat. The Knights reacted with discipline, did not give way to panic. Rounding their horses, they began to ride in column toward the city. The foot soldiers wheeled about, headed in orderly march back to the walls. The Knights advanced to cover the footmen’s retreat. The archers were now visible on the walls, arrows nocked.

Yet Gerard could see—everyone could see—that no matter how fast they moved, the strange fog would engulf them before the closest soldier could reach the safety of the sheltering walls. The fog slid over the ground with the rapidity of a cavalry charging at full gallop. Gerard stared at the fog as it drew nearer. Stared at it, blinked, rubbed his eyes. He must be seeing things.

This was not fog. This was not a “heavy dew.” These were Mina’s reinforcements.

An army of souls.

An army of conscripts, for the souls of the dead were trapped in the world, unable to depart. As each soul left its body that had bound it to this world, it knew an instant’s elation and exultation and freedom. That feeling was quashed almost immediately. An Immortal Being seized the spirit of the dead and gave it to know an immense hunger, a hunger for magic.

“Bring me the magic, and you will be free,” was the promise. A promise not kept. The hunger could never be satiated. The hunger grew in proportion to what it fed on. Those souls struggling to free themselves found there was nowhere to go.

Nowhere to go until they received the summons.

A voice, a human voice, a mortal voice, Mina’s voice called to them.

“Fight for the One God, and you will be rewarded. Serve the One God, and you will be free.”

Desperate, suffering unending torments, the souls obeyed. They formed no ranks for their numbers were too great. The soul of the goblin, its hideous visage recreated from the soul’s memory of its mortal shell, barred teeth of mist, grappled for a sword of gossamer and answered the call. The soul of a Solamnic Knight that had long ago lost all notions of honor and loyalty answered the call. The souls of goblin and Knight walked side by side and knew not what they attacked or what they fought. Their only thought was to please the Voice and, by pleasing, escape. A fog it seemed at first to the mortals who faced it, but Mina called upon the One God to open mortal eyes to see what previously had been kept from their sight. The living were constrained to look upon the dead. The fog had eyes and mouths. Hands reached out from the fog. Voices whispered from the fog that was not fog at all but a myriad souls, each holding a memory of what it had been, a memory traced in the ethers with the magical phosphoresence of moonlight and foxfire. The face of each soul bore the horror of its existence, an existence that knew no rest, knew only endless seeking and the hopeless desolation of not ever finding. The souls held weapons, but the weapons were mist and moonglow and could not kill or maim. The souls wielded a single weapon, a most horrible weapon. Despair.

At the sight of the army of trapped souls, the foot soldiers threw down their weapons, heedless to the furious shouts of their officers. The knights guarding their flanks looked at the dead and shuddered in horror. Their instinct was to do the same as the soldiers, to give way to the feelings of terror and panic. Discipline held them for the moment, discipline and pride, but when each turned to look at the other, uncertain what to do, each saw his own fear reflected back to him in the faces of his comrades. The ghostly army entered the enemy camp. The souls flitted restlessly among the tents and the wagons. Gerard heard the panicked neighing of horses and now, at last, sounds of movement from the camp—calls of officers, the clash of steel. Then all sound was swallowed up by the souls, as if jealous of sounds their dead mouths could not make. The enemy camp vanished from sight. The army of souls flowed toward the city of Solanthus.

Thousands of mouths cried out in silent torment, their whispered shouts a chill wind that froze the blood of the living. Thousands and thousands of dead hands reached out to grasp what they could never hold. Thousands upon thousands of dead feet marched across the ground and bent not a single blade of grass.

Officers fell prey to the same terror as their men, gave up trying to keep their men in order. The foot soldiers broke ranks and ran, panic-stricken, for the walls, the faster shoving aside or knocking down the slower in order to reach safety.

The walls afforded no sanctuary. A moat is no deterrent to those who are already dead, they have no fear of drowning. Arrows cannot halt the advance of those who have no flesh to pierce. The ghostly legions slid beneath the wicked points of the portcullis and swarmed over the closed gates, flitted through the murder holes and glided through the arrow slits. Behind the army of souls came an army of the living. Soldiers of Mina’s command had kept hidden inside their tents, waiting for the army of souls to advance, to terrify the enemy and drive him into panicked chaos. Under cover of this dread army, Mina’s soldiers emerged from their tents and raced to battle. Their orders were to attack the Solamnic Knights when they were out in the open, isolated, cut-off, a prey to horror. Gerard tried to halt the soldiers’ flight as they trampled each other, fought to escape the ghost army. He rode after the men, yelling for them to stand their ground, but they ignored him, kept running. Everything disappeared. The souls of the dead surrounded him. Their incorporeal forms shimmered with an incandescent whiteness that outlined hands and arms, feet and fingers, clothing and armor, weapons or other objects that had been familiar to them in life. They closed in on him, and his horse screamed in terror. Rearing back on its hind legs, the horse dumped Gerard on the ground and dashed off, vanishing into a swirling fog o: grasping, ghostly hands.