Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

The king knew beyond any doubt that it was Willim the Black who had created, who led the rebellion. Beyond the identity of his slain agent, the proof could be found in the spells used against the royal troops, including the violent explosions of fire and lightning, the lethal blasts of thunderous meteor showers, and the searing magic missiles that had scourged the ranks of his loyal soldiers. No other but the eyeless Theiwar wizard was capable of such powerful enchantments, of dispatching such magically skilled agents.

Not to mention the foul black minion.

The king had been driven to his lofty redoubt, a platform carved around the circumference of a stout stone pillar that extended all the way to the ceiling dome over Norbardin. Indeed, the elevation was such that he was poised more than a hundred feet above the level of the great plaza, while the ceiling of the top of the cavernous chamber was only twenty or thirty feet higher than his head. The pillar itself was hollow, with the prayer platform and other ramparts lower on the shaft accessible by a wide, spiraling stairway. Firing platforms stood at many levels within the tower walls. Narrow slits in the thick stone walls allowed defenders to shoot from those platforms in all directions, while offering good protection to any return fire from attackers below.

It was clear to Jungor that his forces were losing the battle, even though fighting still raged around all of the palace environs. The royal troops were trying to enter the palace, but many-perhaps a thousand-remained trapped outside the main gate, where they fought with the desperation of cornered animals against the rebels that closed in from three sides. With commendable courage, General Ragat was trying to organize the defenders, brandishing his own silver shield as a proud badge of his status, his courage.

“Shields out!” he barked to those on the left. “Raise your pikes!” he commanded the spear-carrying dwarves on the right. “Stand fast there,” he encouraged the swordsmen in the middle.

For some minutes, it looked as if they might be able to hold the gate. While the line was stabilized, General Ragat came through a portal and scrambled up a stairway to a higher platform, where he could benefit from a better view of the frenzied fighting. Even more of the king’s troops surged across the courtyard and out the gates, reinforcing the brave pocket of defenders and blocking the retreat of those with faltering courage.

Then: butchery and disaster! Willim the Black was there, standing on a broken cart behind the rank of his troops. The Black Robe pointed at the knot of defenders and cast a terrible spell. Even from on high, the king could see the tiny pebble of brightness, like a marble of pure, hot flame, that floated in almost leisurely fashion toward the heart of the battle, past the rebel troops and into the middle of the defending ranks.

The king could only watch with horror as a searing, brilliant fireball exploded in the middle of that tightly packed mass of his loyalists. He heard the screams and, in moments, smelled the seared flesh as the powerful wizard urged his rebels forward into the charred and blackened swath where so many of Stonespringer’s soldiers had died.

Led by the few survivors of the Black Cross company, the attackers pushed through the gate, carrying the battle into the courtyards directly below the prayer tower. A desultory volley of crossbow bolts flew from the arrow slits on the walls of that tower, the missiles plunging haphazardly into the throng of dwarves fighting their way through the palace gates. More of the king’s troops lined the outer walls, but there, too, the rebels scrambled upward. Magical fireballs-not so terrible as Willim the Black’s apocalyptic incineration, but still deadly-blossomed here and there as nimble Klar and Hylar climbed ropes and lifted ladders, allowing them to seize the positions scoured by fire.

The king could see that the most deadly threat to the defenders was the hulking black minion, the magical creature summoned by the enemy wizard. The evil being seemed to be impervious to normal weapons, and its talons and fists punched through the royal troops wherever they dared to stand and face it down. Brave dwarves were smashed to the ground, their armored helmets, breastplates, and shields crushed and deformed by the marauding beast. Others were cast into the air, their torn and bleeding bodies becoming missiles in their own right, smashing into their former comrades, disrupting ranks, and terrorizing those troops who were already starting to waver in the face of the horror.

Everywhere across the half mile of plaza he could see, deep into the streets of Norbardin where they led way from the great square, and around the palace walls, dead and dying dwarves sprawled. It was a panorama of blood and severed limbs, and above it all could be heard the pathetic moaning of those warriors too badly injured to crawl away to safety, though unable, at least yet, to escape into the stillness of death. The battle seemed to have no form or focus anymore: it was just random groups of dwarves trying to slaughter other scattered dwarves. One pocket of rebels was surrounded inside the wall, but they cut down every one of the king’s soldiers who tried to approach them. Beyond the palace, loyal warriors fought individually and in pairs, often taking on ten or twenty of the attackers, fighting on long after any hope of victory, or survival, was gone.

The king groaned in despair. He saw General Ragat mustering some of the elite Royal Division at the gates to the keep, within the palace walls. The loyal dwarves were fighting furiously, with the rebels inching closer on all sides. It seemed only a matter of moments before they’d be overwhelmed and the attackers would surge into the palace proper.

Then everything Jungor Stonespringer had worked for, the purity of the dwarf peoples, the restoration of the true law of Reorx, his own primacy, would end.

The king’s heart was proud almost to bursting at the valiant courage of his loyal troops. The dwarves of Norbardin stood bravely in the face of the horrific onslaught, but they had insufficient weapons and inadequate tactics to counter the threat of such powerful spells. They had no solution to the depredations of the black minion. How had Reorx failed him when the nation was so nearly cleansed of unholy influence? When righteousness, as decreed by Jungor Stonespringer, was so close to prevailing?

“My master! My lord! Strike them all down!” the monarch screamed from his prayer tower. “Slay them! Kill them! Let the stones feast on their blood!”

But the stones, the mountain, the world itself gave no reply.

Jungor wept as he beheld the fate of the loyal dwarves who served him, but it was starkly, appallingly clear that such bravery by trained and untrained alike would be no match for the lethally armed and thoroughly obsessed mercenaries of the rebel armies.

He spotted good Ragat Kingsaver stalking among his men, exhorting the defenders to greater efforts, and the monarch watched in awe as a few dozen wounded garrison troops stood shoulder to shoulder to try to halt the attack of one hundred Klar berserkers. For the moment the keep would hold, but a whole company of Hylar spilled over the palace wall and burst into the main storerooms. Within minutes smoke billowed from the smashed doorways as a year’s worth of food supplies were ignited.

“Ragat, my general,” the king said softly, his voice more of a moan than a cry. “Would that you could save me again!”

Ragat Kingsaver’s arm felt as heavy as lead. His vision was blurred, obscured by his own sweat and by the spattered blood of the many dwarves he had slain during the endless battle. Still, he pressed forward to take his place in the line, cutting down a leering Klar that charged toward him with an upraised axe. The royal soldiers took heart from their leader’s example, and in a frenzy of swordplay, they drove back the latest press of attackers. For a moment, the skirmish settled into almost a lull as the nearby rebels fell back from the courageous veterans guarding the door of the royal keep.