Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

"The tower of the Breleshva Bridge is breached, and the enemy is entering the city."

Zisgymond took a step backward. "With your permission, General, I go to take personal charge of the defenses there. There is a chance we can keep them bottled up in the Plistina District. Fighting house to house, street to street, we can prevent them from flanking and taking any of the other bridges from behind."

That was the great strategic danger, of course. Once across the river, the enemy would be able to fan out and attack the defenders of the other bridges from the rear. This posed the danger of the city's defenses collapsing completely. Of course, the castle and the plains beyond could still be defended, but glorious, beautiful Kyll-Bar-Bennid, city of elegant avenues and a thousand spires, would be lost to pillage and destruction. It was a scenario that threatened to break Goughfree's heart.

They could only pray for the success of Zisgymond's efforts. If anyone could mount a successful counterattack under such rapidly developing desperate circumstances, it was the senior officer from far Xolchis.

Zisgymond had been gone for only a few moments when a courier arrived, breathless and excited. Her expression bespoke good news, a commodity that had been sorely lacking since that morning's sodden sunrise. Whatever it was, Goughfree knew, it did not involve the struggle below. Warriors of the Horde continued to pour through the captured Breleshva tower, fanning out into the city streets behind. Already, tongues of flame and the shadows of smoke from other incipient blazes could be seen rising from homes and businesses that the Totumakk had begun to put to the torch.

Still, any good news was welcome. Absently, he acknowledged the courier's salute. "Yes, what is it?" Perhaps a prediction of worse weather to come, he hoped. A heavy downpour might help to slow the enemy's alarmingly swift advance.

The courier swallowed as she struggled to catch her breath. She was very young, Goughfree saw, and quite attractive. No time for such fond contemplations now, he reminded himself sternly.

"Noble s-sirs," she gasped as droplets of mist pearled her exhausted face, "the convocation of the Gowdland mages has deferred all action upon receiving word that Susnam Evyndd has just entered the city!"

Goughfree's eyes widened. For him, this amounted to a shout of exultation. Other members of the general staff were not so restrained. Their reactions to this news ranged from a throwing of arms joyously into the air to one colonel who fell to his knees, overcome with emotion.

The few wizards of the Gowdlands who had been recruited for the defense of the city had so far been unable to come up with a coordinated response to the attacks of the Horde. Throughout the battle, they had remained huddled within the castle keep, casting runes and seeking otherworldly inspiration. Now the news that the greatest of them all, the most celebrated and distinguished master of the necromantic arts in all the known kingdoms, was inside the city should serve to strengthen the spines of soldier and scholar alike.

It did not mean he was there to help, Goughfree cautioned himself, but it was hard to imagine why else he might have come. Surely he had not journeyed all the way to Kyll-Bar-Bennid simply to witness and observe its destruction!

"Now we have something to fight back with!" The captain of foot who spoke thrust his clenched fist forward. "Magic with which to counter magic!" He gestured contemptuously in the direction of the looming keep. "A wizard who will do battle with more than mystified mutterings. A mage of action."

"Great magic, too, if it is truly Susnam Evyndd." Another officer regarded the courier expectantly.

Eyes blinking as she gasped for air amid the cloaking mist, the young rider nodded vigorously as she swore. "It is truly he, noble sirs. I saw him myself, when he pulled back the curtain of his palanquin to peer out and gauge the weather."

Raundel was nodding slowly. "I have heard that his is not a countenance to be mistaken for another's." He turned to the nearest waiting couriers. "Pass the word to all defending officers that the celebrated wizard Susnam Evyndd is in the city, and will soon be involved in the fight to preserve it from the enemy." Anticipation in defense of morale was no sin, the general believed.

They were waiting, all of them except Zisgymond, when the great man finally arrived. He was dressed simply, in a manner belying his status, when he finally ascended the last step and stood among them atop the parapet. Much shorter than Goughfree had expected, the wizard strode immediately to the overlook and stood there surveying the mist-shrouded chaos of combat. Clad in shirt of plain homespun and pants of gray poplin tucked into calf-high boots of dramunculi leather, he was of ordinary build. But his face bore the scars of a lifetime of doing battle with the unknown and powerful, his eyes did not water, and his voice cleaved the dank air with the assurance of one who knows, if not All, at least a good deal more than his fellow beings were capable of comprehending. It exuded an unshakable, almost jaded self-assurance.

"When I heard what was transpiring, I got here as fast as I could." His tone indicated frustration at the delay, as if he had been personally affronted by Time itself. "I see where your problems lie. We will deal with them now."

Without hesitation or fear of the great height, he scrambled swiftly up onto the rim of the parapet. No one dared move to hold him back, or voice a warning that would clearly not be heeded. As the wizard lifted his arms, the officers of the general staff did not have to be told to step back.

Then Susnam Evyndd began to speak, addressing the unseen in a voice that boomed out over the city like a reassuring balm.

"MALORIAN NAR MACUSCO! SETHIN PAIS TAAL RA!"

The wizard's words rolled over and down the sides of the fortress and the high hill on which it stood like a peal of thunder emerging from the bowels of an arriving storm. It swept out and over clashing armies and howling warriors and echoed from the far banks of the swift-flowing Drimaud. Hearing it, soldiers of the Gowdlands looked up. Seeing a brightness beginning to coalesce on the rim of the fortress wall, piercing the omnipresent drizzle with its sharp radiance, some recognized the individual standing tall in its midst, and began to cheer. Meanwhile the masses of the attacking Horde blinked, and hesitated.

Lightning, white and pure, leaped from the billowing refulgence that had formed above the castle. In a great irregular arc, the angry bolt plunged downward to strike in the midst of the attacking Totumakk. It struck the bespectacled warlock of the bulbous red hat and, without ceremony or preamble, pierced him from front to back. A startled look transformed his supremely repulsive countenance. Slowly and without a word, sorceral or otherwise, he toppled from his seat.

Seeing this, the defenders of the Breleshva Bridge took heart and redoubled their efforts, quickly bringing a halt to the enemy advance. Once more, the well-placed shells of the Shandrac Thunder began to land unimpeded among the advancing Horde, raising havoc in their ranks and preventing reinforcements from surging across the bridge.

A second bolt of mage-bred energy demolished the porcine sorcerer, who squealed in terror as his feeble attempts to deflect the necromantic blow came to naught. Methodically working his way downstream, Susnam Evyndd next slew the third sorcerer. Each time their mystic protector was lost, the line of enemy Horde relying on him faltered. Already, the defenders of the Salmisti and Zhisbrechar Bridges were driving their attackers back across the Drimaud, recovering lost ground stone by blood-soaked stone.

Now only the four-armed warlock remained to shield the last of the enemy's attacking columns. As the wizard Evyndd was preparing to deliver himself of a fourth thunderbolt, the colonel of horse drew the attention of her fellow staff members to a spreading commotion among the Horde on the far bank. Something was emerging from the forest. It was large enough so that its general shape and size could be made out even through the light drizzle.