Richard Baker - Farthest Reach

A brilliant stroke of lightning flashed overhead, followed by a peal of thunder. Seiveril looked up at once, and saw in the fading brilliance the shape of a great, winged monster wheeling overhead. He glimpsed a dark figure astride the flying monster, a staff clutched in his hands. The Zhentilar sky mage hurled another blast of lightning down at the Grimmar off to his right, but then a pair of Eagle Knights streaked down out of the dark skies, lances couched. The monster croaked and turned away as a furious melee erupted in the skies over the elves’ march.

“Well, I didn’t really think we would reach the camp undetected,” Seiveril muttered. “Adresin, wind your horn! Now is the time for speed!”

In the crude earthworks ahead a flat iron gong began to sound, beating an alarm. But a moment later it was drowned out by the high, clear ringing of dozens of elven horns. From the Crusade came a great roar in answer, and the elves and Dalesfolk broke into a run, hurrying to cross the last few hundred yards of ground before the Zhents could fully man their palisade.

A barrage of battle-magic blasted out from the Zhentilar camp, streaking fireballs and scathing ice storms, but Jorildyn and the other battle-mages were ready for that. They quickly countered most of the Zhentish magic, dispelling deadly invocations or raising magical shields to ward off battle spells. Many of the Zhentish spells faltered, broken on the elven defenses, but a few streaked through and detonated amid the onrushing elf and human soldiers. Horses screamed in the cold air, and battle cries became shrieks of pain, but the elves’ rush swept on unbroken. From a dozen places in the elven lines mages halted their advance for a step to reply with spells of their own, scouring the enemy earthworks.

“Archers!” cried Seiveril. “Cover the ramparts!”

Trained to fire on the move, elf archers began to shower the palisade with a silver storm of arrows. Even though the Zhentilar rushing up to take up station behind their staked ditch-and-berm were well hidden by their earthworks, all an elf archer needed was a glimpse of a foe to send an arrow winging his way with uncanny accuracy. Seiveril was close enough to see bands of gnoll archers gathering behind the ramparts to fire back, as companies of ogres, bugbears, orcs, and black-clad human pikemen streamed up to defend their ramparts. But they were slow to form ranks, and several large gaps beckoned, places where Zhentil Keep’s soldiers had not yet reached their posts or elven battle-magic had seared the ramparts clear.

We have them! Seiveril thought, and he started to give Adresin the order to charge.

But at that moment the air all around Seiveril and his guard rippled and boomed with dozens upon dozens of sulfurous belches. Demons and devils by the score appeared all around Seiveril’s banner, grinning with needle fangs, eyes ablaze with hellish glee as they teleported to attack Seiveril’s standard. Elves surrounding Seiveril cried out in panic, and horses screamed in sudden terror.

“’Ware the demons!” cried Adresin. “To the banner! To the banner!”

The center of the charging elven line was thrown into chaos. Seiveril found himself beset by a pair of insectlike mezzoloths, fearsome hellspawn who carried great tridents of iron. He danced his mount aside from the stabbing points, and barked out the words of a prayer that unsummoned one of the monsters, hurling it back into the foul netherworld from which it had come.

The other monster lunged and nearly impaled the elflord with a low belly thrust that Seiveril barely blocked with his shield. He reared his warhorse and battered at the monster with his courser’s deadly silver-shod hooves, then wheeled around and caught the dazed yugoloth off-guard, smashing at it with his holy mace. The weapon burned with a pure white light as it struck demonflesh, and the mezzoloth’s beak clicked and hissed in pain.

The mezzoloth reeled back out of reach and vanished in the confusion of the fray. Seiveril looked around desperately, trying to see what had become of the attack. The Zhentish ramparts were only sixty yards away, and he could see that on both the right and the left that the wood elves and the Dalesfolk were already sweeping up and over, laying down a storm of arrows. Whole companies of elven infantry from the center continued their attack as well, already ahead of the demons who had suddenly teleported into their midst. And behind him the Moon Knights and Knights of the Golden Star were falling upon Sarya’s demonic minions. Seiveril had wanted to use them to wreck the camp, but they had to drive off the demons and devils, and Ferryl Nimersyl knew it.

A gout of fearsome hellfire washed over Seiveril, and he staggered in his saddle as his mount reared and screamed. The elflord wrestled with the animal, speaking a quick healing prayer to salve his mount’s injuries, and looked up just in time to catch the heavy blow of a nycaloth’s brazen sword on his shield. The hulking monster snapped at him with its awful maw, and caught Seiveril’s right arm in its teeth. Elven plate crumpled in the force of its bite, and Seiveril cried out as the foul fangs pierced his flesh. His mace dropped from his fingers, and the nycaloth wrenched him out of his saddle, shaking him like a dog worrying at a rabbit.

“Get away from me, hellspawn!” Seiveril snarled.

He ignored the agonizing pain in his arm and the bruising and battering, finding the clear still center in his soul where Corellon Larethian’s divine power waited, and he shouted out a holy word of great power. In a burst of supernal white light Seiveril blasted a circle twenty yards wide clear of demons, devils, yugoloths, and all other sorts of foul creatures from the lower planes. The nycaloth shaking him vanished with an ear-splitting howl, so suddenly that Seiveril dropped to the ground and went to all fours, shaking his head.

Wincing inside his helm, he looked at the blood streaming from the punctures in his arm, and took a moment to whisper another healing prayer, staunching the wound. Then he groped for his silver mace and clambered to his feet, looking for his mount.

“Lord Seiveril! Are you hurt?” Adresin rode up, his golden armor badly scorched on one side, but seemingly unhurt otherwise.

Ferryl Nimersyl of the Moon Knights followed him, his gleaming white armor spattered with black gore.

“I’ve lost my mount, but I am all right,” Seiveril managed.

He spied another horse nearby, its owner nowhere in sight, and hurried over to swing himself up into the saddle. The Golden Star knights and the Moon Knights were all around him, battling furiously against those hellspawn that still remained. He groaned in frustration, seeing the chaos that had come from the daemonfey intervention… but then a ragged shout of triumph from the right caught his ear. He looked toward the ramparts, and saw that only a few dark islands of Zhentilar soldiers remained on the ramparts. Left and right, wood elf and Dalesfolk archers held the earthworks and rained arrows down into the camp from point-blank range, and even in the center, the Evereskans had managed to seize their line as well.

“What kind of unholy alliance has Sarya forged with the lower planes?” Ferryl Nimersyl snarled. “Demons, devils, yugoloths all fighting together-they are supposed to be the most implacable of enemies!”

“I have no answer,” Seiveril replied, though it was a question that troubled him too. There was no time to answer it just then, however. “Ferryl, rally your knights to my banner. I mean to take that camp.”

The commander of the Moon Knights nodded and called for his riders to gather at Seiveril’s banner. In the space of a hundred heartbeats, better than fourscore knights of both the orders assembled in a dense knot around Seiveril. Then they rode forward, veering to make for the gap where the Evereskans had breached the rampart. Seiveril kept his eyes away from the elf warriors who lay still among the stakes of the ditch and the steep berm, spurring his new mount to scramble up the rampart.