Douglas Niles - Measure and the Truth

“Est Sudanus oth Nikkas.”

My power is my Truth. Ankhar savored the irony of his personal credo. He had allowed himself to idle and cower for too long, had nearly forgotten the lesson that his mother-and his mother’s unforgiving god-had taught him so many years ago.

“Est Sudanus oth Nikkas,” he repeated, well satisfied. It was a phrase that had been taught to him by one of his old lieutenants, a former Dark Knight-turned-mercenary named Captain Blackgaard.

“What do you mean by that phrase you keep muttering?” Pond-Lily asked cautiously. She had just served the half-giant his morning porridge and stood to the side as he slurped noisily from the great bowl. Ankhar had been acting strange for the past few days, and strange for him was really strange, the ogress thought.

“It means, ‘My power is my Truth,’ ” came the reply.

“Oh.”

“I am intended for great things,” the half-giant expounded. “I was once a great lord-”

“You still are a great lord!” she blurted with wide-eyed sincerity.

He patted her cheek so gently that, though he knocked her down, he didn’t really hurt her very much. “Don’t interrupt.” As she picked herself up and sat meekly beside him again, he gathered his racing thoughts.

“I am a chosen one of the gods,” he said, trying to recall the eloquent words that Laka had beaten into his head with her skull-capped totem staff over the past few days. “And it is a waste for me to live here, in the Lemish Forest. I am to be master of a great city!”

“A city! What city?”

He scratched his head, for the details were a little sketchy, in spite of his mother’s yammering. “A city of the knights,” he remembered. He growled, unconsciously. “I hate the knights,” he added.

So it was that, just a few days after the auspicious visit of the Nightmaster, Ankhar, the chosen one, marched out of his safe village. He was accompanied by some henchmen from his previous campaigns-Bloodgutter the ogre, and Rib Chewer the goblin, among them. His goal was to assemble another horde and launch another war and conquer a certain city of the knights.

He bore his emerald-tipped spear in his right hand and wore a gem-encrusted gold crown, one of the few treasures he had brought from Solamnia after his defeat. With his henchmen dressed in great bearskins, each captain crowned with a feathered headdress, he led his entourage through the woods to the nearest ogre settlement.

It was the stronghold of Vis Gorger, a hill town, in a valley peppered with cave mouths. Inside of each was a house, an inn, or a shop. There he met with the ogre lord Vis Gorger, who was still resentful over the Pond-Lily affair, and refused to join the expedition or acknowledge that Ankhar was the Truth.

So the half-giant broke the ogre’s neck, quickly and without warning or hesitation. The town’s vice chieftain, a strapping male named Bullhorn, didn’t seem to mind and proved more amenable to Ankhar’s needs-especially after Ankhar appointed him the new overseer of the town. Then Ankhar collected more than a hundred ogre warriors, young bulls eager for mayhem and plunder.

Next he went to the town of Heart Eater, the other chief who had claimed Pond-Lily’s affections.

Apparently, word of Vis Gorger’s fate preceded Ankhar’s arrival. In any event, Heart Eater organized two hundred ogre warriors, with twice that number of goblin spear carriers, and was ready and waiting to join the half-giant when Ankhar and his growing force arrived.

And so it went. The villages and towns of Lemish gave up their young warriors, willingly and with great expectations. They all joined the army of Ankhar the Truth. His force swelled by the day as he marched up and down and back and forth through the breadth of the land.

Until finally, he had amassed his horde of warriors and there was no place left in Lemish for him to go.

Blayne Kerrigan didn’t stay to witness the outcome of the battle in the orchard. Instead, he took two hundred skilled archers and the wizard Red Wallace, and speedily rode east to Vingaard Keep. They crossed the Stonebridge near the bank of the Vingaard-the bridge Jaymes had ordered Dayr not to guard in order to draw more of the Vingaard defenders into battle outside the keep walls.

The riders crossed the span just upstream of the confluence of Apple Creek and the much larger river. South of the creek, they raced westward along the road toward the advancing forces of the emperor. Soon they came up behind the position established by Lord Kerrigan before he had gone to parley with the emperor.

A deep ditch had been excavated across the road, which was anchored by steep, rocky hills to either side. A number of men were waiting behind the dirt wall that had been thrown up behind the ditch, while many horses were pastured in the fields behind the hills. Blayne quickly located the officer in command.

“I have a thousand horsemen, and as many archers and soldiers on foot. We’ll hold them up for a few hours,” reported Captain Dobbs, a veteran of the keep garrison and the man in charge of this contingent. “But we won’t be able to stop them.”

“A few hours is all I’ll need. Do you have the equipment I asked for?”

“Yes, sir, right over here.” The captain led him to a small compound, where bulky saddlebags-two hundred pairs-had been prepared and laid out for Blayne’s inspection. Each set included quivers of arrows, a stout bow, jars of pitch, some webbing to wrap around the arrows, and dry matches.

“Excellent,” pronounced the young lord. “Any word on how far away the emperor is?”

“Only a couple of miles and coming fast. They didn’t waste much time after the battle at the ford.”

“No-he always was fast on the march,” acknowledged Blayne, wincing. “But it might give us enough time.”

“Good luck, sir,” offered the captain.

“And to you, too,” Kerrigan replied, heading for his horse. That mount, like the rest of the two hundred, had already been outfitted with the bulging panniers. The rest of his band mounted and they cantered away. No longer did they follow the road. They took to the fields, coursing around the southernmost of the twin hills where the Vingaard line was situated.

Blayne had hunted, prowled, fished, and camped on those lands since he was a small boy, and he needed no map or guide. He had a specific spot in mind, and the fast-moving column crossed several fields of grain-though the young lord made sure to steer his horseman along the lanes between the tender plantings-and quickly passed under the shade of overhanging trees.

The Southwood Forest was not a cultivated grove, like the apple orchard, but a deep and ancient wood of dense trees, drooping, mossy branches, and heavy thickets. Few pathways crossed through the forest, but Blayne knew how to lead his column rapidly through the woodlands. When they approached the mouth of a wide gulley at the far side of the forest, he signaled for his men to dismount. The band gathered around him, alert and unafraid.

“Take the webbing from your saddlebags and wrap it around the foreshaft of each arrow, extending about a foot back from the head. Use the pitch to hold it in place. I want every man to have at least a dozen of these fiery missiles ready to shoot in the next ten minutes.”

While his men went about making the preparations, Blayne and Red Wallace advanced on foot to the mouth of the gully. Taking cover behind a cluster of large trees, they looked down on the paved road where, already, the emperor’s army could be sighted, no more than a mile away.

“If we have timed it right, the horsemen are in position beyond the road,” Blayne said.

Almost immediately those words proved correct as the first of the Vingaard delaying tactics began to play out. They watched as hundreds of cavalrymen, lancers mounted on fleet, unarmored horses, burst over the ridge on the far side of the road and came pouring down on the flank of the emperor’s column. The Crown Army cavalry rode to intercede, charging from the front and rear of the column. The two men watched as a frantic battle erupted, men and horses cut down by the score, hooves trampling the wounded, grit and resolve driving each side.