Douglas Niles: Measure and the Truth

Smoke spewed into the sky like a column of ash from an erupting volcano. Bits of wooden debris, much of it flaming, tumbled away from the murk, scattering like small meteors across the road, the mountains, and the interior of the fortress.

“Go now! Give them your steel!” Jaymes roared to the men and dwarves of his assembled, waiting forces.

As soon as the rocks and other shrapnel ceased to rain down, the dwarves of New Compound together with the infantry of the Palanthian Legion and the Crown Army rushed forward into the gap. Shouting and cheering, chanting hoarse battle cries, they erupted into the open. Dwarves banged their axes against their shields, and humans clattered their swords together, adding to the din.

The attackers swept forward in irregular formation-pushing through the choking smoke and dust, scrambling over the piles of rubble left by the shattering of the walls, stumbling and scrambling up the steep slopes. They charged into the gaping courtyards of the fortress. So much of the wall had come down that the attackers had dozens of possible routes leading right into the interior of the fortress. Quickly they rushed up stairs, claiming the tops of the walls to either side of the massive breach, and passed through the vacant courtyards, pressing into the fortress’s interior buildings.

The dwarves, with Dram in the lead, charged to the left, sweeping up onto a standing curtain wall, rushing along the rim, one by one taking the towers that obstructed passage at intervals around the ring-shaped barrier. Axes and hammers smashed against closed doors, splintering the boards. The dwarves crushed ogre skulls and broke ogre limbs with abandon, as many defenders were still stunned by the tunnel blast. Whether the ogres were lying down, fighting, or running away, the dwarves of New Compound gave no quarter.

Following General Weaver, the men of the Palanthian Legion spread out in the middle of the fortress, capturing one courtyard after another. Several companies burst into the base of the great tower before the defenders could recover enough to close their gates, and soon the attackers found themselves in the deep passages where long ago the Heroes of the Lance had lured dragons to their doom with the Orb of Dragonkind.

From there, the attackers worked their way higher, charging up stairways, slaying any Dark Knights or ogres who stumbled into their path. The farther they got from the scene of the blast, the more organized were the defenders, yet the swiftness of the advance continued to carry the day. The knights and foot soldiers swept through a level of temples and shrines, another of garrisons and mess halls. Six ogres tried to hold at the top of a stairway. Weaver’s crossbowmen shot them down with a single well-aimed volley, and again the emperor’s men rushed up and past.

General Dayr led the footmen of the Crown Army to the right, with a large detachment under Captain Franz attacking the separate redoubt known as the Knights’ Spur. They clashed with a line of Dark Knights on the drawbridge to that isolated complex, and again the charge swept right into the spur before the outer gates could be closed. Skirmishes raged in a dozen chambers, but the Crowns threw more and more men into the figh. The Dark Knights could only fall back or die.

Then Jaymes ordered the second rank-mostly heavy infantry-to advance in as close a formation as they could maintain through the rubble and debris. The field commanders would use the second wave as a reserve, concentrating them wherever the enemy seemed determined to make a stand. Some men cleared paths through the rubble, so the follow-up troops could fight more readily.

Then, finally, the emperor and the white wizard advanced, side by side, seeking an end to the matter once and for all.

Pond-Lily was sobbing, and Ankhar cradled her under his big right arm. They leaned against the solid tower wall inside the High Lookout, watching as the attackers ran rampant through the fortress. The southern gatehouse, where the Nightmaster had pledged an epic defense, was simply gone, blasted into pieces by the unimaginable explosion. Those pieces, the half-giant assumed, included the little bits that remained of the black-masked cleric. The gatehouse was merely a gaping hole, a smoky crater crawling with the figures of dwarves and the emperor’s men.

Bakkard du Chagne burst out of the door from the tower’s interior to find Ankhar and his ogress on the parapet.

“The emperor’s men are in the base of the tower!” he cried shrilly. “They’re coming up the steps! Our men can’t hold them back.”

“Coming up the steps of this tower?” asked Pond-Lily, gaping.

“Yes, you stupid bitch!” screamed du Chagne. “They’ll be here any moment!”

Pond-Lily uttered a choking sob and buried her head in the half-giant’s side.

Ankhar shook off his lethargy and shock to glare at the chubby, balding man. The former lord regent, used to obedience and command, nervous of disposition and irascible of temper, had been an annoying presence during their weeks in that confined space. The half-giant had tolerated him only because he had been brought there by and was under the protection of the Nightmaster.

But… he looked at the crater again. No one could have survived that. It seemed safe to conclude the Nightmaster was dead.

Ankhar released the weeping Pond-Lily, who merely watched in amazement as the half-giant grabbed du Chagne around the neck and easily hoisted him off the ground. The human’s eyes and tongue bulged out, but the grip was too constricting for him to make any sound. He could only stare pathetically into the half-giant’s eyes as Ankhar lifted him over the parapet and dangled him in the air, hundreds of feet above the violence-racked courtyard below.

Then the half-giant let the former lord regent go, and that was when du Chagne found his voice, uttering a piercing shriek that lasted a very long time-as long as it took for him to hit the ground.

Coryn and Jaymes strode side by side through the wreckage caused by the blast. Nothing about the smoking crater suggested it had once been a mighty gatehouse or part of any kind of structure. The broken rock was strewn haphazardly, with a shallow groove running through the middle to vaguely suggest where the explosive-packed tunnel had been mined underneath the ground.

The bodies of many men and ogres of the garrison had been blown to pieces by the explosion. Here and there lay a grotesque corpse-or a part of a corpse-but those, like everything else, were so coated with the ubiquitous gray dust that they resembled stone more than flesh. Coryn turned away from the sight of one apparently unmarked corpse, a dead Dark Knight pasted with so much fine powder that he looked like a skillfully rendered statue of a dead man.

“Over here,” Jaymes said, finding a channel in the debris. They passed between shattered walls rising like jagged cliffs to either side of them, and the emperor had to clasp a hand over his face just to keep the dust from choking him. He felt it coating his beard and skin, saw it on his leggings and tunic and boots.

Yet when he looked at the enchantress, her robe was as immaculately white as ever. He could only shake his head in amazement.

“We need to climb up into the tower, see who’s still alive up there, right?” he asked.

“Ankhar has been on the High Lookout many times every day,” Coryn reported. “I’m guessing he has quarters somewhere high up in the tower.”

“Yes,” Jaymes agreed. “Let’s go pay him a visit.”

He came to a section of broken stairway leading toward the top of one of the walls. The outer portions of the steps had been blasted away, but some remained. Clasping the railing with his left hand, he stepped carefully upward, kicking loose rubble out of the way. Coryn took his other hand and climbed behind him.