Douglas Niles: The Crown and the Sword

The lord marshal shook his head. “No, I’m sure you have prepared well. But tell me, what about the trenches?”

He indicated the fortifications around the enemy camp. Deep gashes in the ground, scored in a zigzag pattern, shielded the whole array of Ankhar’s troops.

“Something novel is called for, don’t you think, my lord?” Dayr turned and gestured to a young knight. The man had light golden hair, worn long, with the emblem of a crested bird on his tunic. “This is Sergeant Heath of the Order of Clerists.”

The commander nodded. “The priest-knights are finally arriving at the front, I see.”

Sergeant Heath saluted stiffly. “I beg my lord’s pardon for the delay. I assure you that it was not caused by unwillingness on the part of my company. The Council of Whitestone was slow to react, but as of this year, there are mystics and Kingfishers both sailing for your shores.”

“I understand-Sir Templar has apprised me of the resistance from Lord Liam and the rest of the council. So I am doubly pleased to see you. How large is your company?”

“I have a dozen priests, my lord, and an equal number of acolytes. We pledge our swords-and our spells-to your cause.”

“Very good.” The lord marshal gestured at the enemy entrenchments. “Now tell me what you plan to do about those.”

The camp of the Crown Army was quietly astir by an hour after midnight. Captain Powell, with his Freemen and the casks from the Compound, was already gone. Now Sergeant Heath and his Clerists slipped away from the command post and immediately melted into the full darkness that descended after moonset. Each knight-cleric wore a cloak of grayish brown and had smudges of the same color darkening the skin of their faces and hands, so they may as well have been invisible as they closed on the nearest trenches of the enemy position. Leaving their weapons and armor behind, they advanced with stealth and concealment as their only protection.

After an hour of careful advancement, the mystics were in position, only a few dozen feet short of the deep, wide trenches of Ankhar’s army. Each priest-warrior was alone and knew his task; they all remained silent and in their camouflage, invisible to the enemy sentries.

Heath himself knelt before the broadest section of trench. Barely daring to breathe, he watched the shadowy figures of goblins and ogres clomping back and forth on sentry duty behind the ditch. He waited, lying flat on the ground, until he was certain the rest of his men were ready.

Night still cloaked them in utter darkness as the knight-priest rose to a kneeling position. He held a fistful of gritty clay in his hand as he murmured a prayer-and an appeal-to Kiri-Jolith. Soon he had worked the material into a hard lump. He felt the answering presence of his god, a powerful blessing of magic, and in one smooth gesture rose to his feet, shouted the climactic words to the spell, and hurled the lump of dirt into the trench.

All along the line, the Clerist knights worked the same clay magic. The sudden noise of the spellcasting alerted the brutish defenders, who rushed forward to launch spears and arrows into the darkness-even though the mysterious attackers were already falling back.

Behind them they left the results of their magic: twenty-two earthen bridges, each spanning a section of the army’s trenchworks.

“Light!” cried General Dayr, as he heard the culminating words of the Clerists’ spellcasting. “Bring out the torches!”

Flames immediately erupted from a hundred barrels, all positioned along the front of his army-directly along the lines of advance for the Crown Army’s light cavalry. All three companies of the Thelgaard Lancers waited there in ranks, already mounted, prepared for the signal. These riders, lightly armored and riding very fast horses, were trained to carry long lances in the charge. But this morning, their arms would be unique.

Each rider carried several dry torches in one hand. As the oil-filled barrels were ignited, the horsemen started forward, their disciplined mounts filing close by the blazing containers. As the line of riders passed, each man thrust the head of his torch into the oil. The dry brands instantly ignited. Without hesitating, the riders spurred their horses into a canter. The lines of cavalry were eerily illuminated by the blazing torches bobbing and waving over each man’s head, and those columns rode directly toward the enemy camp.

Where a few moments earlier Ankhar’s troops had been lolling casually behind deep entrenchments, these defenders now faced the sudden reality of nearly two dozen earthen bridges, magically conjured to cross the barriers. Ogres bellowed and roared at the goblins, while the smaller fighters scrambled to take up weapons and race to the terminus of each span. A horn sounded somewhere in the rear of the camp, a lonely summons to arms.

But already the human riders were racing to confront the defenders. The Thelgaard Lancers sped across the magical bridges and charged through the chaotic soldiers trying to block their path. Shouting men drove goblins back by the simple expedient of waving burning torches to the right and left. Once they had breached the trenches, the horsemen galloped into the center of the huge enemy camp. Some threw their torches into command tents or ignited crates and barrels of supplies stacked haphazardly here and there. Other attackers continued onward, charging through the encampment toward the great war machines lined up at the rear of Ankhar’s army.

A human captain barked commands, rousing a small company of men-former Dark Knights-to oppose the rush of thundering horses. In the confusion, the footmen did not have time to arm themselves properly, however; they were easily swept aside by the rampaging horsemen. More flames brightened the chilly predawn as several oil casks erupted into greasy fire, the liquid spilling along the ground, igniting as it flowed.

General Dayr, astride his steed, watched the initial onslaught with satisfaction. Even before the last of the light cavalry had crossed the bridges, he issued his next order: “Kaolyn Axers-move out!”

The doughty dwarves of this heavy infantry unit started forward to the steady beat of a deep drum. This was the First Regiment of the Axers, one of three serving in the lord marshal’s army. They had come down from the Garnet Mountains for two reasons: because the ogres and goblins of Ankhar’s horde were their hereditary enemies and because they would be paid well for fighting. They fought as tenaciously as any knight and with their thick plate mail shields and armor, short, muscular legs; and keen-bladed axes, they could form a veritable forward-moving wall on a battlefield.

Now the dwarves marched on the double, trotting across the bridges immediately after the last of the lancers. The black-tunicked dwarves formed a defensive semicircle around the terminus of each of the earthen spans. The mere presence of glaring dwarves and whirling axe blades was enough, for the time being, to keep the poorly disciplined goblins and ogres at bay.

At the same time, the farthest riders continued their rampage among the war machines of the enemy batteries. Some tossed their torches onto the bales of hay surrounding the position, while others dismounted to push the kindling up against the frames of the catapults, ballistae, and trebuchets. Immediately the dry wood caught fire, sending flames shooting dozens of feet into the air. Much oil, for the soaking of flaming shot when the batteries were active, was stored around the catapults. These barrels were quickly splintered and the liquid contents ignited. A wall of orange flame rose into the night.

Jaymes, the lord marshal, astride his horse very near the front of the Crown Army, watched as the enemy commander was finally spotted amidst the flaming camp.