Douglas Niles: The Crown and the Sword

The two men rode their horses at a slow walk, following behind an enclosed wagon that served as an ambulance, softly furnished to carry Coryn as comfortably as possible. The Clerist knight, Sir Templar, rode inside the wagon with the wizard, using his healing magic to ease her pain and recuperation. The lord marshal intended to accompany the wagon all the way to Palanthas, but Solanthus was the first stop on the long ride.

Generals Weaver, Dayr, and Markus were riding with their own troops, elsewhere in the great column. General Rankin had fallen in the Battle of the Foothills, as it was being called, and his body was carried in another wagon not too far away. He would be returned to Solanthus for a state funeral. Captain Powell and the Freemen were riding in a loose formation around the lord marshal, near enough to be summoned if necessary. One other rider, the slight figure of Moptop Bristlebrow astride a small pony, trailed very closely behind Martin and Jaymes.

“So you dispatched the kender to search for these adamites, to lure them up to the surface?” Martin said, shaking his head in astonishment. “How did he know where to find them? Or where to bring them to the battlefield?”

Now it was Jaymes’s turn to shake his head wonderingly. “All I can say is he calls himself a professional guide and pathfinder extraordinaire, and if anyone ever earned his title, it’s Moptop Bristlebrow. He must have a very benevolent god looking out for his welfare. I’ve never met anyone who can find his way like he can, and yesterday he found a path that saved a whole army.”

Yet Moptop, listening in as he rode beside the two humans, was unusually subdued and self-effacing. “I thought this whole war thing would be a grand adventure,” he said with a heavy sigh. “But there’s too many people who get hurt. The city got all broken up, and I can’t stand seeing all those horses get killed.”

“Aye, my friend,” said Jaymes, clapping him on the shoulder. “Far too many people get hurt.”

“We’re going back to Solanthus, but it makes me so sad to think of that place without the duchess. She led those people through that long siege, and she won’t be there now. Not ever again!” the kender declared, sniffling noisily.

“Aye,” Lord Martin agreed. “But she held us together, kept the city alive, during those years of the siege. You may rest assured, my friend, that her memory will live as long as there are people in Solanthus strong enough to draw a breath.”

“That’s something, I guess,” he admitted. “But I still miss her.”

“Indeed.” Martin nodded solemnly. “As do we all.”

The princess of Palanthas looked out of the window from her chambers high up in one of the towers of her father’s palace. Her eyes were drawn to the east, where the crest of the Vingaard range was outlined in the purplish rays of the setting sun. She held a piece of paper in her hand, a few sentences quickly scribed and messengered to the city in a courier’s pouch. That same pouch, carried by a fleet rider, had brought news of the great victory.

All the city was celebrating Ankhar’s defeat. His army had been banished to Lemish, said the report, and the threat to the lands of the knighthood was quelled for the foreseeable future.

The other note that had been delivered to her was a personal missive from the lord marshal himself:

I have won the field. My army has triumphed, and I returning to Palanthas. I am coming home to you, my bride.

The missive had provoked a strange reaction-not the delirious joy she would have expected, nor even a tremulous sense of relief, the weight of concern for her husband’s fate lifted by the good news.

Instead, she felt confused and frightened.

She remembered her tears, her almost uncontrollable hysteria when Jaymes had departed for the war the morning after the wedding. She had locked herself in her rooms for days, seeing no one but her faithful maid, Marie, and her trusted counselor, the priestess Melissa du Juliette. The cleric had remained at her side, caring for her tirelessly, speaking softly, soothing the grieving young woman, until at last Selinda began to feel more like her old, confident self.

Emerging at last from her self-imposed seclusion, she had found a palace, a city, a people she barely recognized. It was this altered awareness that finally brought home to her that, though her surroundings remained the same, she herself had undergone some deep, fundamental transformation. It was a frightening and disorienting awareness, so she had tried hard to figure out what had happened to change her so.

At first she had prayed to every goddess she knew, hoping that the seed of her wedding night’s passion would take root within her womb and begin to grow into the baby she desperately desired.

Within a few weeks, however, she had learned she was not yet pregnant, and with that realization had come a new sense of wonder, and mystery, and another dawning realization.

Did she desire a child?

No, not yet, she had decided, and with that decision had come more questions. Why had she fallen so giddily for this man she had known for years and had previously regarded with a certain wary respect. What had happened to her? What had changed her?

And what would her future hold?

“You fool!” shouted Ankhar, raising his fist over his stepmother’s wrinkled face. “You pledged me an undefeatable ally, and he was defeated at the very moment of my triumph!”

“He was as mighty as they come!” shrieked Laka, not the least bit cowed. “You are the fool, to let him be trapped in the mountains! You should have driven him across the plains with the wand!”

“Bah! He was killed by that army of stone! Who were they? Where did they come from all of a sudden?”

Laka only glared at him. The half-giant’s hand trembled, but he could not bring himself to smash it downward. Instead, he whirled about and spotted the Thorn Knight watching him through narrowed eyes.

They were in a bivouac of the retreating army, a sprawling encampment near the marshes that marked the border between Solamnia and Lemish. That land, dark and mysterious and peopled with monsters and goblins and other wretched beings, lay like a shroud on the southern horizon. For miles around the trio, the remnants of the half-giant’s horde were scattered in tents and bedrolls on the wet, miserable ground. Mosquitoes and other insects whined around their ears. All of the half-giant’s captains had found compelling reasons to avoid their commander on this dark and ill-omened night.

“Why could you not foresee the danger?” Ankhar asked the wizard, his voice a low growl.

“Who could have?” Hoarst replied, not illogically. “Those stone soldiers are unknown in all the history of the world.”

“Fool!” the half-giant cursed, still trembling. Impulsively he slapped with his great hand, a blow that would have snapped the wizard’s neck had it landed where he aimed, right on the smug, almost contemptuous face.

However, the Thorn Knight was no longer there; he had blinked himself magically out of sight a fraction of a breath before the powerful blow landed. Ankhar swung through a wide arc, striking only the air, staggering off balance to keep from falling.

“Where did he go?” he demanded of the old hob-wench.

Laka shrugged in that maddening way of hers. “Away,” she replied. “Perhaps he will return when you have calmed down.”

The half-giant forced himself to draw a breath. He squinted, remembering. “You said that potion, the tea he drank to gain strength, would kill him eventually!”

“It should have,” the shaman replied with a shrug. “But he has a well of strength I did not perceive. It seems my potion not only healed him for a time, but ended up by making him stronger.”