Douglas Niles: Lord of the Rose

He himself was so weary he could hardly stand, but he would not let that fatigue show.

Ankhar looked around, wishing he could have Laka’s counsel, but he couldn’t find her. He had told her to stay back from the fighting once it began, and her feeble legs would not allow her to keep pace with the pursuing army. Well, she would hear about the victory soon enough, and she would have to be satisfied.

“Come!” he roared, waving the emerald spearhead, the enchanted talisman of Hiddukel, over his head.

It may have been his imagination-or the bright sunlight-but it seemed the glow was not as intense as it had been at the start of the day.

Selinda had been restless for five days after arriving in Caergoth, but there was nothing to do but wait. For a time there had been no news. Then, yesterday, the rumors began to trickle in. She picked up from her servants and even from several courtiers of the duke’s court distressing rumors of invincible enemy hordes, a crushing defeat.

She proposed to Powell that they ride out onto the plains to see what was really going on. When he had suggested, not joking, that he would clap her in chains before allowing her to ride beyond Caergoth’s high walls, she had agreed to stay and wait.

Still, she sprang to her feet when she heard the first herald’s cry, and she was already down in the great hall when the Duke of Caergoth came striding through the doors of his mighty keep, flanked by Captain Reynaud. The nobleman stopped, shocked and a little confused, seeing Selinda waiting for him.

“How fared the battle?” she asked.

“Oh, fine,” he said. “I… I am so glad to see you. Can I offer you a glass of wine?”

“Aren’t there more important things right now?” she asked, stunned at his nonchalance.

“None that I can think of,” he said, snapping his fingers and sending a steward hurrying to the wine closet.

“I was terribly sorry to hear about the Duchess Martha,” the princess said. “Her death must be awful to bear.”

“These things happen,” he said, shrugging. “A small thing, compared to the killing out on the plains.”

“Was it a victory, then?” Selinda asked hopefully.

“Hard to say. Too soon to tell,” the duke replied dismissively before taking a large gulp of the wine the steward had just handed him. “I need to see my priest,” he added, “but then we’ll be having dinner-something splendid, to be sure. Can you join us?”

The princess frowned but saw she wasn’t going to get more information out of the duke, not right now. “Very well,” she said. “Thank you. When?”

Duke Crawford didn’t reply. He had already exited, heading for the temple of Shinare at a most undignified trot.

Through the long, dry morning the throng made its way across the bridge in steady ranks, paced by Captain Marckus’s steady voice and confident air. Jaymes and his diminishing company held the line against constant attacks. The goblins found renewed energy when they sensed the survivors were on the verge of escape.

For two hours the men of Solamnia fought a pitched battle at the north end of the long bridge. Jaymes commanded the soldiers at the rear, as Marckus moved others across the span as quickly as possible. Archers in the bridge towers added to the defense, and Ankhar’s troops were not able to rupture the determined front.

Finally, the rear guard was the last unit, standing in a tiny knot between the towers at the northern end. Leaving the ground littered with their dead, the pursuing goblins had fallen back slightly beyond the reach of the deadly crossbows on the bridge towers.

They waited as though to see what these last humans would do next. No need to fight and die in such close quarters, after all.

“Let us face the enemy here, men,” Jaymes announced. “Stand shoulder to shoulder, and don’t let them onto the bridge.”

“How long must we hold out?” asked a young, wounded soldier plaintively. He looked with longing at the south shore, a quarter mile away.

“As long as it takes,” Jaymes said, trying not to let his anxiety show as he glanced around. Where was Coryn? Would she find Dram and bring him back in time to help?

“Just have faith, lad,” said Captain Marckus, who had come back to stand with the rear guard. “Your officers won’t let any more harm come to you.”

Not half a mile away, the ground was black with the gathering mass of Ankhar’s army. “If they cross the bridge, there’s nothing to stop them between here and Caergoth,” the veteran captain muttered quietly.

“I know. I might have a plan, but I’m waiting for a wizard to get here and help out.”

As they set up positions, Jaymes dismounted, sending his horse across to the other side of the bridge with a couple of wounded men lashed to the saddle. The first rank of the enemy, a line of huge hobgoblins, rushed forward with a roar.

The warrior drew the sword of Lorimar and twisted the hilt in his hands. Immediately bright blue fire erupted along the keen edge. In the face of those flames, the hobgoblins faltered.

In a flash of white smoke Coryn was there beside him. With her arrived Dram Feldspar and the two gnomes of Dungarden. They bore four stout casks.

Growling and pointing, the goblins balked again at the sudden display of magic. Soon they would deploy archers, Jaymes guessed. He gave instructions to the newcomers. Glancing at the goblins, they saw the urgency.

“So, I should have guessed. Is this your wizard?” asked Marckus, regarding the enchantress, the dwarf, and the gnomes. “Hello, Lady Coryn,” he said, with a formal little bow.

“Hello Marckus,” she replied. “You look spent.”

“Just doing my job,” he said. “I had help-from your friend, here.”

“Yeah, yeah. Will one of you help me put these under the bridge?” Dram cut in. “One at each of the four northern supports.”

Several knights helped lower the dwarf, supported by ropes, until he could crawl along the pillar that supported the marble slabs of the bridge. He lodged the first cask in place, then crawled out, trailing a piece of string that, he explained to Jaymes, was a refined version of their earlier fuses. “Leave it be for now,” the dwarf counseled.

In short order, the rest of the casks were placed underneath the span, with the shortest fuse at the south end, increasingly longer lines toward the north. With the touch of matches, the long fuses were fired. Immediately they started to sputter and flame.

“Run!” cried Jaymes, ordering the rest of his men away. Seeing the fire dance along the fuses, they needed little urging to sprint for the south bank. Dram and the gnomes followed.

Jaymes brought up the rear, but as soon as the humans started to flee, goblins and draconians surged onto the bridge, howling. A great, painted hobgoblin led the way, waving a studded mace. The span vibrated under the pounding of hundreds of boots.

That first hob disappeared as a towering explosion lifted a whole section of the bridge into the air. Smoke and fire billowed skyward, soaring up hundreds of feet, sending shards of white marble cascading down into the Garnet River.

The subsequent explosions came in staggered sequence. Each one of the four casks of powder blasted out another portion of the bridge, and with each section a score or more of enemy warriors were blown to pieces, or hurled through the air and into the river. Many goblins were trapped on standing parts of the bridge or pinned under wreckage. Without their connecting supports, the last parts of the bridge swayed and, one by one, toppled into the river.

When the last blast had sounded, and the smoke began to clear away, the King’s Bridge was a ruin. Fully half of its length was gone.

No army would be crossing to the south of the river any time soon.