Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

Owen turned back to where Kamiskwa and Justice turned away the last of the earth. “Is it there?”

Kamiskwa nodded, then sank to his knees and reached into the hole they’d carved into the hillside. “I can feel it, the stone and the magick.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled a cloud of steam. “Now, to make it work.”

Prince Vlad watched as Rufus Branch glided effortlessly down the hill. Behind him, trolls gathered, and above him, the demons circled. The stick, dammit, I should have gotten myself a stick. Vlad lifted his chin and drew his hands behind his back. If he wasn’t going to have a staff to brandish, he would hide his hands and affect an air of not being concerned at all.

Rufus hovered on a golden disk, keeping himself a bit above eye-level with Prince Vlad, even though four hundred yards separated them.

“You dare attack?” The pure effrontery of the action, and his affected outrage at it, almost completely covered his surprise.

Vlad lifted his chin. “I dare. I more than dare. This is not your land. It belongs to Norisle. You are an intruder here. The one you’ve chosen to use is singularly ignorant of the world and incapable of understanding the higher concepts at play here. He does not serve you well, except that you must have found his greed quite comforting, likewise his sense of grandiosity and narcissism.”

Vlad chose his words carefully, using longer terms that Rufus likely would not have heard before and certainly could not parse accurately. He sensed hesitation in his counterpart. In that moment of inner concentration, the disk dipped and the ordered advance of the trolls faltered.

But only for a heartbeat. The hands settled on the staff, together, at his navel, the orb glowing with a silvery-white light. “Then you have come to negotiate with me?”

“Negotiate? I hardly think so.” Vlad shrugged. “I have come to accept your surrender. That is the only way you can avoid your utter and complete destruction.”

Rufus’ eyes tightened, and his head canted to the side. “You have never before appeared to be mad. Clearly you must be if you have forgotten what I did to your troops so recently. My riders destroyed yours.”

“And I have destroyed your riders.”

Rufus looked back toward the valley and again the disk wavered for a moment. His head snapped back around and his eyes blazed. “You cannot stop me. You’re lost. Your people are lost. Your puny weapons cannot stop us. Your feeble sense of magick cannot stop us.”

He raised his hands and spread his arms. The trolls broke ranks and rushed into the forests. The demons plunged down through the evergreen canopy. “Your minions will soon all be dead, Prince Vladimir of Norisle. And I shall save you for the last, so you will know all hope is gone. Once your heart is broken, I shall crush your body and then sweep your people into the sea.”

Half-crouched in front of the battle line, Ian Rathfield drew his heavy cavalry saber before the echoes of the cannon shots died. “Steady, men, steady. Just as we planned it.” His heart pounded and his mouth went dry, not from fear, but anticipation and anger. These were the creatures that had destroyed his command. He and his men, just like the Rangers, had spent three days preparing the battlefield. As Rufus had caught them unawares at Fort Plentiful, so the Norghaest would find themselves paying for their lack of foresight.

Trolls came up over the hillcrest and fanned out into the woods. Their broad feet kicked up snow. They had to twist to shoulder their way between trees. As they rushed on, their ranks closed. They filtered into easy alleyways that allowed them to speed their advance.

Their clumping together made them simple targets. At thirty yards, a third of a battalion fired. Thirty musket balls blasted into the trolls. Most struck the one in the lead, stippling his fur with dark, bloody wounds. He went down and two others were knocked back, but the rest came on.

“First line withdraw.” Ian turned his back to the trolls and marched steadily toward the west as a second line of his troopers took aim. “Ready yourselves!” He glanced back over his shoulder.

“Fire!”

Brimstone smoke gushed out and balls zipped past him. He heard the thuds as they struck home. A troll thumped down behind him, a bit closer than he’d expected. He ran forward as his retreating men fell back to a third line, then stopped and turned. He slashed with his saber, opening a troll’s belly, then Ian ran off toward the northwest, as planned, while Captain Cotswold gave the orders to the third line to open fire.

A troll had decided to give chase, and Ian laughed despite the thunder of the thing’s footfalls. He ducked beneath branches and relished the crashing as branches whipped across the troll’s face. Ian ran for a fallen log which lay between two widespread trees. He leaped it, shearing closely to the tree on the left, then stumbled and rolled. His sword flew a short distance away, snow stained with troll-blood marking where it had fallen. He rolled onto his back and looked at his pursuer.

The troll bounded over the fallen log with ease, landing a good ten feet beyond it. His feet sank through the snow, then punched on through the branches which had been laid over a pit running five feet in depth. Normally that would have been a minor inconvenience for the troll, resulting in a bruise as he slammed against the pit’s end, but a handful of sharpened posts had been planted deep into that wall. Three of them impaled the troll, one through a forearm, the other two through the belly, popping free of his back.

More gunfire resounded in volleys as Ian scrambled to his feet. He grabbed his sword and swung it in a grand arc over his head, chopping a demon in half. More flew at him, but they discovered that the nets which had been meant to stop them at Fort Plentiful had been strung through the trees. Demons bit at ropes that had tangled their limbs. Soldiers with steel bayonets thrust up at them, killing them.

Here and there men screamed as trolls caught them or demons attacked, but the Fifth’s discipline held. They kept withdrawing, moving from prepared position to prepared position, loading and firing to command. In the woods, at close ranges, they had an advantage, but Ian wondered how long that would last. Most of his men could manage four or five shots before magick began to fail them. In combat on the continent, at that point, they’d be bayonet to bayonet with the enemy, or riding after them as they retreated. This sustained combat, while effective, would only win the day if the supply of trolls ran out before his soldiers’ ability to kill them did.

Ian ducked out of the way as a pursuing troll triggered one of many traps the Fifth had labored to construct. The bole of a stout tree had been chopped into a six-foot length. Its branches sharpened into stakes and it had been hauled into the forest’s upper reaches. It swung down on ropes, whooshing past him, and branches impaled a troll through the upper chest and neck. Off to the right a deadfall trap broke another troll’s legs. As it thrashed on the ground, men bayonetted it to death. Ian split the skull of a demon which clung on one of his men’s backs, then thrust the weary man west.

“Falling back, in good order.” Ian again raised his sword and laughed bravely. “By God they’ll remember tangling with the Fifth, men. Fall back, take aim, and send them home to Hell!”

In an effort to hide his nervousness, Prince Vlad idly studied the fingernails on his right hand. Over the top he studied Rufus. Golden energy trickled up through the ground and curved down, falling over him as if a gentle shower. The disk exuded small etheric pseudopods, keeping it elevated and moving forward. Before the Prince had studied with Msitazi and Fire, the amorphous feet would have been invisible to him. He would have taken greater heart in seeing them, save that the magick that allowed him to do so was the simplest thing he’d learned, and a prerequisite to the greater magicks he’d have to use against Rufus.