Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

Specifically, Mugwump had consumed pasmortes — the corpses that du Malphias had reanimated with magick. He’d gobbled them down quite happily, gorging himself at Anvil Lake. But when du Malphias had killed the spells which animated his corpses, Mugwump stopped feeding and vomited back up the creatures he’d just consumed. Just as greedily, he had snapped demons out of the air at Happy Valley.

Subsequent to both instances of his having gorged on creatures of magick, Mugwump had changed physically. Vlad could not help but surmise that the consumption of magick had provided the impetus for growth and change, but he knew neither how nor why. That the visions had shown the dragons to have an antipathy toward the Norghaest explained why Mugwump would feed on the demons, but Vlad couldn’t see any connection between those demons and the pasmortes.

“If you knew, would you tell me?” Vlad shook his head. “I need to know because I have a lot of people here who are willing to face your enemies. The problem is, I know very little about them. Now, the demons, they seem pretty close to gnats as far as you are concerned. And the trolls, I don’t know, bunnies to a hawk?”

The dragon snorted.

“Was that a note of contempt?”

Mugwump shifted, bringing his tail around to hem the Prince in.

Vlad patted his muzzle again. “I’m not worried for you, my friend; I just wish you had a few more of your friends to join us. A dozen or so dragons should deal with the Norghaest very nicely, I should think. Then again…”

Vlad leaned against Mugwump’s muzzle. Other dragons might view the Mystrians as the same bother as the Norghaest. “I’m not sure how they would deal with my maintaining you as a possession. Would they be wolves looking at you as a dog, or would you be a captive that they would want to free?”

A shiver ran down Vlad’s spine. What if there are no other dragons?

Auropeans had been on Mystria for nearly three hundred years and had never reported seeing a dragon. The Shedashee had knowledge of them, but always prefaced stories of them with “In the time of the grandfathers,” which was the Auropean equivalent of “Once upon a time.” The last clutch of wurms born in Auropa had been laid seven centuries before. Is it possible that there have been none here, since then?

Mugwump’s ears came forward, then his head up and around. Vlad ducked as the dragon looked to the west.

A handful of heartbeats later the ground shook. Not hard nor heavy, just a little tremor. The sort of thing one might feel when standing on a bridge over which troops were marching.

Norghaest troops.

Vlad strode to the opening. “Mr. Baker, please see to saddling Mugwump. The Count will be joining us, and we’d appreciate having our swivel guns ready to go.”

21 May 1768 Fort Plentiful, Plentiful Richlan, Mystria

Owen ran to the fort’s parapet. There, on the cusp of the hills northwest across the river, the ground quivered. Greensward pushed up, like a bubble, then burst. Rich, brown earth geysered into the air, piling up around the depression, as if it were a giant gopher hole. Owen shivered, fearing that analogy was not far off the mark, and knowing foul monsters would pour forth.

I’m sure there’s a Scripture that forewarns of such a thing.

A single figure rose from within and easily moved east along the ridgeline. Rufus Branch, with his remaining hair grown long and white, gathered into a ponytail, appeared little changed from when they last saw him. He glanced down as he walked, as if distracted by feeling moist earth and green grasses beneath his feet

Branch wore a black robe secured with a golden girdle around his waist. It had been stripped down from his torso, the arms dangling. The angry red track of a chain scar stood out on his chest and over his left arm. He bore a long staff about a head taller than he was, topped with an ovoid orb which scintillated with golden light.

The hillside continued to boil with undefined forms undulating beneath the sod. Then the earth split facing the fort. White forms, maggotlike, crawled from the wound, glistening wetly. They rolled downhill into a writhing pile. Their skin became translucent and their black heads went from glossy to dull. Mandibles opened wide, then hands thrust up and out through the mouth. The flesh cracked and trolls emerged. The skin folded itself back onto them, and the mandibles curled into their horns.

Vlad appeared beside him on the right. “Dear Lord. There must be hundreds.”

“More.” Owen pointed toward the west. “Cavalry.”

As the Norghaest infantry arrayed itself in ranks, the daunting silhouettes of trolls astride wooly rhinoceri skylined themselves on the western hill crest. Owen only counted fifty, but could imagine more hidden behind the hill. A greater number would just represent overkill, since the rhinos could flatten anything they chose to run over. Sunlight glinted from copper plates on their foreheads, matching the metal on their riders.

“Why there?” Vlad frowned. “He could have deployed on this side of the river.”

“No, Prince Vladimir. Our presence did not allow it.”

Owen spun, recognizing the voice, but knowing that he had to be mistaken. “How?”

Msitazi, Chief of the Altashee, stood at his left hand. Below, on the fort’s parade grounds, a hundred Shedashee braves stood. The air around them shimmered, as if it were a fluid, and seemed to drip from some of them. The drops even fled sideways, back into the shimmer, which quickly evaporated. The warriors-twenty from each of the Confederation’s tribes-had painted themselves red and black in a pattern matching Mugwump’s markings.

They wore leggings, breechcloths, and bone armor chestplates, as well as feathers and bits of shell as decoration. Msitazi had dressed similarly, but had added a red coat and a proper Norillian hat that had both once belonged to Owen. He bore no weapons, unlike his traveling companions, but Owen hardly thought the man with a milky eye defenseless.

“Your people called us the Twilight People because, in the beginning, they would only see us emerging in the twilight. They assumed we moved through darkness. They were mistaken.”

“Great Chief Msitazi, you know far more about the Norghaest than you have told.” Vlad concealed his hands behind his back and bowed toward the Shedashee chieftain. “I need to know what you know.”

The Shedashee ruefully shook his head. “It is not what you need to know, Prince Vladimir, it is what you must understand. You have to learn.”

Vlad thrust a finger toward the trolls. “We don’t have time to learn.”

Msitazi smiled in a way which Owen took to be faintly encouraging. “You do. The Noragah must learn as well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What you have yet to learn, they seek to remember.”

The sound of a musket-shot spun Owen back around again. “The trolls, Highness, have begun their advance.”

Atop the berm, Nathaniel ran over to the man who had fired and smacked him with his hat. “You damned fool. You have a better chance of dropping a moose at that range. Reload.”

The trolls, arranged in thick ranks, naked save for their furred pelts, marched forward. Two companies, ten ranks deep by ten columns wide, they kept good pace with each other. Only when they hit the river and started to wade through did their cohesion begin to fray. That would have been the point to hit them, but the river’s near edge lay a hundred and fifty yards away, and Nathaniel figured that even with green powder training, that was about five times longer than killing range for a musket.

“Rifles!” Nathaniel pointed with his own weapon. “Ain’t a one of you firing a-fore they get halfway up that slope. The rest of you, thirty yards, no more. Aim for something ain’t covered in bone.”