Troy Denning - The Siege

This was the last river they would cross before reaching Evereska, and if the enemy meant to stop them, it would be there, and Laeral knew there was a good chance that they would.

In addition to slowing the progress of the relief army to a crawl, the horrid weather was taking a terrible toll on the health and spirit of the army. There was not a fighter among them who doubted that they owed their lives to the forces of Shade. Had the Shadovar not appeared when they did at the High Moor, the enemy horde would have beaten them to the high ground and obliterated the army to a warrior.

Many officers were beginning to question the wisdom of continuing the march at all. While the priests and healers were keeping deaths from illness to a bare minimum, most soldiers were feverish and-with the constant rainfall spoiling rations-weak from hunger. Even if they reached Evereska in time, it seemed likely that their poor condition would only be a burden on those already in place.

Laeral refused to hear these arguments. Sooner or later, the weather would break-it had to-and a few days of sunshine would do wonders to rejuvenate the army. More importantly, she felt certain the phaerimm would eventually find a way to defeat the shadowshell. When that happened, the thornbacks would learn from their mistake and scatter across Faerыn, and the only thing capable of stopping them would be the sheer numbers of Laeral's relief army.

Most of all, there was her beloved Khelben to think about. He had vanished at the Battle of Rocnest, defending a trio of Evermeet's high mages as they attempted to open a translocational gate that would have allowed Waterdeep to send relief forces in a matter of moments instead of months, and Laeral was determined to find out what had become of him. She would have known if he had died-as a Chosen herself, she would have felt his loss in the Weave-so he had either been sucked into another plane when the phaerimm captured the gate, or trapped inside Evereska with the elves. She was gambling on Evereska, if for no other reason than she had already done what little was possible to contact him in the planes beyond.

The first rafts appeared out of the rain, the deep voices of two hundred Uthgardt barbarians chanting a somber hauling song as they pulled themselves along the guide rope. Laeral began to think her army would actually make the crossing successfully. The rafts were spaced about thirty paces apart, just far enough to avoid being caught if a magic fireball, meteor storm, or some other area attack struck the raft in front, yet close enough that the warriors on any one raft could help the others if they did come under attack.

A distant thunder began to roll over the horizon from the direction of the Forest of Wyrms. Laeral assigned her battle mages to ground defense, then took her hippogriff riders into the air to establish a protective screen fifty paces ahead of the shoreline. The thunder grew into the unmistakable roar of pounding boots and growling voices, but the rain clouds were so thick that Laeral couldn't see their enemies even from a hundred feet above the ground.

The roar grew steadily louder and passed underneath her. Laeral dropped down until she saw first the hazy darkness of land, then thousands of oblong boot prints simply appearing in the mud. Someone had turned the entire army invisible, and that meant phaerimm-probably several of them.

She aimed her palm at the front rank and spoke a few syllables of dispelling magic, and a ten-yard circle of charging bugbears appeared no more than thirty paces from the shoreline.

Several of the battle mages raised their hands in spell-casting, and a mile-long wall of flame rose up to devour the first rank of bugbears. Most fell where they stood, but hundreds of the beasts stumbled forward, roaring in pain and raising huge double-headed axes as they staggered toward the thin line of mages. The first Uthgardts were already splashing ashore to meet the beasts, but the mud was deep, they were few, and time was short.

Laeral pulled a nugget of coal from her spell pocket and flew low in front of the burning bugbears, crumbling the coal into powder and uttering a complicated incantation. The ground turned black and viscous beneath the charging beasts, miring them to their knees, then to their waists and, as they continued to struggle, their chests. Wherever their flaming bodies came into contact with the black sludge, it began to burn as well, and the band was soon filled with roaring scarecrows of orange flame.

At the end of her attack run, Laeral rose into a storm of sling stones and hand axes. None of the attacks penetrated her shielding magic, but the sheer volume was enough to slow her ascent. She turned and found herself staring out over a sea of bugbears and gnolls, all visible the moment some had begun to attack. Pushing through the horde were small bands of beholders and tentacle-faced illithids, coming forward to punch holes in the magic defenses holding their masses at bay.

Of the phaerimm who controlled the army, Laeral saw no sign at all. It was even possible that the illithids and beholders themselves did not know where the creatures were or even that they were there. The phaerimm delighted in using their magic to make other beings do their will, and often the victims were not even aware they were being controlled.

A chorus of shouts drew Laeral's attention back to the flood-swollen river, where two flights of beholders were bobbing in from the flanks to attack the raft line. She flicked a finger over her thumb ring to activate its sending magic. She pictured the craggy face of the leader of her hippogriff scouts and thought, Aelburn, they're trying to take the rafts from the flanks.

As you predicted, Milady, came Aelburn's reply. We'll turn that against 'em.

Aelburn's mount voiced a series of sharp screeches that caused the scouts to divide into two groups and wheel around to dive on the two flights of beholders from behind. Laeral watched the gray sky to be certain that no phaerimm emerged from the clouds behind her scouts. A tempest of crackling and booming exploded over the river as the mages and clerics on the rafts began to fling spells at the attacking beholders. An instant later, the sound was joined by the screams and shrieks of drowning warriors as the creatures responded with disintegration rays and death beams. Hippogriffs started shrieking and crossbows clacking, and bodies from both sides began to splash into the water.

When Laeral turned back to the main battle, the first beholder was already at the wall of fire, spraying a green ray from its huge central eye and slowly dispelling the magic that had kept it burning. She pointed her fingers down at the creature and tore it apart with ten golden bolts of magic. The battle mages filled the gap with a new curtain of fire even as the first bugbears pushed forward to exploit it, but a dozen beholders more were already floating up to spray the flames with their magic-killing rays.

Laeral pulled a pair of wands from her belt and flew down the line, flinging bolts of magic with one hand and forks of lightning with the other. The nearest beholders died before they could open a breach, but those at the far end extinguished huge swaths of flame, and bugbears and gnolls poured through by the dozens. They were met by storms of fiery meteors and dancing chains of lightning, but the battle mages could not stop them all. The meager bands of Uthgardts were forced to meet them at Laeral's tar trench, and all too often it was the barbarians who fell. More warriors were rushing up from the second and third waves of rafts, but with the raft convoy still under attack from the beholders the flow would soon stop.

Laeral finished her run and took out the last of the beholders-then turned and found another two dozen assailing the fire wall behind her. She started down the line again and felt a mental jolt as an illithid tried to blast her with its mind numbing powers. Her thought shield held firm against the assault, but she knew it would only be a matter of time before the creature had one of its beholder companions turn its magic-dispelling ray on her and tried again, and that would work. She would have to call her sister… again.