James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

Roghar turned to face his little army again. The numbers had swelled further, to more than he could quickly count, and he felt a surge of gratitude that made his chest ache. “Warriors of Fallcrest!” he called. A chorus of cheers, louder than anything he’d heard back at the inn, answered him. “We march into enemy territory,” he said. “But we’re not going to find massed lines of demon soldiers waiting for us-they don’t fight that way. They’ll send little squads to harry us, to bite at our flanks and nip at our heels. That means we need to be as nimble as they are. If there’s too many of them and too few of you, fall back and find help. There’s no disgrace in it.”

He let his eyes range over his troops. He saw nods of understanding, faces set in determination as soldiers steeled themselves for battle, and a few of them taking nips from little flasks of liquid courage. The early rays of sunlight gleamed on their steel caps and spearheads, resting like the favor of the gods on each of them.

“On to victory!” he shouted.

“Victory!” came a cheer in response.

Roghar lifted his glowing sword over his head and started down the trail, Uldane and Tempest close behind him and a surge of desperately eager soldiers pressing him on.

The cliff that divided Fallcrest in two offered a sheer drop of more than two hundred feet in the center of town. The track made use of natural ledges and dwarf-cut switchbacks to provide a path a wagon could follow, albeit slowly and very carefully-especially on the turns. It was only barely wide enough for a wagon, and every time a wagon started the descent a runner would hurry to the bottom to make sure a different wagon didn’t start up at the same time. But even that arrangement was better than what the other two roads that traversed the bluffs offered-riders and small carts could navigate them, but wagons were out of the question. That made Market Street the best option for his soldiers, but still not a great option.

Roghar tried to listen for any sign of an ambush, but the soldiers behind him made an unbelievable amount of noise. Wayward footsteps sent trickles of gravel down the cliffside around him, and even the whispers of more than two dozen men added up to a constant low murmur that made him despair of hearing anything else.

“Up ahead!” Uldane said suddenly. He pointed to a narrow stretch of the trail, where the cliff edge was marked with red warning banners. Roghar knew that at least one wagon had slipped over the edge there and plummeted down, killing several people and as many horses. It was a logical place for an ambush.

He followed Uldane’s pointing finger and tried to make out what the halfling had seen, but his eyes showed him no sign of danger.

“I see it,” Tempest said. “One of the nightmare demons.”

“More than one,” Uldane said. “Look up the bluff from the road.”

Roghar looked up and spotted at least some of the demons Uldane saw-three or four of the shadowy demons, lurking among the scrub trees that clung to the bluffs. “Well done, Uldane. Let’s get them!”

His sword blazing like the sun, Roghar charged forward. As he neared the point where he’d spotted the demons, he called on Bahamut’s power, and a gust of wind like a swooping angel lifted him off the ground and set him down in the midst of the demons on the bluff. One foot slipped as he landed, and for a moment he feared he was about to tumble down the cliff, but he got his feet under him again and stood his ground as three shadowy figures surged toward him.

“You killed us,” one of the figures said, no longer a demon of shadow and Voidharrow but a soldier just like the ones behind him, clad in leather and clutching a spear. The man’s eyes were dead and his flesh gone gray, but he moved with all the speed of the living. The other two figures took on similar shapes, and they reached for him with their dead hands, whispering words of condemnation.

“You led us to our doom,” one said.

“Foolhardy,” said another.

The ground beneath Roghar’s feet began to rumble, matching the pounding of his heart. His mind knew that these demons could prey on his fears and turn them against him, but when faced with his deepest terrors given flesh, he found it nearly impossible to listen to that part of his mind. He glanced around and saw gravel tumbling down the bluffs, and he realized what the rumbling meant.

A landslide would obliterate his entire, pathetic army in one blow.

“You did this to us,” a dead soldier said, clawing at his eyes.

Roghar whirled his sword around him in a wide circle, trailing light like a comet. Steel and radiance bit into the walking corpses that threatened him and they recoiled, allowing their true demonic faces to show through for a moment.

“Hurry!” he yelled to the soldiers behind him. “Landslide!”

The demons in their dead-soldier guises closed around him again, and the rumbling of the earth grew louder. His sword exploded in light as he slammed the blade into the middle demon’s shoulder, cutting through red crystal and shadowy flesh until nothing remained but dust. He spun to face the two remaining demons and roared his triumph, punctuating his roar with a blast of dragonfire from his mouth. As he conquered his fear their faces with their haunting eyes melted away-and he realized with a start that the rumbling of the earth stopped as well.

There was no landslide-it was just another weapon of the demons, playing on his fears.

But it might have been their most effective weapon yet. In his fear, he had shouted an order to his soldiers that had instilled the same fear in them. Fear could turn an army of soldiers into a panicked mob in an instant, and a glance behind him confirmed that his warning had done exactly that.

“Halt!” he shouted, but he had no confidence that his voice would be heard over the tumult of the panicking soldiers. And before he could do anything more, the other two demons redoubled their assault.

“I’ve heard a lot of lies and excuses in my career,” one demon said, taking on the appearance of the commander on the bridge and glaring at Roghar, “but never so bold a lie from a paladin of Bahamut.”

The other stood back and seemed to grow. Its face was a mirror of Roghar’s own, and great leathery wings spread from its shoulders.

“Kuyutha,” he murmured, awe and fear seizing control of his thoughts. Kuyutha was an exarch of Bahamut, a dragonborn who had been a paladin like him in life, but ascended to his god’s right hand. Dragonborn revered Kuyutha as Bahamut’s particular emissary to them, who had shepherded the scattered clans after the fall of the empire of Arkhosia centuries ago. He was said to train the bravest and purest dragonborn paladins personally, in his halls in the celestial mountains.

“You have failed Bahamut,” the exarch said. “I share our god’s disappointment.”

Roghar glanced between the two figures expressing their condemnation, and he knew the exarch’s words were true. He was a failure as a paladin, a disappointment to Bahamut and a mockery of all his god’s ideals. He fell to his knees and bowed his head, feeling unworthy even to look at Kuyutha. The commander stepped closer and drew a sword, as if to carry out a sentence of execution.

“For Fallcrest!” came a shout from somewhere behind him.

“For Bahamut, and for glory!” more voices cried.

Roghar looked up just as the commander swung his sword at Roghar’s neck. A reflex brought his shield up to block the blow, and he sprang to his feet.

A wave of soldiers was about to break around him. As he stared, trying to remember what was happening, the first soldiers reached the commander, hacking him with swords and prodding him with spears. He made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a roar and changed, his human face transforming into a blank, alien visage of leathery black skin and red crystal.