“The wedding will occur this evening. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, Selinda wants you to be present. So can I expect you on your best behavior?”
For several breaths the regent’s jaw worked, but his mouth couldn’t seem to form words. Finally, he nodded curtly. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be there.”
Generals Dayr, Markus, and Rankin led their separate columns eastward across the Plains of Solamnia, moving as swiftly as their exhausted troops could march and their weary knights could ride. The outposts of Ankhar’s army had no choice but to fall back before them, for without the river as a defensive barrier, they were too widely scattered to oppose. If these units-mainly goblin riders and human mercenaries-had not retreated, the mobile columns of knights would have isolated and destroyed them.
However, each of the three army wings had been brutalized by the costly river crossing; then the combined force had been shocked and battered by the passage of the monstrous elemental being. Even though the Solamnic troops had not directly confronted the creature, it had inflicted a thousand casualties in a matter of moments.
Now hundreds of wounded were being tended by clerics in a great hospital camp set up on the west bank of the river. Many supplies had been expended or lost in the crossing or burned by the elemental. Food, spare weapons, and medical resources were in short supply.
General Dayr’s Crown Army had been reduced to less than half its starting strength. The shower of arrows had killed many men in their boats, and countless others had drowned when the frail little crafts had capsized. In the immediate aftermath of the battle, the Crowns had been forced to lick their wounds on the west bank and were able to cross at a ford only when the goblin cavalry had withdrawn to avoid being outflanked.
The Sword Army of General Rankin had not lost quite as many of its rank and file, but his elite knights had been shattered in the charges against Blackgaard’s pikemen. Their courage had been epic, but their tactics disastrous. The steady lines of the defenders, their tight discipline, enabled the long weapons to gut hundreds of horses and pierce the flesh of nearly as many riders. The pathetic remnant of Sword Knights accompanying the columns of infantry eastward effectively numbered only a few hundred now.
General Markus and the Army of the Rose had fared a little better than their northern counterparts, but even that force had been considerably reduced. In addition to the casualties suffered in the crossing, Markus had been forced to detach a sizable contingent to screen the army from the prospect of attack from the Garnet Mountains.
That range was Ankhar’s home territory, and he had used the forested slopes and rocky valleys before to launch his actions. So Markus had sent companies of swordsmen and archers, positioning them to the south, where they were responsible for keeping an eye on the many routes out of the mountains. The elemental king had last been seen striding into the heights, and they were also scouting for any sign of the monster.
All three wings of the great army inched steadily eastward, however, driving Ankhar’s cavalry and mercenaries steadily before them. By the time they drew near to the city of Solanthus, scouts reported that the enemy was withdrawing from his siege lines. First reports indicated the horde was falling back to the east or southeast, possibly toward the savage realm of Lemish-known to be a stronghold of the ogre race. But details were sketchy, and the mountains also promised concealment, shelter, and a place to regroup.
Finally, the Solamnic Army stopped within sight of the Cleft Spires of Solanthus. The soldiers could clearly see the great swath of destruction where the mighty West Gate lay in ruins. Beyond stood the towers of the city. A fortified line of trenches and wooden breastworks faced them, but already it was clear that those enemy positions had been abandoned.
The three generals, Dayr, Markus, and Rankin, met face to face to debate their next move.
“Any word from the lord marshal?” asked Markus, as soon as he and the other two generals had dismounted.
“None,” Dayr replied. Rankin said the same. When the captain of the Freemen, Jaymes’s personal bodyguard, arrived a moment later, Markus put the question to Captain Powell.
“I’m sorry, General. But we have had no word since the White Witch sent him into the city-and that, I fear, was many days ago.”
“Do you think he’s still in there somewhere?” Markus asked, indicating the looming bulk of Solanthus. “Could some trap await us inside the city?”
“No, it seems like Ankhar is falling back,” Rankin guessed. “There ought to be nothing to prevent him from coming out to us now. It’s strange, this long absence and silence.”
While the three generals were discussing their options, two noblemen rode out of the city to greet them. Lords Harbor and Martin welcomed the troops of the liberating army and sadly informed the generals that the Duchess Brianna had fallen heroically in the ultimate battle just at the moment of victory.
They recounted the tale of the city’s battle with the elemental, and Jaymes’s role in that clash. But when asked about the lord marshal’s whereabouts, the two noblemen could only shrug and report that he had disappeared from within the ducal palace. No one had seen him depart the building, and several days of vigorous searching had turned up no clues.
“However, we have to believe that he left the city safely as mysteriously as he arrived,” Martin reported. “Probably by magic. The kender who came with him also disappeared, at more or less the same time. Believe me, we would know if the kender was still about.”
Mystified, the three generals and two nobles retired to the headquarters of the encampment, where they might, with more comfort, mull over a plan of action.
“Ankhar’s army is only a dozen miles to the east,” Martin explained after they had all settled with tea and a ration of biscuits. “We’ve had scouts following him, and it doesn’t seem like he’s in a great hurry to flee. Can’t you strike him there soon?”
All three generals shook their heads, though it was Markus who offered the explanation. “Our men are exhausted, and we are all woefully under strength. This army needs rest, replenishment, and reinforcements-if any can be found. It would be rash to the point of recklessness to charge into battle now, even if we could catch up to the fiend.”
“But he’s right there, within your grasp!” insisted Lord Harbor, gesturing vaguely toward the east. “Surely this is an opportunity we can’t afford to pass up?”
“What about your own garrison?” asked General Rankin sharply. “Do you have perhaps a thousand knights ready to ride? Can you contribute five times that many footmen to our strength? Or two regiments of archers, with twenty arrows for every man?”
“Of course not!” the lord retorted. “We have barely survived this siege with a skeleton garrison. We have perhaps three hundred horses, woefully underfed. And our footmen are half starved. But we drove the enemy away-we have already given our full measure!”
“What my colleague means,” Lord Martin suggested diplomatically, “is that we have also suffered and are diminished. It seems obvious that, even if we combined all our forces, we don’t have enough troops to confront the enemy-not at the present time, at least.”
Sir Templar arrived to find the two groups huddled around the campfire, their command counsel rapidly deteriorating into sighs and long, gloomy silences.
“Sirs,” he reported breathlessly. “I have received word from one of my fellow clerics, in Palanthas.”
“Do you mean that inquisitor fellow?” asked Dayr suspiciously. “I don’t trust anything he has to tell us!”
“No, not him.” The young Clerist knight, who had proved his worth to the generals beyond any doubt when he screened the bridge attack over the Vingaard, spoke frankly. “In point of fact, I share your suspicions about the inquisitor, especially where this army is concerned. But I received an ethereal missive from a priestess, Melissa du Juliette. And she is a woman, a cleric, I trust implicitly.”
“And what did this priestess have to say?” asked Markus impatiently.
“The lord marshal is in Palanthas!” The words, the momentous news, seemed to burst excitedly from the Clerist. “He’s been there twice in the last month, apparently, most recently appearing there several days ago. Evidently he travels by magic-perhaps the White Witch teleports him. The first time he was there, he fought a duel with Lord Frankish over the Princess Selinda-it was Frankish who issued the challenge-and the lord marshal won, I’m pleased to report. Frankish himself was slain. Today the lord marshal is marrying the princess-it was she who was the cause of the duel. and finally, Lord Marshal Jaymes has taken command of the Palanthian Legion and will be marching at its head on the morrow, hastening here to join us at the front! With him are marching a thousand knights, and six or eight thousand infantry!”
