draw a breath.”
“That’s something, I guess,” he admitted. “But I still miss her.”
“Indeed.” Martin nodded solemnly. “As do we all.”
The princess of Palanthas looked out of the window from her chambers high up in one of the towers of her father’s palace. Her eyes were drawn to the east, where the crest of the Vingaard range was outlined in the purplish rays of the setting sun. She held a piece of paper in her hand, a few sentences quickly scribed and messengered to the city in a courier’s pouch. That same pouch, carried by a fleet rider, had brought news of the great victory.
All the city was celebrating Ankhar’s defeat. His army had been banished to Lemish, said the report, and the threat to the lands of the knighthood was quelled for the foreseeable future.
The other note that had been delivered to her was a personal missive from the lord marshal himself:
I have won the field. My army has triumphed, and I returning to Palanthas. I am coming home to you, my bride.
The missive had provoked a strange reaction-not the delirious joy she would have expected, nor even a tremulous sense of relief, the weight of concern for her husband’s fate lifted by the good news.
Instead, she felt confused and frightened.
She remembered her tears, her almost uncontrollable hysteria when Jaymes had departed for the war the morning after the wedding. She had locked herself in her rooms for days, seeing no one but her faithful maid, Marie, and her trusted counselor, the priestess Melissa du Juliette. The cleric had remained at her side, caring for her tirelessly, speaking softly, soothing the grieving young woman, until at last Selinda began to feel more like her old, confident self.
Emerging at last from her self-imposed seclusion, she had found a palace, a city, a people she barely recognized. It was this altered awareness that finally brought home to her that, though her surroundings remained the same, she herself had undergone some deep, fundamental transformation. It was a frightening and disorienting awareness, so she had tried hard to figure out what had happened to change her so.
At first she had prayed to every goddess she knew, hoping that the seed of her wedding night’s passion would take root within her womb and begin to grow into the baby she desperately desired.
Within a few weeks, however, she had learned she was not yet pregnant, and with that realization had come a new sense of wonder, and mystery, and another dawning realization.
Did she desire a child?
No, not yet, she had decided, and with that decision had come more questions. Why had she fallen so giddily for this man she had known for years and had previously regarded with a certain wary respect. What had happened to her? What had changed her?
And what would her future hold?
“You fool!” shouted Ankhar, raising his fist over his stepmother’s wrinkled face. “You pledged me an undefeatable ally, and he was defeated at the very moment of my triumph!”
“He was as mighty as they come!” shrieked Laka, not the least bit cowed. “You are the fool, to let him be trapped in the mountains! You should have driven him across the plains with the wand!”
“Bah! He was killed by that army of stone! Who were they? Where did they come from all of a sudden?”
Laka only glared at him. The half-giant’s hand trembled, but he could not bring himself to smash it downward. Instead, he whirled about and spotted the Thorn Knight watching him through narrowed eyes.
They were in a bivouac of the retreating army, a sprawling encampment near the marshes that marked the border between Solamnia and Lemish. That land, dark and mysterious and peopled with monsters and goblins and other wretched beings, lay like a shroud on the southern horizon. For miles around the trio, the remnants of the half-giant’s horde were scattered in tents and bedrolls on the wet, miserable ground. Mosquitoes and other insects whined around their ears. All of the half-giant’s captains had found compelling reasons to avoid their commander on this dark and ill-omened night.
“Why could you not foresee the danger?” Ankhar asked the wizard, his voice a low growl.
“Who could have?” Hoarst replied, not illogically. “Those stone soldiers are unknown in all the history of the world.”
“Fool!” the half-giant cursed, still trembling. Impulsively he slapped with his great hand, a blow that would have snapped the wizard’s neck had it landed where he aimed, right on the smug, almost contemptuous face.
However, the Thorn Knight was no longer there; he had blinked himself magically out of sight a fraction of a breath before the powerful blow landed. Ankhar swung through a wide arc, striking only the air, staggering off balance to keep from falling.
“Where did he go?” he demanded of the old hob-wench.
Laka shrugged in that maddening way of hers. “Away,” she replied. “Perhaps he will return when you have calmed down.”
The half-giant forced himself to draw a breath. He squinted, remembering. “You said that potion, the tea he drank to gain strength, would kill him eventually!”
“It should have,” the shaman replied with a shrug. “But he has a well of strength I did not perceive. It seems my potion not only healed him for a time, but ended up by making him stronger.”
“He is a dangerous man.”
“A powerful enemy, to be sure. But also a powerful ally.”
“Will he really come back?” Ankhar asked, discouraged. It occurred to him, a trifle belatedly, how much he had come to rely upon the Thorn Knight. Hoarst’s spells, and his knowledge, had been key elements in the army commander’s success, and he knew that he wouldn’t fare nearly as well without his magic.
The half-giant slumped to the ground, ignoring the swampy wetness that instantly soaked through his breeches. Laka came over to him, placing a clawlike hand upon his beefy forearm.
“If he has reason to come back, he will,” she said. “You have made him a very rich man, and he will remember that. For now, you must rest. Tomorrow we march into Lemish. There, my son, you will be master of all-King Ankhar!”
“King of Lemish? Lord of a swamp and a forest? Master of a few crude villages? What good is that?” he demanded.
“It is a new start,” she said. “A place for you to begin afresh, grow strong again, my bold son. For I had another dream, just this night.”
“A dream? Of what?”
“A dream that you will return to Solamnia. Your army will be mightier than ever, and the humans of the world will bow down to you and beg for mercy.”
“A prophecy,” Ankhar said. He leaned back, stretching out on the ground, suddenly conscious of the weariness that seeped through every fiber of his bones. “I like this prophecy,” he remarked. “Tell me more.”
But by the time Laka began to speak, he was already snoring.
The great column of the Solamnic forces dispersed as it marched. A large contingent, representing all four armies, stayed in the vicinity of Solanthus, there to keep a wary eye on the border with Lemish, and to watch for any reappearance of Ankhar’s vanished-and vanquished-horde. General Rankin of the Sword Army, former captain of Solanthus, would be laid to rest in a great funeral in the city, but the lord marshal offered his regrets and explained that he would hurry on to Palanthas with Coryn the White.
Detachments of the Rose Army headed south and west for Caergoth, while many of the Crown Knights made for the site of ruined Thelgaard, where rebuilding was already under way. The Kaolyn Axers turned their faces toward the high Garnet Mountains and the undermountain kingdom.
Many men of the Vingaard plains simply bade farewell and returned to their homes and farms. Dram, with the very few survivors of his original company-the hill dwarves who had garrisoned the supply park, mostly-would ride to the New Compound.
“It will take some time to settle the affairs of all those dwarves who died with the battery,” Dram explained to Jaymes, his expression stern, his eyes cold and unclouded by tears. “That’s the most important thing. It will be next year before we’re ready to start working again.”
“I understand,” said the lord marshal. If he was anxious to accelerate the work on the compound, and to have a new battery of bombards to replace those lost on the ridge, he knew his able assistant too well to press the point.
