out against great armies many times in the past.
The lead company started down the bed of a narrow ravine, descending sharply. Occasionally the path twisted around to give them another glimpse of their destination, but mostly it was a deep, narrow trench and all they could see was a narrow sliver of sky overhead.
The Thorn Knight was the first to reach the base of the ravine. They were less than a mile from the north wall of the tower when Hoarst called a halt. His men gathered around as he reached into his bag of holding and pulled forth the cask that he had brought from the Dargaard range. The wizard produced a very tiny cup and opened the spigot. One by one, his three hundred men were given a sip of the potion that had been brewed at such cost.
When they were done, the wizard dropped the keg on the ground. It was no longer needed-like the drained corpse of Sirene, it was an empty shell that had to be unsentimentally discarded. Hoarst lifted his hands, outlining his gestures with the tiniest hint of light magic so that his men could observe him. With one smooth gesture, he commanded them to move out.
Swiftly, silently, and magically, his company of soldiers began to fly.
General Markus was restless, unable to sleep. Always an early riser, on that morning it seemed as though he had not been able to close his eyes for more than a moment or two all night. Giving up sleep as a lost cause, he rose, dressed himself in his leather garrison tunic with the red rose emblazoned on the crest, and decided to walk the parapets of his mountain fortress.
He found the guards awake and alert, as he knew they would be. Most of the defensive positions of the High Clerist’s Tower overlooked the road through the pass. That was the highway Jaymes had ordered widened, the route where the emperor’s army had marched to and from Palanthas. Nothing stirred on the road that day.
Markus had been the commander of the tower garrison since shortly after the defeat of Ankhar’s army. Jaymes Markham had given the trusted, veteran captain the choice of going back to Caergoth, to command the Rose Army, or of taking command of one of the remote outposts in the outer empire. Markus had leaped at the chance to come to the tower and never regretted the choice.
There he was his own master, and the master of a place that was hallowed throughout the long history of his order. He trusted his men, and they all but worshiped him. There were no politics, no distractions-thankfully, no women! — and there he could live the austere soldier’s life that he loved. It was a life of duty and service, maintaining the security of a very important landmark.
He never forgot the fact that the High Clerist’s Tower was a bastion of the ages, the site of some of history’s greatest battles. It was the battlefield where Sturm Brightblade, the knight who restored honor to the Solamnic orders during the War of the Lance, had fallen. It was where the Heroes of the Lance had slain their first dragon. And it was the key trade route of the new Solamnic empire. Every night, no matter how ill he slept, Markus went to bed proud he did his job to the best of his abilities.
Why, then, did he feel such unease and disquiet?
Still restless, the veteran captain moved from the gatehouse through the lower courtyards, where all was quiet. He climbed the towers on the curtain wall, finding the sentries awake, bored but watchful. He considered going all the way up to the High Lookout-the loftiest spot in the whole tower, except for the tiny enclosure known as the Nest of the Kingfisher, atop a narrow spire-but he knew there were trustworthy guards up there, and it would take him until dawn just to climb the hundreds of steps.
Instead, he made his way to the northern walls of his great fortress. They looked down into vast canyons, utterly dark and silent, and up on frowning cliffs and jagged peaks. There were places in view that were higher than the fortress walls, but they were too far away for archers, or even catapults, to come to bear. The night was motionless, dark with shadows.
“Eh?” croaked one of the knight guards from the outer parapet. “What kind of bird-?”
The sound died out in a gurgle of air and blood. Markus had been a soldier all his life; he knew the sound of a throat being cut.
“Alarm!” he cried. “Raise the alarm. Light torches, by Kiri!”
Immediately fires flared into being, a dozen brands igniting across the many ramparts. For a horrified instant, the captain could only gape in disbelief. His lofty parapet, nearly a thousand feet above the canyon bed, was swarming with attackers clad in black leather armor. They came not just over the walls, but also from the base of the interior wall and tower-and many were dropping right out of the sky!
The defenders never had a chance. Markus’s knights, the men who so adored and trusted him, fought bravely, but there were only twelve men posted on the remote platform, and they were swarmed by at least ten times their number. Each knight faced two, three, even four attackers at once. Steel slashed at them from every direction. And the enemy were skilled attackers.
Markus saw the last of his men die-within seconds after the battle had started-before managing to retreat into the tower’s interior, pulling the heavy iron-banded door shut behind himself. He dropped the bar and braced it with his hands.
The alarm was ringing across the pass. Torches flared all over, as men sought targets and shouted questions and challenges.
A sergeant pounded by the steps below Markus, carrying a torch and holding his sword at the ready.
“General! What’s going on?” he cried.
“Up here!” Markus cried. “Two hundred men, maybe more, have gained the north parapet-right outside this door! Get reinforcements up here on the double!”
“Yes, sir!” The veteran soldier sheathed his sword and sprang down the stairs, his torch flaring. Markus still had his hands on the locking bar, but he grew more and more unsettled when there came no attempt made to force the barrier.
A moment later the general heard dozens of boot steps pounding up the stairs. He went to an arrow slit and looked out, wondering why none of the attackers had started to pound on the door. Markus could only hope that fresh troops arrived in time to help him make a desperate stand.
But when he looked out the arrow slit, he saw why the attackers weren’t pressing the attack there. The reason was clear and astonishing: they weren’t trying to batter down the door because they were simply flying away, soaring through the air to attack another position.
Hoarst and his flying company struck three different parapets, all positions high up on the north wall. In each place they killed the posted guards and created such commotion that additional troops from the tower’s limited garrison were dispatched to the critical juncture. And by the time the reinforcements reached each scene, the attackers were gone. Soon the whole tower was ablaze with torches and littered with dead bodies.
The High Lookout bristled with archers, and arrows were launched against bats, clouds, and imaginary targets in the sky. Hoarst would send his men against the lookout soon-they had about an hour of time before the potion of flying wore off-but first he had an even more important objective.
The Gray Robe’s advance company swept downward, off of the high wall, toward the north gate. Only about a dozen of his men had been lost in those initial skirmishes, and Hoarst took the rest in a long, sweeping descent from the lookouts and into the courtyard that was just within the fortress’s northern gate.
There they found several dozen guards, and there the flying soldiers of the Black Army attacked ruthlessly. Half the defenders fell even as the attackers were dropping to the ground, swords extended and chopping. For a few moments, a melee swirled in the courtyard, blades clashing and men shouting, screaming, and dying.
Hoarst saw a knight rushing toward the massive rolled chain of the portcullis. He knew that if the man released the chain, the heavy barred gate would come crashing down, and it would take at least an hour for his men to hoist it up again.
The wizard pointed his finger and spat a word of magic. Arrows of light and energy, deceptively beautiful yet terribly lethal, shot from Hoarst’s fingertip. Two, four, six of the magical arrows seared into the back of the running knight, dropping him to the ground, his body blistered and bleeding. The stricken man reached out a desperate hand toward the chain release, but another attacker was there. The Black Army man crushed the knight’s hand with his heel of his boot then stabbed him through the neck with his sword.
The Thorn Knight was pleased. As the last of the defenders were dispatched, he looked up at the massive gates, studied the mechanisms, and spotted the great capstans that would pull the portals open.
“Go there, men!” he cried, highlighting the machinery with a ghostly spell of brightness. “Turn the winches!”
