“Charge! Double time, men-to the gates!”
Captain Blackgaard was leading the attack on foot-the steep and rocky slopes were not fit for horses-and the bulk of the Black Army surged after him in a long file. The nine companies on the ground swept around the base of the great fortress, which was protected by the cloaking shadows in spite of the torches flaring all along the high parapets.
As the alarms spread above them, they emerged from the shadows and raced toward the great barrier of the north gate.
Finally they came around the last corner of the bastion to see the great gates looming before them. Blackgaard felt a momentary panic when he saw the impassable barrier still blocking them. There came a creak of sound followed by a first tentative movement-and then he thanked his gods and all those who would make him rich, as the mighty portals began to swing open.
Hoarst had done his work well.
Markus looked down to see thousands of men, all clad in black, pouring through the open gate. The advance guard of flying soldiers, meanwhile, had claimed the gateway into the central part of the tower, forced an opening, and slain the few defenders who blocked their path.
The general took a look across the courtyard toward the redoubt known as the Knights’ Spur. It was a side tower separated from the bulk of the fortress by a deep channel, which was crossed by a single bridge. If the defenders could get across there…
The thought died as he saw fifty black-dressed soldiers already patrolling that rampart. The small bridge was being raised; the Knights’ Spur was soon closed to the defenders.
Clashes raged throughout the great fortress. Outnumbered and surprised, most of them awakened from a sound sleep, the Knights of Solamnia nevertheless gave a good account of themselves. They fought in twos or threes, each man watching his comrade’s back. The attackers were cut down by the score. More by instinct than anything else, however, the knights were gradually retreating toward the southern end of the fortress.
Already the attackers, with so many gates opened by the flying advance guard, were pouring around every wall, tower, and courtyard on the north side. They swarmed through the central courtyard. The great tower in the center of the fortress had fallen, and enemy archers had replaced the knights on the High Lookout, raining their deadly missiles down on the defenders.
Here and there a sergeant organized a counterattack, or a dozen men burst through an encircling line of black-clad attackers. The Solamnics fought bravely and died, falling back steadily. The fortress was too big, had been breached in too many places for them to try to hold more than a small corner of it against the overwhelming numbers.
“Rally to me, knights!” cried Markus to his surviving men. “We’ll hold them at the south gatehouse!”
His men arrived in pairs and trios, a pathetically small number, all of them fighting their way to the general, many dying in the attempt. Dressed in silver mail shirts or even silken pajamas, they stood back to back when they could find companions, dueling-and dying.
Still, the Solamnics took a terrible toll on the attackers. They knew every nook and cranny of their great fortress and had the advantage of lethal traps that had been carefully laid over the years. More than two hundred of the attackers perished under a crushing rockslide, triggered when a sergeant released a trapdoor over a constricted corridor. Dozens of black-clad soldiers fell as they pressed through darkened hallways defended by unseen knights. A whole company of the Black Army-three hundred men-died horribly when they were trapped in a courtyard that was flooded with oil and subsequently ignited into a cauldron of screaming men and stinking, burned flesh.
But in the end, the overwhelming number of attackers simply had to prevail. When a hundred men were slain charging across an exposed courtyard, two hundred survived the charge to sweep the beleaguered defenders from their positions. When a corridor floor dropped away, spilling two hundred Black Army soldiers into a subterranean aqueduct and certain death by drowning, four hundred replacements took a new route and massacred the knights who had sprung the trap. Wherever the defenders met with a momentary success, the attackers changed tactics, came around from a new direction, and carried the fight.
Finally Markus had fewer than a hundred men left, huddled together on several sections of the outer parapet. They formed two lines, facing west and east, blocking the ramparts on top of the walls as the attackers swarmed into them. For a few moments, the Solamnics stood, steel clashing against the attackers, killing two or three of the black soldiers for every one of their own casualties.
Markus looked to the sky, which was paling with dawn. The flying soldiers had disappeared. Knowing they must have used magic to take to the air, he realized the foul enchantment had worn off, that the enemy was once again grounded, like his own men.
“Fall back to the south gatehouse!” he ordered. “We make our stand there.”
The men retreated with the discipline one would expect of Solamnic Knights. There was no panic, not even when a new rush of the black attackers surged through a side door and took the skirmish line in the right flank. Two or three men fell, but the rest wheeled back toward the great metal door that led to the massive gatehouse.
But then the doors to that gatehouse burst open, disgorging a fresh company of the enemy, three hundred strong or more emerging to form a phalanx. The defenders were trapped in a vise. Enemy archers began to open up on them from higher platforms, and it broke Markus’s heart to see brave men fall without even being able to strike a blow at their distant attackers.
It was not far from this place, General Markus remembered grimly, that Sturm Brightblade had died. The Blue Lady, Kitiara, had killed him here, and in that courageous moment the Orders of the Solamnic Knights had sprung back to life. The Oath and the Measure had been redeemed, the honor of Vinas Solamnus restored.
“Hold, there!” he called as two more knights fell. A young apprentice, not yet bearded, rushed into the breach, hewing and hacking at the black-clad attackers, and the new line held-for a moment, until the lad was felled by an arrow plunging from high above.
Markus was down to only a dozen men, and they were beset by hundreds of attackers on all sides. His bloody sword was a heavy weight in his hand, but that was nothing compared to the burden dragging down his heart.
Another knight fell, so close to him that his blood spilled across Markus’s boots. The general tried to step forward and avenge the man, but the killer backed away from him, and five or six of the attackers rushed in to take his place.
Markus never saw the one who killed him, the keen blade lancing in from the left, stabbing under his rib cage, driving up to pierce his great heart.
“Est Sularus oth Mithas,” he groaned. My honor is my life.
And on that day, it was his death as well.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The latest reports still have Ankhar closing in on Solanthus,” reported Captain Franz. The Crown officer sat astride his lathered charger. The young man’s face was lined with sweat, caked with dust. But he had ridden up to the emperor and his staff at a gallop, and his voice displayed only calm assurance, no fear.
The leader of the White Riders had been out on patrol for more than a week and had just located the marching column of the Palanthian Legion and his father’s Crown Army. Dismounting, Franz saluted his father, General Dayr, and turned to address Jaymes. “But I have to tell you, Excellency, that those reports are four days old. My outriders have not been able to penetrate the screen of warg cavalry, so we don’t have concrete information on the whereabouts of his main body.”
“Well, let’s start with some facts,” Jaymes said, thinking aloud. He had maps in his saddlebags and a whole library of them in one of the command wagons, but his memory had etched every detail of those plains into his mind; he didn’t need to consult any documents to lay out the situation on the plains.
“He hasn’t come within fifty miles of the city-that much we know.”
“Correct, my lord,” the knight captain reported. His gaze was steady on the emperor, and he spoke levelly, without emotion, though resentment simmered behind his eyes. “The screen of his riders extends that close to the
