“I agree as well.” The second speaker’s voice was muffed, as though he spoke through gauze or something.
The princess tried to open her eyes, but the lids refused to move-almost as if they were glued shut by some gummy substance. Frantically, she strained, trying to move, to speak, to see.
“Now get her out of here!” Hale said. “It makes me nervous, and she’s been here too long already!”
“I intend to.”
Selinda heard someone come close, felt a presence-like a cold, black shadow-loom over her. Abruptly a cold, clawlike object brushed her hand, and a painful shock pulsed through her body, forcing an involuntary scream.
Immediately her eyesight cleared, and she found herself looking up at a faceless man, an image of darkness that utterly terrified her. After a moment she realized that it was a person concealed by a black mask, but that only added to her fear.
“Get up, my dear,” he commanded in a clipped tone. “You will find that your limbs are quite capable of functioning again.”
Wiggling her fingers, lifting an arm, Selinda was surprised to see he spoke the truth. She forced herself to a sitting position, swaying dizzily. The man was standing very close to her, and she nearly gagged on the stench of foulness and decay that seemed to permeate his black robe.
“You aren’t going to take her out the front door, are you?” asked Hale, alarmed.
“Of course not.” The masked man stared down at her. She felt like a mouse under the keen stare of a circling hawk. “Stand up,” he said.
She did so, still dizzy, bracing herself against the bed. A momentary thought of flight entered her mind, but she banished it just as quickly. Even if she were steady enough on her feet to try to make a getaway, she sensed power in the man’s voice and knew that she couldn’t resist if he simply ordered her to stop. He must be some kind of wicked priest, she deduced, but she couldn’t guess which god he served.
“I know you have powerful friends,” he said to her, mildly amused. “So you must forgive a little spell that will mask you from magical detection.”
The priest pulled a dirty black powder from his pocket and sprinkled it over Selinda. She wanted to shake her head, to lift her hands and brush it away, but her body would not obey her mind.
“That will suffice,” he said. “Now we go.”
He swirled his hands around himself and circled Selinda’s head while muttering a deep, glottal chant. Almost immediately the room filled with gray haze, so thick Selinda couldn’t see the walls or floor; then she realized that the room itself had disappeared. She felt the sensation of standing in an immense space, but she could see nothing beyond the tip of her nose.
She experienced that clawlike touch again and gasped as the priest took her hand. Every fiber of her being compelled her to pull away, but once again she felt powerless. “You do not want to escape me… not here,” said the black-masked man. “You would wander for very many lifetimes and never find your way back home.”
Terrified, she felt herself pulled along, dragged and stumbling across some kind of smooth, hard surface. She looked down but couldn’t see anything except the gray haze. For a little while she tried to count her steps, but her mind was clouded, and the numbers swirled randomly in her head. Had they gone twenty paces, or was it two hundred? She had no way of telling.
“Now… here we are,” the priest said finally. The grayness vanished and she found herself in a wood-paneled room lined with books. There was a fireplace-cold at the moment-along one wall. There were great windows, and she could see that it was fully dark outside.
The place was vaguely familiar-no, more than vaguely, she had been there many times! Why was her mind so thick?
“I have her, my lord,” said the priest, addressing someone behind Selinda.
She turned and gasped out a single word. “Father!”
Then the contents of her stomach rebelled, doubling her over, forcing her to retch all over the expensive imported carpet.
“Excellency! The men are tiring badly. Are you sure you don’t want to stop for a few hours to let them rest?”
General Weaver’s question was legitimate since the army had been marching hard for three days. But the emperor had no patience for questions or delays. Jaymes had traveled that valley many times. He knew that New Compound was a two-hour march away-two hours if they could at least maintain their crawling pace!
“No rest!” he snapped. “There’ll be plenty of time for that after Ankhar is dead.”
He knew the risks he was taking. Bringing a fatigued army directly into battle from a forced march tempted disaster. But it was a calculated risk too, for he reckoned the ogres would be celebrating chaotically after driving the dwarves out of New Compound. Most likely the great majority would be drunk or groggy with powerful hangovers. If he delayed, his men would have time to rest, but the enemy would have time to recover as well.
And there were other risks. What if Ankhar was planning to withdraw back up and over the Garnet Mountains? They might lose his trail entirely! And how many dwarves had he killed? Was Dram alive… and Sally? What about their little son? With a twinge, Jaymes realized he hadn’t been there to see the lad in more than a year.
Curse Dram for a fool anyway! If he had built those bombards-ah, a foolish complaint at the moment. The big guns could reduce a fortress, but they would have been useless against ogres swarming down from the mountains. By the time the gunners were readying their second or third shot, the battery would have been overrun.
“Move!” demanded the emperor, picking up the pace of his own marching. He had dismounted hours earlier, striding on foot so as to set a better example for the men. He was grateful for the good dwarven road, smooth and gently graded, carrying them steadily and quickly up the valley toward New Compound.
He recognized a ridge before them, a moraine running perpendicular to the valley floor. It was the last obstacle before the town, and he halted his army. Ordering them to deploy on both sides of the road, he advanced carefully to a crest with General Weaver and Sergeant Ian.
They spotted the smoke even before the town came into view. Crouching, moving through some underbrush to the side of the road, they made their way to a decent vantage, where they could look over New Compound without being observed.
The great fire in the plaza was the central feature of the view, still casting a plume of smoke more than a mile into the sky. At the base of the blaze, smoldering rather than flaming, lay the charred ruins of nearly a dozen bombard tubes. So Dram had started manufacturing them after all!
And Ankhar had destroyed them and so much more. Jaymes took in the blackened warehouses, the splintered tangle that had been a neat lumberyard. The doors of every house he could see had been smashed in, with personal belongings, fabrics, and furniture scattered around in the streets and yards. The emperor’s jaw clenched in fury, and his eyes narrowed to mere slits, glaring with hatred at the damage that had come to the place-to his place!
For if Dram Feldspar had been the caretaker of New Compound, Jaymes Markham had been its creator. His orders had caused it to be built there, and his steel had funded its operations. It would be his soldiers who avenged its destruction.
His narrowed eyes took in the military features of the valley. The once-splendid stone bridge-Dram had been inordinately proud of the structure, Jaymes thought-was a blasted ruin. Beside the wrecked span, the ogres had placed log bridges across the stream at several places, obviously readying for a march down the valley. But bridges could work in both directions, Jaymes knew.
At the moment the ogre army looked more like a disorganized mob. A few of the troops were up on the mountainside, apparently inspecting the rock piles where the dwarves of New Compound had been buried alive. The others were carousing through the ruined town. From where Jaymes was, it appeared as though nearly all were drunk. Certainly they were not expecting battle.
“We’re going to strike at once,” the emperor declared curtly.
“Certainly, Excellency,” General Weaver declared. He gestured to the base of the cliff wall to the left, where a dense pine forest concealed the ground. “I suggest we send a flanking force through there, and take them from two sides at once.”
“No time,” Jaymes retorted after a brief pause. “The ground is too rough for troops; it would take them hours to get into position.”
