“I will see to the Knights’ Spur,” Hoarst said. “It’s a good position for guarding the approach on the road up from the plains.”
“And I will stay here, on the High Lookout,” Ankhar declared haughtily, “where I can keep an eye on everything.”
“What makes you think that will be enough?” demanded du Chagne, his voice quavering. “We all know he has one of his cannons left. He can set that up on the Wings of Habbakuk and blow this tower to pieces-even if it takes him all winter.”
“True, that bombard is a threat,” Hoarst allowed.
“Then why are you so sanguine about our chances here?” demanded the former lord regent.
“Because I intend to see that his vaunted bombard never reaches the pass,” the gray wizard replied confidently.
Coryn and Jaymes teleported from Palanthas to the far side of the great pass. There they would wait for the Crown Army, the Palanthian Legion, and the dwarves of New Compound, all of whom were marching as fast as they could across the plains. Even so, they knew it would be several days before the troops arrived.
“We should find a place we can use for shelter and to keep an eye on the road,” the emperor suggested. Coryn agreed and they started to ascend the wide roadway, remaining out of sight of the tower.
Nearby they found a small herdsman’s cottage adjacent to the road, about a mile below the pass. The shepherd and his flock were apparently spending the summer in the high pastures, so the place was abandoned, and they decided it would be a cozy place to wait.
Jaymes took a walk up the road, going about a half mile before he reached the last bend below the fortress. He went far enough to look at the tower rising so high about the surrounding walls, gatehouses, and fortifications. He thought ruefully of General Markus, always the boldest of his commanders. He knew that Markus and his Rose Knights would have given a good account of themselves. He was sorry the old veteran was dead.
“We will avenge you, good knight,” he said softly before turning and making his way down the road and back to the cottage.
When he got there, he found Coryn had made herself right at home. The white wizard had produced a wide array of objects from within her bags of holding, setting up a crystal ball on the little kitchen table, taking over a pantry to store her potions and little boxes of components. Her spell books went on a shelf beside the door.
As Jaymes entered, she was seated at the table, using the scrying ball to see what she could learn about their enemies.
“They’re all in the tower,” Coryn confirmed after quick scrutiny. “The Thorn Knight and the Nightmaster have both placed many spells of detection around the place, so I couldn’t probe too deeply. But the ogres that fled New Compound are manning the walls, and Ankhar himself seems to be the one in command.”
Jaymes gazed at her. Her black hair spilled across the back of her robe, lustrous and long, a sharp contrast to the whiteness of her garb. Those traces of silvery gray-premature in a sense, for she was still a young woman-only added allure to her appearance. Lost in concentration, she held her slender fingers to her chin, absently chewing on a nail as she studied the murky globe. Abruptly she looked up, surprising him as he stared at her.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking… how much we have been through together… and how grateful I am to have your help. Nothing I have accomplished would have been possible if I hadn’t had your help, your support.”
She smiled radiantly. “Why… thank you. You’ve never said anything like that to me before.”
“You’re right,” he replied in some surprise. “I guess I never have. I should have before now. Long ago, I should have.”
Coryn rose and came to him, taking his hands in hers, her black eyes looking up into his own dark gray orbs. However, her expression was cloudy and troubled. “I have done things for you that I would never have done for anyone else. I’m not proud of everything. It was all toward a good end I trust, but sometimes I do regret the means we employed toward those ends.”
He nodded with understanding. She had brewed the potion he had used to win Selinda du Chagne’s heart, to cause her to fall-at least temporarily-in love with him. It was not something they had spoken of since that time-nor was it mentioned at that moment. But Jaymes remembered how surprised he had been at Coryn’s bitterness when he had explained he needed that potion. She had complied but had done the work in a cold fury.
Suddenly he remembered Selinda’s words about Coryn. Were they true?
The white wizard turned and sat back down at the table, that time chewing on a strand of her hair as she peered into the globe again. Once, she turned to the side and saw that he was still watching her. She smiled warmly again and went back to her inspection.
Jaymes decided that almost certainly Selinda had been right.
The Palanthian Legion and the Crown Army marched up the road, climbing the pass from the plains of Vingaard toward the High Clerist’s Tower. Dram and the dwarves came behind the human troops. The mountain dwarves rode on the driver’s seat of one of the freight wagons. He had, for once, persuaded Sally to do the sensible thing and stay back in New Compound with her father and son to supervise the rebuilding that had to get under way. He missed her terribly but was glad she was not riding to war.
Five hundred dwarves accompanied Dram and his precious cargo. A mixture of hill and mountain dwarves, they had all volunteered to take part in the final battle of what the dwarves had taken to calling the Ankhar Wars. The dozens of wagons in the train were hauling hundreds of casks of black powder, each vehicle separated by some distance from the others to prevent an accident. One mistake with one wagon could turn into a disaster for the entire army.
From his seat on the first wagon, Dram was enjoying the sight of the mountains looming around him. The Garnet range was nice, with its snowy glaciers and vast pine forest, but the stark and rocky cut in the Vingaard Mountains had always appealed to him.
“Reorx knew what he was doing when he carved these grand peaks,” he had remarked to the other dwarves as the saw-toothed ridge came into view. The walls rose up on both sides of the dwarf contingent.
The lone bombard was in front of him, hauled on its great wagon in the midst of the marching legion. Because the steep, uphill road was long and curved, the dwarf had a good view of the massive gun ahead as it lumbered along, hauled by oxen.
Suddenly, even as Dram stared at the bombard, the cliff ahead uttered a groan and gave way, a crack spreading across the near face of the mountain. The section of the road where the bombard had been traveling simply dropped into the chasm, carrying the gun, the wagon, the team of oxen, and more than a hundred marching men of the Palanthian Legion into the depths.
The landslide was so sudden, so pinpoint, that it could have been provoked only by magic, Dram realized at once. The dwarf caught a glimpse of two figures, men high up on the crest of the ridge on the far side of the valley. The hair at the back of his neck prickled, but he could only fume as their sole remaining artillery plummeted into the chasm and shattered into splinters far below.
His eyes shot back to the ridge top, but he was not surprised to see that the two strangers had disappeared.
“It was an earthquake spell, no doubt, and it took us a day to carve out a new road in the gap,” Dram reported to the emperor three days later, when the column of dwarves at last reached the herdsman’s cottage. “But we’re here now. We lost probably a hundred good men. And unfortunately, we don’t have the gun.”
“Hmm, but you still have the powder, right?” Jaymes asked. He seemed surprisingly undismayed by the act of sabotage.
Looking around, Dram had to wonder if the emperor’s stay in the little cottage-he and Coryn had almost set up housekeeping in the place, the dwarf had decided with a single glance through the door-was making Jaymes soft or even apathetic.
“Yep. Plenty of powder-’bout three hundred casks, give or take.”
“Excellent,” said the emperor. “Come with me.”
They went to meet Dayr and Weaver, who were riding at the heads of their respective armies. Jaymes instructed them to put the men into large, comfortable camps on the Wings of Habbakuk, the flat plateaus spreading out a mile or so below the High Clerist’s Tower.
“Tell them to pitch their tents securely. I expect we’ll be here for at least a month or so.”
Then the emperor led Dram, together with Generals Dayr and Weaver, and Captain Franz of the White
