Ahead of the swiners flew five streaks of darkness, their black wings mere blurs as they shot forward to meet the Royal Excursionary Company. Vangerdahast’s heart sank. They had never before seen more than three ghazneths at a time.
The charge started down the front of the hill and picked up speed. Vangerdahast’s old knees began to ache from squeezing Cadimus so hard. The ghazneths continued to climb higher as they approached, and they were a hundred feet in the air by the time the company crossed the neck of the peninsula. The royal magician slipped one hand inside his weathercloak and found the escape pocket, craning his neck to keep watch on the rising phantoms. At last, when he judged them to be two hundred feet above the ground, they wheeled around to fall on the company from behind.
Vangerdahast looked forward again and saw the orcs forming ranks along the neck of the peninsula, their officers pushing and shoving frightened warriors into short stretches of line. The swiners were armed with an odd assortment of spears, swords, and pikes-whatever they happened to be holding at the moment the alarm was sounded. Even without magic, it would have been an easy matter to break through their defenses, but the royal magician was in no mood to waste time in melee, especially with the ghazneths swooping down on them from behind.
Vangerdahast fixed his gaze on a tribal campsite about two hundred paces shy of the keep, looking past a long line of orcs streaming down the peninsula to meet the charge. He could barely make out the distant figures of females and children, turning to stare after their warriors and shake their arms in encouragement. They were in for a big surprise.
Vangerdahast thrust his hand into the escape pocket, and a large black square appeared directly ahead of him. Cadimus whinnied and tried to veer off, but there was no time. He hit the doorway at a full gallop, and Vangerdahast experienced that familiar feeling of dark, endless falling.
An instant later, he burst back into the light, head spinning and ears ringing with astonished squeals and grunts. Cadimus stumbled, something shrieked, and Vangerdahast took a blow across the shin. He looked down, but his vision was still a blur, and he could not imagine what might have happened. The sound of drumming hooves began to build around him, and the world erupted into a cacophony of shrieking and snorting. Cadimus ricocheted off something soft but sturdy, then bumped into something just as soft and sturdy on the other side, and the round shape of a horse’s rear end came into focus ahead of Vangerdahast.
The wizard shook his head clear, recalling that he was in the middle of a cavalry charge. He began to make out the shapes of dazed horses and glassy-eyed men all around, all galloping forward at a full sprint, all oblivious to the blocky keep standing at the end of the peninsula just fifty paces ahead.
“Halt!” Vangerdahast reined Cadimus in, being careful not to pull up so short that he caused a collision with the horse behind him. “Stop! Stop!”
Slowly, the rest of the company began to heed his orders. By the time Vangerdahast reached the keep, the charge had slowed to an amble, with horses stumbling about blindly and men struggling to shake their heads clear. The ground at this end of the peninsula was striped with hairline crevices, all spewing yellow fumes and fouling the air with the acrid stink of brimstone. Clouds of mosquitoes, wasps, and flies drifted back and forth through the smoke, biting, stinging, and filling Vangerdahast’s ears with their maddening drone.
He wheeled Cadimus around and found himself looking back at the remnant of an orc camp. There were hides and half-cooked food strewn everywhere, and the terrified females were herding their stunned young into the marsh. About two dozen grizzled males, and a like number of husky females, were scuttling forward with crooked hunting spears clutched in their hands.
Vangerdahast maneuvered Cadimus through a tangle of afterdazed dragoneers and waved his hand across the width of the peninsula, uttering a long and complicated incantation. Unlike many spells, this one required no material components, but it required half a minute of tongue-twisting chanting. Before he finished, the swiner elders began hurling spears in his direction, and the ghazneths appeared in the sky over the promontory, streaking back toward the keep. Though he could not see the main body of the orc army, he felt sure it would be charging up the peninsula to defend the keep.
When Vangerdahast finished his spell, a wall of flashing color sprang up before him, stretching across the peninsula and well down into the water. It would not stop the flying ghazneths, of course, but the orc army would be forced down into the marsh to circumvent it. Any warrior foolish enough to try scaling it would be spit back at his fellows, mangled beyond recognition.
By the time Vangerdahast turned back to the mud keep, a steady drizzle of ore arrows was flying down from the arrow loops. The Royal Excursionary Company was beginning to recover from its afterdaze and return fire, but without much effect. The pall of darkness that seemed to cling to the place prevented them from seeing their targets, and so their arrows were about as effective against the swiners as those of the swiners were against their magically shielded armor.
Vangerdahast rode forward to his subcommanders, who stood together taking orders from Owden. Scowling at the priest’s presumption, the wizard dismounted, leaving Cadimus with a young dragoneer, and joined them.
“Stop wasting time with this groundsplitter!” Vangerdahast shoved the commander of the Purple Dragons toward the wall. “The ghazneths will be here in two minutes. Get your archers ready.”
The man paled. “As you command.”
He ran off to obey, shouting for the dragoneers to form their squares. Vangerdahast turned to the master of his war wizards and pointed at the keep’s gate. To his surprise, it was coated in black iron. He could not understand why he had failed to notice the dark metal from the hilltop.
“Can you tell me why that is still standing?”
The young wizard paled. “No. We’ve hit it with fire, lightning, and warping. Nothing works.”
“In fact, spells only make the gates stronger. The iron was not there until your wizards started their work,” added Owden.
“Then try the walls!” Vangerdahast stormed. ‘We’re in a hurry!”
As he spoke, the royal magician pulled his lodestone from his pocket and scraped a pinch of dust off Owden’s weathercloak. He rolled the lodestone in the dust, pointed to the base of the keep, and uttered his spell. A ray of shimmering translucence shot from his finger, blossoming against the building in a circle of rippling energy. The mud wall turned dark and smooth and seemed to melt as the wizard’s magic faded, finally coalescing into a smooth disc of black marble.
Vangerdahast cursed, then an orc’s arrow corkscrewed down to bounce harmlessly off his breast.
“The same as the gate,” said Owden. “I fear Alaphondar is more right about the nature of the keep than he knows. It seems to be using your magic against you.”
“Obviously,” Vangerdahast snarled.
Deciding to try the opposite tactic, he waved his hand at the wall and uttered a quick incantation to dispel the magic. The dark circle only grew larger.
A flurry of throbbing bowstrings proclaimed the arrival of the ghazneths. Vangerdahast glanced toward his prismatic wall and saw all five phantoms wheeling toward the marsh, their breasts and wings peppered with iron- tipped arrows. Two of the creatures seemed to be flying a little more slowly than usual, and one was trailing a syrupy string of black blood.
“If magic won’t work, hard work will,” said Owden.
The harvestmaster snatched an iron-tipped spear from a dragoneer and charged the keep, angling away from the dark circle that Vangerdahast had created.
A cloud of crooked shafts wobbled down from arrow loops to meet his charge. Most missed broadly, but even those that found him bounced off without causing harm. Vangerdahast scowled, then finally realized what the priest was doing and waved a troop of men after him.
“Get over there and help the fool! Tanalasta will have my ears if something happens to him!”
A dozen dragoneers grabbed their spears and rushed after Owden. They were joined by a handful of war wizards, who quickly raised a floating ceiling above their heads to deflect the annoying deluge of orc arrows. Vangerdahast remained a moment to watch the enemy response, but the aura of darkness clinging to the keep precluded any possibility of seeing inside. The only reaction was a slight slackening in the rain of crooked shafts as the swiners within realized the futility of their attacks.
Pulsing volleys of bowfire began to sound from all directions. Vangerdahast glanced around the peninsula to
