Four Aumrarr came swooping out of the smoke just above his head, then, gave him wide smiles, and let go of something that fell through the air to bounce wetly on the cracked slab of stone the two veldukes had been using as a table.
The object was round; it rolled and hopped the length of the table before wobbling off one edge to thump to the ground below. And stare endlessly, bulging-eyed, up at the sky.
A noble who'd been humming to himself stopped doing so, abruptly.
'Falcon!' Marquel Blackraven swore, his emerald eyes hard as he stared at it. Behind him, Lords of Galath glanced over, stared hard, then crowded forward to stare some more.
Even if the glint of the crown hadn't still been about its brows, they all knew what it was.
The severed head of the King of Galath stared up at them, unseeing.
By the time Arduke Stormserpent and fat, florid Baron Chainamund had stopped swearing and peered into the skies again, there was no sign of the winged women. After a moment, they looked down at the head again.
'Bloodhunt!' Velduke Brorsavar bellowed into the smoke, his deep voice as strident as any war-horn. 'Come quickly! I need you here!'
'So that's it, then,' Arduke Windtalon said flatly, clapping his helm down over his shoulder-length copper hair. 'End of siege.'
'Certainly not!' Marquel Duthcrown snapped, striding forward to stand over the severed head with his sword drawn, and hastily settling his own helm back into place, wisps of stray white hair thrusting out in all directions under its edge. 'Certainly not! We have a royal command to follow; a sworn duty to perform!'
'That writ ended with the severing of that royal neck,' Arduke Lionhelm said firmly, 'and I for one was not witness to your coronation, Duthcrown. Presume not to speak for the throne.'
Duthcrown glared at him, mustachioed lip drawn back to expose his teeth, and barked, 'You speak open treason! Chainamund! Murlstag!
Dunshar! To me! Stand with me, here, and guard the crown against all such traitors!'
'Before we speak of such guardianship,' Arduke Stormserpent said sharply, his dark face even sterner than usual, 'suppose we hew a little closer to common agreement on just who's a traitor, and why. Nobles who presume to stand in judgement over the rest of us tend to annoy me. I'm annoyed right now.'
'And isn't that just too bad?' Baron Chainamund sneered, face reddening anew as he bent, snatched up the crown, and clapped it on his own head. 'Stormserpent is annoyed. Pity.' Twirling his great straw-yellow mustache with one fat finger, he roared, 'Hear ye, all: I hereby proclaim myself King of All Galath! King Glusk, the first of that name! And I now decree that Stormserp-'
His words ended in a great gout of vomited blood that drenched the point of the swordblade that had suddenly burst forth from his ample stomach.
Arduke Lionhelm let him spew his way down to a last throat-gurgling choking before he put a boot on Chainamund's back and kicked the dying baron off his steel.
'Enough,' he said, his voice ringing as cold and hard as iron. 'We will have order, or there will be war here, at the very gates we're besieging. Lords, Galath will survive only-'
'How dare you?' Marquel Duthcrown cried, waving his sword. 'You murder a crowned king, in front of all of us-'
'Duthcrown, be still!' came a deep roar. 'Speak such foolishness to your mistresses, not to us!'
Velduke Aumon Bloodhunt, with his knights behind him, was standing atop a nearby heap of rubble, glaring down, more white than gray in his hair now, but angry blue eyes snapping as bright as ever. 'I am the ranking noble here, as it happens,' he added, his deep voice only a trifle quieter, 'and I say Chainamund was no more king than a stable-boy who happens to lay hand on a crown and prance about with it! Let us draw off from the walls, beyond the reach of Deldragon's catapults, and hold council.'
'Bah!' Duthcrown spat, striding to meet him. 'For years you and the other toothless old lions have farted and swaggered and paraded before us, whenever you're not fawning and simpering before this wizard and that! Well, I'll stomach no more of it!'
Waving his sword, he charged up the slope, losing his helm in his haste, his white hair wild in the wake of its tumbling. Bloodhunt's knights rushed to meet him, swords singing out, and-
Another fall of stone crashed down from the sky, shattering and burying the men on the slope; one moment their swords were flashing in the dust, and the next, dust was drifting above a new heap of rubble, where all those men had been.
'The crown!' Klarl Snowlance shouted, his reedy voice rising as shrill as a war-horn. 'Where is the crown?'
'The crown,' Lionhelm bellowed, 'is here!' The hawk-eyed arduke grounded his sword on a stone in front of him, and all of the converging nobles saw that its point was encircled by the Crown of Galath.
'I am not claiming it,' the handsome arduke added, just as loudly. 'I propose to take it into my hand and go away from the walls, as Velduke Bloodhunt has so wisely suggested. Then let us parley in peace, lords, and-'
With a great roar, burly Klarl Dunshar and two of his knights who were even larger men than their master, with their three breastplates gleaming like oversized shields, abreast, charged at Lionhelm, swords out. Baron Murlstag joined in the rush, yellow eyes flashing, and Ardukes Stormserpent and Windtalon spat curses and hastened, tall and swift, to defend Lionhelm. Swords flashed out, all around the heaps of rubble, and as the nobles who wielded them started shouting, some of their heralds and equerries sounded war-horns to spread word.
Even as stone-faced Baron Lothondos Pethmur commenced to sternly lecture the unheeding air, 'I for one have no interest in continuing a siege when the man who ordered it lies dead!' the sounds of sword on sword, war-cries, and the screams of the dying arose, sudden, loud, and enthusiastic, on all sides.
To the astonishment of Deldragon's defenders on the walls above, bloody war had suddenly erupted among the besiegers below. Everywhere they could see, the Lords of Galath and their armies were killing each other.
Rod Everlar sighed as he found himself on yet another hilltop in the brightening morning.
This time, he was facing a crumbling stone door, set into a grassy hump of earth. There had been words graven into the stone, once, but they had largely crumbled away. Not that Rod needed to read them, to know that he was staring at a tomb.
He wasn't surprised in the slightest when the dweller in his mind forced him to take a scepter from his belt that he'd never used before, aim at the door, and whisper a word he did not know.
Nothing seemed to erupt from the scepter, but the door shattered as if a titan had dealt it a mighty blow.
Its stone shards bounced and rolled past Rod Everlar's feet as he lifted them to begin the short walk into waiting darkness.
In Ult Tower, a sharp-nosed wizard stiffened, his brown eyes blazing fresh fire. 'Lorontar! I knew it!' he spat.
Whirling around, Arlaghaun snarled into his apprentice's face, 'The shade of the undead wizard Lorontar is riding yon Shaper, controlling him, and that control comes through Lorontar's command over the enchanted items the man bears!'
Fat, scraggle-bearded Klammert had already gone pale; now he was leaning back and away, as if Arlaghaun's sharp nose was a dagger. 'Aye, master,' he said huskily, 'but why? Why send yon man to open a tomb?'
Arlaghaun sighed in exasperation, and then explained as if to a simpleton, 'He is sending Everlar to the tomb-caches of other dead wizards, to fetch and gather magics that will enable the undead Lorontar-an utterly evil and extremely powerful archwizard, even in ghostly undeath-to rise to life again!'
Klammert pointed at the mirror. 'Master, he's gone in.'
'Work with me!' Arlaghaun snapped. 'We'll raise a gate and bury him in Dark Helms!'
'Lorn!' an archer shouted, turning to aim. The older warrior standing beside him on the battlements of Bowrock struck his bow aside, and wasn't gentle about it.
'Those are Aumrarr, fool! If you can't tell lorn from women with wings, you shouldn't be up on these walls!'
He ducked aside as a young and achingly beautiful winged woman swooped in low over the ramparts, and winked at him. Hastily he gave her back a wave and a smile.
