carrying them ahead. Their bodies were as stiff as statues, and they couldn’t stop themselves. Two of them hit the ramp, and slid to a grinding halt. The others went tumbling over them, and fell into the dark, crowded area below.
“Push the others over the ledge, elf!” Targon yelled. “The spell will only hold them still a moment more.”
With that, he raced off towards the nearest scaling ladder, which was being topped by another wave of undead men.
The wizard had been correct. Even as Vaegon rolled the last stinking corpse over the edge of the ramp, it was starting to move again. Before the thing toppled over, Vaegon put his foot on the man’s blade. It was a long sword, like Ironspike, and looked to be well kept. As the man’s grip let loose and he fell away, Vaegon took up the blade, and charged over to help Targon. He got there too late though, or maybe not getting their quick enough saved him from meeting the same dismal fate as Targon did.
The Choska demon came swooping down out of nowhere at breakneck speed. Its clawed feet latched onto Targon and yanked him screaming up into the darkened sky.
As if it were connected to the Highwander wizard by some unseen magical rope, the siege ladder nearest him was yanked away from the wall. The sudden sideways movement toppled the undead climbers back into the darkness below, like droplets of water shaken from a wet tree. Only two of them had gotten to the top of the now island-like section of wall though. Vaegon readied himself to take them on, as dawn’s light reached up over the mountains behind the castle. He and the two decaying men were alone atop the isolated section of structure. All around them, some sixty feet below, raged a sea of bloody battle and searing flames.
Vaegon hacked, slashed, blocked, and parried with the sword. Moving from one edge of the crumbling plateau to the other, he fought furiously, but the undead neither tired, nor relaxed their blades. Nearly at the edge, the two living corpses split up, thus putting Vaegon in an extremely vulnerable position.
The first blow he took, caught him in the arm and split him from wrist to elbow. He dodged, and spun, slinging fat droplets of his elven blood. He even leapt like a tree cat, trying to get out from between them.
The second blow he took, caught him on the back of the leg, and made him crumple to a knee. He didn’t give up though. He blocked, and spun, grinding his kneecap into the rough, gritty surface of the plank, and somehow managed to take an undead fighter’s leg off at the calf. When he turned to find the other though, after finally narrowing it down to one against one, he saw the undead soldier’s sun-tipped blade coming down in a gleaming speeding arc. All he could do was dive forward, and he did. He heard the “whoosh” of the steel as it passed a hair’s breadth over his scalp, then heard another sound – a harsh thumping grunt.
He rolled to his back to see where the death blow was coming from, so that he might have a chance to avoid it, but what he saw was as baffling, as it was terrifying.
The back end, and streaming tail of a horse made of silvery white flames, shot out of his vision. Apparently, it had swept the undead swordsman from the wall. He started to get up, but the huge red dragon came swooping over him, in pursuit of the flaming steed. Its jet of scorching hot flames went right over Vaegon. It was so hot, that he felt his skin blister, and could smell his hair burning. He was lucky, he decided. The blast could have easily been a little lower, or he could have made it to his feet. If either had happened, he would have been left a smoldering husk.
He sat up, and tried to catch his breath. A few feet away, the one-legged corpse was still trying to come for him. It was pulling itself hand over hand towards him. It was close enough now to chop at Vaegon’s legs with its sword, but was intent on getting closer. Its eyes were dark, emotionless, and set in a decomposing face, that appeared to be smiling a smile of long, greenish-yellow teeth.
Vaegon gritted his own teeth together, and gained his feet. The pain of his wounds brought out a harrowing yell. Sensing the elf’s moment of weakness, the undead came scrabbling forward quickly, like some sort of grotesque three-limbed crab. Deftly, but painfully, Vaegon sidestepped, and dispatched the undead man, by shoving his blade tip down through its neck, and severing its spine.
He looked out to see what the flaming horse was all about, and barely had time to register that it was Mikahl who was sitting proudly on its back, before the Choska demon caught him full in the chest with both of its razor sharp claws. The last thing that Vaegon saw, before the world went spinning away in a crazy dizzying whirl, was Mikahl sending a wicked blast of magical blue lightning out of the end of Ironspike’s blade towards the dragon.
Pael moved through the city by gliding just above the cobbles as he went. The sudden presence of the sword, and the bastard Squire, had scared him, but not enough to deter him from his conquest.
No one dared approach him, though several arrows came at him true. Those were deflected, shattered, or blown off course, as if they were merely pieces of straw in the wind. He spied what he was looking for, and hurried his pace until the secondary wall stood before him. There was no gate along this section of wall, only a mercantile neighborhood in the inner city. It had wisely been abandoned in anticipation of his coming.
A large trading house had been built against the wall at the end of the block. Pael wanted to breach the wall here, so that the Highwander soldiers might pour out to aid their trapped comrades. His undead were concentrated on blocking and attacking the areas around the gates. He was doing this because of his wish to keep the battle away from the palace itself. The more soldiers that died out here, between the secondary wall and the outer crumble, the less resistance he would meet inside the castle’s inner wall. He didn’t want to have to tear the palace down to take it. He wanted its splendor for himself.
He stood carelessly in the street, and cast his spell. A static pulse of energy left his hands, growing in size and strength as it went. The building smashed flat back against the wall, and then the wall itself exploded in a thunderous shower of brick, glass, and wooden shards.
Satisfied that the breach was large enough, Pael glided away, debating whether not to kill Mikahl in the air, or force him to the ground first. With a long look at the morning sky, he decided on the latter. With a thought, he ordered the Choska to swoop in, and relieve the Squire King of his magical seat while Shaella and her pet dragon were still holding his full attention.
Hyden burst up onto the roof of the Royal Tower with a rushing bustle, and a few deep heaves of breath. Had Talon not just preceded him, the guardsmen might have blocked his way. Instead, they let the wild-eyed young man pass. Everyone had heard the rumors of where he had gone, and the sight of him, gave even the most hardened guard a little pause. Besides the fact that he had just returned from Dahg Mahn’s Tower, the look of intensity on his face warned that he couldn’t afford to be detained.
“Your Highness, milady, or whatever it is I’m supposed to call you. I need you!”
He took a breath, noticing the wide-eyed expression on Queen Willa’s face. He hoped he wasn’t scaring her. In his pack was the big, heavy Night Shard crystal. In his left hand, was the elven longbow Vaegon had gifted him, and a full quiver of arrows hung at his hip. He had no idea how long he had been inside the Tower, or how shocking it was to everyone that he had survived it.
“Targon said you could summon him with a spell. I… We need him.”
“You survived Pratchert’s Tower?” The Queen was awed.
“Aye,” he nodded.
His air was finally coming back to him, after the incredibly long dash up the four hundred circling steps of her tower. He couldn’t help but smile, and push out his chest a bit proudly. He had seen how many men had failed Dog Mahn’s trials before him.
“No one has ever returned from beyond that door. By right, the tower, and everything in it, is yours now.”
Hyden shrugged, and Talon gave an urgent squawk from somewhere nearby.
“Targon?”
She shook her head slightly at the impossibility of it all; bastard Kings with horses of fire, an unsophisticated young mountain man, who befriended elves and hawklings, and spoke with Great Wolves, winning his way into Pratchert’s Tower. The only thing that would be surprising now, was if the might of Doon, the dwarven aid promised eons ago, came bursting out of the earth, to answer the call of the horn she had recently blown. She had to chide herself, for thrilling like a maiden, over the wild hope that Hyden and Mikahl instilled in her. Now was not the time to wonder about how and why though. It was the time to do.
She cleared her head, and cast the spell that would summon her High Wizard, but there was no response. Thinking that she misspoke the words in her haste, she spoke them again, only this time in an urgent and
