“We could break up the regiment into companies,” Owen suggested. The Viking, who had been commanding the goblins for more than twenty years, was as frustrated as Natac himself with his unruly charges. “I can tan the hides of those that still get out of line, and Hiyram can keep tabs on some of the others.”
Natac shook his head. “I want to avoid that if at all possible. We have, what, four thousand or more of them? That makes them our biggest single force, and if we need them in the fight, I’d like to use them together.”
“I would, too,” Owen agreed, relief written across his bearded visage. “So let’s keep ’em in camp, and I’ll still find some hides to tan!”
“Good… for now, anyway.” Natac tried to move on, to think about the next problem facing his large army. But despite his best intentions, the warrior found that he couldn’t concentrate. Over and over his mind wandered across the water, to the white villa on the lakeside hill.
“I tell you-it’s our best chance. You have to let me try!” Darann hissed, her face darkening as she made the effort to keep her voice down. She confronted her husband in the plain barracks room that had been their living quarters for more than two decades.
“Are you mad?” roared Karkald, uncaring of the elves who lived in neighboring rooms and were undoubtedly shocked by his outburst. “You’d be killed-or worse!” His rage was fueled by stark, raw fear, emotions howling through his veins.
“But listen to me! I might be able to distract him-”
“I forbid it! I utterly, absolutely forbid you from acting on this craziness-in fact, you are not even to think about it!” He struggled to regain his breath, to lower his voice. “Why-you’re talking about the most powerful, unpredictable kind of magic there is! And you’d put yourself in terrible danger!” It was all so logical, such an obvious decision. Surely she could see that?
When his wife didn’t answer, Karkald grunted in acknowledgment, sorry that he had shouted so loudly. And he made the mistake of thinking that her silence indicated that she had accepted his mandate.
16
The Marching Acres
Fear is a capricious weapon effective only as a credible threat.
When no such threat exists terror and dread are fruitless, as transient, as wind on wave.
From The Ballad of the First Warrior
Deltan Columbine
Everything was a dim, gray haze… a haze punctuated by pain, agony that speared through his skull, stabbed his mind with relentless, fiery force… until again the murk would rise, granting him the only relief from his constant hurting.
Sometime later he smelled blood, and came awake with a start. Once again that pain rushed through every nerve end, but he forced his head up, off the hard stone floor. Drawing a breath, he felt more pain searing through his ribs, but he fought against it, pushed himself through a slow, awkward roll onto his belly. Still he held his head up, though his vision was blurry and his head still pounded.
With an effort, he thumped his tail against the ground once, and again. And then he knew he was whole. Grunting from the agony, he pushed his shoulders up until he was sitting. His head throbbed with an agonizing cadence of pain, and one ear was crusted with dried blood, but stiffly, slowly, he forced himself to stand. Sunlight flooded the garden, the villa, the landscape. The blood he smelled came from very nearby, where Fallon’s corpse lay stiff and drained, with a dried, brownish swath extending in a ghastly spill down the stairs from the elf’s body.
Shaking his head, seeing and smelling better with each passing second, Ulf started into the big house. And then he froze.
Miradel lay on the floor in a pool of her own blood, a smear of darkening crimson across her belly staining her gown. Nearby was the corner of a black silk net, apparently sliced with ragged force from its parent. Whimpering unconsciously, Ulf slowly approached the motionless figure. He lowered his head, sniffed hopefully, knowing that those hopes were futile. The druid was utterly, irrevocably dead.
The stench of Delvers was everywhere, so he had no doubts as to who had killed her. Growling almost inaudibly, he padded back onto the patio and blinked in the bright sunlight. The lake was an azure blanket below, cut by the thin white line of the causeway.
Ulfgang knew that Natac needed to be told about Miradel, and that road was his only route back to Circle at Center. Taking several deep breaths, then lapping up a good drink of water from the druid’s garden pool, the dog ignored the pounding in his head as he started down the hill.
K erriastyn cowered before her master. Zystyl could sense her fear, reveled in it as his rage flexed through his nostrils like an odor, touching the cringing female, stroking her senses like the disingenuous kiss of a hungry vampire. She stood on her feet, but leaned forward abjectly, with her face turned up to him in mute acceptance of whatever justice he would deliver.
You failed me. The phrase was a whip, used against her thoughts, striking with a lash that drew a moan of agony from her silver-plated jaws. She dropped her face, unable to meet his punishment directly.
You disappointed me.
Again he struck her with the power of his mind, and again he thrilled to the sound of her pain as she took a step backward. Kerriastyn was crying now, a pathetic murmur of sound that echoed through the tunnel in dolorous solitude. Doubtless there were Delvers who could hear, but they remained utterly silent lest the weight of their general’s displeasure should fall upon them.
You have cost me a precious opportunity.
His final rebuke whipped through her being, dropped her to her knees, sent her writhing across the floor. He observed her convulsions with keen pleasure-the sounds of her pain, the raw stink of uncontained terror, the keen awareness of her utter subjugation, all bathed his senses in sublime ecstasy. She expected to die-he could sense her anticipation of his judgment-but it gave him cold pleasure to defer his retribution.
“But it is my decision that you shall live, shall continue to serve.” He began to speak aloud, letting his mercy be known to all witnesses within earshot. “For even with your failure, the elven city will fall, and a world of treasures will become mine.”
T he white dog crouched at the top of a hill, looking at the scene spread along the muddy lakeshore. The mouth of the Metal Tunnel yawned at the base of the opposite elevation. The Hour of Darken approached, so the shadowed entryway teemed with Delvers, hundreds of the Blind Ones milling like ants, waiting for full darkness to release them to raid. Ulf knew that Zystyl’s warriors had created a city for themselves, a virtual hive of sunless caverns, dens, and warrens, within the massive subterranean passageway.
Closer by, the ruins of the Blue Swan Inn lay scattered across the shore, a monument of charred stone walls, blackened timbers, and soot-covered ground that the invaders had left undisturbed, in full view of Circle at Center. Ulfgang noticed again how even now, twenty-five years after the destruction, not so much as a blade of grass had sprouted from the blackened and bloodstained ground. To the right and left of the ruins, however, the Crusaders had erected massive, log-walled barracks buildings. Muddy streams flowed from valleys denuded of timber, while companies of Sir Christopher’s warriors gathered, marching along the lakeshore and out of the hills to converge here, at the place that now held Ulfgang’s considerable interest.
It’s like… a floating island, he realized, studying the massive expanse of solid ground filling the place that had once been the harbor of the Blue Swan. But it was ground made out of wood and metal, he finally saw, and it had many gridded openings where he could see the water sloshing just below the deck.