"I've been busy at that pleasure since before dawn," a graybearded Tarmoran panted, rising from the task of tugging armor off a dead Murlan knight. "Murlstag is out there; I saw him myself, sitting his saddle under his banner. No one else this side of a field hawk has those yellow eyes. We think he brought a few hundred more than a thousand with him, under arms; we've taken him down under the thousand, all right, but… then there're the lorn."
Tindror nodded. "There are," he replied curtly. "How much of Wrathgard do we still hold? Are all the lower floors-?"
"No. These and the rest up here came up a ladder to that big window in the Shields Hall; the lorn broke it and held the upper end of the ladder firm, against our shovings and hewings from within. They still have Shields Hall, but we've forced them back to its doors. Down below, the main doors are still shut against them for now, but a few of the Murlans who came up the ladder are skulking about, swording anyone they can reach. We're hunting them."
"Well done, Lemral. The lorn: have any of them dared to enter Wrathgard?"
"Not that I know of, lord, though they could be swarming through the upper rooms of all six towers and I'd not know it. I have seen them out windows, just as I ran past; they're perched on our roofs and ramparts like trees in the forest!"
"The North Stairs?"
"Still ours. The Purple Stairs, too. We're going below, lord?"
Tindror nodded.
"Good. Tori and Baereth have been guarding the well since first warning was cried by the wall-watchers."
The baron smiled. "Good and better. Have-"
Faintly, from outside the walls, came a sudden swell of sound. Angry shouting, cries of alarm, a thundering of many hooves, and then a long, rolling succession of dull, meaty, heavy crashes, laced with the screams of horses and men.
Then a war-horn sang out, high and clear, in a distinctive three-note call. It was echoed by two more, and they were all answered by a rising din of shouts and steely clanging, the ringing of hundreds of swordblades striking each other.
"Deldragon?" Tindror snapped, wild hope in his face. He and Lemral sprinted off down a passage.
Taeauna followed every bit as quickly, taking firm hold of Rod's elbow as she passed, to tow him along, and snapping at the wizard, "Come, wizard! Come, or I'll hunt you!"
They all pelted along the passage, through one door and then another, into a room where lorn were perched on the sills of shattered windows, and dead Tarmoran guards lay sprawled and silent on the floor.
The lorn took flight, hissing, as Lord Tindror charged right at them. He fetched up at the broken window, panting, to stare past his raised sword, out and down.
In the morass of churned earth that the Murlan horses had made of the ditch and great slopes around Wrathgard, the men of Murlstag were dying in their dozens under the lances and blades of even more magnificently armored knights, a great sea of moving steel that had charged into them without warning from behind and smashed through their ring, trampling and slaughtering, before the war-horns had sounded.
Through that breach the newcomers were now flooding in all directions, charging besieging Murlans. Tindror laughed aloud as he beheld Baron Murlstag's own banner flapping raggedly, far off to the left in frantic flight toward the mountains. A small and dwindling knot of Murlans around it were being ruthlessly harried and hacked down by hard-riding knights, and three dragon banners streamed above those pursuers.
Everywhere the baron looked, he could see busy butchery of Murlans, their maroon banners with white stag heads falling here, there, and over yonder. And everywhere the eye turned, steel-hued banners emblazoned with a crawling red wyrm were advancing.
He held up his sword to them in salute before turning from the window.
"Deldragon," Lord Tindror announced slowly, deep satisfaction in his voice. "Deldragon has come to save us all."
Crimson dragons flapping on steel-gray banners fell into liquid shapelessness as the scrying-spell faded, and left the wizard Arlaghaun watching nothing at all.
"Amalrys," he ordered his chain-girt apprentice flatly, "cast it again. I must see if that fool Murlstag survives and manages to return to Morngard."
She nodded in the gloom of the old stone room, eyes downcast for fear of drawing his ire. They both knew how displeased he was at Deldragon's sudden appearance, and how had that meddlesome, oh-so-valiant velduke known of Murlstag's ride on Wrathgard, anyway? What wizard was whispering in his ear?
Her cruel master sat silently watching her casting, as he often did, looking like a sharp-nosed warhound in his gray garb, his brown eyes ablaze. At first she'd thought he watched her so intently because his chains were all Arlaghaun suffered her to wear and he enjoyed indulging his lusts, but she might have been bared down to her bones for all the man-reaction his face betrayed right now.
That sharp, thin-lipped face was a mask of calm as her chains chimed around her. Amalrys made her casting as graceful a dance as she could, swaying her hips and tossing her head to make her long, unbound honey-blonde hair swirl about her shoulders, thrusting her breasts and hips at him in as sinuous a manner as she could manage, offering herself to him with longing in her eyes, just as he preferred… but when at last she was done and turned to face Arlaghaun, fingers spread in the last gestures, he wasn't looking at her at all.
He'd been busy casting his own spell, all this time. A compulsion magic.
Her master gave her an expressionless nod. And then he did something surprising. Though he'd never bothered to tender her any explanations before, he did so now.
"I have worked a compulsion," he announced calmly, "to draw all the nobles under my control to Galathgard, to receive the king's next decrees. It will take some days for all of them to reach the castle; you and I shall use that time to work tantlar magic. A lot of tantlar magic. When Deldragon arrives home, he will find his wells and flour poisoned, and every last item of magic in his castle gone."
Amalrys couldn't help herself. She went white and started to shake.
Arlaghaun smiled slowly, obviously enjoying her terror for what seemed to her a very long time before he added gently, "Calm yourself. I will not be requiring you to test the magics we seize. Klammert and Yardryk are both more expendable than you; they can see to braving any traps and unforeseen discharges."
"Has he?" Taeauna murmured. "You're sure he's not ridden by a Doom, who sent him here to slay or capture us?"
Tindror sighed and waved his arms wide, his drawn sword still in his hand. "I can be certain of nothing, Tay; you know that. Yet he's the last noble in all Galath I'd suspect of doing any wizard's bidding. Yes, yes, I know that makes him a more suitable wizard's pawn than the rest of us, but somehow I just can't believe… no. No."
The bearded baron shook his head, and then shrugged. "And if he is? How can we stand against him? Murlstag's men were more than my loyal blades can handle; Deldragon can bury us in knights, all of them better armed and armored than we are. So when this fray is done, and he comes to our doors, I'll let him in, and welcome him as the friend he has always been to me. And if he then seizes you and your silent lord, or butchers me where I stand, and all of my household with me, then… he does so. Whether I like the fate he hands me or not, what can I do?"
Four dirty-booted merchants crouched behind spreading saliva branches and peered out over a battlefield at the distant towers of Wrathgard. They wore no badge or colors to tell Falconfar they were of the Vengeful, but they didn't need to. Real merchants would have been fleeing as fast and as far as they could from this pitched battle, not sitting on a ridge, albeit in bushes, staring down at it. The screams of horses and men and the clang of steel on steel drifted up to them all too clearly.