“Why do they stand?” he demanded of General Darkstone. “We’re killing a score of them for every one of our men wounded!”
“I know,” growled the commander unhelpfully. “But our numbers are limited. Look.”
He pointed toward the wall around King Stonespringer’s fortified palace. Willim saw the gate open, spilling hundreds more irregulars onto the plaza. Some of them weren’t even armed, but still they howled and charged, hurling themselves with suicidal frenzy into the mass of dwarves battling the Black Cross. They picked up weapons from the dead and wounded, eagerly surging forward to join the battle against the rebels.
At the same time, more of the irregulars were advancing from the side streets, swarming into the square with little semblance of order or formation. Some came at the Black Cross ranks from the side or even from behind.
Fortunately, the veteran Captain Veinslitter recognized the fresh threat, pivoting his troops on the right flank to meet the new danger. At the same time his crossbowmen fired at the dwarves surging toward the rear of the Black Cross. So effective was that volley that a hundred of the enemy fell, and the few survivors among them were so intimidated by the deadly crossbows that they pulled back. Under their captain’s steady, shouted orders, the Black Cross resumed its slow, deliberate advance.
“They are penetrating too far,” Darkstone declared grimly. “They’re in danger of getting cut off.”
“No!” retorted Willim. “Keep charging-break them! Smash through to the palace!”
The general nodded and, when Veinslitter looked up, simply gestured the captain to continue pressing the attack. The Daergar captain touched his silver helm and cheered the Black Cross regiment forward with renewed determination. Every few steps they had to pause and launch a volley of crossbow bolts against the militiamen who were milling around near the streets that spilled onto the plaza from nearby neighborhoods.
More and more citizens attacked from the side, rushing out of the alleys and streets, carrying makeshift weapons or picking them up from beside the bodies of the slain. It was a floodtide more than a thousand strong, a relentless force of nature.
“There-a breach!” called Willim, spotting a gap in the defenders.
No sooner had he spoken than a hundred howling irregulars filled the gap, threatening to sweep around the exposed flank of the outnumbered veterans. Veinslitter reacted by pulling his right flank back, thinning out his ranks to extend the length of his line. Even so, there were too many of the militia, too few of the Black Cross. The king’s loyalists started to spill around both sides of the Daergar heavy infantry, and there were no longer enough troops to extend the line. The Black Cross curled back to the right and the left until it resembled a horseshoe, fighting countless foes to the left, ahead, and to the right.
And still more of the king’s troops and volunteers, ill-trained and poorly armed but seemingly infinite in number, charged into the square toward the beleaguered Daergar.
At last even Willim recognized the grim reality.
“Sound the retreat!” he barked tersely, and Darkstone immediately passed the command to his trumpeter. The brass call finally signaled the dwarves of Veinslitter’s elite company to back away from the grip of the frenzied mob.
But already it might be too late. The possessed defenders followed the thinning lines of the Black Cross as the veteran Daergar tried to fight their way free of what was becoming a deathtrap. At the same time, organized ranks of the Royal Division advanced against Veinslitter’s left flank, nearly surrounding the formation. The line fractured, the Daergar on both flanks fighting as islands of resistance in an enemy sea, while the remnant of the center struggled back toward the gate. Willim grimaced in anger as more and more of his veterans fell, vanishing under the press of the enemy’s rabble.
The few surviving Daergar finally made it to the gatehouse, where the rest of the rebel army stood ready to support them. Even so, Willim could see that his elite company had been decimated; only about a quarter of those veteran warriors had made it back to his own position. The wizard ground his teeth, knowing that his best regiment had been squandered, without a single foot of ground gained to show for the sacrifice.
Beside Willim, Blade Darkstone covered his eyes with his gloved hand and uttered a sob of despair. The wizard grimaced and turned away.
“What did you mean, telling them there might be a way to get them out of Thorbardin?” Peat demanded soon after the Hylar family, buttressed by sudden hope, had departed with the promise to return in twenty-four hours. “Surely you’re not thinking of our ring?”
The two Guilders had several very precious treasures that were definitely not for sale. One of those was a ring of teleportation, a device that would allow the wearer to magically travel to another destination. Only a few were said to exist on all of Krynn.
“Of course not!” Sadie retorted. “There’s only the one ring, and therefore only one person could use it. It wouldn’t be much good to those four Hylar!”
“Well, I know that,” replied her husband, peering at her with his watery, nearsighted eyes. “But what in Reorx’s name are you talking about then?”
“That spell!” Sadie replied, a wide grin brightening her nearly toothless mouth. “The spell on the scroll, the one that I’ve been saving for a very long time.”
Peat harrumphed. “I know what’s in the scroll cabinet. There’s nothing in there that will get a blind rat out of Thorbardin, much less a family of Hylar.”
“Ah,” Sadie said, her eyes gleaming in her wrinkled face. “But this is a special scroll! I have been trying to copy it for a while now, and I am almost done.”
With her husband tottering along behind, she led him into the storeroom at the back of the shop. With considerable effort, she bent down and tapped several times at a piece of rock that looked like the foundation of the bottom shelf. To Peat’s immense surprise, the rock swiveled away to reveal a dark aperture-the entrance to a secret compartment.
“Eh?” he said. “How’d that get there?”
“I made it myself,” his wife said smugly as she reached inside to pull out a long tube. She handed it to him and stood up with surprising alacrity, given her age and arthritic limbs. “Now take it over here to the worktable!” she instructed.
Peat, speechless for once, did as he was told. He unscrewed the cap on the end of the tube and pulled out a roll of parchment while Sadie muttered a quick spell, igniting the candle that rested in a wall sconce above the table. Under the bright yellow glow, Peat could make out the words at the top of the piece of parchment.
“A dimension door?” he asked in surprise. “You want to conjure a dimension door?” He had intended to ask how she had gained access to such a powerful spell, why she had hidden it from him, what she had planned to do with it. Instead, he just gaped at her, amazed at the idea and imagining the possibilities.
Sadie smiled so wide that her toothless gums were exposed. “Just imagine how much we could charge to use it,” she said.
“Aye,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “Pretty much whatever we want to for someone who really wanted to get out of here. And who had the money to pay.”
“Darn tootin’!” his wife rejoined, cackling gleefully. “Now get out of my way. I need to finish the copy so we can save the original. We’ve got a lot of work to do!”