Falconfar 01-Dark Lord (51 page)

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.

Lorlarra, flying in Dauntra's wake in a welter of disintegrating dark armor, blew him a kiss. That raised a ragged shout of laughter from the men on the battlements.

One of them called, "Looking for someone handsome?" He struck a pose.

It wasn't hard to tell that the four Aumrarr were peering at every face as they glided along above the walls. Soon fierce and scarred Juskra made a sudden, wordless sound and pointed, and the four winged women converged.

"Friggin' Falcon!" Garfist swore, as dark wings loomed. He grabbed a sword from the man beside him as he turned to Iskarra. "They're coming for us!"

"Of course they are," she said bitterly. "Who else would they be after, in all besieged Bowrock? I know not what we did to anger the Falcon, but I wish most fervently that..."

The man whose blade Garfist had borrowed tried to snatch it back. Garfist hung on to it, offering the man a hard elbow and a harder knee instead. They struggled together as Dauntra and Juskra sped past, plucked up Iskarra by clamping firm hands around each of her bony wrists, her drawn daggers waving vainly, and flapped up into the morning sky.

Lorlarra and Ambrelle slammed right into Garfist, knocking him free of the other warrior and the other warrior's blade, and caught him by the ankles as he rolled helplessly, the men of Bowrock scattering.

A moment later, Garfist was hanging head downward in the air, high over the heart of Bowrock, with two pairs of wings beating hard above him, their owners puffing and panting, and straps and dangling plates of dark armor flailing him across the face. He roared in anger and tried to squirm free, snaring the nearest armor-strap in one hairy fist and tugging, hard.

A wing slammed into the side of his head as his captors lurched, dipping alarmingly.

"Stop fighting us! You'll die if you fall!" Lorlarra gasped, from the other end of that strap.

"Yes!" Ambrelle added severely, through her own tangle of purple-black hair. "Stop struggling; we're rescuing you from all this!"

Garfist let go of the strap, and twisted his neck around until he could glare up at her. "Why?"

"We need hands that can act where we dare not go."

"Go to do what?" Iskarra called, as her pair of Aumrarr brought her near.

"Slay Dooms, rescue Falconfar... that sort of thing."

"I see," Iskarra said weakly.

PUt them on.
Quickly.

The voice in his head was strong and firm, now;

whispering and suggesting no longer.

Rod drew on the gauntlets, halting in alarm for a moment as sudden lightning arced between them, crackling and spitting.

Now get out of the tomb. Hurry.

Rod hurried out of the chill, earthy darkness, out into a vivid purple glow that was already disgorging black-armored warriors. They trotted toward him, raising shields and hefting swords.

Point your fingers and blast them.
A vivid image unfolded in his mind of how to unleash the powers of the gauntlets.
Kill them all. Do NOT let the finger-beams touch the gate.

Rod pointed his fingers and blasted, hastily moving from one warrior to another. The gauntlets seemed able to spit one pencil-thin crimson beam per finger, if he concentrated on maintaining all the beams he willed into existence, but those beams shot out arrow-straight from his fingertips, and had to be aimed precisely. They melted through armor and flesh alike without pause, slaying almost as fast as he could aim them.

But the Dark Helms were fast, too. They came rushing at him in such desperate haste that Rod was almost forced back into the tomb, and they died so swiftly that they fell in heaps, forming a wall. He hurried along the slope, trying to keep from being literally buried in foes, foes who had plenty of swords and daggers to stab with.

Keep moving. Circle out and around the gate. Don't let any Dark Helms get where you can't see them. You must kill them all.

The finger-beams soon started to fade, reaching shorter and shorter distances, until there came a time when one of them sputtered and failed completely. The face of the foremost onrushing Dark Helm changed from terror to triumph.

Shake the gauntlets off, jump sideways at the last minute, and grab the horn-headed scepter!

Rod hesitated for an instant, and felt sickening surges in his arms and legs, forcing him to shake the gauntlets off—sickening because they were being done to him. He was as much a slave as any shackled, flogged unfortunate, but his master was sitting in his head!

The horn-headed scepter proved to unleash cones of ravening fire that could reduce several armored warriors to blackened, tumbling bones in the space of a deeply drawn breath. It was just a little slower at slaying than the gauntlets had been, which would have doomed him if there'd been many Dark Helms left.

However, only a few came trotting through the glowing purple arch now, sporadically, and perhaps twenty were left on the hill, skulking behind the bodies of their dead fellows, trying to get close enough to Rod to rush and hack at him before he could burn them down.

Rod felt sick. The stink of cooked Dark Helms was like burned roadkill, a reek so strong that it was almost choking. Part of him wanted to burn down every last Dark Helm, in Taeauna's name, and part of him was screaming that he was a writer, not any sort of fighter, and certainly not any sort of killer.

Yet here he was, dodging and ducking among the heaped dead, peering at wherever he thought a warrior or two was hiding.

Behind you, fool.

Rod spun around, scepter spewing flame even before he got properly turned. That was what saved him; the ribs beneath the arm that was swinging a sword at his head were boiling away before the blade could get to him, robbing its swing of strength and height so that it was falling free by the time it bounced off his shoulder and tumbled past. Rod crisped that warrior and the three right behind him in frenzied haste, as their sprint carried their collapsing bones almost into him.

And then there were no more Dark Helms, and the gate was pulsing bright purple, flickering and dancing.

Don't even look at the gate; for you, it's a trap. Get back to the tomb door, looking all around as you go.

Rod stumbled over bones and corpses, wondering how it was that flies discovered the dead so quickly, and where they all came from. He looked this way and that, but...

Keep looking around, idiot,
the sharp voice snarled in his mind. A moment later, it added:
There!

Someone was standing atop the tomb-hill, where there had been no one a moment earlier. Someone with burning brown eyes.

Arlaghaun.

That was all Rod had time to see before a spell burst in the air all around him, washing over him and setting the trampled grass aflame.