Gundling was pointing to Castle Nidus, where twenty more of the monsters were circling and menacing, hurling rocks wildly at the old black battlements.
Daeghrefn looked toward the eastern foothills. Perhaps there was still a way to get to the highlands, circle the castle, and approach from the northern side. There was a rise he remembered … a copse of evergreen …
As he looked toward the jagged silhouettes of the trees framed against the white of Solinari, Daeghrefn saw the
dragon's dark wings rise above the black aeterna, and the hillside shook, and the tall pines snapped like kindling.
"Lord Daeghrefn, what do we do?" Gundling shouted, his eyes on his commander. "Lord Daeghrefn? Lord Daeghrefn!"
When Daeghrefn froze in the saddle on the fiery plain, it was not from fear of ogre or flame, but from a darker cause. He would never remember the dragon itself-the dark web of wings passing over the moon-but he would remember the fear always.
And he would think, as a man who believes in neither monsters nor gods, that the fear was again of his own making.
Verminaard galloped over the blackened plain, moonlight glimmering on his uplifted mace.
At a distance, he saw the ogres, milling around a small group of soldiers atop South Moraine. It was defensible ground, and the men had bows, but the ogres were closing on them slowly, batting at the arrows. The men were few and the weapons paltry against such monsters. The soldiers wouldn't hold out much longer.
"Verminaard!" Aglaca shouted. "It's your father's squadron!"
Verminaard looked more closeJy at the stone-tattered standard nodding above the horse soldiers, a black raven on a red field.
The black mace whistled and droned in his scorched hand, and he was suddenly filled with surety and power. Here was an enemy he could fight!
With a shout, he turned Orlog toward the milling ogres and lifted the mace above his head. Exuberant and wild, he swung the weapon in a wide arc. Black fire flashed
before the mace head, and its wake painted a wide stream of darkness, a blackness against which the depths of a starless night sky seemed afire.
Two hulking ogres, bound for the battle at the moraine, turned at the sound of Orlog's hoofbeats. Verminaard galloped toward them, mace uplifted, and before the first of them could raise its club, he brought the weapon flashing down upon the monster's shoulder.
"Midnight!" he cried, as the Voice in the cave had instructed.
The air rained blood and black fire. The ogre shrieked, its skin curling and blackening, and it fell to its scabious knees in the high grass. Its eyes, suddenly and strangely blinded, rolled white and terrified toward the slate-gray sky, where the stars of Morgion shone coldly above the fiery bloodbath.
The second ogre leapt away with a shout, crossing swiftly before Judyth's charging mare and stumbling and sliding through the rock-littered grass on its way back to the smoke and safety. Verminaard veered to follow it, spurring Orlog swiftly across the field in pursuit. The ogre reeled and tried to bring up its weapon, but the mace descended again with a crash, and the monster bellowed as the darkness encircled it.
Verminaard shouted again, held the dripping mace aloft, then steered the black stallion toward the rise, toward the ogres, and toward his father. Caught up in the blind rush, the roaring swirl of the mace, and the chaos of fire and noise, Judyth whistled shrilly, and the mare followed Orlog, picking her way over the few remaining spots of unburned ground.
Now the ogres loomed before them, hulking, ash-covered shapes lurching from the smoke, their weapons raised as they charged toward the rattled party. Judyth had heard the stories the knights told back in Solamnia- how the monsters strayed out of the mountains, ravaging
livestock, caravans, occasional drowsy villages. One of them, it was said, was a fighting match for five men, ten of them for a whole company of knights.
But here on the plain there were twenty . . . thirty . .. forty against a mere eight men.
She looked toward the castle, where yet another score advanced, beating their breasts and roaring, pummeling the ground with stone, axe, and club.
There were far and away too many. It was a massacre in the making.
Judyth brought the mare to a struggling halt twenty yards from the gathering monsters as two ogres, rushing out from the smoke, closed ground rapidly, their stony teeth chattering in fury. Aglaca leapt from the saddle as the girl grabbed vainly for his arm. He twisted through the air like a cyclone, shouting and kicking out at the nearest ogre, who toppled forward, choking from a crushing blow to its windpipe. Aglaca hurdled onto the shoulders of the other ogre, a big fellow with a club the size of a fence rail, who swatted at him vainly, like a bear fending off a darting wasp. And then Aglaca slammed an elbow to the side of the monster's baffled face and sprang back for the saddle while the ogre staggered and dropped to its knees, its head and shoulder in a new and grotesque arrangement.
"Judyth! Ride toward those three!" Aglaca shouted, pointing toward a trio of ogres in the gathering smoke.
Judyth did not stop to question. With a shrill whistle and a slap of the reins against the mare's withers, she goaded the willing little beast to a gallop.
The ogres were caught unaware. The smallest raised its club and bellowed, but Aglaca was plunging from the saddle before the weapon descended, his sinewy arms wrapped about the creature's wrist, his weight pulling the thing over backward. The ogre reeled, teetered, then suddenly, surprisingly, flew through the air, as the young
Solamnic tossed it over his shoulder with a levering move he had learned from L'Indasha Yman. Crashing into its two oncoming companions, who fell dazed to the hard, fire-blackened earth, the monster roared, grunted, and lay still.
"Take the horse, Judyth!" Aglaca shouted. "Ride for the castle! They're bound for Daeghrefn. Perhaps we can hold them off until-"
"It'll be too late!" she protested. '
Aglaca nodded. "All the more reason to stand with the soldiers," he declared calmly.
She stared down at him, reached for him, tried to speak.
Then overhead, a dark shape eclipsed the white moon, and the plains themselves shadowed for a breath. Judyth paled.
"Don't look up!" she shouted at Aglaca, shielding his eyes with her hand. In front of them, Verminaard, the ogres, and the horsemen from Nidus stared into the night sky, where the dragon swooped and vanished in smoke and cloud. A long moment passed.