Across the vale, there was the sound of drums and horns. The enemy was preparing, too.
The sun’s disk was just breaking the horizon when the troops of Cormyr formed their battle lines. Patriarchs of Helm the Watchful strutted along the line, each with an attendant acolyte and a bucket of holy water. The patriarch would dip a hollow mace, its head pierced with a hundred tiny holes, into the barrel, then fling the water over the waiting troops, blessing them en masse with the Tears of Helm.
Aosinin was on his brown gelding by this time, a huge, heavy beast barded with interleaved plates heavier than his own. His squire secured the last of the bolts and latches, then retreated to ready himself. The squire, one of the young Dauntinghorns, would march with the infantry, providing some backbone to the Arabellan troops.
The men of Arabel looked nervous but resolute, Aosinin thought, eager to prove their worth and banish the last vestiges of the term “rebel Arabel.” Yet a mantle of fear hung on them that even the blessing of watchful Helm did nothing to dissipate.
The troops from Marsember were descendants of the original smugglers and pirates who had founded and refounded that swampy, independent city. They looked fully capable of taking on the Witch Lords by themselves. Indeed, if the king hesitated any longer, they would do exactly that.
The mages signaled that their preparatory spells were complete, and Thanderahast rode to join the king. The wizard’s mount was a light pony, a dappled veteran of many battles. It had been trained to retreat if Thanderahast left the saddle, and it had survived a number of nasty frays as a result.
The king was mounted on his black charger, a magnificent mount clad in ivory-shaded barding. The charger’s armored headpiece had been fitted with a unicorn’s horn, no doubt further enchanted by the Royal Wizard to protect the rider. Galaghard’s own armor was polished to a luster that caught the sun’s rays and threw them back like a mirror. On his chest was the painted symbol of Cormyr, the Purple Dragon, adopted officially since the years of pirate exile.
Across the shallow vale, the horns grew louder and the drums began to roll, a long, ominous sound that would end in a charge. The Witch Lords’ troops would not wait for the sun to fill the vale, their inhuman troops preferred to fight in the shadows. They would move soon.
There was one last, lingering blare of horns, and the drums fell silent. The armies of the Witch Lords roared in unison and surged forward down the gentle slope. Goblins and orcs trotted on the flanks, their ranks sprinkled with the hulking forms of ogre captains. In the center ran the human troops, bolstered by a few knots of loping trolls. There was no visible sign of the Witch Lords themselves, but then there hadn’t been at any of the previous battles, either.
The Marsembians started to advance in response, only to be hauled back by the shouted curses of their noble leaders. Marliir was the name, Aosinin thought.
The king held up one hand, his eyes locked on the advancing line of nonhumans and traitors. If he had any doubt in his heart, it did not show on his face. The opposing forces had reached the bottom of a shallow delve and were now slowly working their way up the other side.
King Galaghard lowered his hand, and the silver horns of the Cormyrean army roared out in response. Like one vast, amorphous creature spread out over the hilltop, the Glory of Cormyr spilled into the valley. Aosinin rode in the main vanguard, alongside the High Wizard on his pony. An eager-looking young Skatterhawk rode on Thanderahast’s other side, paired with an older, grimmer Thundersword. As they rode, both nobles waggled the blades of their swords to flash reflected sun into the eyes of their foes.
They had closed about half the distance to the enemy line when the bats appeared. The ungainly creatures lofted up from the back of the enemy lines, great fur-covered giants with twisted faces and dead-white skin, shadowing the morning light with their numbers. Humans rode the backs of the daunting beasts-humans wearing dark helms bedecked with stag antlers. The lieutenants of the Witch Lords.
They swooped over the Marsembian troops, and light-fling bolts laced down. The bolts were erratic, gouging the soft, peaty earth more than the troops, but for every two Marsembians who fell, only one rose again.
On his left, Aosinin heard Thanderahast let out a shout of anger, then call out Luthax’s name. His personal enemy was among the bat riders, though how the mage knew, Aosinin could not guess. Thanderahast began to bark the ancient phrases of a spell. Aosinin realized what the mage was doing and reached out to stop him, but his armor did not allow him such swift, stretching overbalancing, and the mage finished the spell and lofted himself out of his saddle, flying upward to meet the bat riders. The pony, as trained, immediately halted and started to trot back up the hill.
Aosinin bellowed at his cousin, and the king nodded grimly. From other wings, Thanderahast’s pupils were rising as well, abandoning their troops in order to join in the airborne carnage.
Ahead, the Witch Lords’ troops halted on the near slope of the valley. Ogres were bellowing orders, and orcs and goblins were desperately trying to form a line, spear-points out, to break the Cormyrean charge. Most would not complete the maneuver before they were struck down.
Above their heads, the bat riders and flying mages wheeled and dodged. Lightning cracked across the clear sky, and the Royal Wizard’s pupils replied with gouts of fire. Here a human form would plummet to the earth, and there a flaming bat wing would flutter downward, trailing ink-black smoke down to its death. Thanderahast had removed the danger of any unopposed, concerted attack from above, but at the cost of any protection of the line troops on the ground if the Witch Lords had any other tricks up their sleeves.
The next horror of the necromancers was apparent when the two armies fully closed. At first Aosinin thought he faced humans-traitors, rebels, and mercenaries. They might have been once, for he recognized some badges on the armor they wore. But now they were marching dead things, the remains of their eyes hanging bloody in their sockets, and their flesh drained of all blood. To a man, they had deep slashes across their exposed throats.
The walking dead! Zombies, Aosinin realized with a groan, magical creations under the control of a powerful necromancer. And unlike the animated skeletons they had fought in previous battles, these were recently made and still had some of the power they held in life. The noble thought of the fires and the drums of the previous evening and realized that it had not been a rallying celebration, but a grisiy enchantment. The Witch Lords had consumed their own living troops to provide fodder of the utmost loyalty for this crucial battle.
The Arabellans in the front line quailed when they saw what they faced, and several began to retreat. Galaghard rode among them to the front of the line, raising his arm and sounding the attack. The Arabellans stiffened at the sight of the king and, with a shout, pressed forward into the undead.
Aosinin spurred his horse forward to follow his king, and all around him, the battle lines disintegrated into the usual chaos of hacking and thrusting and dying as the ranks of soldiers broke into a swirl of smaller conflicts-man against goblin, against ogre, and against undead abomination. The Truesilver wasted no breath on battle cries but set his teeth and hacked at the butchered humans, seeking to carve a path to the king, who wheeled and slashed again and again against the Undead horde.
At the king’s flanks rode two priests of Helm the Watchful. Golden lights danced from their palms as they drove the animating essences from the fighting corpses. As Aosinin watched, one of the priests was overwhelmed by a wave of clutching undead and dragged from his mount. Aosinin did not see him again. Instead, the Truesilver found himself beset on all sides by swarming goblins, who were spilling into the heart of the Cormyrean host in the wake of the undead, slashing at zombie and Cormyrean with equal abandon.