He caught sight of her and said, almost exultantly, “Magic still serves the crown in some things, lass!”
The Steel Princess lifted an eyebrow, overjoyed to see the King of Cormyr out of his dark mood but somewhat puzzled as to why.
“You didn’t expect Dauneth to meet us here?” she asked, glancing around at the familiar cliffs and crags of Gnoll Pass. “You told me yesterday how sorely we needed the reinforcements he’d bring, and now his obedience seems to be a cause of… Are things in Arabel worse than I’d heard?”
“No, no, lass!” Azoun chuckled.” ‘Tis what he’s brought with him that’s a cause of… I’ll tell all later. For now, let us claim yonder hilltop and there raise the tent I hope young Marliir’s also brought along.”
“Tent? Father, are your wits addled at last?”
“Have a care for treason of the tongue,” a lancelord snapped from behind the Steel Princess. “You speak ill of the king!”
She whirled around with sparks fairly spewing from her eyes and snarled, “Dare less with your own speech, soldier! Obarskyrs speak freely and thereby keep the realm strong. Learn that well, if you learn nothing else about fighting under the Purple Dragon banner.”
“You chided the Steel Princess?” someone muttered, just loudly enough for Alusair to hear as she turned to stride after her father. “Man, are your wits addled at last?”
A smile almost rose to the lips of the princess at that, as she hastened down loose rocks and slippery tussocks of clingvine and grass to where Dauneth Marliir was kneeling before his king.
“All is as you requested, Your Majesty,” the High Warden of the Eastern Marches was saying earnestly. “The poles-crew await your orders. The mages stand there, with the cage. As you can see it is wrapped to hide its true nature, just as you instructed.”
“Wrapped to hide-?” Alusair murmured, coming up to stand beside her father’s shoulder. “What by all the unslain orcs of the Stonelands is..
“Tell me now,” Azoun was asking, “what was the look on Elemander’s face when you brought him my orders, and showed him the royal ring?”
“Total astonishment,” Dauneth said with a smile, “but it soon slipped into disgust about the time I began describing the massive cold iron bars. ‘Beneath my skills,’ he sniffed, and snatched the ring from my fingers to make sure I wasn’t playing him false. He cursed-I can’t remember all the words even if Your Majesty cared to hear such foulness, and I doubt there even is such a thing as the ‘blind-flying spawn of a love-slave-slapped, dung-sucking donkey’-then he took the suit of armor he’d been working on from its stand and hurled it the length of his shop.”
The king exploded in laughter, slapping his thighs then dealing Dauneth a blow across the back that sent the young warden staggering. “Wonderful!”
“Will someone,” Alusair asked with silken politeness, “kindly tell me what this matter of royal armorers fashioning crude cold iron cages is all about?”
“Lass,” her father said jovially, indicating the hilltop and giving Dauneth a nod to tell him to send the poles-crew on its way, “we’re going to catch ourselves a ghazneth-and if need be, trade its freedom in exchange for our lost royal magician!”
“Oh,” Alusair replied with deceptive mildness, “Just like that? Well, now that you’ve told me, I’m sure everything’s going to go off without a hitch. It certainly sounds plausible enough, hmm?”
Azoun lifted an eyebrow at her tone, murmured something under his breath that might have been, “Just like your mother,” and swung around to point back behind them. “Surely you’ve had enough of fleeing from floods of orcs?”
“Gods, yes,” Alusair growled as fervently as any Purple Dragon veteran sick of long marches and given a chance at sitting idle instead might.
“Well, with Dauneth’s reinforcements guarding our flanks, we’re going to turn around and strike right back at them. They’ve been howling at our heels for long enough now that they don’t expect anything else from us except grim retreat. We’re giving them a despairing last stand right now, on the other side of that last hill behind us. The moment that tent is up, we’re going to break ranks and run back here. They’ll pour after us to enjoy the rout and slaughter, and we’ll send Dauneth’s troops looping out and around them like a long arm, taking them from behind while the war wizards Dauneth’s also brought with him hurl spells at them from the tent.”
“So the slaughterers will become the slaughtered,” Alusair said calmly. “I’m with you so far. Just how, exactly, are we to deal with the ghazneths who’ll inevitably come soaring in at us when we start this hurling of spells?”
“Wizards will cast visible defensive magics-harmless faerie fires-on the tent,” the king told her, “then scuttle inside when the ghazneths swoop down. The cage will be lined up with the tent mouth, and Purple Dragons will be standing inside with weapons of cold iron raised and ready to transfix any ghazneth bursting in.”
Alusair shook her head, then suddenly shrugged and grinned. “In other words, you’re just pitching in, running wild, and hoping,” she said. “Well, why not? We’ve tried everything else.”
“I knew you’d be ready for a little striking back,” her father replied, “because, by all the sheep who’ve ever drunk from the Wyvernwater, I certainly am!”
Three young war wizards stood in the dark mouth of the tent on the hill, their faces tight and pale with fear. Fireballs and lightning bolts streamed from their hands, flashing into the heart of the howling orcs surging up the slope then recoiling from the line of hard-thrusting Purple Dragon spearmen. Orc bodies arched in agony or were flung, broken, through the air only to be caught in the blast of the next spell and hurled anew.
It took only the space of a few breaths for the first of the expected ghazneths to streak in, flying low and hard from the south.
“Gods above, but they’re fast,” Alusair murmured at the king’s shoulder. She glanced over at the three war wizards-Stormshoulder, Gaundolonn, and Starlaggar, that was his name, Mavelar Starlaggar-and saw them, to a man, pale-faced and trembling with fear. “Are you sure our war wizards are up to this?”
Azoun followed her quizzical glance in time to see one of the young mages convulsively lose his last meal onto the ground. The king lifted his shoulders in a shrug and said, “We all have to face our first battle sometime, and I can’t hold the realm if only old, grizzled veterans know how to stand and fight for Cormyr.”
“Old, grizzled veterans like the king?” Alusair said with a smile.
“Exactly,” Azoun snarled back, and sprang forward. “Here comes a bolder bird now…”
The second ghazneth to appear over the hilltop wasted no time in the circling and shrieking that its fellow was engaged in. Without pause it swooped at the tent.
One war wizard moaned in fear and fell over his nearest fellow mage in his haste to escape, causing them both to topple over into the tent. The third one stood desperately trying to roll them out of the way as the ghazneth-a large, powerful one with a bald head and the shoulders of a large and imposing man-plunged down at it.
With seconds to spare, War Wizard Lharyder Gaundolonn got his two companions out of the way and threw himself over their bodies into the dim interior of the tent. The ghazneth raced in behind them like a laughing bolt of black lightning whose swift flight ended in a crash of splintering bones and reluctantly rolling cage that shook the entire hilltop.
A swordlord threw the slide that locked the cage, thrust the two iron spikes that would hold it from moving into place, and waved forward the spearmen whose weapons would keep the captured ghazneth away from them. “Well, majesty,” the swordlord said, “you’ve got your caged bird-faster and cleaner than I’d feared it’d come to us, too and now?”
The king shrugged and said, “We only have the one cage.”
He looked out over the tumult of bloody battle where Purple Dragons were slowly advancing to meet each other, hacking down the orcs trapped between them, then up at the-three, by now-ghazneths who were swooping down to claw off a head here, and rake open a face there.