With a few hundred extra gold galifars, two arcanists could transport the entire group. With the budget they’d been allotted, they could transport two squads. Haldren quickly decided to teleport the two squads and send the other two by foot. Ten soldiers could hunt wolves as well as twenty, he argued, even if it took them a little longer. The other squads would arrive in time to hold the canyon against any new or renewed threat.
The chain of command, though, required that Haldren wait for Kelas’s approval before acting on this change of plans. Haldren’s blood boiled while he waited for the runner to return. As a general in the Last War, he gave orders and they were obeyed, and he let the royal treasurers figure out the consequences. This was just one more example of Haldren’s total subordination to Kelas. The Lord General believed Kelas delayed his response intentionally, to remind Haldren of his proper place.
Finally Kelas’s approval came. Haldren put the more competent of the two sergeants in charge of the overland expedition and sent them out. Then the Arcanix wizard performed his ritual, opening a glowing portal in the air. Beyond it, Cart saw another great hall, richly furnished and inscribed with arcane sigils. Haldren strode through the portal first, leaving Cart in command. That part, at least, went according to plan. Cart was the last one through, and it felt no different than walking across a threshold-a single step that carried him across five hundred miles.
The round chamber on the other side was as large as the ruined cathedral. It filled one floor of one of Arcanix’s magically floating towers, with windows on every side looking out over the Aundairian plain, the Blackcrags to the southwest, and the rich blue expanse of Lake Galifar to the west and north. Great columns formed an inner ring, each one carved with a human or near-human figure gazing toward the chamber’s center. Gleaming silver traced weaving patterns along the wall, and other metals outlined smaller circles spaced around the rest of the hall. Haldren circled the chamber with a mix of impatience and rapture-he evidently felt or saw something in this arcane paradise that completely escaped Cart.
Another thing that escaped Cart was any means of egress from the chamber. Though there was certainly more to this tower, no stairway led up or down. The windows on every side proved that there were no rooms or stairs beyond the walls of the great hall. They were trapped-the whole party was at the mercy of the wizards of Arcanix, who could seal them in this room forever if they desired.
Fortunately, the wizards evidently had no such desire. The arcanist who had opened the portal from Fairhaven led Haldren to an inlaid copper circle and, with a simple word and gesture, set the ring glowing with a rich green light. Haldren barked the orders this time, sending one squad into the circle first, where they vanished. Haldren and Ashara followed, leaving Cart to order the last squad through and bring up the rear, alongside the young wizard.
Cart had spent so much time in the maze below Fairhaven’s cathedral that it seemed he had forgotten what open air and sunshine felt like. Even when he left the dark passages, he hadn’t been out of Fairhaven in months, and as green and warm as the city’s streets were, they couldn’t compare to the feeling of sheer possibility he felt standing once more on a wide plain. Lake Galifar stretched out behind him, so wide that its far shore-its Eldeen shore-was lost in the haze of the horizon.
Eager to start the mission, the quicker to get it over with, Haldren pointed to the south and ordered the soldiers to march. Falling back on habit, Cart marched alongside them-eyes forward, attention only on the cadence of the march. Ashara, though, apparently thought of their journey as a pleasant stroll across the countryside, and walked beside him, chatting as though she were on a casual stroll on any sunny summer day.
“What do you make of these reports of demonic wolves?” she asked.
Cart shrugged. Left, left, left.
“I wonder if there’s some wizard behind that,” Ashara continued. “They say there’s a mad wizard in Droaam who was exiled from the Twelve because of his work in modifying living flesh. This could be the same sort of thing, don’t you think?”
“Could be.” Left right left.
“On the other hand, maybe we should take the reports at face value. The Dragon Forge is supposed to draw on the power of an imprisoned fiend-why couldn’t some taint of its presence affect the creatures around it?”
“That’s what Haldren thinks.” Left, left.
“He’s probably right, then.”
Ashara fell silent, a blessed respite from her incessant chatter. Cart let the cadence fill him, move him along in the march, carry him along the road. The greatest joy in the soldier’s life, he had often thought, came from working with a single will, perfectly coordinated, with his fellow soldiers. The march was the simplest example, the first step on the way toward a total union of disparate minds and bodies. The squad, the company, the regiment that could march together would someday learn to fight together.
“Why don’t you like me, Cart?” Ashara shattered the silence and disrupted his rhythm.
He stopped beside her and gestured for the soldiers to continue. “Lady Can-”
“Call me Ashara, please.”
“Lady Cannith,” Cart repeated firmly, “we are on a military expedition, not a stroll through a vineyard. Whether I like you or not is irrelevant to our mission.”
“It’s relevant to me.”
For a moment, looking at her so-human face with its contracting muscles and damp eyes, Cart almost believed her. Then, disgusted, he followed the marching soldiers, eager to rejoin their cadence. He didn’t notice what Ashara did after that.
The sun blazed overhead when they drew near the canyon four days later, and Cart could see that the heat was wearing on the soldiers. Sweat rolled down their faces, and their discipline was crumbling-several of them stopped to remove their helmets and shake the sweat from their hair. He didn’t reprimand them. He knew from experience that if they didn’t have a chance to catch their breath while marching, they’d try to do it while fighting. And then they’d die.
The first sign of the wolves came as they were pitching camp that evening. A howl rose from the foothills ahead-an unearthly sound, rumbling with thunder even as it soared to eerie heights of pitch. The soldiers looked up from their work, fear in their eyes. Another howl, and this one was joined by several more, a demonic chorus. The upper notes of their calls clashed in agonizing dissonance even as the lower rumbles flowed together in a rolling boom like an earthquake. An uneasy feeling settled into Cart’s chest at that, and a few soldiers looked on the brink of headlong flight.
Haldren kept his head and barked orders. Two rings of sentries would patrol the edge of the camp, in constant motion to ensure alertness, rotating in short shifts through the night. At the merest hint of wolves, the sentries should wake the camp-better to warn of an attack and be wrong than to keep silence and have soldiers die in their sleep. Cart nodded his approval. The Lord General might have found this assignment disappointing, but he took it seriously once it began.
Needing no sleep, Cart patrolled on every shift. Twice, sentries on the opposite side of the camp from him sounded alarms, but either their eyes had been tricking them or the wolves retreated when the soldiers sprang into motion. The sentries described enormous shapes looming out of the darkness, as tall as a man at their shoulders. Cart suspected them of exaggeration born of fear, but he said nothing.