The captain’s engineers had done a splendid job on the road. It would not suffice as a trade caravan route-it was too steep-but it was wide enough for five men to march abreast, even where it was scored along the side of a sheer cliff. After crossing the first ridge, the route cut along the precipitous side of a mountain, staying a hundred feet below the crest for the sake of concealment. Descending gradually, it curled around the shoulder of the solid massif then dropped sharply to pass between a pair of conical summits.
Beyond, the route was confronted with the obstacle of a half-mile-deep chasm-the barrier that had prevented any previous attack against the tower from the north. But the bridge that had been erected for the attack was a true work of art, slender and graceful, spanning the narrowest part of the chasm on a single arch. The stone surface thrummed to the march of the Black Army and carried the whole force safely across by midafternoon.
There was one last ridgeline to crest, and there the companies narrowed into double, and finally single, file. That part of the route, scaling the highest summit, was of necessity rough and ill-prepared. Since it was close to the fortress, the diggers had worked only very cautiously there so as not to risk discovery.
Night was falling as they approached the summit. Blackgaard had previously scouted out a shallow swale near the top, and there he put the small army into an overnight bivouac. There were a few stubby cedars growing in the little valley, but Blackgaard would allow no fires. Even though the rising ridge blocked their line of sight to the fortress, the smell of smoke had been known to thwart a surprise attack.
Lying on the hard and rocky ground, the men slept as much as they could, which was not much at all. Mostly they watched the red moon, then the white, slowly traverse the night skies. Lunitari set behind the western slopes at about midnight. Solinari, closer to full and trailing behind his red cousin, did not set until past three. Only the stars, far more of them than a man could count, brightened the vast arch of the cosmos.
Then it was time to move out.
Hoarst went first, leading a single company of three hundred handpicked men. As they crossed the summit of the ridge, their target came into view. Even in the moonless night, the alabaster walls of the High Clerist’s Tower stood out against the black mountain range. Dominated by its tall, central spire, the fortress had stood in that spot since the Age of Might, a symbol of the Solamnics’ mastery of that corner of Krynn. Lesser towers, immense walls and gates, and the secondary fortress known as the Knights’ Spur, all stood as reminders that the place had held out against great armies many times in the past.
The lead company started down the bed of a narrow ravine, descending sharply. Occasionally the path twisted around to give them another glimpse of their destination, but mostly it was a deep, narrow trench and all they could see was a narrow sliver of sky overhead.
The Thorn Knight was the first to reach the base of the ravine. They were less than a mile from the north wall of the tower when Hoarst called a halt. His men gathered around as he reached into his bag of holding and pulled forth the cask that he had brought from the Dargaard range. The wizard produced a very tiny cup and opened the spigot. One by one, his three hundred men were given a sip of the potion that had been brewed at such cost.
When they were done, the wizard dropped the keg on the ground. It was no longer needed-like the drained corpse of Sirene, it was an empty shell that had to be unsentimentally discarded. Hoarst lifted his hands, outlining his gestures with the tiniest hint of light magic so that his men could observe him. With one smooth gesture, he commanded them to move out.
Swiftly, silently, and magically, his company of soldiers began to fly.
General Markus was restless, unable to sleep. Always an early riser, on that morning it seemed as though he had not been able to close his eyes for more than a moment or two all night. Giving up sleep as a lost cause, he rose, dressed himself in his leather garrison tunic with the red rose emblazoned on the crest, and decided to walk the parapets of his mountain fortress.
He found the guards awake and alert, as he knew they would be. Most of the defensive positions of the High Clerist’s Tower overlooked the road through the pass. That was the highway Jaymes had ordered widened, the route where the emperor’s army had marched to and from Palanthas. Nothing stirred on the road that day.
Markus had been the commander of the tower garrison since shortly after the defeat of Ankhar’s army. Jaymes Markham had given the trusted, veteran captain the choice of going back to Caergoth, to command the Rose Army, or of taking command of one of the remote outposts in the outer empire. Markus had leaped at the chance to come to the tower and never regretted the choice.
There he was his own master, and the master of a place that was hallowed throughout the long history of his order. He trusted his men, and they all but worshiped him. There were no politics, no distractions-thankfully, no women! — and there he could live the austere soldier’s life that he loved. It was a life of duty and service, maintaining the security of a very important landmark.
He never forgot the fact that the High Clerist’s Tower was a bastion of the ages, the site of some of history’s greatest battles. It was the battlefield where Sturm Brightblade, the knight who restored honor to the Solamnic orders during the War of the Lance, had fallen. It was where the Heroes of the Lance had slain their first dragon. And it was the key trade route of the new Solamnic empire. Every night, no matter how ill he slept, Markus went to bed proud he did his job to the best of his abilities.
Why, then, did he feel such unease and disquiet?
Still restless, the veteran captain moved from the gatehouse through the lower courtyards, where all was quiet. He climbed the towers on the curtain wall, finding the sentries awake, bored but watchful. He considered going all the way up to the High Lookout-the loftiest spot in the whole tower, except for the tiny enclosure known as the Nest of the Kingfisher, atop a narrow spire-but he knew there were trustworthy guards up there, and it would take him until dawn just to climb the hundreds of steps.
Instead, he made his way to the northern walls of his great fortress. They looked down into vast canyons, utterly dark and silent, and up on frowning cliffs and jagged peaks. There were places in view that were higher than the fortress walls, but they were too far away for archers, or even catapults, to come to bear. The night was motionless, dark with shadows.
“Eh?” croaked one of the knight guards from the outer parapet. “What kind of bird-?”
The sound died out in a gurgle of air and blood. Markus had been a soldier all his life; he knew the sound of a throat being cut.
“Alarm!” he cried. “Raise the alarm. Light torches, by Kiri!”
Immediately fires flared into being, a dozen brands igniting across the many ramparts. For a horrified instant, the captain could only gape in disbelief. His lofty parapet, nearly a thousand feet above the canyon bed, was swarming with attackers clad in black leather armor. They came not just over the walls, but also from the base of the interior wall and tower-and many were dropping right out of the sky!
The defenders never had a chance. Markus’s knights, the men who so adored and trusted him, fought bravely, but there were only twelve men posted on the remote platform, and they were swarmed by at least ten times their number. Each knight faced two, three, even four attackers at once. Steel slashed at them from every direction. And the enemy were skilled attackers.
Markus saw the last of his men die-within seconds after the battle had started-before managing to retreat into the tower’s interior, pulling the heavy iron-banded door shut behind himself. He dropped the bar and braced it with his hands.