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Before long, the frightened villagers, grumbling about the rain, began to pile through the eastern gate, crowding the courtyard. Albrecht set them to work immediately preparing bandages, fetching and carrying supplies for the soldiers, and rounding up the livestock running loose in the compound.

After everyone was fed a thin stew from the enormous pots that would too soon hold boiling water for the defense, Tate called an emergency meeting of his four-man council of knights. Since the great room was filled with displaced vil shy;lagers, Albrecht, Wallens, and Auston met with him in the light of a single taper in their barracks. Tate's batting felt wet and clammy against his skin.

"You've all seen, or at least heard about, the mobile barri shy;cades beyond the gates," Tate began. "We are now sealed in, unless we choose to try fighting our way out.

"It appears, however, that we are badly outnumbered. The enemy has a sizable army of humans, ogres, and some sort of creatures no one here can identify. Prudence demands we assume they have dragons, as well, although no one has seen them." Heads nodded quiet agreement around the table.

"Considering the seriousness of the situation, I want to send an emissary out to talk to their commander."

Agreement was replaced by surprise. "Surely you don't mean to discuss surrender?" asked Albrecht.

"No," replied Tate. "But we have a huge number of women, children, and old men here in the fortress. We must at least try to arrange safe conduct for them away from the battle."

Auston cleared his throat. "Sir, I would be honored to serve as message bearer. I've had some diplomatic experi shy;ence, settling ethnic disputes with the barbarians in the Est-wilde region of Solamnia."

Tate clapped the eager young knight on the shoulder. "You're just the man for the job, then, Auston."

A short time later the knights were reassembled inside the south gate. Lanterns, spitting softly in the light rain, cast their dim light across the scene. Auston sat proudly, if somewhat nervously, on his horse. Tate shook the young knight's hand. "Come back swiftly and safely."

Nodding, Auston touched his helmet in salute to Tate as he rode out the gate. Two guards hastily closed and barred it behind him.

Rather than wait anxiously back in the barracks, the knights separated to double-check the castle's defenses. Tate went to the stables below the barracks and fed the griffons. The horses had been moved above ground to accommodate

the five horseflesh-loving winged creatures he'd purchased at great expense from a trader.

An hour later, there came a shout from the rampart. A ner shy;vous guard peered out and saw a white horse, returning alone in the pale moonlight. Tate ran from the stables up onto the wall to see what caused the commotion. He watched with the sentries and knights gathered there as the horse cantered back to the south gate. Guards flung back the heavy wooden doors and hustled the horse inside. Snorting, eyes wide and fearful, the white creature circled through the courtyard and the thronged people there, stopping before Tate, who'd has shy;tened down from the battlement. The courtyard grew strangely still, as if everyone inside was holding his breath.

The apprehensive lord knight began to search the creature for a note or message of some kind concerning Auston's fate. The horse itself provided the answer. Its hairy lips ruffled, and a voice very like Tate's own said through the horse's mouth, "You can't act like ruffians and expect to be treated like ladies." Tate visibly paled.

"What does it mean, Sir Tate?" Albrecht asked, noting the expression of understanding growing on his superior's face. "And what have they done with Auston?"

"It means no deal," Tate said numbly. "Auston's dead."

"The unprincipled bastards!" snarled the usually con shy;tained Wallens. "What'U we do now, Sir?"

Tate tried to rub the weariness from his eyes. "See to your stations one last time tonight, then get some rest while you can," the lord knight said. "Tomorrow promises to be a long, hard day."

Tate was already walking away from the dazed Albrecht and Wallens, his thoughts on a distant time. Three fingers traced the scars beneath the whiskers on his cheek. Now he knew why the dragon at Shalimsha had seemed so familiar. The witch-woman from the ambush.. Tate didn't under shy;stand magic well enough to explain how it could be done, but he was certain the human fighter was now a vengeful, black dragon. It was obvious from the message that she hadn't for shy;gotten their encounter, either.

A muscle twitched in Tate's wet cheek. The dragon's quest was nothing compared to the knight's: to avenge his friend, Wolter. She was a worthy adversary as a dragon, he mused, recalling the battle at Shalimsha.

He found it all very curious how their paths had crossed and recrossed.

He wasn't a man to believe in omens, but if ever he did …

The Knight of the Crown felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to pray to his patron, Kiri-Jolith. He'd spent little time in temple since the battle at Shalimsha. Tate told himself he was too busy reorganizing troops and bolstering morale to devote one of every seven days to inactive prayer.

The truth was, without the old knight to steel his resolve, Sir Tate's interest in rising to the Order of the Rose had waned. In a secret corner of his soul, Tate had even dared to wonder if Kiri-Jolith hadn't abandoned him first.

As the lord knight picked his way through the sleeping bodies in the courtyard, he couldn't help thinking that many were taking their last mortal rest. The thought propelled Tate faster toward a long overdue talk with his god.

Chapter 22

Maldeev was feeling confident. The highlord sat apart from his four black dragons, who waited restlessly for daybreak on a rocky cliff west of Lamesh. He knew that when the sun crested the horizon to the east, Salah Khan would issue the order for the ground troops to advance on Lamesh's south wall. The sec shy;ond he saw the knights' attention devoted there, Maldeev would lead the dragons in an attack on the west wall. It was a plan the highlord was certain couldn't fail.

The pace of the assault had gone from boring to breakneck in one long night. The draconians, under Horak's watchful eye, had chopped down trees that the ogres turned into makeshift bridges for fording the moat and ladders for climb shy;ing crenelated walls.

Maldeev had flown to this vantage point with the dragons late in the night. Though the steady downpour was an uncomfortable nuisance for the highlord, it seemed to act like a mental balm for the black dragons. They'd dropped into sleep after foraging for food in the mountains farther west.

Wound as tight as a spring, the highlord had been the first to awaken, though he wasted no time in rousing the others to draw a crude battle diagram in the dirt. The plan had changed little from the one drawn up at a war council of officers and dragons the day before the march north. Truly, the only alter shy;ation was to the role of the dragons, and that was as obvious and simple as the dirt in which Maldeev had drawn it.

"Whoever built Lamesh obviously did not consider aerial attacks," the highlord said. "It must have been built during the time your kind was banished from Krynn."

"Technically, we still are," Khisanth interjected mildly. "The Dark Queen's return to Krynn is the point of the war, isn't it?"