Furthermore, the miserable journey back to the surface seemed to take twice as long as the descent, an exhausting climb back through the underground labyrinth. His muscles ached from weariness; his hands were blistered by the work of lifting himself over rough rock. Often he had to hoist Laka over challenging, steep stretches of the climb. At one point the return trip was eased by the levitation spell Hoarst had cast so, once again with his stepmother cradled in his arms, the half-giant had been able to rise up the miles-long precipice he had magically descended a lifetime earlier.
At least it seemed like another life. Only the thrilling-and terrifying-success of their mission had given him the strength to persevere, trudging blindly through the long caverns leading, he desperately hoped, back to the surface. Laka’s spirits had never flagged, however, nor had she displayed any doubts as to the correctness of their path. As usual, her wisdom was proved sound.
By the time the weary trio had approached the mouth of the cave, squinting against the blinding daylight even though it was just past sunset, the commander of the horde had somehow straightened himself. He had even attained a measure of swagger by the time he and his two companions returned to the camp. There they learned that nearly twenty days had passed during their sojourn. The army’s positions hadn’t changed in that time, but Ankhar learned the knights were massing across the Vingaard, so it was with a sense of growing urgency that the half-giant ordered immediate preparations for the attack on Solanthus.
His most important captains were summoned to arrive at the rendezvous point by midnight. Bloodgutter reported that his brigade, which was to lead the assault once the city wall had been breached, was on the march, and would be in position below the West Gate before dawn. Captain Blackgaard rode up on his midnight-blue charger, the animal snorting and pawing the ground as if it sensed-and thrilled at-the nearness of battle. Rib Chewer Wargmaster was also here; though his lupine cavalry would not be involved in storming the walls, Ankhar wanted his most trusted commander to hear all the plans and view the new power of the Truth. The goblin chief settled beside the fire, wrapped his cloak around himself, and promptly fell asleep.
As the hours ticked by, the half-giant paced worriedly. All these captains, all of their fierce and veteran warriors, would not be enough to win the battle he intended to wage. Finally he pulled his stepmother aside and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Where is he? What keeps the Thorn Knight?”
“Sir Hoarst has much work to do,” Laka reminded him. “If he makes a mistake in the creation of his device, it will be difficult-maybe impossible-to control the king once we open the box.”
Ankhar shivered. The memory of the king of the elementals, shackled and restrained, was terrifying. The thought of him running amok was completely unacceptable.
Dawn was already streaking the eastern sky, silhouetting the lofty battlements, spires, and ramparts of the West Gate, before the wizard made his appearance. He carried a slender wand, a stick no longer than the span between the tip of the thumb and little finger on the half-giant’s splayed hand.
“That?” Ankhar asked skeptically.
The wizard looked haggard; he had dark circles around his eyes and a pallid cast to his skin, his paleness accentuated by the long period under the ground. He had not rested since they had returned to the camp, and now he fixed the commander with a glare that caused Ankhar to immediately regret his tone.
“This wand is the product of a great deal of research, spellcasting, and careful carving,” Hoarst snapped. “If its appearance is not suitably impressive, I suggest you find someone else to control the creature!”
“No! It will do-it must!”
By this time the ogres had arrived, nearly a thousand of the brutish creatures assembled in five battle columns, each ten abreast and twenty deep. The sheer mass and crushing momentum of such a formation would overpower any normal army, and if the elemental king could but smash through the gatehouse, Ankhar was confident that his ogres would be able to strike deep into the city’s defenses. They would be followed by thousands upon thousands of goblins, hobgoblins, and Blackgaard’s mercenaries.
The half-giant could almost taste the coming victory! But there were still many questions to be answered. He sat with Hoarst and Laka beneath the army headquarters banner and tried to hammer out the details. The ruby box rested on the ground at his feet.
“The box is the ultimate means of control,” the Thorn Knight explained. He had gone over this before, but if he was impatient now, repeating himself, he didn’t betray the fact. “As long as the king wears the shackles when he is out, he will be compelled to return to the box when it is opened.”
“Thus it was in my vision, the image of the Truth,” Laka confirmed. She nodded at the slender wand. “And your twig?”
Hoarst shrugged. “It is a means of focusing the creature’s attention on a target. I must wield the wand-it requires a spell-caster to effect its function. When we open the box, the king will emerge, and he will be consumed with rage by his entrapment. But the shackles bind him to our will, so he will not attack the one who holds the box or any nearby.
“With the wand I shall steer him to the gate, and his innate fury will drive him forward in a destructive frenzy. I hope, and expect, that the wand will function as a powerful prod, that I will be able to guide him from a distance of several miles away.”
“But if he gets too far away, he could break the spell?” This seemed to Ankhar to be a rather important point. “Could he turn on us?”
“If we begin to lose control of him through the wand, Laka must open the box. He will be drawn back to us and be compelled to enter his prison.”
“Very well,” decided the army commander. The sky in the east was already pale blue, and sunrise was less than an hour away. He summoned Bloodgutter with a wave. “Make ready,” he ordered. Then he turned to his stepmother.
“Time to open the box.”
Sir Cedric Keflar looked in on his children, all three sleeping in the single narrow bunk. Violet, the oldest, was nearly as long as the bed, but she curled her slim frame against the wall so her younger brothers could nestle in the softer, central part of the crude straw mattress. The knight leaned down and kissed each child’s smooth cheek, his heart breaking at the gauntness of those precious faces, proof of the hunger that had sunk once bright eyes so deeply into their sockets. He was grateful they didn’t awaken; Violet only sighed quietly and shifted a little in her sleep.
Barely a foot away in the tiny room, Kiera, Cedric’s wife of twenty years, lay shivering on her own pallet. He touched a hand to her forehead and felt the fever that was burning her up. He took the time to moisten a rag and place it over her clammy skin. Then he leaned down to kiss her, grateful for the flutter of eyelids that was as much acknowledgement as she could offer.
Dawn was coming, and with dawn came duty. The sun would wait for no man, and Cedric Keflar, Captain of Swords, was determined to be as reliable as that cosmic orb when it came to his duty. He eased out of the tiny bedroom and buckled on his great sword, the weapon that had belonged to his father’s father’s fathers for as far back as any of the Keflars could reckon. Silently he closed the door to the apartment, trying to keep his armor from clanking as he made his way past the sleeping families crowded into the other rooms, and clustered on the balconies and landings of the rickety building’s stairways.
This was the way of life in crowded, besieged Solanthus. Cedric’s rank would have entitled him to a house for his family alone, but only if such houses were available. The entire human population for a hundred miles in every direction-at least those humans who had survived the horde’s initial invasion-had come to seek shelter behind the city’s high, impregnable walls. They subsisted on starvation rations and during the last winter, had burned every stick of wood within Solanthus. Clerics labored to create food, and while their efforts kept many people alive, there was never enough.