Cedric had to step over several people sleeping on the front steps of his building, and more were huddled against the curb, in each alley, sometimes tumbling into the roadway. Moving through the darkness, the knight captain walked carefully. Here and there a pair of bright eyes watched him from the darkness, and he did his best to look calm and capable as he marched toward another day at his post.
As he turned down the gate street, he glanced over his shoulder, toward the heart of his city. The Cleft Spires loomed to the left, but the lofty, graceful outline of the Ducal Palace dominated the view. Flanked by slender towers, with an arched roof that looked more like a cathedral than a castle, it was a view that never failed to inspire Sir Cedric. It reminded him of so many of things they were fighting for.
“Bless you, my lady,” he whispered, thinking gratefully of the woman who dwelled there, the duchess who moved among her people with such serenity that the citizenry couldn’t help but take hope from her example.
As Cedric moved closer to the West Gate, he passed through a broad marketplace, now dark and silent except for the snores of sleeping refugees. Beyond, the steep walls of the gatehouse rose before him. He paused in the plaza before entering the building. Outlined by the growing light of dawn, the Cleft Spires stood out against the rosy sky. Silhouetted against the setting of the white moon rose the gatehouse and the formidable walls to the west. That was where Cedric headed this morning… and every morning. As Commandant of the West Gate, he was responsible for one of the key components of the city’s defense.
“How fares it, lads?” he asked the men of the night watch, who snapped to attention as their captain climbed the stairs to the First Tower, the rampart directly over the thick, iron-banded gates.
“Bit of a rumpus out there in the wee hours, sir,” replied the sergeant major who ruled the post during the hours of darkness. “Seems to be some ogres moving up to within a mile of the gate.”
“Well, Mapes, we’ll have to hope the blokes creep a bit closer,” Cedric replied cheerfully. “And our archers can turn a few of ’em into pincushions!”
“Aye, Captain!” Mapes said with equal cheer. The men of the ranks, a dozen or more of them standing within earshot, looked at each other and nodded. Already whispered reports of the exchange, verbatim, were being passed along the lines on the wall tops, through the interior bastions, and down into the central courtyard. With confident leaders like these, the men trusted they were invincible.
The West Gate was more than just a gatehouse; it was a sturdy castle in its own right. The gate was wide enough, when opened, for two freight wagons to roll through or ten fully armored knights to ride abreast. The approach crossed a drawbridge some forty feet long, over a moat that was nearly as deep. The bottom of the moat was a muddy morass of sewage, brackish water, and mud deep enough to swallow a tall man up to his neck. When the drawbridge was raised, it formed the first barrier of the gates. Immediately within was a massive portcullis of iron bars-the second line of defense.
An attacker who penetrated the portcullis would find himself in a constricted corridor, blocked by another portcullis forty feet inside. Overhead was a slotted ceiling-whose slots were murder holes, designed for hot oil to be poured down the openings or arrows to be loosed at the heads of any encroaching foes. If the assaulting force broke through the second portcullis, its soldiers then would have to cross a courtyard a hundred feet wide, surrounded on all sides by high ramparts and towers. From those elevations a devastating fire could be directed at the hopelessly exposed invaders. Then, across the courtyard, the whole process of the double portcullis corridor had to be repeated before the enemy actually broke through to the city streets of Solanthus.
Sir Cedric had a garrison of more than five hundred men to hold just this one gatehouse. Though the troops, like everyone else in the city, were hungry and discouraged, they were brave fighters and if given the chance, they would certainly acquit themselves in a manner worthy of the Knights of Solamnia. Indeed, the greatest enemy that they faced-besides hunger-was the long period of inactivity that had worn away at their readiness over more than thirteen months of siege. To combat this forced lassitude, Cedric and Mapes had organized countless drills and driven the men through numerous training regimens scheduled in the deep central courtyard. But the nearing prospect of battle, the chance to strike back at the ever-present, but thus far unreachable, horde, was to the captain’s thinking the best medicine he could ask for his men.
Still, Cedric could not quell a sense of disquiet as he gazed over the wall, spying the great blocks of the ogre columns increasingly visible as dawn turned to daylight. The ogres were organized in tight file formations-that is, one file directly behind the other-such that they would assault the gate almost as one. Their drums, in a measured basso thumping, were marking a slow, almost dirge-like tempo, he noted. Ogres were tough brutes, Cedric well knew, but even if they held great shields over their heads, the devastating fire of arrows, rocks, and burning oil from the heights would surely decimate a great number of them before they could crawl through the mud of the moat. So the captain doubted they would attack in a mass and suspected they must have some other plan.
The first clue to their strategy came now, when a hulking shape, accompanied by a more normal-sized retinue of soldiers, appeared at the fore of the first ogre company.
“Why, that’s the half-giant himself,” Mapes exclaimed, “or I’m the son of a gully dwarf!”
Cedric, who had a spyglass, raised it to his eye and stared. “No, Mapes, your bloodlines can reasonably be assumed to have flowed through humans,” the captain confirmed.
As the bestial, tusked face of the horde’s commander glared back at him, the knight felt his first shiver of apprehension. “That bastard is up to something today,” he said warily.
He scanned around, examining Ankhar’s party. Next to the half-giant, he saw a man in the armored breastplate and ash-gray cloak typical of a Thorn Knight. On the other side stood a short, stooped creature with bestial features, apparently some kind of witch doctor, clutching a grotesque talisman that looked to be a human skull mounted on some kind of short stick.
The latter, a gnarled female, placed a small box on the ground before Ankhar as the first rays of the sun streamed over the battlements and brightened the ground. Something as red as blood, rubies no doubt, glittered brightly on that container, as the witch doctor pulled back the lid.
Cedric continued to stare, betraying no emotion, as a pair of sparkling embers rocketed out of the box, climbing, spiraling around each other, circling into the air. They soared to a height above the heads of the strange trio, then floated unsteadily, bobbing and weaving, occasionally intermingling or floating past each other. Now his eyes returned to the box, which was spewing smoke, a dark cloud of vapor that billowed upward into an impermeable column, masking the half-giant and his two companions. The black vapor shot up to the height of the circling embers then halted its rise, though more smoke continued to pour from the box, filling out the pillar, thickening it, giving it an almost tangible solidity.
The captain could hear wary mutters and whispers from the men on the ramparts. “Steady, fellows,” he counseled. “Mapes, get a couple of the Kingfishers up here right away.”
The sergeant major hurried to fetch a couple of the Solamnic Auxiliary Mages, new to the ranks of the ancient order. These men, universally young and keenly intelligent, devoted their time to the study of spells and wizardry rather than the customary use of the sword and shield. As their symbol was the kingfisher, many of the veteran knights had taken to calling them by that name. Cedric had a feeling the Kingfishers might be of some use against this new, as yet unknown mystery. Already the vaporous form was taking a shape, vaguely humanoid, with arms and legs and a broad torso. The entire huge body was an image in midnight black, except for the glowing coals, and a pair of large silver rings that seemed to encompass each of the monster’s wrists.