The sky turned a brilliant searing white, and the ground heaved and writhed under his feet. A blast of sound chopped through the air, deafening all who heard it, and the elf felt as though an angry god had picked him up, them slammed him to the ground with immortal fury.
Finally he lay in a place of utter, consuming darkness.
14
A curtain of red, pulsing and fiery, filled the view of Grimwar Bane. He could hardly breathe, and it was impossible to move. He strained to clench a fist, even to wiggle his toes within the heavy, whaleskin boot. The king was vaguely aware of being borne on a makeshift litter, hauled down the hill and onto the terraced fields, away from Brackenrock. He tried to object, to order these craven cowards to turn back, to pour through the breach, swarm across those walls, and raze the entire cursed citadel.
Someone cried out something about the catapult, and he wanted to repeat his orders even louder-shoot the orb! Blast Brackenrock into dust! Damn the Axe of Gonnas and every other trivial complication-blow that wretched place off the face of Krynn!
No words came. Instead, there was crushing pain in his chest, and each bubbling breath required a monstrous effort. Wetness spilled down his flanks, sticky within the confines of his leather shirt and punctured breastplate, and he realized that he was leaking blood. Cold fear rose within him-for the first time in his life he confronted the possibility that he was mortal, that he might die. The very notion seemed monstrously unfair, incomprehensible.
“I refuse!” He wanted to bellow the denial but instead merely coughed an inarticulate word, tasting blood in his throat. No! He couldn’t imagine that his life had come to this, to a dirty retreat from a band of ragged human rabble.
That red sheet blocking his vision thinned slightly, cleared enough that he could see the sky above and the ocean below. Frantically he struggled to rise, to strike these disobedient ogres who carried him away from the fight, but he fell back in agony, watching as his quarry, that nightmare citadel, receded in his hazy vision. He smelled salty air, saw his beautiful ships so far below, drawn onto the beach where they had landed. Not there… not yet…
Something sparkled in his line of sight, a golden flicker of brightness, and again he remembered the orb.
Stariz stumbled down the slope toward the second terrace, falling onto her face in the trampled mud of a ruined field. The ogre queen lay still, hoping she was unseen, fearing the thrust of human steel into her back, but there were no footsteps, no obvious signs of pursuit.
She was still lying there when she heard the spring-snap noise of the catapult triggering its heavy load. Numb with disbelief, she understood only that the golden orb was not supposed to be launched until she had the Axe of Gonnas in her hands. Bitter fury blinded her, but she choked back the screams of rage. Instead she hissed to herself, “The humans will suffer for this-they and whoever has aided them will die in pain and misery and subjugation!”
She pushed herself up to her knees, and only then did she recognize the orb arcing over her head, soaring outward and downward, toward the shore. In a moment it had plummeted from her field of vision, falling beyond the rim of the terrace. With a gasp, she rose to her feet and started forward at a lumbering run. Before she reached the edge of the flat, muddy grange, everything turned white, as if she had crashed into the sun. She felt the ground heave under her feet, and the brilliance became a hole in the center of her vision. She staggered on, reaching the lip of the terrace, staring dizzily down the steep hill at the beach. The sea had erupted into a mountainous fountaining wave.
No, it was a series of waves rippling toward the beach. Wood and sticks blew past in the furious wind, and she vaguely understood that one of the galleys had been shattered. Bodies flew by and rolled around on the shore, and she was vaguely aware these were ogre bodies-though they looked insignificant, almost toylike, from her vantage.
The blast of waves took longer to strike the other galley, Goldwing, and in bright, flickering flashes the ogre queen now saw the royal ship heel violently, spin sideways and skid through the shallows parallel to the shoreline-blown as though it was a leaf. She was still watching, mesmerized, when an invisible force hit her in the face. The huge ogress was thrown backward as though she had been slapped by a dragon’s tail. Flattened on her back, gasping for air, she offered a mute prayer to her mighty god, a plea for survival and vengeance.
After a short time she could breathe again, and slowly she sat up, then pushed herself laboriously to her feet, looking at the shore below her. Hornet was gone-utterly gone-and Goldwing had been heaved sideways, tossed down the shore upon sand. None of the two score ogres left to guard the beach were visible.
“O my wrathful god!” she groaned. “How did we fail you?” Though unable to deny the evidence of her eyes, Stariz was unwilling to accept the fantastic scope of the disaster.
She started forward at a jog, her mind whirling, filled with chaotic images and hateful thoughts. Her trunklike legs pumped, carrying her down the hill. She passed the trudging Shield-Breakers who were picking themselves up, plodding dazedly onto the beach. Some distance away, still coming down the hill, Stariz saw a party of ogre warriors bearing a litter and recognized the golden breastplate.
The king! What further disasters could this day bring? Now pure fear choked her throat, apprehension that Grimwar Bane would die and she would become a mere priestess again, would lose the status and power that she had worked so hard to attain. She lumbered along the shore, and she saw the figure on the litter thrashing, rejoiced to think her husband still lived. Perhaps the power of her god might aid her to heal him, as long as he breathed, no matter how grievously injured he might be.
Exhaustion forced her to slow. She looked around, saw a vast gaping hole in the ground and the seawall made by the wasted explosion of the golden orb.
Stariz crossed the beach, meeting the party bearing the fallen king. Already a hundred of the Grenadiers were heaving at the beached hull of the royal galley, dragging it across the sand and into shallow water, from there out to where it could float, while a ramp was lowered for the survivors and the king. Thankfully, the Goldwing, for all that it had experienced, seemed remarkably undamaged.
“My queen!” called Argus Darkand, reliably close by Grimwar’s side. “The king is sorely hurt!”
“Take him onto the deck and into his cabin!” Stariz cried, pointing imperiously. The ogres hastened to obey, and she felt she had recovered some measure of dignity and satisfaction as she stalked up the ramp and onto the galley’s deck.
She had thought of a new plan.
Grimwar Bane sensed walls and a ceiling-a darkened room. He smelled the sea and weathered timbers. It was a cabin. He was in a cabin on his ship, he deduced, and somehow he was still alive-though it still seemed that his chest was all pain and his breathing was torturous. Argus Darkand stood over him, the ogre’s face contorted by worry.
“Take me out of here, onto the deck!” The king’s words were croaked, so great was the fire in his lungs, but he flailed a hand and was able to make himself understood. The helmsman looked reluctant.
“It was the queen’s order, Sire,” Argus Darkand declared, “to place you in the cabin. She will be here in a moment, said she needed to retrieve some unguents and a talisman from her sea-chest….”
“No!” groaned the king. “I want to see the water, the sky.” He felt a stark fear that he might never behold those sights again, and he desperately wanted to feast on their natural glory before he perished.