Long Live the King

"The battle begins in full," Danica whispered in Cadderly's ear. "We must go."

Cadderly held her in place, pulled her lower into the shadows. He sensed something, a presence, perhaps, and knew instinctively that danger was about. Unconsciously, the young scholar dropped a hand into a pocket of his traveling cloak and closed his fingers around the tiny amulet.

"Druzil," he whispered, surprised as he spoke the word. Danica looked at him curiously.

"The amulet works both ways," Cadderly realized. "I know the imp is nearby. And if the imp is about . . ."

As if on cue, Dorigen stepped into the clearing in the wake of the passing trees. Cadderly and Danica crouched lower, but the wizard was obviously intent on the now-distant spectacle of the marching trees.

Danica pointed to the west, then started stealthily away, circling behind the wizard. Not daring to speak a word, Cadderly held up the amulet to remind her that Dorigen's devilish henchman was probably also in the area, and probably invisible.

"What have you done?" Dorigen cried, and Cadderly nearly fainted from fear, thinking that she was addressing him. Her narrow-eyed gaze remained locked on the moving trees, though. She thrust her fist out in front of her and cried, "Fete," an elvish word for fire.

A jet of flame roared from Dorigen's hand Cadderly thought that perhaps it came from a ring a burning line that stretched across the yards to engulf the last tree in the procession.

"Fete!" the wizard repeated, and the flames did not relent. She moved her hand about, shifting the angle of the fire to immolate the tree. The great oak turned its cumbersome bulk about, inadvertently setting small fires on the trees beside it. It reached out with a long root for Dorigen, but the wizard lowered her hand in line with the root and burned it away to nothingness.

So horrified at the sheer wickedness of Dorigen's destructive actions, Cadderly couldn't draw his breath. He looked to his right, the west, for some sign of Danica, praying that his love would come out and stop Dorigen's carnage. But while Danica was indeed concealed in the brush behind the wizard, she couldn't easily get to Dorigen. Three orogs had moved out of the shadows and taken up a defensive position behind and to either side of the wizard.

The tree crackled and split apart, falling into a flaming heap. Dorigen stopped her attack, but kept her fist clenched, trying, it appeared, to make out another target through the smoke and flames.

Cadderly knew he could not allow that to happen.

Dorigen extended her fist again and started to utter the triggering rune, but she stopped, distracted by a curious sight off to the side. A beam of light emanated through the brush and from the shadows, rocking slowly back and forth. Keeping her fist extended, the wizard slowly moved over to investigate.

Her expression turned to one of curiosity as she neared the shadowed hollow. A cylindrical tube, the source of the light beam, rocked along the inner edge of a light blue, wide-brimmed hat that had been placed on its side. Dorigen didn't recognize the hat, but she had seen the cylindrical object before, inside the pack belonging to the young priest, Cadderly.

Dorigen realized that she was vulnerable, knew that she should be wary of the young priest, but pride had always been her greatest weakness.

A short distance away, low behind the trunk of a tree, Cadderly unscrewed his feathered ring, pulled back the ram head of his walking stick, and inserted the dart. He took great care to keep it out of the sunlight, but he was less than confident as he pursed his lips against his blowgun and drew a bead on Dorigen.

"Where are you, young priest?" Dorigen called. She turned to signal to her orog guards, then flinched as something small and sharp struck her on the cheek.

"What?" she stammered, pulling free the feathered dart. She nearly laughed aloud at the puny thing.

"Damn," Cadderly groaned, seeing her still standing. Dorigen yawned then, profoundly, and wiped bleary eyes.

Cadderly knew that his chance was slipping by. He jumped from the side of the tree and rushed at his enemy.

Seeing their mistress endangered, the orogs howled and charged to intercept the young scholar. They found Danica instead, suddenly, and each tasted a foot or a fist before it realized what had happened.

Dorigen didn't seem to need them, though. Her fist, still clenched, pointed to greet Cadderly he could see now that it was the onyx ring she wore on that hand. He couldn't possibly get to her in time, and he had no other weapons to strike with from a distance.

Dorigen began to speak Cadderly expected the words to fall over him like the pronouncement of doom.

*****

"Where will you hide, elf king?" Ragnor roared above the ring of steel and the cries of the dying.

Galladel reined in his horse and wheeled about, as did the others of his cavalry group.

"There!" one of the elves shouted, pointing to a break in a line of beech trees. There stood Ragnor in all his evil splendor, his bottom tusk sticking up grotesquely over his upper lip and his elite bugbear guards fanned out in a semicircle around him, their sharp-tipped tridents gleaming wickedly. Galladel led the charge, the seven other riders bravely at his side.

The elf king pulled up short, though, knowing that he and his troops could not get through Ragnor's defensive ring. Somehow, Galladel realized, he would have to get to the ogrillon, would have to strike a decisive blow in the lopsided battle.

"You are Ragnor?" Galladel cried in a derisive tone. "He who hides behind his minions, who cowers while others die in his name?"

The ogrillon's laughter defeated Galladel's bluster. "I am Ragnor!" the beast proclaimed. "Who claims Shilmista as his own. Come, pitiful elf king, and pass your crown to one who deserves it!" The ogrillon reached over his shoulder and pulled out his huge and heavy broadsword.

"Do not, my king," one of Galladel's escorts said to him.

"Together we can crush their ranks," offered another.

Galladel put his slender hand up to quiet them all. The elf king thought of his past failures, of the time he had failed to awaken the trees at the price of many elven lives. Truly, he was weary and wanted only to travel to Evermeet. But noble, too, was the elf king of Shilmista, and now he saw his duty clearly before him. He spurred his horse ahead a few strides, ordering his escort to stay back.

Ragnor's bugbears parted, and Galladel's charge was on. He thought to bury the ogrillon, smash straight in with his powerful steed and crush the invader. His plans came to a crashing end as a huge boulder, hurled by a giant in the shadows, caught his horse on the flank and sent the poor, doomed beast spinning to the ground.

Galladel's escort roared and charged; the bugbears and the giant moved quickly to block them. When Galladel pulled himself from the pile and regained his feet, shaken but not seriously injured, he found himself alone, faced off against mighty Ragnor.

"Now the fight is fair!" Ragnor growled, steadily advancing.

Galladel readied his own sword. How much larger the brutish ogrillon seemed to him now, with his horse lying dead at his side.

*****

Cadderly fully expected to be fried long before he got to Dorigen. The wizard began to utter the triggering rune, but yawned instead as the sleep poison continued to work its insidious way inside her.

Cadderly didn't hesitate. He charged straight in, launching a roundhouse, two-handed swing with his walking stick that caught Dorigen on the side of the head and blasted her to the ground. In all his life, Cadderly had never hit anything so very hard.

Dorigen lay still at his feet, eyes closed and blood trickling from a cut the ram's head had torn along her ear.

The sight unnerved Cadderly, sent his thoughts spinning back to the tragic events of a few weeks before. Barjin's dead eyes hovered about the young scholar as he looked down at Dorigen, praying that she was not dead.

*****

Danica uttered no such prayers for the first orog she had felled. She had hit the beast squarely in the throat and knew that its windpipe was crushed and that it soon would suffocate. The other two fought savagely, though, despite the wounds Danica had inflicted. Wielding finely crafted, razor-edged swords, they soon had the young woman backing steadily away.

A sword cut just above her head as she ducked. She kicked straight out, connecting on the monster's thigh, but had to back off as the other monster pressed her savagely. One, two, and three, came the monster's wicked swipes, each missing the scrambling woman by no more than an inch.

Then Danica was up again, balanced on the balls of her feet. The orog she had kicked lagged behind its companion in the pursuit, and Danica found her opening.

The single orog thrust its sword straight at her. Faster than the weapon could get to her, Danica fell into a crouch, nearly sitting upon the ground, then came up hard and angled in toward her attacker, the fingers of her right hand bent in tightly against themselves. Her left arm led the way, brushing aside the orog's sword, leaving the monster defenseless. Her deadly right arm, coiled tight against her chest, snapped in through the opening, slamming her open palm into the hollow of the orog's chest with every ounce of power the young woman could throw into it.

The beast hopped two feet from the ground and landed back to its feet, breathless, then it fell dead.

The remaining orog, moving in on the young woman, looked at its fallen companion curiously, then abruptly changed its course, howling and hooting and scrambling for the trees.

Danica started to follow, then dropped to her knees in surprise as something whistled past her, just a few feet to the side. She understood when the dart hit the orog in the back and exploded, throwing the creature facedown on the ground. It gasped once for breath that would not come, and lay very still.

Danica looked back to see Cadderly, his crossbow, taken from the unconscious wizard, securely in his hand. Standing over Dorigen, he almost seemed a terrible thing to Danica, his visage stern and angry.

Danica guessed what emotions tore at poor Cadderly; she understood the guilt and confusion that had brought him to this point. But now was not the time for weakness. "Finish her," Danica instructed coldly. She glanced around quickly to ensure that there were no more enemies in the area, then ran after the departing trees, where the larger battles had been joined.

Cadderly looked down to the unconscious wizard, disgusted at what he knew he must do.

*****

When he had led the procession from Syldritch Trea, Elbereth had thought to keep his forces together and cut a wedge through the enemy lines to rejoin his people. As the elf prince came upon the area of battle, though, he saw the folly of his plans.

There was no line to cut through, and no clear group of his own people to rejoin. Chaos ruled in Shilmista this day, a wild scramble of elf and goblinoid, giant trees and giantkin.

"Good fighting, elf!" were the last words Elbereth heard from Ivan, circling back out of the trees with Pikel, as the elf prince sprinted off to the side to engage a bugbear moving along a patch of brambles.

By the time Elbereth had finished the creature, the trees had moved past and split up, many going for the fires burning in the north or for the cries of battle in the east, and the dwarves were nowhere to be seen. Too busy to go in search of them, Elbereth sounded his horn, a call that he hoped would soon be answered.

Temmerisa appeared in mere seconds, flying like the wind, with Shayleigh holding tight to the steed's reins. The horse ran down one goblin, and leaped over several others as they crawled through the thicket.

"The trees!" Shayleigh cried, her words choked with hope and astonishment. She looked back over her shoulder to one oak that was pounding down a host of monsters. "Shilmista has come alive!"

Shayleigh dropped from the saddle. "Take Temmerisa," she said quickly to Elbereth.

"The horse is in fine hands," Elbereth replied, refusing the bridle. "I only called to ensure that Temmerisa and his rider were still about."

"Take him!" Shayleigh implored the elf prince. "Find your father. I have heard whispers that he battles Ragnor, and if that is true, then he will need his son beside him!"

Elbereth needed to hear nothing more to convince him. He grabbed the bridle and swung up into the saddle. "Where are they?" he cried.

"The line of beech!" Shayleigh replied. She started to warn Elbereth about the bugbear guard, but stopped, realizing that the elf prince, already flying away on his powerful mount, was too far gone to hear her.

Elbereth pounded through the forest. He saw dozens of small encounters where his sword might have been of use, but he had not the time. Galladel battling Ragnor! The thought stuck in Elbereth's throat and stuck his heart like a sharp pin. He recalled his own painful encounter with the powerful ogrillon, a fight he would have lost. Elbereth was more highly regarded in swordplay than was Galladel.

Elbereth ducked under a low branch and pulled Temmerisa in a tight turn through a narrow gap between two maples, then urged the horse into a long leap across a patch of brambles. He could feel the lather on Temmerisa's muscled neck, could hear the proud steed's lungs straining to pull in the air needed for such exertion.

Another leap, another turn, then a straight charge, and Temmerisa seemed up to the task, running hard, sensing its beloved master's urgency.

Elbereth caught sight of the giant out of the corner of his eye, saw the hurled boulder rushing in. He yanked hard on Temmerisa's reins, turning the horse aside, but not fully out of harm's way. The white stallion went down under the force of that impact, but came right back up, stubbornly, and continued on its way.

"We will pay back that beast," Elbereth promised, slapping his precious steed's neck. Temmerisa snorted, lowered its great head, and charged on.

*****

Ivan and Pikel tried as best they could to stay in the vicinity of the marching trees. Every orc or goblin the dwarves encountered slowed them down, though, while the oaks walked right through, scattering horrified monsters wherever they went.

The dwarves heard elven cheers from all about, though they saw few of Elbereth's people. Not that they minded; the brothers were certainly more interested in spotting enemies than in finding allies they didn't really believe they needed.

Then the trees were far beyond them, fanning out in their steady march, and the Bouldershoulders were all alone.

"Uh-oh," Pikel remarked, suspecting what was to come. Sure enough, dozens of monsters appeared from their concealment in the wake of the passing trees, dozens of monsters with no apparent targets other than the dwarven brothers.

"Get yerself ready for some fighting," Ivan said to Pikel. The words were hardly necessary; Pikel smashed one orc even as Ivan spoke.

Then Pikel grabbed his brother and scrambled to the side, under the low-hanging, thick boughs of some pines. Ivan understood his brother's intent, and wisdom, as soon as the monsters closed in on them, for the close quarters and low visibility favored the outnumbered dwarves.

Still, almost everywhere that Ivan swung his axe, blindly or not, he found some monster waiting to catch it and a dozen others in line behind, ready to step in.

*****

Safe in his high perch, Kierkan Rufo thought himself quite clever. The angular man had no intention of playing any role in this horrific battle beyond that of observer, and in that regard, he thoroughly enjoyed watching the pitiful goblins and orcs and orogs fleeing before the incredible power of his moving oak.

He changed his mind abruptly when the oak stumbled upon a different enemy: two giants that were not so cowardly and not so small. The tree shuddered violently as a boulder slammed against its trunk. It swung a branch at the nearest monster, connecting solidly, but the giant, instead of falling dead, grabbed the limb and twisted.

Above, Rufo heard the sharp crack of living wood and thought he would faint away.

Another branch swung in to pound on the monster, but the second giant got in close to the trunk, grabbing on with frightening strength. The giant heaved and pulled, and the huge oak swayed to one side and then the other.

More branches descended over the more distant giant, battering it and lashing it. The monster caught a few and snapped them apart with its huge hands, but the beatings were taking a heavy toll. Soon the giant fell to its knees, and, soon after that, the oak pounded it to the ground.

Another thick branch, the lowest on the great tree, wrapped about the trunk, encircling the tugging giant in an unbreakable hold.

Kierkan Rufo found himself cheering the tree on as the giant fought for its breath. The angular man thought the battle won, thought that his oak could finish this foe and move on, hopefully to safer and smaller opponents.

The gasping giant slumped as low as it could get on its thick, trunklike legs, then heaved for all its life, pushing up and to the side.

One of the oak's roots bent back on itself, and the tree went down in a heap, never to rise again, clutched in a death grip with its doomed destroyer. More branches wriggled in to ensure the giant's fate.

Rufo was sure that one of his legs had been broken, though he couldn't see the leg, pinned underneath a huge tree branch. He thought of crying out, then realized the stupidity of that. Many more monsters than allies were about to hear him.

He scooped away some dirt, digging a shallow pit, then he pulled as many small, leafy branches over him as he could and lay very still.

*****

Danica came into the chaos with her mouth hanging open in amazement. Never had the young woman witnessed such destruction. She saw the tree go down with the giant, then another tree went down, farther in, under a press of bugbears.

Danica looked back behind her, worried for Cadderly. She couldn't protect him this time she didn't really believe she could protect herself. With a resigned shrug and one longing glance back to where she had left the young scholar, the young woman set off, knowing that she would not have difficulty finding an enemy to hit.

A resounding "Oo oi!" turned her head to a grove of thick pines. A bugbear rushed out desperately, followed by a flying club. The weapon took the creature in the legs, knocking it to the ground. Before it could rise, Pikel ran out, collected his club, and splattered the bugbear's head against the ground. The dwarf looked up at Danica, his white smile shining within the layer of gore that covered his face.

Despite the craziness and danger all about her, Danica returned his smile and winked at the dwarf, and both she and Pikel suspected that it would be a wink of farewell.

Pikel disappeared back into the pines, and Danica bent low and took out her twin daggers. Then the young monk went a-hunting.

*****

Cadderly fumbled with the Tome of Universal Harmony, trying to find some answers that would offer him escape from the task Danica and the insane situation had placed upon his shoulders. Dorigen lay very still below him, groaning softly every now and then.

More important was the growing roar of the battle. Cadderly knew that he could not afford to delay much longer, that he should join in the fight beside his friends, and that even if he did not, the battle would likely come to him all too soon. He had his retrieved crossbow reloaded only five darts remained and lying ready atop the fallen wizard.

The pages of the great book seemed a blur to him; in his frantic state of mind, he could hardly read the words, much less discern some value in them. Then he was pulled from the pages altogether, distracted by a distinct sensation that he was not alone. He spent a brief moment concentrating on that feeling, focusing his thoughts.

Slowly, Cadderly reached down and took up the crossbow. He spun about, letting his senses guide him where his eyes could not, and fired.

The explosive dart slammed against the trunk of a sapling, blasting the tree apart. Just to the side of it Cadderly heard a sudden flap of leathery wings.

"You cannot hide from me, Druzil!" the young scholar cried. "I know where you are!"

The sound of beating wings faded away into the forest and Cadderly could not prevent a grin of superiority from crossing his face. Druzil would not bother him again.

Dorigen groaned and began to shift her weight, groggily trying to get up to her elbows. Cadderly turned the crossbow down at her and loaded another dart.

His eyes widened in shock at his actions; how could he think of killing the defenseless woman, and how could he think of using his damning weapon to commit the foul deed? His breath came in gasps; Barjin's eyes stared at him from the shadows.

He dropped the bow and took up the book, closing it and grasping it tightly in both hands.

"This is not what you had in mind when you gave this to me," he admitted, as though he were addressing Headmistress Pertelope, then he slammed the heavy tome on the back of Dorigen's head, again dropping her flat to the ground.

Cadderly worked frantically, before the wizard recovered again. He pulled three rings from Dorigen's hands: one her signet ring bearing the design of this sect of Talona; one of gold and set with a shining black onyx (this was the one that Cadderly suspected had shot the magical flames); and the last of gold and set with several small diamond chips. The wizard's robe came off next, Cadderly stuffing it into his backpack. He found a slender wand slipped under a tie in Dorigen's undergarments, and fumbled through any pouches or pockets in her remaining clothing, making certain that she had no more magical devices or spell components.

When he was done, he stood staring at the helpless woman, wondering what to do next. Some spells, he knew, required no physical components, and others used small and common items that could be found almost anywhere. If he left Dorigen like this, she might still play a role in the continuing battle, might wake up and kill any of them, kill Danica, perhaps, by uttering a few simple syllables.

Outraged by that thought, Cadderly grabbed his walking stick and laid the wizard's hands out to the side. Grimacing as he swung, he smashed Dorigen's fingers, on one hand and then the other, repeatedly, until her hands were black and blue and wickedly swollen. Through it all, the drugged and battered wizard only groaned softly and made no move to pull her hands away.

Cadderly gathered his possessions, placed the bandolier with the remaining darts over his shoulder, and started away, not having any idea of where he should go.

*****

At last Elbereth spotted his father, fighting in the small clearing with huge Ragnor. The elf prince knew it would take him some time to circumvent the many other battles in the area to get near Galladel, and he knew, too, that Ragnor was fast gaining an advantage.

He watched his father try a desperate, straightforward strike. Ragnor caught the elf king's arm and sent his sword in an overhand chop, which Galladel stopped by grabbing the ogrillon's wrist. It all seemed horribly familiar to Elbereth. He wanted to scream a warning, wanted to destroy himself for not telling his father of the ogrillon's favorite tactic.

The stiletto popped from Ragnor's sword hilt, straight down at Galladel's vulnerable head, and Elbereth could only watch.

They continued their struggle for another moment before Ragnor freed his huge arm and plunged it down.

Suddenly, so suddenly, Elbereth was king of Shilmista.