Black wizards - Douglas Niles [159]
Tristan caught a glimpse of Pontswain in the middle of a mob of duergar. The lord's blade was bloody, and though his eyes were wide with panic, he struck about him like a wild-man, somehow keeping the dark dwarves at bay.
Now the men of Doncastle fell back across the neck of land. Here, where the promontory was barely fifty feet wide, sheer cliffs more than a hundred feet tall dropped to either side of the peninsula. Farther out, the promontory widened, but it was surrounded by high cliffs on all sides.
The rebels filed across the land bridge as the dwarves and small groups of men held the attackers at bay. Tristan stood with Finellen, and Canthus snarled and fought between them. They fought back-to-back against the sahuagin that threatened at any moment to overwhelm them – but somehow, they held them at bay.
The prince's arms had long grown numb, and blood poured across his skin from a number of wounds. He was soaked to the elbows in the gore of his enemies, and his movements had become automatic. Numbly, he lifted his still-gleaming blade and swung, lifted and swung.
O'Roarke and Daryth stood with their men on the other side of the knoll, holding back the dark dwarves and the sea's dead. They, too, fought with automatic precision, adding body after body to the pile.
Finally the bulk of their force had crossed, and the men of the rearguard backed onto the neck of land. Tristan, Daryth, Finellen, and Hugh O'Roarke stood side by side in the center of the line. They fought a mixture of duergar, sahuagin, corpses, humans of the guard, and ogres.
A vicious, drooling ogre lunged at the prince, and fatigue numbed Tristan's reactions. The monster's huge, spiked club whistled toward his head, but then a wide broadsword cracked into the weapon, knocking it off its mark. The ogre bellowed at Hugh O'Roarke, who had stepped forward to deflect the blow. Before he could recover, the lord staggered from the thrust of a sahuagin trident.
Tristan leaped forward and cleaved the ogre's chest into a wide death-wound, seizing O'Roarke's arm as the lord stumbled. But another fish-man stretched forward his horrible claws and pulled on Hugh's arm. Tristan whirled to avoid a duergar battleaxe, and suddenly O'Roarke was gone.
He heard the lord's bellow of challenge as a dozen sahuagin dragged him into their midst and saw at least two of the fish-man fall dead from the outlaw's dying blows.
And then he felt the earth reel beneath his feet, and the world began to come apart around him.
* * * * *
Cyndre sat upon the roof of the royal coach, watching the progress of the ogres and the sahuagin. He could not see the other brigade of the Scarlet Guard, nor the duergar, nor undead, but he felt confident the battle progressed according to plan.
His time would come soon, when all were occupied. He waited specifically for a sign of Alexei. Often in a battle such as this, the mage who revealed himself first was the mage who died first.
But Alexei was careful. Cyndre was not overly concerned by this – he knew his own power far exceeded that of his former lieutenant. Soon it would be time to move.
Below him, seated in the coach, the king drooled and gibbered senselessly. His mind was finally broken, and only with great difficulty had Cyndre concealed this fact from the men of the Scarlet Guard. After their victory, however, it would not matter.
Now, he decided. He would find Alexei and kill him. Then he would see that the battle was won in a suitable fashion.
Cyndre gestured quickly, and in the space of a blink he disappeared.
Alexei idly watched the struggles raging around him. He stood upon the highest rise on the promontory, separated from the main battle by the thin peninsula. From here, he sought signs of visible magic or any other clue as to Cyndre's