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  One had four arms that picked invisible somethings from the air and flung them in the direction of the defending troops. Another was bloated and porcine, while a third was so squashed and profuse of jowl as to appear bodiless, as if its legs were growing right out of the bottom of its neck. The fourth, who was sorcerously assisting the assault on the Salmisti Bridge, wore a high, fat red cap the same color as its bulbous nose. Thin white wire spectacles rode that protuberant organ, while pointed teeth protruded forward and out from a slightly underslung lower jaw. The creature was reading from a handful of papers, reciting in detail those spells it had not wholly committed to memory.

  In addition to sustaining the nefarious, necromantic shields that protected the advancing hordes from the effects of the Shandrac Thunder, the four warlocks called down burning sulfur and white-hot phosphorus on the defenders of the city. Small snapping fish fell among the archers and crossbowmen, while biting, stinging insects bedeviled the waiting cavalry.

  As the spell-invigorated enemy threw itself against bulwark after bulwark, high on the city wall a worried Chaupunell and Zisgymond caucused with Goughfree.

  "Our soldiers are brave and determined." Along with the rain, lines of concern streaked General Zisgymond's noble face. "But they cannot fight incantations. Hexes do not bleed." He gestured toward the wall, in the direction of battle. "Already the defenders of the Salmisti and Hidradny Bridges are being forced back to the towers. If these fall, the enemy will enter the city. Soon thereafter, they will be here, laying siege to the castle itself."

  "Look at our people, suffering and dying beneath that which they cannot understand." Confidence could be seen slipping from Chaupunell's face, like a party mask whose strap had broken. "They fight on, but their morale is degenerating rapidly. Something must be done! Where are our own magicians?"

  "Conferencing, or so I am informed. Trying to decide how best to counter this unexpected assault."

  Chaupunell's face was set with concern as he surveyed the field of battle. "We cannot wait for bickering oldsters to agree upon a course of action. We must do something now."

  "Do you not think I am aware of this?" Goughfree was as troubled as any of them. "We must find a way to stop the necromancers who are leading the attack, or at the least, find a means of reducing their influence." He called to several nearby couriers, who stood waiting for orders. "Inform those commanding the defenses of the Salmisti, Breleshva, Hidradny, and Zhisbrechar Bridges that they are to hold their towers at all costs. In twenty minutes we will launch a coordinated counterattack, with cavalry, at all four points." As supreme commander of the city's defense, it was within his provenance to issue such an order. He turned to the rest of the general staff.

  "I want the best archers not engaged in the immediate defense of the bridges to be formed into four squads. Each is to be escorted by heavy cavalry. When the counterattack begins, they are to be rushed forward in chariots. They must penetrate the enemy lines and kill the four warlocks, or at least cause them to retreat from the field of battle. If they can do that, I think the enemy, whose confidence has presently been restored by unnatural means, will break." He indicated the castle keep behind them. "I have the utmost respect for our own learned scholars, but we cannot wait for them to concur."

  It was a sound plan, the best that could be propagated under the circumstances. Even the weather must have thought it auspicious, for when the massive counterattack began, the rain turned to a light mist that was to the benefit of the waiting archers.

  The Horde was hit hard. Heavy cavalry from Blest-on-Yoor and the Kingate of Hrushpar slammed into the enemy, trampling those in front, stunning those behind, and bringing the assault on the Salmisti, Zhisbrechar, and Hidradny Bridges to a shocked halt in front of the defensive towers. Only on the bridge of Breleshva did the counterattack slow and begin to falter. Narrowest of the four main bridges that spanned the Drimaud, it offered the least room for heavy horse to maneuver.

  Furthermore, the attackers there were led by the wizard of the bloated red cap. Strewing balls of orange flame in front of the counterattacking cavalry, he blinded the horses while the enemy Horde surrounded them and, one by one, brought down their armored riders. Urged forward by their bloodthirsty brethren behind, those attackers in front succeeded in pushing past and over the defenders, leaving chariot-borne archers and steel-clad cavalry bobbing behind like boats trapped in a churning back-eddy at the bend of a river.

  A bleak-visaged Goughfree turned away from the unsettling scene. Though he carried the sword slung at his side primarily for reasons of ceremony he now knew that it was soon to be employed in more prosaic pursuits.

  "The tower of the Breleshva Bridge is breached, and the enemy is entering the city."

  Zisgymond took a step backward. "With your permission, General, I go to take personal charge of the defenses there. There is a chance we can keep them bottled up in the Plistina District. Fighting house to house, street to street, we can prevent them from flanking and taking any of the other bridges from behind."

  That was the great strategic danger, of course. Once across the river, the enemy would be able to fan out and attack the defenders of the other bridges from the rear. This posed the danger of the city's defenses collapsing completely. Of course, the castle and the plains beyond could still be defended, but glorious, beautiful Kyll-Bar-Bennid, city of elegant avenues and a thousand spires, would be lost to pillage and destruction. It was a scenario that threatened to break Goughfree's heart.

  They could only pray for the success of Zisgymond's efforts. If anyone could mount a successful counterattack under such rapidly developing desperate circumstances, it was the senior officer from far Xolchis.

  Zisgymond had been gone for only a few moments when a courier arrived, breathless and excited. Her expression bespoke good news, a commodity that had been sorely lacking since that morning's sodden sunrise. Whatever it was, Goughfree knew, it did not involve the struggle below. Warriors of the Horde continued to pour through the captured Breleshva tower, fanning out into the city streets behind. Already, tongues of flame and the shadows of smoke from other incipient blazes could be seen rising from homes and businesses that the Totumakk had begun to put to the torch.

  Still, any good news was welcome. Absently, he acknowledged the courier's salute. "Yes, what is it?" Perhaps a prediction of worse weather to come, he hoped. A heavy downpour might help to slow the enemy's alarmingly swift advance.

  The courier swallowed as she struggled to catch her breath. She was very young, Goughfree saw, and quite attractive. No time for such fond contemplations now, he reminded himself sternly.

  "Noble s-sirs," she gasped as droplets of mist pearled her exhausted face, "the convocation of the Gowdland mages has deferred all action upon receiving word that Susnam Evyndd has just entered the city!"

  TWO

  Goughfree's eyes widened. For him, this amounted to a shout of exultation. Other members of the general staff were not so restrained. Their reactions to this news ranged from a throwing of arms joyously into the air to one colonel who fell to his knees, overcome with emotion.

  The few wizards of the Gowdlands who had been recruited for the defense of the city had so far been unable to come up with a coordinated response to the attacks of the Horde. Throughout the battle, they had remained huddled within the castle keep, casting runes and seeking otherworldly inspiration. Now the news that the greatest of them all, the most celebrated and distinguished master of the necromantic arts in all the known kingdoms, was inside the city should serve to strengthen the spines of soldier and scholar alike.

  It did not mean he was there to help, Goughfree cautioned himself, but it was hard to imagine why else he might have come. Surely he had not journeyed all the way to Kyll-Bar-Bennid simply to witness and observe its destruction!

  "Now we have something to fight back with!" The captain of foot who spoke thrust his clenched fist forward. "Magic with which to counter magic!" He gestured contemptuously in the di
rection of the looming keep. "A wizard who will do battle with more than mystified mutterings. A mage of action."

  "Great magic, too, if it is truly Susnam Evyndd." Another officer regarded the courier expectantly.

  Eyes blinking as she gasped for air amid the cloaking mist, the young rider nodded vigorously as she swore. "It is truly he, noble sirs. I saw him myself, when he pulled back the curtain of his palanquin to peer out and gauge the weather."

  Raundel was nodding slowly. "I have heard that his is not a countenance to be mistaken for another's." He turned to the nearest waiting couriers. "Pass the word to all defending officers that the celebrated wizard Susnam Evyndd is in the city, and will soon be involved in the fight to preserve it from the enemy." Anticipation in defense of morale was no sin, the general believed.

  They were waiting, all of them except Zisgymond, when the great man finally arrived. He was dressed simply, in a manner belying his status, when he finally ascended the last step and stood among them atop the parapet. Much shorter than Goughfree had expected, the wizard strode immediately to the overlook and stood there surveying the mist-shrouded chaos of combat. Clad in shirt of plain homespun and pants of gray poplin tucked into calf-high boots of dramunculi leather, he was of ordinary build. But his face bore the scars of a lifetime of doing battle with the unknown and powerful, his eyes did not water, and his voice cleaved the dank air with the assurance of one who knows, if not All, at least a good deal more than his fellow beings were capable of comprehending. It exuded an unshakable, almost jaded self-assurance.

  "When I heard what was transpiring, I got here as fast as I could." His tone indicated frustration at the delay, as if he had been personally affronted by Time itself. "I see where your problems lie. We will deal with them now."

  Without hesitation or fear of the great height, he scrambled swiftly up onto the rim of the parapet. No one dared move to hold him back, or voice a warning that would clearly not be heeded. As the wizard lifted his arms, the officers of the general staff did not have to be told to step back.

  Then Susnam Evyndd began to speak, addressing the unseen in a voice that boomed out over the city like a reassuring balm.

  "MALORIAN NAR MACUSCO! SETHIN PAIS TAAL RA!"

  The wizard's words rolled over and down the sides of the fortress and the high hill on which it stood like a peal of thunder emerging from the bowels of an arriving storm. It swept out and over clashing armies and howling warriors and echoed from the far banks of the swift-flowing Drimaud. Hearing it, soldiers of the Gowdlands looked up. Seeing a brightness beginning to coalesce on the rim of the fortress wall, piercing the omnipresent drizzle with its sharp radiance, some recognized the individual standing tall in its midst, and began to cheer. Meanwhile the masses of the attacking Horde blinked, and hesitated.

  Lightning, white and pure, leaped from the billowing refulgence that had formed above the castle. In a great irregular arc, the angry bolt plunged downward to strike in the midst of the attacking Totumakk. It struck the bespectacled warlock of the bulbous red hat and, without ceremony or preamble, pierced him from front to back. A startled look transformed his supremely repulsive countenance. Slowly and without a word, sorceral or otherwise, he toppled from his seat.

  Seeing this, the defenders of the Breleshva Bridge took heart and redoubled their efforts, quickly bringing a halt to the enemy advance. Once more, the well-placed shells of the Shandrac Thunder began to land unimpeded among the advancing Horde, raising havoc in their ranks and preventing reinforcements from surging across the bridge.

  A second bolt of mage-bred energy demolished the porcine sorcerer, who squealed in terror as his feeble attempts to deflect the necromantic blow came to naught. Methodically working his way downstream, Susnam Evyndd next slew the third sorcerer. Each time their mystic protector was lost, the line of enemy Horde relying on him faltered. Already, the defenders of the Salmisti and Zhisbrechar Bridges were driving their attackers back across the Drimaud, recovering lost ground stone by blood-soaked stone.

  Now only the four-armed warlock remained to shield the last of the enemy's attacking columns. As the wizard Evyndd was preparing to deliver himself of a fourth thunderbolt, the colonel of horse drew the attention of her fellow staff members to a spreading commotion among the Horde on the far bank. Something was emerging from the forest. It was large enough so that its general shape and size could be made out even through the light drizzle.

  A giant stepped out from among the trees.

  The figure was of indeterminate outline, clad from head to foot in black cloth. No gold thread adorned the massive chest, no precious gems sparkled atop the concealed skull. Though no more massive than the blond-furred lumpenkin or dark lurchers presently crowding the bridges, its oddly shifting outline inspired much comment among the onlookers. As to its identity, that did not long remain a mystery. A chant rising from the far shore began to swell in volume. Soon it was loud enough to be heard on the bridges, among the towers, and finally within the fortress of Kyll-Bar-Bennid itself.

  "Mundurucu, Mundurucu, Mundurucu …!"

  "So that's the legendary Khaxan Mundurucu. At last." Along with the restof his fellow officers, General Mauffrew was leaning against the parapet, staring across the river past the battle raging below. "He's big, but not all that big."

  "It is not his size that should concern us." No sooner had Goughfree proffered this sensible observation than the truth of it was proved right.

  Erupting from the newly arrived necromancer's right hand, a ball of orange-yellow fire soared castleward. Among shouts and involuntary screams as the members of the general staff, their aides, and waiting couriers took cover, Susnam Evyndd calmly turned slightly to his right and raised both hands, palms outward, the thumbs touching. No one paid much attention to the words he uttered, but they must have been powerful indeed.

  A glistening, shimmering transparency materialized around him, glass and crystal come together to form a bubble of what one distant onlooker later described as clear magic. Striking this, the ravening orange fireball shattered into fiery, swiftly dissipating embers before crossing the wall.

  His arm wheeling round in a great arc, the wizard flung riverward a bolt of pure sorceral force so intensely white that it verged on blue. Goughfree and the others strained to see, but it was the colonel of horse, she of the sharpest vision, who reported to them that while two dozen attending retainers had been blasted into oblivion, the black-clad figure had only been staggered by the blow, and remained standing.

  It was Chaupunell who thought to look, not at the continuing pandemonium of battle or the opposing warlock, but at the valorous Evyndd. What he observed was not encouraging. The wizard was frowning, his head inclined forward, as if unable to quite believe that the tremendous blow he had just delivered had not resulted in the complete destruction of its intended target. Drawing himself up, he raised both hands high above his head, fingers pressed tightly together and pointing downward. Lightning began to crackle and take shape before his fingertips as he summoned forth a ball of energy even greater than the one he had just flung at the opposite shore. Chaupunell had to shield his eyes from it. Everyone else kept their gaze focused on the far bank of the river.

  Just as the eminent Evyndd was about to deliver his blow, a cylinder of gleaming blackness shot through with internal flame struck the parapet. The result was a narrowly focused but intense explosion that knocked everyone down while rendering them momentarily blind and deaf. When Goughfree had recovered enough for his eyes to focus, he saw that a man-size chunk of wall and floor was now missing from the castle's rim. Smoke rose from the solid stone, which, unbelievably, crackled with flame in several places, the raw rock burning like kindling. Fragments of quartz within the rock had melted and run like pallid butter from the extraordinary but tightly focused heat. His throat clenched, though not from the smoke or dust.

  Of the great wizard Susnam Evyndd, protector of the Gowdlands and defender of Kyll-Bar-Bennid, nothing could be seen
. Then a soldier cried out, and the survivors ran to see where he was pointing. Below the wall, on the lower landing, the transparent sphere the mage had enchanted around him still sparkled in the dim light. It had preserved not only the wizard's body but those who had been standing in his vicinity. In turn, it had absorbed the full force of the strike from the far side of the river. While not strong enough to penetrate the transparent shield, that awful speeding black cylinder of unknown composition and unimaginable power had blown it and the man contained within right off the parapet on which he had been standing.

  Within the sphere of protection, the wizard Susnam Evyndd had been violently buffeted about by forces no human body could be expected to withstand. As he lay unmoving on the stone paving, the pellucid bubble surrounding him made a slight popping sound—and was gone. Blood trickled from his nostrils and the corner of his mouth, staining his simple cotton clothing.

  Those deliberating mages who had gathered below to defer to the greatest among them now formed a circle around the intact but motionless body. The expressions on their faces sent a cold, damp chill running down the length of Goughfree's spine. Looking up and back, one disconsolate wizard met the general's stare—and slowly began to shake his head from side to side. Goughfree's jaws tightened until his teeth began to ache. It was impossible, it was madness—Susnam Evyndd could not be dead. He couldn't be!

  But he was. While the concussive power of the black cylinder had not shattered his body, its force had broken something within his skull. As the circle of melancholy mages gathered up the limp form of he who had been foremost among them and prepared to carry him safely away from the scene of battle, a distraught Goughfree realized that the defenders of Kyll-Bar-Bennid would have to make do without him.