A Realm of Shadows (16 page)

Duncan
raised his
sword, Bant his hatchet, and there came a terrible clang as their weapons
locked. They stood there, each grunting, neither able to get the best of the
other.

Finally, Duncan kicked Bant in the chest, sending him stumbling back and down to his back in the
dirt. He then rushed forward and kicked, knocking the hatchet from his hand.

Bant rolled and
tried to recover it, but Duncan stepped on his hand, then kicked him again,
knocking him back.

Duncan
leaned over to
pick him up, but Bant sneakily grabbed a handful of dirt and spun and threw it at
Duncan’s eyes.

Aidan’s heart
leapt as he saw his father blinded. Duncan stumbled back, and Bant, taking
advantage, jumped to his feet and kicked him, sending him stumbling to the
ground, dropping his sword.

Duncan
lay there,
defenseless, and Aidan went instinctively to rush forward, to help his father—but
suddenly a strong hand on his chest held him back. He looked up to see Anvin
standing there, shaking his head, warning him not to interfere between the solo
combat.

Bant rushed
forward, about to stomp Duncan in the face, but Duncan rolled out of the way at
the final moment. In the same motion, Aidan was proud to see, Duncan raised his
foot and swept it around and kicked Bant behind the knee, dropping him.

Duncan
then grabbed
his sword, wiped the sand from his eyes, and smashed Bant in the back of the
neck with the hilt, sending him down face first in the dirt.

Duncan
stood,
breathing hard, wiping blood from his mouth, and looked down at Bant in
disgust. He reached down, grabbed the limp Bant, and held him from behind, a
dagger to his throat.

Silence fell
amongst both armies, all the soldiers crowded around, all eyes to them.

“Tell your men
to lay down their arms,” Duncan growled to Bant.

Bant shook his
head, spitting up blood.

“Never,” Bant
replied. “You can kill us all, but it won’t help you. You will soon die with
us. The Pandesians will kill you all anyway.”

Duncan
sneered.

“For my sons,”
he said with contempt, and in that same motion, he sliced Bant’s throat.

Aidan watched,
shocked, as the leader of Baris slumped down to the ground, dead.

All of Bant’s
men seemed to have the life taken out of them as they watched their leader die,
and as one, they all dropped their weapons and raised their hands.

There arose a
loud cheer, and Aidan finally breathed easy, as the men crowded around his
father, victorious. The canyon was theirs.

*

Duncan stood in
the canyon, surrounded by Leifall, Anvin, Kavos, Bramthos, Arthfael, Seavig,
Aidan and his hundreds of men, all survivors of the brutal battle. All around
them the canyon floor was littered, amidst the rubble, with the corpses of
hundreds of soldiers, some Duncan’s men and others Bant’s. There was a sense of
victory in the air, yet it was also a somber one.

Duncan
embraced Anvin,
who embraced him back, overflowing with gratitude for his men’s loyalty and
bravery. One at a time, he clasped men’s shoulders, finally reaching Leptus and
his men, so grateful and proud of each of them.

“I owe you a
great debt of gratitude, my friend,” Duncan said to Anvin, “for convincing
these men to come to our aid.”

“It is your son
you must thank,” Anvin corrected.

Duncan
turned to
Aidan, standing there amongst his men, and looked at him with surprise.

“Aidan convinced
these men to join our cause,” Anvin continued. “Without him, I doubt they’d be
here.”

Duncan
walked over to
his son and squeezed his shoulder, more proud of him than he could say.

“You are no
longer a boy,” he said to Aidan, “you are a man among men.”

Duncan
’s men cheered
in response, and Duncan was elated to see Aidan look back up at him with so
much pride.

Duncan
looked over and
saw Motley standing by his side.

“And you, Motley,”
Duncan said, clasping his arm. “You took a great chance to save a stranger.”

Motley beamed
back, clearly not used to being thanked by a soldier.

Duncan
turned and surveyed
the canyon floor, saw all of his men, saw the survivors combing the
battlefield, climbing over corpses, scavenging for weapons, regrouping. He saw
all of Bant’s men, all prisoners now, all staring back, all awaiting their
fates. He turned and faced them, growing somber. He knew that a good commander
should execute all these men, to protect his flank.

“You are all
warriors,” he called out to them, as they stared back anxiously, “men of
Escalon, just as we. The blood of our forefathers runs through you, as it does
through us. We are one people and one nation. Your mistake was joining the
cause of a traitor. But that does not make you traitors yourselves. Sometimes
good men, out of misguided loyalty, serve bad commanders.”

He sighed,
surveying them all, as they stared back hopefully.

“So I shall give
you all one more chance,” he said. “In these times we need every man we can
get. You can die by our swords, or you can renounce your former commander, the
dead traitor Bant, and join ranks with my men. Which will it be?” he asked.

A thick silence
fell, as all his men crowded close to watch.

The lead soldier
among Bant’s several hundred men stepped forward, his hands in shackles, and
stared back solemnly.

“You are a good
man,” he replied, “and a fine commander. Bant was wrong to betray you, and we
were wrong to follow him. No other commander would have spared us. That alone
makes our decision easy. We are with you! Let us fight together, as one, and
kill these dogs who have invaded Escalon!”

“WE ARE WITH
YOU!” all of Bant’s men cried.

Duncan
’s heart lifted
with optimism and relief. He nodded to his men, and they all stepped forward
and broke the shackles binding Bant’s men, freeing them, all.

Duncan
turned and
surveyed the army, now one, their ranks bolstered, and he wondered: where to go
from here? They had avenged themselves against Bant. They had regrouped. They
were stronger than ever. Yet still, they could not attack Andros, not with the
dragons there, and not with the Pandesians there in force.

Duncan
turned to the
rest of his men, and slowly, he grew serious.

“MEN!” he called
out. “Here we stand, at the base of the canyon, alive, but the Pandesians will
arrive here soon enough. We will be trapped here in this hole in the earth,
stuck in the low ground.”

He looked them
all over.

“You have all
fought valiantly, and we have lost many good brothers on the field of battle
today,” he continued. “Bant is dead, and we have one less front to worry about.
Yet the Pandesians await us, and we cannot meet them on their terms. The time
has come to execute the next part of our plan.”

A long silence
fell over the men, all looking to him with eager eyes.

“The time has
come to lure them to this canyon—and to flood it.”

The men all
stared back, fear in their faces, unsure. The silence grew thick and tense.

Duncan turned to
Leifall, the commander of Leptus.

“Everfall,” Duncan said. “It can be done, can it not?”

Leifall rubbed
his beard, skeptical.

“The falls are strong,
that is true,” he replied. “Strong enough to create a river. That river, if
redirected, could theoretically reach the canyon.” Leifall shook his head. “But
it’s never been done.”

“Yet it’s
possible,” Duncan persisted.

Leifall shrugged.

“Everfall flows
into the Bay of Death,” he said. “You propose changing the course of nature.
You would have to reroute the channels in the mountain face. There are levers,
ancient levers from the dawn of time, for such a purpose, for a time of war.
But they have, to my knowledge, never been used.”

Leifall sighed,
as a long silence fell over the men, all of them staring.

“A bold plan,” he
finally said. “Risky. Improbable.”

“Yet possible?” Duncan asked.

Leifall rubbed
his beard for a long time, then finally, he nodded.

“Anything is
possible.”

Duncan
nodded. That
was all he needed to her.

“I will lure the
Pandesians into the canyon then,” he called out to his men, emboldened, “and
you and your men will redirect the falls here.”

Leifall stared
back, concerned.

“There is one
thing you are not considering, Duncan,” he added, with concern. “If this works,
you will trap yourself, here, at the base of the canyon, and be flooded with
the Pandesians. You may drown, too.”

Duncan
nodded, having
already considered that.

“Then that is a
chance I will have to take.”

The Holy and
Supreme Ra paced the stone battlements of the castle of Andros, furious. High
above, the dragons still crisscrossed, raining down fire on the streets of the
capital, shrieks filling the air as men burned alive in the street. Rumbles
made the ground shake, as building after building was swiped by their great
talons, knocked to the ground. This capital building, with its golden dome and
walls of gold, seemed the only safe place left.

Worse, Ra had
been forced, on the open battlefield, to retreat in humiliation. He had almost
had Duncan in his grasp, until that dragon, Theon, had arrived and snatched
away his victory. It was a humiliation he refused to accept.

Retreating back
to the capital had been the only thing he could do at that time. Theon could
not pursue them here, not to Andros, with all these other dragons. It had given
Ra a chance to regroup his men, at least for now, though coming here, back into
the dragons’ den, had made him lose many more.

Night was mercifully
falling now, though, and he would be able to use that to his advantage. Ra could
march his men at night, in total blackness, out of sight of the dragons, back
after Duncan. They would march swiftly back to the canyon, and kill Duncan at the crack of dawn while he and his men still slept. The Great Ra never forgot a
vendetta.

Yet still, Ra was
not satisfied with one mere plan of victory. Like all great commanders, he needed
a backup plan. A plan not only of brawn, yet also one of trickery. Something to
assure that this time, no matter what happened, Duncan would die. Yet what that
backup plan should be, he still did not know.

Ra looked out at
his chamber, packed with advisors and counselors and generals and sorcerers, all
of them cowering in fear from the dragons’ breath outside, all of them debating
his course of action. Tired of mulling over his own thoughts, he nodded to his
men.

“You may speak
now,” he finally said to his general, who had been kneeling before him, waiting
to speak for hours.

“My Most Holy and
Supreme Ra,” the general began, his voice tremulous with fear. “I bring the
report you asked for. The dragons did more damage than we expected. We have
lost nearly half of our men to their flames, not only here, in Andros, but also in the rest of Escalon. And many more of our men who were spared from the
dragons’ breath have been killed by the legions of trolls flooding in from the
north. We need to urgently stop the tide of trolls, and we need to find a way
to defend against the rise of the dragons.”

Ra clenched his
jaw in rage, listening impatiently.

“We waste our
resources chasing Duncan in the south,” the commander continued. “We need to take
the battle to the north. We need to find a way to restore the Flames and to
stop the trolls from flooding the border. Otherwise, we cannot win this war on
so many fronts.”

The chamber fell
silent, all eyes to Ra.

Ra nodded, and
slowly rose from his throne. He descended, taking a few steps toward the
general.

“Rise, General,”
he said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

The general rose
and looked up at him with hope, and fear.

“I thank you for
your report,” Ra added.

The general
smiled, looking relieved.

“And I thank you
for your opinion,” Ra added.

In the same
breath, without warning, he suddenly stabbed the general in the heart.

The general,
shocked, dropped to the ground, dead, and all the other generals stared back at
Ra, filled with dread.

Ra breathed,
filled with fury. He hated compromise. He hated being told what he could not
do. And he hated weakness.

What was it
about Escalon? he fumed, wondering. Was it cursed?  In every other place in the
world, he had been able to conquer and hold it. But in this land, problems arose
from every corner.

He turned to one
of his other generals.

“And what would
you
suggest?” he asked.

The other
general gulped, looking back nervously.

“If you were to ask
me, my Most Holy and Awesome Lord,” he replied, tentative, “we should retreat. Abandon
this land. Let the trolls destroy it. Let the dragons destroy it. And then let
the dragons destroy the trolls. Let them all kill each other. Most of Escalon’s
men are dead or enslaved anyway. Our business is done here. And years from now,
when the dragons have left and the trolls are dead, we can come back and
inhabit it—without losing any more men.”

Ra trembled with
anger.

“Retreat?” he
asked, indignant. “Come here,” he added.

The general gulped
in terror as Ra walked him to the stone balcony.

“My Holy and
Awesome Lord,” he began. “I meant you no disrespect—”

Before he could
finish speaking, Ra reached out, grabbed him, and threw him over the balcony.

The general
shrieked as he plummeted and fell face first on the ground below, dead.

Ra stood on the
stone balcony, seething, staring out as a dragon swooped down and picked up the
corpse and ate it.

Finally, Ra
turned back inside and looked back at the other men in his chamber. They all
looked away, terrified to meet his gaze. He breathed, debating.

Finally, he
stepped forward.

“We will pursue
Duncan and his men with all of our power,” he finally boomed. “After his
capture and torture, you will burn his men alive, along with any trace of what
was once left of Escalon. Now go. Invade the canyon. And do not return to me
without his head.”

The men all turned
and rushed from the room, leaving Ra alone in the chamber. Only one remained
behind. Khtha. His sorcerer. He stood there alone, in the center of the empty
chamber, staring back with glowing red eyes, obscured by his cloak and hood.

Ra stared back,
intrigued.

“What do you
see?” Ra asked, almost afraid to know the answer. Khtha  always had an uncanny
ability to see into the future.

“It is… obscured,
for now,” he began, his voice gravelly, unhuman. “Yet I see…a great battle of
forces….Yet who shall win…remains unwritten.”

“Then what good
are you to me?” Ra snapped, infuriated. “Leave me at once.”

Ra turned his
back on him, but Khtha called out:

“I have a plan
for you.”

Ra slowly turned
back, his interest piqued.

“Go on,” he
commanded.

“I can change your
visage,” Khtha said. “Transform your outward appearance.”

Ra furrowed his
brow, intrigued.

“And who shall I
become?” Ra asked.

There followed a
long silence, until finally Khtha replied:

“Kyra.”

Ra felt the
hairs on his arms stand on end, sensing immediately that the plan was the right
one.

“You can
infiltrate their lines,” Khtha continued. “They will trust you, Kyra. You will
get face to face with Duncan. And you, his daughter, can put the knife in his
heart directly.”

Khtha, for the
first time, grinned, a grotesque, evil grin.

Ra could not
help grinning back. This was the exact backup plan he needed, if his armies
should fail.

He nodded.

Khtha stepped
forward and slowly raised a trembling hand, pale, shriveled, and as Ra closed
his eyes, he felt the sorcerer’s hand reach up and cover his face, felt the
slimy fingertips cover his eyelids.

Slowly, Ra felt
himself transforming. He felt his body changing, his hair growing longer, his
face becoming smooth. It burned, and it felt as if it were eating him up alive.
He shrieked in agony.

Yet, finally, it
was done.

Khtha, finished,
held up a looking glass. Ra took it, breathless, and his heart stopped as he
saw who was looking back at him:

Kyra.

Ra grinned and
laughed a deep, evil laugh, yet somehow it sounded just like her.

“Father,” he
said, his voice hers, “I am coming for you.”