Crusade (38 page)

For a moment, the king wondered what he should do. The pain from his leg was getting more intense, though not unbearable, and he was very tired. Sleep certainly seemed in order. However, another trip through the ranks might provide a little comfort for the troops, provide a bit more reassurance that their leader was working late into the night, too. Perhaps, then, sleep might come more easily to the soldiers.

Remembering his daughter’s advice, Azoun sighed. His heart was very clear on how the night should be spent. Limping slightly, the king set off for the nearest campfire and the group of weary soldiers clustered around it.

The Golden Way stretched east before the Army of the Alliance, weaving a broad path through the fields of swaying grass. Clouds filled the sky, and the dawn sun, just rising in the east, shed only a pale light over the battlefield. It was a relief to Azoun’s generals that the Tuigan wouldn’t be able to use a bright sun at their backs to blind the Alliance’s archers.

A quiet tension reigned over the western camp. Actually, no one would call the collection of scattered fires surrounded by bedrolls a formal camp. The soldiers had done little more than set up their defensive lines, with the wagons of supplies behind them. Most now were sprawled in an exhausted sleep near where they would fight later in the day. If the gods were kind and the Alliance won—and many believed that it would take the gods’ power to equalize the odds in the battle—they might set up a real camp. If they lost, it wouldn’t matter.

Not that the western troops had given up hope. Azoun had discovered, much to his surprise, that there were few soldiers in the ranks sodden with despair. The king’s trek around the camp the previous night had revealed that most of the army still believed in the crusade, that they weren’t afraid to die as long as the cause was good. The soldiers felt, as Azoun still did, that they were all that stood between their homes and the Tuigan horde.

At first he had thought the men were only telling him what they believed he wanted to hear. After all, few of the soldiers had spoken to a king before, and most of the Cormyrians spent their time bowing instead of discussing their plight with Azoun. To test this, the monarch had passed the word through Farl that anyone wishing to leave camp could do so before dawn without fear of recrimination. It was a risky ploy, and one opposed by all the Alliance’s generals; Azoun had hoped it would reveal the army’s true disposition and forge a sense of unity in the troops that remained.

It worked far better than he had imagined.

“You must have counted wrong,” Vangerdahast gasped, shaking his head. “I don’t believe it.”

Alusair smiled and handed the parchment to her father. “Farl said that, too, Vangy. We had the captains count twice.”

Relief showing clearly on his weary face, Azoun threw his head back and sighed. “Only one hundred gone,” he murmured. “One hundred out of over fifteen thousand.”

“And most of those were mercenaries,” Alusair reminded the king. She took the parchment from his hands and reviewed the figures noted there. “I don’t think we lost a single Cormyrian regular, dwarf, orc, or even a dalesman. Only hired swords.”

Still numb from the surprise, Azoun looked out over the lines. Some of the men were sleeping, their heads covered to block out the weak sunlight. Morningfeast occupied most of the troops, but a few nervous men and women checked and rechecked the palisades and ditches. “They’re all good soldiers,” he said.

“Idiots, you mean,” Vangerdahast corrected sharply. He looked away, still shaking his head. “I’m going to review the War Wizards.”

Alusair looked up from the parchment. “None of the wizards left either,” she reminded the mage. “Does that make them idiots, too?”

Vangerdahast stopped short and wheeled around. “Having your father needle me is enough,” he snapped. He shook a finger at the princess, then his features softened. “Gods, your whole family exists only to shorten my life. Anyway, I never even bothered to count the War Wizards,” he noted as he turned away again.

“Wait, Vangy,” Azoun said, taking a few steps forward. “Why not?”

Without turning around again, Vangy held up his palsied left hand. “They know that I’d come back from the grave to haunt them all if they left me here to fight the Tuigan alone.” He shuffled past the barricades and disappeared into the western army.

“I believe he might,” Alusair said to herself. She rolled the parchment up and stuffed it into her belt. “I’ll give the numbers to Thom for the chronicles, Father.”

The king was still looking in the direction where Vangerdahast had disappeared. “I couldn’t make him stay in Cormyr, you know,” he said absently.

“Who?” Alusair asked, moving to her father’s side. “Vangy?”

Azoun nodded. “I wanted him to stay in Suzail in case there was trouble. Someone else could have commanded the War Wizards.” The king shook his head as he remembered the mage’s vehement defense of his position as general. “Sometimes I don’t understand why.”

“Because he’s your friend,” Alusair offered.

“He’s been like a father to me, too,” noted Azoun. He looked out across the Golden Way. “Gods, how he didn’t want me to lead this crusade. He was so unreasonable.”

Alusair laughed. “Fathers are like that,” she said and headed off to find Thom Reaverson.

The king, who was already wearing the padded doublet and chain mail coif that went under his plate armor, decided it was time to fully arm himself. As he donned the rest of his shining silver armor, Azoun took reports from returning scouts. At first they had little to tell, but soon it became clear that the Tuigan were on the move again.

“Send for Vrakk and Torg,” Azoun told one messenger. He slipped his surcoat over his breastplate so that the purple dragon reared squarely on his chest. Finally, he looked to the standard-bearer. “Signal the troops into position.”

The king’s standard rose high into the air. The effect the purple dragon symbol had on the army was astonishing. A murmur ran over the mass of troops, and those still sleeping were quickly roused. Armor was donned and weapons gathered. Archers planted their bunches of arrows point first in the ground at their feet, making them easy to pick up in battle. Wizards reviewed spells in their minds, and soldiers softly recited prayers to their gods. The men who hadn’t eaten morningfeast grabbed their meals of hard biscuits and dried meat and rushed to their place in line. Captains and sergeants began to prowl the ranks, shouting orders and arranging the troops in the strongest formations possible.

The dwarven king appeared at Azoun’s side. Like Azoun, Torg was dressed in his full plate armor. Whereas the Cormyrian monarch’s short beard was tucked into the chin of his mail coif, the ironlord’s hung down across his chest, bound as always in gold chain. The finely polished metal of the dwarf’s armor and the gold entwined in his beard gave off a dull reflection of the morning sunlight.

“By your request, Azoun,” Torg rumbled happily. “I’m ready for battle.” As if to prove it, the ironlord drew his beautifully crafted sword and waved it in front of him. “Let the Tuigan come.”

A few moments later, Vrakk, commander of the Zhentish orcs, arrived. “Good-morning, Ak-soon,” he said sleepily in his usual belabored Common. “My soldiers protecting archers, like you say.” He unslung his black leather armor from his shoulder and dropped it onto the ground. In a rather haphazard manner, the orc fitted himself for battle.

Regret instantly colored Azoun’s thoughts. The night before, Vrakk had requested that he leave command of his army to another so he could serve in the king’s guard. The orc had been an able soldier and had kept his troops in line, so Azoun was happy to agree. How Torg had heard of the matter so quickly the king couldn’t guess, but within an hour, the ironlord had demanded similar honors. Wanting to avoid an incident so close to the time of battle, Azoun had also appointed Torg to serve in his bodyguard.

Now the tension between the two commanders only added to the anticipation of conflict.

Alusair and Vangerdahast had also joined the king at his standard by the time the scouts reported the Tuigan to be less than three miles away. A cloud of dust hovering on the eastern horizon told the king that the seventy thousand enemy riders were fast approaching.

While Vangerdahast still wore a brown robe, much like the ones he wore every day at the castle in Suzail, the princess was girded in her ornately engraved plate mail. The bright metal was dented in a few more places than when Azoun had first seen it, but it looked as if it had passed through the first battle without much damage. Silently, Alusair’s father hoped the dwarven plate would protect his daughter as well in the battle to come.

“Cast the illusion whenever you’re ready, Vangy,” the king said as a squire rechecked the last straps on his armor. Azoun flexed his left leg and grimaced slightly. The left cuisse had been repaired since the first battle, the arrow hole filled and hammered smooth, so that wasn’t the problem. From the pain he felt, the king knew that his wound was going to trouble him, despite the attentions it had received from the clerics earlier in the day.

As the king considered this, Vangerdahast had the standard-bearer signal the War Wizards. Then the royal mage faced the battlefield and started a low, musical chant. He swayed slightly and moved his hands in a complicated arcane pattern. Trembling, Vangerdahast cast the components of the spell—a stone, a twig, and a bit of grass from the battlefield—into the air.

No one saw the spell components disappear, for all eyes had turned to the field itself. There, the handiwork of the dwarves lay exposed in the weak sunlight. Thousands of holes littered the field, stretching in a semicircle from the woods on the army’s flanks. But as Vangerdahast and the wizards he had signaled completed their incantations, the holes disappeared. More precisely, the illusion of a rolling, grass-covered field split by a trade road hid the ravaged ground.

“Excellent,” Azoun said and clapped his friend and tutor on the shoulder.

Vangerdahast wobbled slightly. The spell weakened him far more than it would have before the magic-dead area sapped his strength. Still, the wizard puffed out his chest a bit. “Precise down to the type of grass,” he said proudly. “The Tuigan will never know what they hit.”

Turning to Alusair, the king said, “Your turn.”

Beneath the dwarven plate armor, the princess still wore the bracelet the centaur chieftain had given her. She used the magical device now and summoned the hawk from the trees nearby. The bird quickly took flight and soared out over the western lines. Concentrating, Alusair could see the Tuigan horde through the falcon’s eyes, spread out in a wide line, closing in on the Alliance. The bird swooped nearer, and the princess caught sight of the object of her search. There, in the center of the massive Tuigan army, was a yak-tail banner, the war standard of Yamun Khahan.

The falcon caught an updraft and soared higher, out of the range of the Tuigan bows. Circling behind the enemy line, the bird followed it for another mile or so. After Alusair was sure that the khahan’s banner wasn’t going to shift places in line, she pulled her mind back from the falcon.

“The banner you described is in the center of the Tuigan line, Father.” Alusair shook her head to clear it. Using the centaur’s magical bracelet always left her feeling a little drained.

Torg and Vrakk both looked at Azoun, an unspoken question evident on their faces. “I saw the khahan’s banner when I was in their camp,” the king said. “He had it planted outside his tent.”

Grinning, the ironlord grabbed his helmet and dropped it into place. He lifted the visor and said, “Now we know who to aim for.”

The dust cloud grew larger and larger, until it seemed to cover the entire horizon. Azoun signaled the army to ready its weapons, and the anxiety that gripped the troops pulled their muscles a little tighter, forced their hearts to beat a little quicker. In the center of the first rank, the king and his guard put on their helmets and drew their weapons. Unlike the last battle, the entire army was going to fight on foot this time. If the Tuigan were routed again, Azoun didn’t want anyone pursuing them the way the cavalry had. Knowing that no soldier was foolish enough to chase fleeing cavalry on foot, Azoun had ordered that no one, from himself to the lowest paid mercenary, be given a horse.

The Tuigan appeared on the horizon, at first only a black line against the dust cloud they were churning up. The thunder of their horses’ hooves drowned out the murmured prayers and muttered curses in the western lines, and the hundreds upon hundreds of carrion crows that had roosted in the nearby trees took to the air again. In only a few moments, the horsewarriors rode far enough that Azoun could discern a few individual riders. Over the sound of the hooves and the crows, the Tuigan war cry rose.

“Ready the archers and mages!” the king yelled to the standard-bearer. After closing his visor, Azoun said a brief prayer to Tymora, the patron of adventurers, and lifted his shield.

Razor John was afraid.

From where he stood, at the center of the army’s second rank, he couldn’t see the field very clearly. The section of road the king had chosen to defend was level. Trees protected their flanks, but the troops to the rear of the array found their vision hampered by the geography. Still, the fletcher could make out the massive dust cloud rolling toward him from the east. It was clear that the barbarians were going to attack, and a horrible, numb feeling had taken hold of John’s heart. He was certain he would not live to see the sunset.

Even though he feared for his own life, the fletcher was more concerned about Kiri Trollslayer. She was stationed with the infantry in the army’s first rank. Perhaps, John concluded darkly, we’ll both be killed. At least we’ll go to the Realm of the Dead together.

The king’s standard, rising up above the crowded first line of infantry, waved a command. John didn’t know what the signal meant, but the commander of the archers, Brunthar Elventree, soon made the order clear.

“Ready to fire!” Brunthar shouted from nearby.