The Door Within (25 page)
Aidan called back to them, “Is the King alive?!”
“Yes! The King of Mithegard is rallying his captains in the main keep. He is as safe as may be, but you are not safe! You must hurry!”
Because of the dead there was no way to hurry. So, carefully, Aidan and Gwenne tiptoed around the bodies and made slow progress toward the castle. It was just a hundred feet, but it felt more like a hundred-mile journey through a hideous nightmare. They didn’t want to look down because of the dreadful scene at their feet, but they had to look down to avoid stepping on a leg, an arm, or fingers of the poor victims.
They were halfway to the castle of Mithegard when the ground began to shake. Aidan and Gwenne looked back down the avenue to the gatehouse and Mithegard’s outer walls. There was a deafening grinding noise and a tremendous explosion. For a moment, they couldn’t see because the smoke was so thick. When the cloud of debris settled, Aidan and Gwenne realized that a huge section of the wall had been knocked down. And through the gaping hole, like a sea of black and red, poured the armies of Paragory.
Aidan and Gwenne looked on in horror as the armies stopped and formed into horizontal lines that were several dozen Glimpses deep.
What are they doing?
Aidan wondered.
“They are going to fire another volley!” Gwenne cried. “Run!”
A lone trumpet sounded, and another wave of red arrows sped upward into the sky. Aidan and Gwenne turned to sprint for the castle, but they stopped short. The castle’s massive drawbridge had been raised. A sheer fall into a deep, inescapable moat lay in front of them. The ruthless forces of Paragory clamored behind them, and a blizzard of poison arrows was about to crash down on them from above. They were trapped.
E
xpecting at any moment to feel the bite of an arrow through plate armor, mail, and skin, Aidan frantically sought anyplace that might provide shelter for them from the sky. At last he spied a long overhang in front of the stables on the right side of the road.
“C’mon, Gwenne!” he yelled, but she did not answer. Aidan spun around; Gwenne was gone. Then he saw her. She was about twenty feet away, kneeling, and holding something in her arms. A limp form in a small tattered dress. A child.
Gwenne’s liquid eyes were wide with questions, her face contorted in anguish, and her lips trembled. Aidan felt he had been pierced through the heart.
But Aidan knew to wait was to die. “Gwenne!” he screamed in a voice so strong he surprised himself. “You’ve got to get out of the road! The arrows!”
He looked to Gwenne who was moving too slowly, still carrying the child. He looked back at the stable. There’d be no way he could reach Gwenne and get them both back to safety. Then he saw on the other side of the road, behind Gwenne, a cottage with its door ajar.
“Snap out of it, Gwenne!” Aidan yelled. “Never alone!”
Gwenne looked up as if awakening from a trance.
“Get to the cottage, now!” Aidan said pointing. Gwenne hugged the child and ran just as the first arrows struck the road. Aidan sprinted toward the stable. He lunged beneath the overhang, rolled into a post, and lay still.
A hail of poison arrows fell. There were clatters, clangs, and snapping sounds. And then there was silence.
The moment the crimson barrage ended, Aidan heard the heavy cadence of many soldiers marching. He stood, raced to the front of the stable, and froze. He saw the armies of Paragory surge into the main avenue. In terror, Aidan searched the road for his friend. Had she made it to the cottage?! There were so many bodies, but he could not tell if hers was one of them.
The soldiers marched closer. They would kill him if he entered the road, but Aidan had to find Gwenne. And in that moment, he decided she was worth his life. He drew his sword and stepped out into the road.
“Aidan!” Gwenne’s voice rang out above the rumble of the advancing knights. “Get back in there!”
“Gwenne!” he yelled. He saw her. She was in the cottage. “Are you all right?!”
“Yes!” she called back. “I’ve found a trapdoor, leading to a cellar of some kind. I think I can hide there! You must stay where you are! It is too late to get across!”
Aidan looked and saw the grim-faced Knights of Paragor less than a hundred yards from their location.
Gwenne disappeared from sight just as scores of Paragor Knights charged up the avenue between Gwenne’s cottage and Aidan’s stable. The knights trampled the dead as they came and looked hungry to add to the destruction. Aidan crouched down but watched to see what the knights would do.
A mighty shout came from the castle, and at least fifty Mithegard archers appeared from behind the
battlements
high atop the stronghold. They drew back their long bows and loosed their arrows into the heart of the Paragor offensive. There were shrieks and short-lived curses, as the first two rows of knights toppled over in heaps upon the road. From what Aidan could tell, every arrow had found its mark.
But for every Paragor Knight who went down, there were five to replace him. They fired back at the Mithegard archers. Some fell several hundred feet from the battlements and disappeared beneath the dark water in the moat below. There was a frantic exchange of fire, and Aidan watched in sick fascination as warriors from both sides dropped and moved no more. Aidan stayed low for fear that he might be seen. But the warriors of both sides were far too intent on the battle to notice Aidan in the stable.
So Aidan looked on. The forces of Mithegard in their mighty castle held their own against the siege. The foundation of the stronghold was solid. The walls were high, with dozens of
lancet
windows and parapets from which archers could send volleys of arrows and then quickly disappear to avoid being hit by return fire. The Knights of Paragor, on the other hand, had only their shields and horses to hide behind. And they fell a dozen at a time, many adding to the heaps of carnage on the road, and some sliding slowly into the moat. Then, as if raked in by a giant invisible arm, the Paragor forces pulled back.
Where are they going?
Aidan wondered.
Are they giving up?
But the archers from the castle kept firing. In fact, they seemed frantic, firing shaft after shaft recklessly, without aim or pause. Cautiously, Aidan stepped out of the stable and craned his neck around a post to see where the army of Paragory had gone.
Aidan’s heart lodged in his throat.
They were not fleeing.
Spanning the road and drawn by huge, armor-clad steers, heavy catapults rolled slowly forward. Behind each was a massive tarped wagon and scores of soldiers. The convoy halted. The Knights of Paragory, seemingly unconcerned by the hail of arrows from the castle, went to work, winching down the throwing arms of the catapults and removing the tarps from the wagons. They took great black barrels from the wagons and loaded one upon each catapult. In unison, the fuses of every barrel were lit. A horn blared and all at once, the catapults fired. Aidan dove back into his hiding spot, but still watched.
The first volley soared high over the battlements and disappeared. For several ominous moments there was silence.
Then, as if a bolt of lightning had struck, detonating its earsplitting thunder, explosions rocked the castle and shook the ground. Aidan collapsed and covered his head. Great plumes of black smoke rose from behind the parapets and issued forth from the lancets. The castle of Mithegard was burning!
No one moved atop the walls.
Abruptly, another volley from the catapults careened toward the castle. This wave hit the walls directly and exploded on impact. Volley after volley of Paragory’s powerful black projectiles were hurled at the walls of Mithegard’s stronghold.
Dust fell and the stable groaned as if it might collapse. Tears blurred his vision. Still, he managed to look out from the stable into the swirling mass of smoke.
Flames crawled up the stone on creeping vines, but the castle walls were not breached.
Then, as Aidan watched helplessly, the Paragor Knights approached the moat and stood there as if willing the iron portcullises to be raised and the drawbridge to be lowered. From the midst of them strode forth a tall warrior. He wore a scowling black helmet and armor so jagged and fierce that it seemed he could kill without a weapon. But this foe had a sword in each hand.
It is him! It is the twin-bladed warrior who stood with Paragor in the dream.
Aidan clutched his chest.
Is this where it happened? Will I be captured, brought before the Prince, and executed in cold blood?
Aidan felt a powerful urge to run out into the field of battle to surrender, to explain that this was all some sort of mistake, and to beg for mercy. And perhaps the old Aidan might have done just that. But this Aidan had made a promise.
Even were the hordes of darkness to assail you in hopeless demand of your life—even then do you swear devotion forever to the King?
“Aye!” Aidan had answered.
Aidan looked down at the Son of Fury. The sword burned in his hand. If it came to it, Aidan would die, but it would not be a coward’s death. Aidan went back to see what the dark knight would do.
Trumpets rang out. When the echoes faded, the Glimpse raised both swords and declared aloud, “By order of the Prince, Lord of Paragory and Master of all Glimpse-kind, you are commanded to open the castle of Mithegard and surrender!” It was the voice of Lord Rucifel. Aidan was stunned.
Another voice answered, coming from high in the middle tower of Mithegard Castle. And a lone figure appeared atop the walls and fearlessly stood upon the battlement. It was King Ravelle. “Rucifel, at last I see you as you truly are,” the King of Mithegard thundered. “Liar! Murderer of the innocent! We will not surrender to the likes of you or the mongrel you serve!”
Lord Rucifel placed his helmet on the ground and sneered up at the King. “Powerless fool!” he exclaimed, slashing the air with both blades. “The mercy of Paragory should not be so rudely cast aside. If you had but accepted the Prince’s offer of friendship, you would not be reduced to this—”
“Friendship!” barked the King. “You stretch out one hand in friendship while in the other you hold a dagger! Nay, there is no friendship or love in slavery! I know now where Mithegard’s true friends dwell. In the east by the Seven Glorious Fountains!”
Aidan’s heart leaped when he heard this. Was the King allying himself with Alleble? Did that mean his own father would come to be—
“Seven!” Rucifel laughed cruelly. “Did you say ‘seven’ fountains? Know you not that only six of those fountains still flow? The other is cold and barren. It stands as a monument of what follows when my Prince is defied! Your last chance, King Ravelle. Yield to me! Surrender—if not for your own sake, at least consider the lives of your loyal subjects . . . what few remain.”
Like the crack of a whip, King Ravelle flung something dark straight at Rucifel. It turned end over end. Rucifel tripped over his helmet as he dove out of the way. His scowling helmet rolled over the edge and plopped into the moat.
Embedded deep in the ground was the black sword Rucifel had delivered to King Ravelle as a token of Paragory’s goodwill.
“There’s your filthy sword back!” The King’s voice exploded. “Mithegard will not surrender! We would rather die first!”
“And die you shall,” replied Lord Rucifel, standing awkwardly and nodding to a group of extremely tall, muscular warriors who had come to the front of the massive army.
The brawny Glimpses turned and walked back into the crowd of knights. Moments later the ranks parted and the warriors returned, leading several of those great horned beasts with their wagons and their deadly payload. Six wagons, each still tarped and very full. They led the steers to within several feet of the moat and turned them so that the back of the wagons reached just over the edge.
The musclebound warriors of Paragory opened the backs of the wagons. Barrel after black barrel tumbled out and fell into the moat.
How many are there in each wagon
? Aidan wondered. But he could not tell, although he suspected more than a dozen.
Finally, when all of the wagons were empty, Rucifel himself came forward carrying a single barrel on his shoulder. With some effort, he removed the peg from the barrel and repulsive brownish fluid began to gush out into the moat. He traversed the edge until the liquid was spent. Then, he ordered his knights to withdraw. The entire army of Paragory marched back a hundred yards from the castle.
Aidan watched in fearful suspense, wondering if Gwenne was still safe, wishing she were with him. Surely she would know what to do! But there was nothing that either of them could do.
A single Paragor archer stepped forward from the crowd. He raised his bow, and Aidan saw that he had a flaming arrow fitted to its string. Aidan wasn’t sure what happened next. He saw a vision of the fountain in Alleble, and in it, waist-deep in oil, were the Elder Guards, their wives, and their children. And standing high above on a balcony was Paragor with a torch. With a chilling laugh, Paragor cast the torch high in the air. The moment the torch hit the fountain, the vision was gone, and the archer let fly his flaming arrow.
Aidan stared in horror, for if the archer’s aim was true, Aidan knew that the arrow would sail down into the moat. And he knew that when those dozens and dozens of black barrels exploded, it would level the castle and obliterate everything near it—including the stables. Aidan threw himself to the ground.
25
THE BATTLE BEFORE
THE SEVEN TOWERS
A
idan waited for the roaring fiery explosion, for the searing wave of heat that would follow and the burning debris that would fall. But there was no explosion, and Aidan thought for a moment that the archer had missed.
Then, Aidan heard something that made his heart soar: “Hold, thou weedy, weather-bitten canker-blossoms!! Mithegard Castle shall not fall if I can help it!”
Aidan looked up, and beyond all hope it was true! There in the sky, the morning sun shining gold upon his armor, was Captain Valithor!
“Now, Swiftwing!” he cried out to his dragon steed, and the agile creature craned its neck down, opened its jaws, and snatched the flaming arrow out of the air moments before it would have hit the fuel in the moat!