BECMI Chapter 339 – Castles and Caergards

The Princes surely knew they were coming now, and it had the nation in a tizzy. Word had spread that tens of thousands of undead had been destroyed, their necromancer masters reduced to dust, and several minor nobles revealed as vampires or ghouls or wights themselves, to boot! The word spread across the entire nation, and while the noble wizards were frightened and rather united by this lethal threat that dared to kill them in their towers, necromancers or not, their subjects and the common folk were pretty much united in massive approval for whoever was doing this.And, as was pointed out with grim satisfaction, over and over, there was no law against killing the undead, and wizards killed wizards all the time. If a week went by without someone to blame, the matter was dropped as if forgotten by the government, and friends and families were the only ones who could avenge the fallen.

Not many were willing to avenge the undead, even if they were relatives.

House Caergard and House Bulgarov made loud and impressive noises about terrorist attacks, murderers, and criminals, and made points of preparing their personal forces for direct attack.

More pointedly, the Princes who had Banners of troops under the command of Morphail and Cannarl urgently had them returning home, before such could be commandeered and turned into sacrifices for the ambitions of the two necromancer Houses.

Whispers were that Delpha had heard of the significance of the Radiance and dispatched wizards to terrorize them. Others were that a sacred band of warriors of Quarzion in one of His many forms had finally become overcome with outrage and embarked on a holy quest in Zanzyr to purge the undead from existence, not caring if the magocracy outlawed them. The fact glimpses of folk raising Symbols radiating blessed sunlight had been seen did nothing to ease the mindsets of the Princes.

Kicking out individual Clerics and bullying them was all well and good, but going directly against the will and mortal forces of a truly powerful Immortal? That was suicide, and they knew it. One of the truly major churches could declare a crusade and probably wipe Zanzyr off the map, and succoring so many undead was like a prime invitation for something like that to happen!

The neighbors of Zanzyr stirred, particularly the dwarves of Rukheim and the Golden Khanate of Tukhman, both of which had extremely poor relationships with the magocracy. Many dwarves had not forgotten the treatment of their kin during the Years of Infamy, and seeing virtual civil war rocking the realm of wizards was truly a delight. Even knowing the truth of the plagues and the fact they’d spread it had only served to take some of the edge off the hate and assign that guilt where it was due. The Zanzyrans had done absolutely nothing to blunt the edge of their enmity themselves, save for the Elves of Erendyl, who had carefully allowed Rukheim trade caravans into their Principality.

The savage nomad horsemen of the high plains were god-fearing warriors and spirit-serving priests in numbers, who regarded the Immortal-defying magocracy as a great cancerous blot on the land to be expunged at all costs. The Golden Khan had ambitions of conquest, it was true, believing his men were the most dangerous and lethal armed force on the planet. Crushing the people of Zanzyr under the hooves of their mounts was among the most fervent dreams of many a Tukhman.

The House of Bulgarov held the most northeastern of the Zanzyran lands, closest to the Tukhman plains and thus the most vulnerable to invasion from that angle, while Caergard and Lhamsa held the eastern border with the Titanhall mountains. The border had been made much more dangerous over the decades by sealing off pass after pass from easy access by horse or even by foot, resulting in very few avenues the nomads or nifloids of the mountains could use to invade. Those were always well-defended by the spell-armed soldiers of Zanzyr, and strong fortifications controlling access through the rugged hills and mountains which surrounded the countries.

The nomads were nothing if not opportunistic, and being horsemen, could move with frightening speed when mobilized. In seemingly no time at all, thousands of horseman had ridden into the ancestral lands of the Guyagai tribe and were threatening to move into Skullhorn Pass, so named because of the thousands of nifloid and nomad skulls hung on spikes on the walls of the pass over the decades after bloody battles to take it and maintain control of it. The sound of the wind going through the skulls could be heard for miles, and naturally there were rumors about spells wound into the skulls to cause fear and the like.

Some were even true.

The House of Lhamsa shared the obligation with Caergard to maintain control over the Titanhalls, and Fort Skullhorn was the main gathering of strength there, although there were several secondary camps all along the Pass that could be used as fallback points.

The nomads stirred at a safe distance. Safe, because one group of overeager riders had charged up at the elfin having tea under the sun, and the sky had fallen in on them and reduced all of them and their horses to ash and dust under the cool mountain skies, along with a couple acres of scrub grass and stone.

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The meteors looking like great flaming black skulls falling from the sky with marrow-chilling screams had been kind of impressive too, if they way the surviving nomads ran away was any indication.

They’d shot a volley of arrows at her, remarkably accurate and powerful, from distances of over two hundred yards. Indeed, it was uncanny just how accurate those shots were, scarcely any of them missing.

Then those arrows had come hurtling back nearly twice as fast as they’d gone out, burying themselves in the chest and faces of the shooters, swatting them out of their saddles. Over two hundred more nomads had died instantly to their own arrows turning back on them. Multiple shots, because they were good archers and had several arrows in the air at once!

I announced to all and sundry within three miles, and in their own tongue, taught by clansmen of Lhamsa at the Great School, as I raised an artful porcelain cup to my lips.

The scouts milled about uncertainly, but decided that trying to ride past me might be extremely unwise… especially after a small group tried stealing past me on the extreme north side of the Pass.

Four of blood-red lightning leaving black afterimages and shrieking like banshees came down out of the sky and obliterated all of them, well over half a mile away from me.

I totally ignored them, shaded by the umbrella of my table, enjoying the mountain breeze when it wasn’t cut by the stench of the grease-covered and very unwashed horsemen.

I was patient, and the horsemen moved quickly. The Khan was less than an hour behind his advance wave, expecting reach Skullcatcher Gorge at the least before meeting real resistance. Zanzyr didn’t have anywhere near the troops required to mount any offense against the horse archers, and so would have to defend against an invasion.

Granted, the defense of a place with so many wizards could be extremely costly to any invading forces, but I was definitely an outlier. Defending by sipping tea and not appearing to be Casting any magic at all, although elves were known spellcasters, was definitely making them nervous.

Blood-red lightning and falling flaming skulls were definitely something to give the superstitious nomads second thoughts, and the shamanic Priests among them asking the spirits about me were only going to get reverent or fearful replies… maybe ardent hatred from the evil ones who wanted to encourage them to attack me and get themselves offed, who could say?

I was patient, and the spells had durations of hours and to dawn respectively for the lightning and the arrows. I could bring down a dozen if I had need to, which would also be extremely impressive, but they weren’t my really impressive attack.

A dozen each out through another two dozen nomads in unerring streams of energy and death from violent Kicker damage capable of killing three hundred of them per spell, almost guaranteed, was far more dangerous here. But they didn’t need to know that until they died from it, so I was going to keep it under wraps for now.

So, like that, sipping tea in the sun under a sun umbrellaI waited for a fellow who considered himself the greatest warrior in the world, and his men the greatest army.

It only took about an hour, while the army of Tukhman nomads flooded into the pass and began filling it from one side to the other. The ground around me was blasted white, the men killed by their own arrow fire still laying there, their own people indifferent to their fate or disposal of their bodies. The couple of Priests who’d tried to stealthily me saw the angry red Skull trailing lightning come down out of the heavens, blowing open the vault of the blue sky to starry night for a moment, and then descend on them screaming vengeance, blasting the priests, their mounts, and any riders around them into bloody bits that soon Burned unwhite upon the charred ground, with bloody red rose petals scattered all around.

They never saw me raise a hand. The spirits of this place were making the shamans shudder when they tried to cajole the spirits into action against me… and the Elementals and Fey were having absolutely none of that action.

The Golden Khan came up, his armor all gilded, accompanied both by marching dwarves in gleaming silvered steel and his elite multi-tribal band of riders and personal guards. They came marching up without stopping, the other horsemen shifting quickly out of the way of them. The Khan was obviously not going to be showing any weakness before his men at this auspicious moment of time, especially to an elf and a female, at that!

I watched him come, doing nothing more than moving the pot of tea from the table to a heating rock, which rapidly reddened with heat under his gaze.

He reined in about thirty feet away from me, his dark eyes meeting my gaze with imperious power… and I drank it in and consumed it utterly, completely unimpressed with him, while at the same time very, very obviously taking the complete measure of him and letting him know it.

If he had chosen to remain mounted and sidled up to the table, I would have remained seated and been ready to reduce the surrounding acreage to ash in a second. Instead, he reined in his strong white pony with the immaculate black mane and swung out of the saddle. A grunt and his hand held back his guards, and as he stepped forward, I finally rose to greet him.

“Your Majesty Hiangti,” I greeted him coolly. “Captain Hoofcracker.” Two chairs of white stone rose from the ashen ground and shaped themselves into floating seats for the two of them. The dwarven commander of the footmen there, looking very suspicious at hearing me call his name, shared a glance with the Khan looking back at him. “I am the Lady Edge. If you would be kind enough to share some tea with me, I think I can save all of you some time and troubles.”

A glance from the Khan was enough to allow the dwarf to join us. Both the squat but powerfully-built Tukhman nomad and the stout dwarf glared suspiciously at the chairs… but the one was the perfect height for the former, and the other dropped to the perfect height for the latter.

Unwilling to show any weakness before me or their troops, both men took their seats immediately.