The Sword and the Sorcerer (4 page)

The two families laughed while Alana blushed and acted as if she weren’t aware of Talon’s bold examination of her person.

Richard recognized the all too familiar fire in Talon’s dark eyes and smiled. There was more than lust for battle burning in his young loins. And no one but an eunuch would argue that Phelan’s girl was desirable. She was only thirteen but already ripening curves and the upward tilt of virginal breasts were temptingly outlined by her clinging gown. But for Richard Alana’s most arresting feature were her smoldering dark eyes, which already held the promise of fleshy pleasures and the self-conscious knowledge that beauty was power. If Talon was a man in a young boy’s body Alana was a woman in the body of a girl.

“I’d say she was definitely worth waiting for,” Richard teased both Talon and Alana. “Would not you, Talon?”

But the two blossoming striplings were now so engrossed in each other that they didn’t realize the king was addressing them.

“I
said
,” Richard repeated, louder, “Alana is worth waiting for . . . eh, Talon?”

This time the smitten pair had heard and while Alana modestly turned her inviting gaze away from Talon, he continued unabashedly to stare at her.

“Ay, father. She is indeed.”

Richard and Phelan laughed.

“Oh, to be young again, eh, Richard!”

“The sleepless nights! The hammering desires!”

“Oh, leave the children alone!” the queen playfully reproached her husband and friend, while shooing her delighted brood in the direction of the festive clamor.

Talon strutted alongside Duncan, Henry and Mikah, while Alana held hands with the queen and Natalia. The king and Phelan headed the party, chattering about court politics.

Approaching the gaily decorated archway, with glimpses inside of boisterous revelers around a huge banquet table and pretty maids carrying trays ladden with food, Richard suddenly stopped his royal entourage. For General Karak was racing toward them along another garden path, waving his arms for them to wait.

When Karak caught up with them he was breathless and his normally stern face seemed sterner.

“What is it, General Karak?”

“Forgive me, sire. But I have just received important news from our army on the eastern front.”

The queen automatically shepherded the children away from the three men. From experience she knew Richard did not like to discuss military matters in the presence of her and the children. This consideration was another reason she loved him so much.

Richard indicated that Malia was to wait while he and Phelan conferred with Karak. He steered the two men even farther away to make sure the queen and the children were out of earshot.

“Now, General Karak, tell me precisely what has happened.”

The general’s immobile features seldom conveyed little more than a dour sternness toward life, a trait that often bothered Richard because he could never be quite certain what Karak was really feeling or thinking. But this time the corners of Karak’s stretched mouth and shaggy reddish eyebrows escalated up and down. Clearly the tidings he bore were of great import.

“Sire, reports are that a huge mercenary force, led by Cromwell of Aragon, has invaded the eastern border.”

The news was like an ax to his head, splitting him in two. Cromwell. His old enemy. The nightmare was coming true. Pray God not all of it did!

“Cromwell, you say? So the rumors were true.”

Karak nodded.

Phelan rested an arm around the king’s shoulders. “Just like the monster to attack on your birthday.”

Another macabre scene from the nightmare slid into Richard’s mind and he hesitated asking the next question, but finally did.

“Is . . . is there any word of black sorcery with Cromwell’s assaults?”

Phelan and Karak looked at Richard, puzzled. It was well known that the king prided himself on being rational and that he put little stock in sorcery.

“No, sire. None. Why do you ask?”

“It’s not important. Can the border army deal with Cromwell’s forces?”

“Without a doubt, sire. The eastern army is one hundred thousand strong. And Mogullen leads them.”

Richard’s sagging spirits lifted. Mogullen was one of his bravest and most skillful generals. “Good. But send couriers to Rinak and Lambona. Tell them to ride to Mogullen with reinforcements. And keep me posted daily of the turn of events.”

Karak nodded and scurried away to carry out the king’s instructions.

Richard observed Phelan suspiciously marking Karak’s departure.

“You’ve never trusted Karak, have you?”

Phelan nodded.

“Yet he has never given the court any cause to doubt him.”

“A man’s face that I cannot read—ever—worries me.”

Richard affectionately slapped Phelan on the back and pointed him toward the waiting queen and their children. “We have too many concrete reasons to be concerned without harboring imaginary ones. Hush now, and say nothing to the queen about all this.”

When they rejoined Malia she neither hinted nor pried into the nature of Karak’s business. Besides, if there was trouble in the kingdom, in deference to her feelings, Richard would not tell her anyway, until it was absolutely necessary.

With Richard, the queen, and Phelan at the head of the party, the two families resumed marching toward the feast.

Just outside the archway of the banquet room, Richard suddenly halted the party and pulled back. The queen searched deep into her husband’s lean face.

“What troubles you, Richard?”

Richard glanced down the garden path over which Karak had swiftly faded away, seized with sudden dread. If one part of those hideous nightmares has already come true, perhaps the rest of them would too. Instead of participating in a celebration he should be at General Mogullen’s side grappling with Cromwell.

“You know how inept I am, good woman, at hosting these affairs arranged in my honor.” He rested a hand on Phelan’s shoulder. “Let our beloved friend here attend in my place.”

The queen smiled. Sixty. A king. And he was still shy. So that was why he was behaving so peculiarly!

“Richard, my love, it is
your
birthday party, not Phelan’s!”

“The queen’s right, Richard. The peerage in there anxiously waits to demonstrate their love for you, not me. It would be neither civil nor politically wise to disappoint them.”

Before the king could protest, the queen grabbed him by the arm and practically tugged him toward the increasingly louder revelry. Except for Talon, the rest of the children couldn’t suppress laughing at the sight of the king being pulled by the queen like a stubborn mule on a rope. Only Talon correctly surmised that his father’s faltering had more to do with Karak’s tidings than facing an unruly crowd of well-wishers.

As the royal party marched through the garlanded and bannered archway a roar of cheers and birthday greetings exploded at the sight of the king and his retinue of loved ones.

In the midst of this jollity and display of love Talon’s and Alana’s eyes locked, sending messages of intimacies to come. On impulse Alana sidled up to him and kissed him wetly on the cheek, then darted to her father’s side before Talon could react. When he recovered from her boldness, the predatory set of his features relaxed and he looked like any ordinary teenage boy who realized he had just fallen in love.

THREE

hort and rocklike in build, General Mogullen gropingly opened the flap of his tent and peered outside into the night. He was weak, bewildered, and mortally sick—as were most of his men—with a mysterious plague that was a hundred times more deadly than Cromwell’s lances, swords, and crossbows. Underneath Mogullen’s sectional helmet—consisting of a visor and a headpiece—he could feel running sores opening up like malignant flowers on his scalp and the back of his muscled neck, while life’s vitality slowly ebbed from him as if he were being bled.

He was getting so feeble that he had difficulty focusing. Then the blur cleared and he could discern the sea of tents covering a plateau above a river bank. Bonfires flared here and there like flaming roses, the light silhouetting bodies strewn about the demolished camp like smashed flies. His nose had no difficulty identifying the stench of men recently butchered by the knives of war.

Mogullen lifted his unshaven, swollen face toward the heavens. A galaxy of stars hung over the eastern front of Elysium like glittering daggers waiting for a signal from God to drop—drop and mercifully put out of their misery the legions of his men who lay wounded and dying out there, felled not by the military might of Cromwell’s puny five to eight thousand soldiers against his 100,000 men, but by an unseen specter, a specter that had all the earmarks of having been wrought by black sorcery.

In all of Mogullen’s thirty turbulent, carnage-filled years as a soldier he had never witnessed the hideous likes of what had happened on the field of battle here today!

Because Cromwell’s attackers were so prodigiously outnumbered and poorly equipped, Mogullen’s army had been swaggeringly cocky about the outcome of the unfolding siege.

“We’ll have Cromwell’s parts for you by sunset,” one of his best lieutenants had boasted.

Considering the staggering odds in their favor the boast had not seemed an idle one. On the contrary, as Cromwell’s men advanced upon their impregnable line it looked like a suicide attack if there ever was one. Mogullen had all the advantages: superior numbers, experience, more weapons, and the vantage point of being above Cromwell’s men as the horsemen and foot soldiers marched toward Mogullen’s camp.

Then the unbelievable horror occurred, like a hellish blast from the underworld.

When Cromwell’s army was within striking distance, Mogullen gave the order for his archers to release their rain of arrows. But as the missiles sprang into the air, an invisible hand seemed to catch them in flight, causing the arrows to go awry and fall ineffectually to the ground. Simultaneously Mogullen’s men began to moan, retch, and double up, suddenly racked with excruciating pain.

In the grip of this mass and crippling seizure it was child’s play for Cromwell’s army to storm through the defense line and proceed to hack and cut and devastate Mogullen’s army. Sawing through the ranks like a horde of farmers cutting down wheat with scythes, it took Cromwell’s soldiers less than an hour to turn Mogullen’s camp into a wasteland of bodies.

Nevertheless, because of Mogullen’s greater numbers and the renowned valor of his soldiers, they were somehow able to repel the attackers. But even now, as the wobbly general stared despairingly out over the night-cloaked and body-laden battlefield, he could hear in the distance Cromwell’s army boisterously preparing to strike again—and this time there was no hope of repelling his troops a second time.

Aware that the cursed plague was ravaging his body so fast that he would be mercifully spared having to see the final death-blow to his army, Mogullen staggered back inside the tent. He grabbed the edge of the map table to support himself.

He was standing this way when the young rider he had sent for burst into the tent, his own breastplate and beard caked with blood and dirt. The sores erupting on his battle-weary face showed that he too was afflicted with the plague but he was not as far gone as Mogullen or the others.

At the sight of his beloved general’s condition tears came into the rider’s eyes and he used both arms to steady him.

Mogullen mustered what little strength he had left to speak.

“Ah, Robert, you come at last! You must ride immediately to Elysium! Tell the king himself that our men are dying by the thousands. A plague has been thrust upon us. The battle is lost!”

Mogullen desperately gripped the young rider’s collar, the light beginning to leave his eyes.

“Tell King Richard . . . tell him that it is black sorcery we fight, you hear—black sorcery! The hope of all rests with his learning this. Black sorcery. Now go!”

Mogullen’s lids clamped shut and the rider knew he had given up the ghost. Collapsing in his arms, Robert gently laid to rest the general’s body on a fur-lined cloak in a corner of the tent, weeping copious tears.

“God take thy soul, General Mogullen,” he whispered, dashing out of the tent to his waiting steed.

He knew he would have to ride faster than he ever had in his entire life, for he could almost hear the flapping wings of death hovering over him too.

FOUR

rightly lit with torches that burned night and day, Richard’s massive, high-vaulted war room was on the ground level of the castle and loaded with trophies from previous campaigns: a suit of armor from Eric, the terrible king of Woodlands, whom Richard had beheaded with one fell swoop of his sword; a velvet tapestry whose golden thread depicted Richard’s victorious battle against the barbarians from the east; and a multitude of other souvenirs from different engagements.