Lord of the Rose (51 page)

The Duke of Thelgaard was already dead, the blood still draining from the cuts he had made on his own wrists.

Captain Dayr looked back at Thelgaard Keep. The invaders had claimed the entire city in a few hours of savage assualt. Dayr and two score men had held out in the west gatehouse for a full day, watching as the rest of the city was overrun. The attackers had taunted them with word of the duke’s suicide, but the forty men in the gatehouse—all knights—had inflicted grievous losses at the cost of only two dead.

Finally, as night had fallen, Dayr led the group on a bold escape. They seized horses from a corral outside the walls and rode bareback onto the plains. Some of the worgs and riders gave chase, but they were exhausted from the day of battle while the knights’ horses were fresh. The knights had soon left their pursuers behind.

“Est Sularus oth Mithas,”
Dayr murmured, seeing the banner of the Crown torn down from the castle’s highest tower.

His honor was his life, but that honor did not require him to die, not in the service of a lord who lacked even the spirit to wield a weapon in his own defense. Dayr thought bitterly of all the men who had died in the Battle of the Crossings and here because of the ignobility of the Duke of Thelgaard. The captain himself had ordered men to their death based on his master’s foolish commands. It was a mistake that Dayr vowed never to repeat.

Sometimes honor required that a fighting man retreat so that he could live to fight another day.

E
arly on a cool autumn morning the whole city of Caergoth was astir. Although most of the duke’s great army remained in the field, camped just south of the Garnet River, Duke Crawford had kept his personal guard, nearly a thousand knights, with him in the city. For a week those knights, and every courtier, noble, and priest had been involved with the pageantry attending the Duchess Martha’s funeral.

The duke, in fact, was rather taken aback at the evidence of his late wife’s popularity. For all her simplicity and faults, she apparently had struck a chord with the common people of Caergoth, who demonstrated their genuine grief. Patriarch Issel had delivered a stirring eulogy, and six of his stout clerics had borne her casket to the royal vaults, in the catacombs of Temple of Shinare below the city.

Now, at last, the funeral was over. Knights and squires bustled to prepare for an expedition. Wagons filled with freight lumbered through the streets, starting for the camp of the army some thirty miles away. Great herds of fresh horses to replace battlefield losses and cattle to feed the hungry troops were driven eastward through the city gates and out across the plains.

Finally, after an interval for one last civilized breakfast, it was time for the duke himself to depart. The thousand knights
of his personal guard would escort him into the field, where he would take command of the larger force. The companies of the Ducal Guard were organized by the colors of their mounts. First came the blacks, then the chestnuts, followed by the grays, and finally the whites. Each rider was clad in gleaming armor, the silver outline of the rose visible upon every breastplate. The horses trotted in formation, as precisely as if they were leading a coronation parade. They proceeded out of the gates of Caergoth in ranks of four, proudly leading down the long, swept pavement of the King’s Road.

The duke himself rode in a carriage, with Sir Marckus and Sir Reynaud on their chargers beside the open vehicle. The lord accepted the cheers of his adoring populace as he rode through the streets and out the gates, enjoying the accolades so much that it seemed considerably dull once they left the city and were left merely trundling along the road—good, paved highway though it was.

Because of that road they made very good time, and in two days they rode all the way to the crossing of the Garnet River. Here the army was camped beside one of the engineering wonders of the Solamnic Realm: the King’s Bridge. The span of white marble had stood for hundreds of years, since long before the Cataclysm. Indeed, it had been erected by dwarven masons under the auspices of Istar’s Kingpriest and had once been called the Kingpriest’s Bridge. After the fall of that great city and the convulsions of the Age of Despair, the people of Solamnia had chosen the shorter appellation.

Lord Lorimar had erected his manor in the shadow of this bridge on the north bank of the great river, and the ruins of that once-splendid house could be glimpsed from the crossing. The duke felt his eyes drawn to the charred site, even as he shuddered in horror. Dara Lorimar had been such a beautiful woman … what a shame she had to die that way.

More relevant to Crawford’s immediate future—and a relief to his distracted mind—was the spectacle of the great army, more than ten thousand men encamped along the south bank.
The men exploded with cheers as their lord rolled through the vast tent city.

The next day the duke led his entire army across the bridge, which was nearly a quarter mile long. At the north end, where the road started across the vast plain, he climbed one of the two watchtowers, and relished the sight of his great army flowing over the gleaming span, and forming into neatly organized columns on the north side of the river.

The Garnet River was not as great a waterway as the mighty Vingaard, which lay to the north and drained the vast swath of the plains through the port of Kalaman into the northern ocean. But the Garnet was still deep and fast-moving and bore snowmelt and rainwater from the mountains of the same name through the fertile bottomlands of Caergoth into the Strait of Ergoth. Marshy banks kept the troops away from the river’s edge. Like the road itself, the bridge was paved in granite slabs, and stood as proof of the greatness of the Solamnics.

First across were the knights of the Ducal Guard on their uniformly colored horses. Next came the ranks of pikemen marching in crisp formation, the silver tips of their tall weapons glimmering like a field of diamonds. This column alone stretched more than a mile long. The pikemen were followed by legions of men armed with sword and shield, with more long ranks of those carrying crossbows. Finally the catapults and ballistae rumbled along, the great war machines pulled by straining oxen—even those ponderous beasts had been combed and brushed to a sheen, their tack polished and buckles shined to a dazzling brilliance.

Duke Crawford stood atop the bridge tower and watched the mighty column as it marched past. He allowed himself a moment of pride, reflecting that no force on all of Krynn could stand against his multitude on the battlefield. His captains saluted him, their horses prancing with heads held high. Trumpeters brayed, and festive banners and pennants snapped in the breeze.

In all, the column was more than ten miles long, each detachment formed of men loyal to him, sworn to the Oath and the Measure. They had come from Sancrist, Sanction, and Palanthas,
from even farther outposts across the continent of Ansalon, but they would obey
his
orders alone. Every polished piece of equipment, each steel blade and razor-edged arrowhead, had been provided for such cause as he deemed right and proper. His great power almost made him swoon in his saddle.

“Why the glum face?” the duke asked Captain Marckus, who stood in the position of top honor on Crawford’s right. “Does it not look like a splendid army?”

“Aye, lord. There is no more splendid looking army. Please forgive my melancholy—I was but reflecting that the late duchess would have been delighted by the pageantry.”

“Ah, yes, the Lady Martha was always one to relish a display,” the duke allowed, grimacing. Marckus was always reminding him of the last thing he wanted to remember. As a practical man, he had come to see the death of his wife—distasteful as the whole affair had been—as a blessing. Now he was free to seek a truly worthy wife!

His mind wandered to the Princess Selinda. He recalled the golden sheen of her hair, the breathtaking swell of her breasts beneath her velvet gown. Now
that
was a woman who would make a proper wife! Not only that—by virtue of her own rank, she could raise a duke to the status of a king. The duke imagined Selinda’s certain delight when he communicated to her, hopefully in person, news of the great victory he was about to win. He wished she could be there to welcome him when he returned, victorious, from the field of battle—what a perfect moment!

Now, as the duke stood on the tower and watched, it took more than three hours for his army to make the crossing. In fact, he stepped back from the brink several times for refreshment, and once even enjoyed a short nap under the shade of a hand-held awning. When he awoke, his troops were still marching past! They gave a hearty cheer as he again appeared at the battlement and offered them an encouraging wave.

Impatient at last, he climbed down the many steps from the tower, mounted his charger, and started to ride away. He passed uncomfortably close to the ruined manor of Lord Lorimar—the
blackened, burned structure seemed to stare ominously at him. He spurred his horse forward, cantered along the side of the great column as it advanced northward. He knew that he cut a dashing figure as he rode his stallion, trailed by a dozen or so men of his entourage.

Caergoth was going to war! He felt a twinge of nervousness, suddenly conscious that this was
real
war. The news from the east was dire. The horde of Ankhar had sacked Thelgaard. Solanthus was isolated, the duke slain. Crown and Sword had been humbled by a mere barbarian chieftain. It was time for the Knights of the Rose to set matters right. The Lord of that order, Duke Crawford of Caergoth, was just the man to command the forces of good.

The excitement of the march diminished considerably in the following days as they steadily moved northward along the road. One the second day the Garnet Mountains rose into view on the eastern horizon, but the force passed only within a dozen miles of the outlying foothills.

The great body of the infantry, the foot soldiers who were the backbone of this and every other army, plodded along stolidly in the center of the great formation. The individual units were spread out in a fan-like pattern so they could respond to a threat from either flank. A strong screen of heavy cavalry brought up the rear. The baggage train and war machines were in the middle of the infantry columns, securely protected against threat from any side.

Caergoth’s outriders, his light cavalry, swept the plains ahead of his army. Soon reports began to arrive, and they were exactly as the duke had anticipated: The horde of Ankhar was heading south to meet them. The enemy, too, was closing his ranks, massing his great army into a single phalanx.

The army of Caergoth slowed as it continued north. No longer was the army spread along a ten-mile stretch of the road. Now they marched in block formations, covering a half-mile frontage. Only a small portion of the army could actually use the paved roadway. At least the catapults and other war machines, as well as
the wagon trains hauling supplies, ammunition, and everything from portable smithies to huge stocks of coal, could still roll along the highway dating back to the days of the Empire.