The Crown and the Sword Read online

  A NEW SOLAMNIA

  A unique leader works to forge his nation into a powerful empire.

  A new nation emerges from the ashes of division and war.

  A man who would be emperor faces the gravest threat in his long and violent life.

  He is a knight, a lord, a dictator … ruthless and driven, with ambitions that trample the lives of all who aid him. Revolutionary technology has made him a master of war. He possesses the wife that he needs, even as the woman he desires eludes his grasp. But as an old enemy, mightier than ever, rises to challenge him, new dangers emerge.

  THE RISE OF SOLAMNIA

  Lord of the Rose

  The Crown and the Sword

  The Measure and the Truth

  THE CROWN AND THE SWORD

  The Rise of Solamnia, Volume Two

  ©2006 Wizards of the Coast LLC

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Hasbro SA, represented by Hasbro Europe, Stockley Park, UB11 1AZ. UK.

  DRAGONLANCE, Wizards of the Coast, D&D, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.

  All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Cover art by: J. P. Targete

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-6270-9

  640-A1003000-001-EN

  For customer service, contact:

  U.S., Canada, Asia Pacific, & Latin America: Wizards of the Coast LLC, P.O. Box 707, Renton, WA 98057-0707, +1-800-324-6496, www.wizards.com/customerservice

  U.K., Eire, & South Africa: Wizards of the Coast LLC, c/o Hasbro UK Ltd., P.O. Box 43, Newport, NP19 4YD, UK, Tel: +08457 12 55 99, Email: [email protected]

  Europe: Wizards of the Coast p/a Hasbro Belgium NV/SA, Industrialaan 1, 1702 Groot-Bijgaarden, Belgium, Tel: +32.70.233.277, Email: [email protected]

  Visit our websites at www.wizards.com

  www.DungeonsandDragons.com

  v3.1

  TO JULIETTE AND BENEDICT WEBER

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: The Lord Marshal

  Chapter Two: Betrayal, and Betrayal

  Chapter Three: The Army of Solamnia

  Chapter Four: Lord of the Horde

  Chapter Five: The White Witch

  Chapter Six: The Lord Regent

  Chapter Seven: Army of Darkness

  Chapter Eight: Two Challenges

  Chapter Nine: The King of the Underworld

  Chapter Ten: The Duel

  Chapter Eleven: Secret Compounds

  Chapter Twelve: The Elements Unleashed

  Chapter Thirteen: Emergent Dangers

  Chapter Fourteen: A Path, Found

  Chapter Fifteen: Crossing the Vingaard

  Chapter Sixteen: The Duchess

  Chapter Seventeen: Battles Anew

  Chapter Eighteen: A Small Attack

  Chapter Nineteen: Unleashed

  Chapter Twenty: Missions Urgent

  Chapter Twenty-One: Ensnared

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Acquisitions

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Concentrations

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Thunder on the Mountain

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Sound of the Guns

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Triumph and Destruction

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The March of the Adamites

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: End of the Beginning

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE LORD MARSHAL

  A column of dust marked the progress of two dozen horsemen across the flat expanse of the central Vingaard Plain. They rode in a neat file of pairs, and though the men and horses were coated with a layer of grit indicating a long, hard ride, they maintained ranks with military precision. The mounts were large, long legged, and nimble, and they crossed the miles with an easy canter. Even now, as they moved into a region where the ground rose and fell, their gait remained steady, their course as true and straight as the flight of an arrow.

  At the head of the column rode a single man, wearing the garb of a knight with the unusual feature that his breastplate was not adorned with any symbol—as if he belonged to none of the orders, not to the Crown, the Sword, or the Rose. His shoulders and back were draped with a woolen cape that covered the back of his saddle and flapped loosely. His horse was a nondescript roan mare, a little sloppy of gait, though her eyes flashed with intelligence.

  “We approach the Narrows, Lord Marshal,” commented a rider, spurring his mount as he came up on the left of the man. The rider wore the epaulets of a knight captain, though, like the one he called Lord Marshal, he bore no insignia upon his armor.

  The lead knight merely nodded, taking in the changing surroundings through narrowed, but far-seeing, eyes. Only after studying the terrain for several moments did he raise his hand and point in a direction slightly to the right of their current bearing.

  “General Dayr will gather the Crown Army there. We need to reach him before nightfall.”

  “Aye, my lord,” replied the captain.

  Without breaking stride, the lord marshal tugged his reins and swerved his horse in the new direction. No word was spoken, but the rest of the company followed suit.

  The horses slowed to a trot as they worked their way down the steep slope of a ravine then surged and galloped up the other side. The formation opened only slightly at the increased speed, and the close ranks held firm as they moved fleetly over increasingly broken ground.

  The column of riders came upon the army encampment in the scant shelter against the wind provided by a low hill. Lookouts on top of the elevation had spotted their approach and passed word down to the troops who were making their supper preparations. Two knights, a captain and a gold-caped general, left the warmth of their cook fire to greet the new arrivals.

  “My Lord Marshal, welcome! Your timing is perfect. I plan to attack Ankhar’s North Wing by dawn tomorrow,” reported the gold-caped general. He was a handsome knight with the flowing mustaches of a traditional Solamnic. The insignia of the white Crown was prominent upon his breastplate.

  “General Dayr, Captain Franz,” replied the lord marshal, nodding to the two knights as willing men-at-arms took his horse. He dismounted with the ease of a natural horseman, stretched, and for just a moment, winced at the pain of cramps in muscles that only a few years earlier would have made no complaint at the end of such a ride. Though his beard and hair were black, a trace of thin lines marked the area around his hard, cold eyes. His beard was short, neatly trimmed, and accented the outline of a strong, jutting chin.

  “You made good time, my lord. We didn’t expect you until late tomorrow.”

  “General Rankin and the Swords are advancing on the river. The enemy is in retreat in the south. Here, on his north flank, is the point of decision. I wanted to be here. And naturally, my Freemen were eager to ride.”

  The lord looked almost with affection at the two dozen men of his personal guard. Like himself—and unique among the three armies of Solamnia—they did not wear the insignia of a knightly order. Instead, their loyalty—and their lives—was pledged to the leader who had forged those sometimes fractious forces into one great weapon of war. Captain Powell, the leader of the guard, had been an influential knight in the hierarchy of Palanthas but had
renounced that post to serve the leader who, he devoutly believed, was the only man who could restore the realm of Solamnia to its past glories.

  “Very good,” acknowledged the general. “Would you like a look at the position before dark?”

  “Yes, right away.” The lord marshal turned to the captain of the Freemen, the man who had ridden at his side when they entered the camp. Another knight, his long mustaches caked with the dust of the ride, was making a report to the captain. Both men stood erect when the lord marshal looked their way.

  “Captain Powell, come with us. Sergeant Ian, see that the men get something to eat. I want the Freemen to be well rested in the morning.”

  “Aye, my lord,” both replied in unison.

  The general and the two captains accompanied their army commander in a brisk walk up the low hill. From the crest, they could see a long distance.

  The scene was dominated by a deep gorge, like a wound where a god had cleaved his sword into the flesh of the world. The Upper Narrows of the Vingaard River formed a bottleneck in that mighty flowage, a series of raging torrents and spuming cascades created as the water surged between two confining, looming walls. Even as the descending ground forced the Vingaard northward with relentless, irresistible velocity, the constricted channel compressed and accelerated the current. This was a wild place—the rocky ground around the river was inhospitable to farmers, and the water within its sheer-walled gorge too difficult for grazing animals to reach. The plains above the gorge were dry and dusty, bereft of trees and other vegetation, and subject to bitter, cold winds in winter and scorching, dry heat in summer.

  It was on the west bank of this river gorge that two large military forces faced each other. The camp of the Crown Army was well situated between a pair of ridges radiating out from the round hill. With a company of infantry and another of archers on top of the hill, it was a formidable position. General Dayr had garrisoned both of the ridges flanking his camp and had an extensive picket line, with mounted outriders, guarding the main approach.

  But all this was of secondary interest to the lord marshal. His attention was focused on the enemy, arrayed in a jagged, dirty smudge of fortifications backed by troops and war machines, all forming a semicircular bulge, with the gorge and the valley of the Vingaard at its right and right rear. There was a route of access—or retreat—behind the enemy camp, leading southward along this side of the river. Several paths dropped from the edge, vanishing into the depths of the canyon beside both camps.

  “Is there a route through the gorge?” asked the lord marshal.

  “A narrow path, my lord. We have a company defending it, and Ankhar has a similar force down there. It is a standoff—no advance for either side. And no retreat, either, considering that both paths are overlooked by the enemy.”

  “Good. Your men only need to stand firm down there.”

  “Ankhar himself is in the camp,” Dayr noted. “We spotted him late yesterday afternoon.”

  “He knows his central and southern wings are already across the Vingaard. Here is where he has chosen to make his stand and fight,” the commander remarked. “I have come here for the same reason.” He turned toward Captain Powell of the Freemen, who was sitting astride his horse to the marshal’s right. “Go to the baggage train and find the wagon we dispatched here. Pull out a dozen of the casks that came from the Compound.”

  “Very well, my lord!” Powell saluted and rode away.

  If Dayr was curious about his orders, he knew better than to ask. “Would you like to review the disposition of my forces?” asked the general instead.

  The lord marshal shook his head. “No, I’m sure you have prepared well. But tell me, what about the trenches?”

  He indicated the fortifications around the enemy camp. Deep gashes in the ground, scored in a zigzag pattern, shielded the whole array of Ankhar’s troops.

  “Something novel is called for, don’t you think, my lord?” Dayr turned and gestured to a young knight. The man had light golden hair, worn long, with the emblem of a crested bird on his tunic. “This is Sergeant Heath of the Order of Clerists.”

  The commander nodded. “The priest-knights are finally arriving at the front, I see.”

  Sergeant Heath saluted stiffly. “I beg my lord’s pardon for the delay. I assure you that it was not caused by unwillingness on the part of my company. The Council of Whitestone was slow to react, but as of this year, there are mystics and Kingfishers both sailing for your shores.”

  “I understand—Sir Templar has apprised me of the resistance from Lord Liam and the rest of the council. So I am doubly pleased to see you. How large is your company?”

  “I have a dozen priests, my lord, and an equal number of acolytes. We pledge our swords—and our spells—to your cause.”

  “Very good.” The lord marshal gestured at the enemy entrenchments. “Now tell me what you plan to do about those.”

  The camp of the Crown Army was quietly astir by an hour after midnight. Captain Powell, with his Freemen and the casks from the Compound, was already gone. Now Sergeant Heath and his Clerists slipped away from the command post and immediately melted into the full darkness that descended after moonset. Each knight-cleric wore a cloak of grayish brown and had smudges of the same color darkening the skin of their faces and hands, so they may as well have been invisible as they closed on the nearest trenches of the enemy position. Leaving their weapons and armor behind, they advanced with stealth and concealment as their only protection.

  After an hour of careful advancement, the mystics were in position, only a few dozen feet short of the deep, wide trenches of Ankhar’s army. Each priest-warrior was alone and knew his task; they all remained silent and in their camouflage, invisible to the enemy sentries.

  Heath himself knelt before the broadest section of trench. Barely daring to breathe, he watched the shadowy figures of goblins and ogres clomping back and forth on sentry duty behind the ditch. He waited, lying flat on the ground, until he was certain the rest of his men were ready.

  Night still cloaked them in utter darkness as the knight-priest rose to a kneeling position. He held a fistful of gritty clay in his hand as he murmured a prayer—and an appeal—to Kiri-Jolith. Soon he had worked the material into a hard lump. He felt the answering presence of his god, a powerful blessing of magic, and in one smooth gesture rose to his feet, shouted the climactic words to the spell, and hurled the lump of dirt into the trench.

  All along the line, the Clerist knights worked the same clay magic. The sudden noise of the spellcasting alerted the brutish defenders, who rushed forward to launch spears and arrows into the darkness—even though the mysterious attackers were already falling back.

  Behind them they left the results of their magic: twenty-two earthen bridges, each spanning a section of the army’s trenchworks.

  “Light!” cried General Dayr, as he heard the culminating words of the Clerists’ spellcasting. “Bring out the torches!”

  Flames immediately erupted from a hundred barrels, all positioned along the front of his army—directly along the lines of advance for the Crown Army’s light cavalry. All three companies of the Thelgaard Lancers waited there in ranks, already mounted, prepared for the signal. These riders, lightly armored and riding very fast horses, were trained to carry long lances in the charge. But this morning, their arms would be unique.

  Each rider carried several dry torches in one hand. As the oil-filled barrels were ignited, the horsemen started forward, their disciplined mounts filing close by the blazing containers. As the line of riders passed, each man thrust the head of his torch into the oil. The dry brands instantly ignited. Without hesitating, the riders spurred their horses into a canter. The lines of cavalry were eerily illuminated by the blazing torches bobbing and waving over each man’s head, and those columns rode directly toward the enemy camp.

  Where a few moments earlier Ankhar’s troops had been lolling casually behind deep entrenchments, these defenders now faced the sudden rea
lity of nearly two dozen earthen bridges, magically conjured to cross the barriers. Ogres bellowed and roared at the goblins, while the smaller fighters scrambled to take up weapons and race to the terminus of each span. A horn sounded somewhere in the rear of the camp, a lonely summons to arms.

  But already the human riders were racing to confront the defenders. The Thelgaard Lancers sped across the magical bridges and charged through the chaotic soldiers trying to block their path. Shouting men drove goblins back by the simple expedient of waving burning torches to the right and left. Once they had breached the trenches, the horsemen galloped into the center of the huge enemy camp. Some threw their torches into command tents or ignited crates and barrels of supplies stacked haphazardly here and there. Other attackers continued onward, charging through the encampment toward the great war machines lined up at the rear of Ankhar’s army.

  A human captain barked commands, rousing a small company of men—former Dark Knights—to oppose the rush of thundering horses. In the confusion, the footmen did not have time to arm themselves properly, however; they were easily swept aside by the rampaging horsemen. More flames brightened the chilly predawn as several oil casks erupted into greasy fire, the liquid spilling along the ground, igniting as it flowed.

  General Dayr, astride his steed, watched the initial onslaught with satisfaction. Even before the last of the light cavalry had crossed the bridges, he issued his next order: “Kaolyn Axers—move out!”

  The doughty dwarves of this heavy infantry unit started forward to the steady beat of a deep drum. This was the First Regiment of the Axers, one of three serving in the lord marshal’s army. They had come down from the Garnet Mountains for two reasons: because the ogres and goblins of Ankhar’s horde were their hereditary enemies and because they would be paid well for fighting. They fought as tenaciously as any knight and with their thick plate mail shields and armor, short, muscular legs; and keen-bladed axes, they could form a veritable forward-moving wall on a battlefield.