The Royals

Chapter 32

We are here because your brothers and fathers, sisters and daughters have been treated worse than yes terday's refuse. They have been twisted into a form abhorrent to human and dwarf, to a form many elves themselves would not sanction. The elfwitch will have us all bent into trolls, a form no beast should endure.' His voice rose as he spoke, so that by the end the booming volume seemed augmented by magical means.

'This must not stand. Evil cannot be allowed to exist unchallenged.'

Henry stopped to take a breath and found he had nothing more to say. He faced his men and was shocked to see each and every one standing at attention, his once pitiful soldiers re-formed into a proud army. They were as prepared to fight as they would ever be with so many of them already littering the battlefield.

The prince nodded and the men shouted spontaneously. 'Three cheers for the Dragon Prince!'

''Hip, hip, hooray!'

'Hip, hip, hooray!'

They surged back onto the b****y ground and Henry could not have been more honored. They had chosen to fight the trolls, knowing their chances, knowing who and what they fought.

The prince's newfound pride was short-lived. An archer caught him unawares, burying an arrow deep into the flesh behind the target's shoulder-blade. Henry cried out and fell to the ground.

Maarcus turned away from the scrying bowl in dis gust. Quietly and without passion, Walther continued to describe each man's death so that the physician might know the full extent of the battle. "What was I thinking to agree to this?" he said to Abadan. 'What were you thinking that you would risk your own death to use the f*******n magic? What good is it to know they're being slaughtered while we sit in our soft-cushioned "oversight position." It came out sounding like a foul word and when the physician thought about it, he decided it deserved to. 'We are cowards!'

'No,' the magician told him, still studying the scene before him. 'No, we are not. In some ways, what we do is much more difficult. We are here to observe and learn. With each of the witch's mutilations and tortures, we learn so that we can prevent the next one."

Sweat dripped from the dwarf's face. By the Sisters, I hope so,' he murmurred. 'No fate can be more horrid than this."

Beside him, Zera's man, Harmon, seemed in shock. His eyes were wide and his face was leached of color Stiff hands gripped the edge of the table. 'But we live!' shouted Maarcus. 'How can you be so callous?"

Abadan shook his head and looked up at the physician. His expression was full of pain and regret. There was no anger in it, only resolve. We do what we must. We could not have prevented this m******e in any case, not without more time. We live, yes, but we live to stop the evil.' He paused and licked his lips in an uncharacteristic gesture of unease. 'And we live knowing we have watched men die in this war just as we watched them die in the last.'

That was exactly it, Maarcus thought. He had seen enough dying. He'd never had a taste for it and had only barely managed to stomach King Tomar's campaigns by hovering close to the king himself and considering most of the deaths as nameless body counts. He assuaged what guilt he allowed himself to feel by declaring himself a physician, a healer. He'd saved very few lives in that war and it seemed he would rescue even fewer in this one. 'I am too old for this,' Maarcus spoke aloud without meaning too.

'We will always be too old for this,' Abadan told him.

'Yet we are here because others are too young. They deserve their fates even less than we deserve ours.' He moved back to the scrying bowl and whispered a few inscrutable words.

Maarcus watched Abadan watching men die. Was he a coward for standing back from the front lines? Or was he a coward because he'd rather die than stand by while others did? His hip, injured in the war so long ago, ached worse and worse these days. It seemed to mark the final hours of the Ash Kingdom, for they fought not just the superstitious inborn hatred of another people from realms near or far; they battled an evil that made the other seem petty and insignificant.

The physician forced himself to face the devastation without flinching. If he could not bear the battle from a distance, how could he expect the soldiers to bear it first-hand?

He did not need Walther's mumbled description to know the scene was familiar to any who have witnessed war - blood spurted from wounds the injured barely acknowledged, as they themselves fought to protect their fellows and battle the enemy. The trolls would be a dreadful sight - big, relentless, devastating. But as he imagined their faces, he slowly came to realize they too held the humanity, the elfness or dwarfness of their forebears. They too might be swayed by strong moral argument if they could be released from the witch's spell, if it could be managed without further s*******r. So many ifs, so little hope.

At long last, Henry was flying. He soared over the destruction from a great height. The wings he'd yearned to stretch held him aloft. Wonder was tainted by horror, yet he did not return to the ground. He could not bear to give up the splendor of flight.

His men were dying.

Henry looked away. He could glimpse the sea from here. The palace was an insignificant dot within The Cliffs; the city a tiny grain against the shore of the Ash Kingdom.

Something rocked his shoulder. He twisted to see - and pain overtook him. He plummeted like the wingless man he was.

'Come on, prince, it's all over. Nobody left but you and me, the cowards of the bunch.'

Henry forced his eyes open. 'Watch how you speak to your prince, soldier. No one calls me a coward.' He sounded weak and unconvincing, even to himself.

The man nodded. As you wish, sire. I won't tell if you won't.'

The prince sat up, wincing as he put weight on his right arm. "Tell what?"

'This is rich. First I save you. Now I gotta tell you what you missed.' He frowned, plainly skeptical of the prince's ignorance. He shrugged. Have it your way. A trifling little arrow wound knocked you so far gone the rest of your troops got ground up into troll-bait while you were nappin"."

'Uh huh. And what about you?'

'Why, I dragged you out of the line of fire and saved your princely rump.'

'Just as likely you're the one who shot that trifling little arrow.' "Think what you like. It'll just be you and me returning to The Cliffs with a long list of dead men.' He smiled, enjoying the prince's predicament.

'Not if one of us dies along the way,' Henry snarled. This man stunk of rank opportunism, if not the elfwitch herself.

'Won't be me. I'm the one with the weapons.' He held up Kate's knife along with Henry's short-sword. 'I'm just thinking of you. These blades are dangerous for one nol skilled in their use."

'What do you want?' Henry asked through clenched teeth.

'Nothin' much. Full provisions and a place for me and my friends that's not crowded with vermin of every stripe.'