Troy Denning - Forgotten Realms - Empires Trilogy 02 - Dragonwall

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Dragonwall

Book 2 of the Empires Trilogy

By Troy Denning

Ebook version 1.0

The gray-haired noble reached the top of the tower a few seconds later. The other lords barely noticed

as he entered the room. They were too busy over-whelming Cheng Han with contradictory advice. Hsuang

slipped to the window, peered out, then swore a vile curse in the name of the Celestial Dragon.

The Tuigan had resorted to magic. A single barbarian stood in front of the two thousand horsemen

gathered on top of the smoky knoll. The man was dressed in a long silk robe covered with mystic symbols.

In his hand, he held a scepter capped with a human skull. The barbarian's arms were lifted skyward and his

eyes were fixed on one of the fires.

The shaman had magically braided the smoke from all fifty cooking fires together. The smoke columns

now formed a wide gray ribbon that stretched from the hilltop all the way to Shou Kuan. The smoky bridge

crossed the city wall directly over the gate, just a few yards to the right of the bell tower.

As Hsuang watched, the first horsewarriors spurred their mounts toward the hazy bridge. The

frightened animals reared and tried to shy away. The determined riders kicked the beasts and lashed them

with their reins, guiding the horses onto the gray ribbon as if it were solid rock. When their hooves found

solid purchase on the smoke, the horses calmed and began galloping forward. The riders dropped their

reins, then pulled their bows from their holsters and began to nock arrows.

Hsuang turned to his fellow nobles. "Get to your armies!" he yelled. "The Tuigan are topping the wall!"

THE EMPIRES TRILOGY

HORSELORDS

David Cook

DRAGONWALL

Troy Denning

CRUSADE

James Lowder

DRAGONWALL

AH Rights Reserved.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other

unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written

permission of TSR, Inc.

Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Random House, Inc., and in Canada by Random

House of Canada, Ltd.

Distributed in the United Kingdom by TSR Ltd.

Distributed to the toy and hobby trade by regional distributors.

FORGOTTEN REALMS, PRODUCTS OF YOUR IMAGINATION, and the TSR logo are trade-marks

owned by TSR, Inc.

First Printing: July, 1990

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-51889

987654321

ISBN: 0-88038-919-2

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

is purely coincidental.

TSR, Inc. TSR Ltd.

P.O. Box 756 120 Church End, Cherry Hinton

Lake Geneva, Cambridge CB1 3LB

WI 53147 U.S.A. United Kingdom

Respectfully dedicated to Mr. Dallas,

and to all educators who care enough to make a difference.

Acknowledgements

Without the support of many close friends, writing this book might well have proven to be a task beyond

me. I would like to thank Jon Pickens and David "Zeb" Cook for granting access to their extensive libraries;

Jim Ward for his wonderful suggestions and comments; Jim Lowder for his insight and diligence; Curtis

Smith for advice on things oriental; Lloyd Holden of AFK Martial Arts in Janesville, WI for his expertise;

and most especially Andria Hayday, for her gentle critiques, constant support, and unending patience.

The Minister's Plan

The barbarian stood in his stirrups, nocking an arrow in his horn-and-wood bow. He was husky, with

bandy legs well suited to clenching the sides of his horse. For armor, he wore only a greasy hauberk and a

conical skullcap trimmed with matted fur. His dark, slitlike eyes sat over broad cheekbones. At the bottom

of a flat nose, the rider's black mustache drooped over a frown that was both hungry and brutal. He

breathed in shallow hisses timed to match the drumming of his mount's hooves.

As he studied the horsewarrior's visage, a sense of eager-ness came over General Batu Min Ho. The

general stood in his superior's roomy pavilion, over a mile away from the rider. Along with his commander,

a sorcerer, and two of his peers, Batu was studying the enemy in a magic scrying ba-sin. Physically, the

barbarian looked no different from the thieving marauders who sporadically raided the general's home

province, Chukei. Yet, there was a certain brutal disci-pline that branded the man a true soldier. At last,

after twenty years of chasing down bands of nomad raiders, Batu knew he was about to fight a real war.

Batu forced himself to ignore his growing exhilaration and concentrate on the task at hand. Staring into

the scry-ing basin, he felt as though he were looking into a mirror. Aside from the barbarian's heavy-boned

stature and coarse mustache, the general and the rider might have been broth-ers. Like the horseman, Batu

had dark eyes set wide over broad cheeks, a flat nose with flaring nostrils, and a powerful build. The pair

was even dressed similarly, save that the general's chia, a long coat of rhinoceros-hide armor, was

no-where near as filthy as the rider's hauberk.

"So, our enemies are not blood-drinking devils, as the peasants would have us believe." The speaker was

Kwan Chan Sen, Shou Lung's Minister of War, Third-Degree Gen-eral, and Batu's immediate commander.

An ancient man with skin as shriveled as a raisin's, Kwan wore his long white hair gathered into a warrior's

topknot. A thin blue film dulled his black eyes, though the haze seemed to cause him no trouble seeing.

By personally taking the field against the barbarians, the old man had astonished his subordinates,

including Batu. Kwan was rumored to be one hundred years old, and he looked every bit of his age.

Nevertheless, he seemed re-markably robust and showed no sign of fatigue from the hardships of the trail.

Resting his milky eyes on Batu's face, the minister contin-ued. "If we may judge by the enemy's

semblance to General Batu, they are nothing but mortal men."

Batu frowned, uncertain as to whether the comment was a slight to his heritage or just an observation.

An instant later, he decided the minister's intent did not matter.

Settling back into his chair, Kwan waved a liver-spotted hand at the basin. "We've seen enough of these

thieves," he said, addressing his wu jen, the arrogant sorcerer who had not even bothered to introduce

himself to Batu or the oth-ers. "Take it away."

As the wu jen reached for the bowl, Batu held out his hand. "Not yet, if it pleases the minister," he said,

politely bowing to Kwan.

Batu's fellow commanders gave him a sidelong glance. He knew the other men only by the armies they

commanded—Shengti and Ching Tung—but they made it clear that they felt it was not Batu's place to

object. They were both first-degree generals, each commanding a full provincial army of ten thousand men.

In addition, both Shengti and Ching Tung were close to sixty years old.

On the other hand, Batu was only thirty-eight, and, though he was also a first-degree general, he

commanded an army of only five thousand men. In the hierarchy of first-degree generals, the young

commander from Chukei clearly occupied the lowest station.

Nevertheless, Batu continued, "If it pleases Minister Kwan, we might benefit from seeing the skirmish

line again."

Kwan twisted his wrinkles into a frown and glared at his subordinate. Finally, he pushed himself out of

his chair and said, "As you wish, General."

Batu was well aware of the minister's displeasure, but he was determined not to allow an old man's

peevishness to drive him into the fight prematurely. The surest way to turn a promising battle into an

ignominious defeat was to move into combat poorly prepared.

The wu jen circled his bejeweled hand over the basin, muttering a few syllables in the mysterious

language of sor-cerers. As the barbarian's face faded, a field covered with green-and-yellow sorghum

appeared. Along its southern edge, the field was bordered by a long, barren hillock. A small river, its banks

covered with tall stands of reeds, bor-dered the northeastern and eastern edges. Swollen with the spring

runoff from far-away mountains, the river was brown and swift.

The only visible Shou troops were Batu's thousand archers, who had formed a line stretching from the

river to the opposite side of the field. Each man stood behind a chest-high shield and wore a lun'kia, a

corselet that guarded his chest and stomach. Made of fifteen layers of paper and glue, the lun'kia was

inexpensive and remarkably tough ar-mor. The archers' heads were protected by chous, plain leather

helmets with protective aprons that covered both the front and back of the neck.

Even through the scrying basin, Batu could hear the ten-sion in his officers' voices as they shouted the

command to nock arrows. The archers were unaccustomed to being left exposed, for in previous

engagements the general had always supported them with infantry and his small contin-gent of cavalry.

This time, the rest of Batu's army was hiding behind the hill, along with twenty thousand men from the

armies of the other two provincial generals. These rein-forcements were ready to charge over the hill at a

moment's notice.

The archers were bait, and they knew it. If the battle pro-ceeded according to Minister Kwan's plan, the

barbarian cavalry would sweep down on them. As the horsewarriors massacred the archers, the

twenty-four thousand rein-forcements would rush over the hill and wipe out the in-vaders in one swift blow.

The plan might have been a good one, had the horsemen been the unsophisticated savages Kwan imagined.

But the enemy showed no sign of taking the bait. So far, all they had done was ride forward and shoot a

few arrows. When the archers returned fire, they always turned and fled.

As Batu and the others watched, a subdued and distant thunder rolled out of the scrying basin. A

moment later, two thousand horsemen rode into view on the northern edge of the field, five hundred yards

from the archers. At first, the dark line advanced at a canter. Then, at some unseen signal, all two thousand

men urged their mounts into a full gallop.

The minister and the generals leaned closer to the scrying basin, watching intently. Two hundred and

fifty yards out, the barbarians began shooting. Few of the shafts found their marks, for firing from a moving

horse was difficult and the range was great. Still, Batu found it disturbing that any of his men fell, for he did

not know a single Shou horse-man who could boast of hitting such a distant target from a galloping mount.

Although they were equipped with five-foot t'ai po bows that could match the barbarians' range, Batu's

archers held their fire. They had been trained not to waste arrows on un-likely shots and would not loose

their bamboo shafts until the enemy had closed to one hundred yards. The horsemen continued to advance,

pouring arrows at the Shou line in a haphazard fashion that, nevertheless, dropped more than a dozen of

Batu's men.

Finally, the horsewarriors came into range. The Shou fired, and a gray blur obscured the scene. A

thousand ar-rows sailed over the sorghum, finding their marks in the barbarian line. Riders tumbled from

their saddles. Wounded horses stumbled, then crashed end-over-end as momentum carried them forward

after their legs had gone limp.

Through the scrying basin, Batu heard the screams of dying men and the terrified shrieks of wounded

horses. It was not a sound he enjoyed, but neither did it trouble him. He was a general, and generals could

not allow themselves to be distressed by the sounds of death.

The Shou archers fired again. Another gray blur flashed across the field, then more shocked yells and

frightened whinnies drifted out of the basin.

"Look!" said Shengti. "They're not breaking off!"

He was right. The barbarians had ridden through two vol-leys of arrows and were continuing their

charge. Batu's stomach knotted just as if he were standing with his men.

"Shall we attack?" asked Ching Tung. He had already turned away from the scrying basin and was

moving to-ward the door.

Noting that none of the riders were drawing their swords or lances, Batu grasped Ching Tung's

shoulder. "No!"

As Ching Tung turned to face him, Batu continued, "They're only testing our formation's discipline. If

they had intended to finish the charge, they would have drawn their melee weapons by now."

Ching Tung's eyes flashed. He started to say something spiteful, but the thunder in the scrying basin

suddenly died. The resulting quiet drew all eyes back to the pool. The gen-erals saw that the enemy

horsemen had reigned their mounts to a halt at fifty yards. Batu would have given ten thousand silver coins

to know how many more barbarians lurked out of the scrying basin's view. It was a question he knew

would not be answered. Kwan's wu jen had already explained that his spell had a range of only two miles.

Another gray blur flashed over the field as the barbarian riders fired in unison. The Shou archers, who

had been drawing swords and preparing to meet the charge, were not prepared for the attack. Dozens of

arrows struck their marks with quiet thuds. Over a hundred men cried out and fell to the flurry.

Batu's troops were well disciplined, however, and a volley of Shou arrows answered a moment later.

Another wave of terrible screams and whinnies followed, and the general from Chukei could almost smell

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DragonwallBook2oftheEmpiresTrilogyByTroyDenningEbookversion1.0Thegray-hairednoblereachedthetopofthetowerafewsecondslater.Theotherlordsbarelynoticedasheenteredtheroom.TheyweretoobusyoverwhelmingChengHanwithcontradictoryadvice.Hsuangslippedtothewindow,peeredout,thensworeavilecurseinthenameoftheCelest...

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