BECMI Chapter 342 – The Marshal of Zanzyr
They flowed away as they had come, sure and strong in their thousands, hooves rumbling and kicking up dust as they rode back the way they’d come, banners fluttering and leading their companies in excellent discipline and formation.
There would be no Tukhman invasion of Zanzyr today, and likely not in the near future. The hills to the north between the two mountain ranges of the Titanhalls and the Oskvaralls were too broken for horses, making Skullhorn Pass the only readily available pass for large and easy movement of troops onto the Tukhman Plains.
The only reason to dare the plains was to get to Rukheim or to the Eisholds on the other sides of them. The Tukhmen had little to trade, and definitely were not very accommodating to Zanzyran merchants.
Happily, that also meant they had nothing Zanzyr actually wanted, except to be rid of them. Thaum being an idiot hadn’t realized that just letting them know their land had an Immortal Patron meant they were serving an Immortal, knowingly or not, and their priests had no leg to stand on. Thaum chose to have no priests, that didn’t mean He was helpless or even silent in the land He’d chosen…
Seeing them go, Prince Drakkar von Jaggenfel, the Grand Marshal of Zanzyr, came flying in on his noble white pegasus, Blitzer.
There were many things to notice about the second most powerful human mage in Zanzyr. The one I noticed most was the spells shackling the will of his splendid pegasus mount, forcing it to serve and obey him unconditionally. I knew this because pegasi could not tolerate Evil riders, and Prince Drakkar was a solid Ruby.
He was a hardcore wizard supremacist first, a Zanzyran nationalist second, and an elitist nobleman and soldier third. Oddly enough, he wasn’t a humanist or even overly a racist of his own land, like many of the humans were for their own subspecies.
I doubted I’d be thinking much of the gold dragon the faint scales shimmering in his Aura indicated he had an agreement with. As the Master of the Dracologists, Jaggenfel had the power to turn into a great golden dragon, one likely more powerful than almost any gold dragon still alive. He was actually famous for it, having turned into it on more than one occasion of battle, and the effect was definitely stronger than a rote Shapechange or Form of the Dragon spell.
Still, he’d retained his humanity, as opposed to Messime, who had eagerly undertaken the path of a Dragon Disciple once I’d informed her of it, and who had fully graduated into being a Ruby half-dragon some time ago.
The Prince was tall, imposing, broad-shouldered, and held himself with military precision. He had dark hair, tanned olive skin from being outside, and a short, perfectly-trimmed mustache, with no beard, as per military protocol. He had his admirers among the women, but he was married with three children of his own, and if he kept paramours, it was discreetly on the side. He wore a blindingly white (purple-chased, his House colors) and sharply-pressed dress uniform with high custom-tooled cavalry boots most of the time, not being into armor, with his many medals on ostentatious display on his chest at all times. At his side was a holstered heavy blaster from the time of Darkmoor, something seldom made by the fabbers because of its power and unreliability, and the tendency to explode and end things really badly for those who used them.
I gathered he had never failed a saving throw against a lightning attack, or he and that blaster wouldn’t be here right now.
“You will leave that personal suicide device at your waist on your mount, and your mount will stay at least one hundred feet from me at all times,” I told him as he came down, and I changed the tea in my pot with a swirl of magic. “Have a seat. You’ve no doubt had a tiring day, and I have Marquis Green.”
His mount glided in the rest of the way, coming smoothly to a landing with excellent control and horsemanship. He clearly contemplated coming closer to test me out, but then looked at his prized family heirloom on his waist, considered my words, and slowly took the holster off and hung it from the saddlebags of his mount.
He straightened his jacket and marched over with great authority. I interrupted his speech by floating a cup of fresh hot tea up to him, and gesturing him to the other seat languidly.
He was over sixty, looked to be in his thirties. He accepted the tea, took a sniff, and his eyes popped a bit, the Monocle there falling out to dangle from his breast pocket in surprise.
“Well,” he hmmphed, “perhaps it is not a problem to indulge this once.” I lifted my cup to him, we mock toasted, and we drank as he found a seat on the other side of the table in the chair the Khan had just vacated, which adjusted to fit his taller frame.
“Your interfention in this matter was fery unexpected, Lady Edge,” Prince Drakkar finally got around to saying in his strong accent. “Haf not you been rather busy up north?”
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We didn’t have a lot of tourists up in Eistree, so exactly what I’d been doing was pretty much mum. Pyramids deep inside a continental forest aren’t exactly obvious, especially when Illusion’d up to look like random hills.
“I am a Wizard, Prince Drakkar. Zanzyr and Erendyl are literally one step away at any time,” I sniffed at him, one of Thaum’s many Analects. “I am also an intelligent person who knows how to organize their time. My apologies if your impassioned call to stand forth against the foul invading nomads isn’t going to see any satisfactory results. You may take consolation in the fact that if the Khan had chosen to go ahead, he would have been annihilated without you having to do much, also.”
He gave me a piercing stare, then very obviously looked over the area of white ground around me, the remains of the nomads that were intact hauled away by their brethren, and absolutely nothing else around. “I convess to some skepticism ov your ability to destroy an entire army like that, Lady Edge?” he asked leadingly.
I flicked up a Holo between us, showcasing the pass and the nomad army. They surged ahead… and the great wall came up in front of them, and the great moat behind where we were seated. Great clouds of gas started in the south, pouring down the slope there, and behind their passing, only equipment and white dust remained.
The panicking nomads tried to retreat, to the extent some started a lemming-like drive over the edges of the moat, trying to build up a mound of corpses some could climb down, and others might be able to climb up.
Then the cloud of gas spilled into the moat and swept for them there, too.
In the end, only those who could fly with magical assistance made it out alive.
The illusion rewound, and this time his own army came racing up to climb the steep stairs before the walls. The mages and soldiers of Zanzyr began to bombard the trapped nomads on the other side of the walls, calling down fire and lightning, monsters and storms, ripping the invading nomads apart with style and flair.
“I could certainly kill them all, or I could leave your little army to do the tedious work.” I waved languidly at the battlefield. “The magic is already in place. If an army wants to get through Skullhorn Pass, it’s going to have to deal with the wall and the moat, which are ready to go off at Belle’s command. There are ways to deal with it or blast it apart, of course, but that hardly means she can’t add more of them, does it not?”
There was a tic on his cheek. Dracology was more a straight-up combat art, and Elementalism focused mostly on Summoning. This kind of broad terrain reshaping was not something any other magic or spell could easily duplicate, and all by itself was capable of doing what a few thousand infantry could do.
More, really. It didn’t need to be fed.
He still slammed the table with his fist. “This vas our chance to kill the Khan!” he swore angrily. “I haf strategies and tactics in place to deal with all ov them!”
“He had strategies and tactics in place to deal with you and your plans, specifically. He owns all your books, you see, and his spies make due notes of the powers of your Society and the spells you have displayed in public. That zealot of a shaman of his is better at being a Priest than you are at being a Wizard, and could have snapped you right out of your dragon-form without any magical defenses with one Dispel.” He blinked at me in shock. “You would have gone out to challenge him in dragon form, been forcibly reverted to human, and likely died rather messily very quickly.”
He stared at me, and I ignored him and the way he was trying to Aura-flex on me. “You… are much stronger than you should be…” he managed to deduce warily, sensing there was something very amiss in our relationship.
“I am over a hundred years older than when I entered the School due to some rather complicated temporal shenanigans I won’t go into, long and boring as they are, Prince Drakkar. You are not my equal in magic or with a weapon in hand. If you wish to test this, I will be happy to oblige you and very publicly stomp you into the dirt, questioning your qualifications for your position as I do so. I am sure that will not affect your standing in the eyes of your troops and the rest of Zanzyr at all.”
He trembled a bit, and almost dared to say something. Something he read in my utterly unperturbed expression managed to get through to him, and he wrestled down the desire stiffly. “A gentlemen does not issue a challenge ofer matters that only aid Zanzyr,” he managed to cover his aching disappointment. “Are you also behind the vorces that haf been harrying isolated wizards recently?” he dared to ask me.
I tilted my head slightly. “Interesting phrasing. No, I have not dispatched or struck at any of the necromancers or their undead servants the attackers have targeted, and as I and the other elves do not indulge in necromantic practices without exceptional circumstances, we have not been targeted in turn. I understand two of your local burghers in the more rural areas of Grafburg’s territories did meet an untimely demise, but it was no great loss. They hadn’t been sending many young men for the last few years, probably because they were killing them off and using their corpses to work the copper mines there.”
He scowled at me and the sudden shame revealed. “Grafburg has nefer been a proponent ov the use ov undead or necromancy!” he stated forcibly, slapping the table again.
The teapot rose and floated over to pour him more tea, and he reined himself in, still affronted that someone had dared to clean out his rot before he had the chance to do so himself.
“Then you are either criminally negligent or just inept at administration of your own lands,” I rebutted dryly, unimpressed. “If you cannot take care of corruption on that scale at home, I don’t think you have any rights to boast of your strategic skills before me. A healthy economy and strong civilian support backing your army is the core of a strong military, after all, and both of yours are now very much in flux.”
“You are well-invormed. I beliefe you haf contacts with those responsible vor this trafesty.” However, he leaned back instead of forward, considering me more suspiciously and professionally now.
“Mmm. It would be rather strange if elves did not know of a strong and committed group of people in Zanzyr who were utterly opposed to the practice of necromancy and the existence of undead forces hidden there, wouldn’t it?” I mused emotionlessly.