Pael stood alone, on a ridge looking down over the city of Dreen from a distance. The wind ruffled his silky, black robes, and threatened to blow the hood back from his chalk-skinned head. The gold worked embroidery on the belled sleeves and collar of his garb glittered in the morning sun like star-fire. Far below, and to his left, Lord Brach led a long, winding snake of some eight thousand men, out of the mountains, toward the irrelevant red wall. Inside the walls, Pael could see the Valleyan soldiers swarming like maggots on old meat. The fact that Lord Brach’s snake wasn’t spreading out, or marching toward one of the gates, was confounding them. Pael wished that it was Xwarda below him now, instead of Dreen, so much so, that his actions were mechanical, and his mood dismissive. The manic joy he had found while destroying Castlemont was absent, the exhilaration of the raw demonic power he possessed seemingly forgotten.
In a moment, he would breach the wall for Lord Brach’s men, so that the hungry snake might feed on the maggots, but now Shokin was forming an idea in his head. The idea made him regret sending Inkling, and those poisoned men to sea so far to the south, but only for a moment. When the idea fully bloomed in his mind, he laughed aloud, because neither the three ships full of men, nor the Imp King leading them, mattered anymore.
There might be joy in this day yet, Pael told himself.
He had just come up with a new plan of action, one that wouldn’t force him to have to wait out the winter here in Dreen. If it worked, he could take Xwarda, and gain the power of the Wardstone long before the snow started to fall. He would be able to launch his assault on Xwarda in days, not months.
As he transported himself down to appear before the big red wall of clay, he couldn’t help but laugh again. This time, the manic glee was abundant in his countenance.
The idea was wondrous. It would take a bit of quick work to pull it off, but he could manage it. Knowing this, it created a sense of urgency about him. This day would be a grand one after all. Riding his high spirits, and the possibilities of the days to come, Pael unleashed a blast of searing energy into the wall before him.
The hole it created was enormous, easily wide enough for a half dozen wagons to ride through abreast of each other. The force of the blast, and the debris that it sent flying into the city, left a swathe of chaos and death, deep into the refugee crowded streets. Lord Brach and his winding snake of men came charging in to fill the void, and the battle was under way.
Pael could’ve started blasting away groups of Valleyan soldiers, and large portions of the overcrowded city itself, but he chose not to. Instead, he cast another sort of spell, and he cast it not only on the Valleyans, but on the Westlanders as well. The second spell, an old favorite of the necromancer Priests of Kraw, was the same spell he had recently used, in its singular form, to resurrect Roark. Pael wanted this battle to play out. The more casualties here the better. Spell weary, after casting the long and powerful incantation of reanimation, Pael used the last bit of his energy to transport himself back to his elevated perch. From there, he watched the battle unfold, while he worked out the details of his new idea.
As soon as Lord Brach got the first few hundred of his men into the breach, the Valleyans threw open a nearby gate and charged forth. It made sense. With a massive hole leading into the city not far away, keeping the gates barred was pointless.
Cavalry met cavalry, in a shining clash of armor and steel. The red and yellow checked Valleyan banner whipped proudly in the wind. The dark shield upon it was an ancient and constant reminder to defend the horse herds. The golden lion on its field of green roared and reared back at them as the Westlanders pressed forth intensely.
A troop of cavalry broke free from the middle section of Westland’s procession, thus ruining the snakelike appearance of the army. The group raced away to meet a knot of Valleyans that had come out of some unseen gate around the wall. The Valleyans were charging to attack the Westland flank. The collision of men, animals, and sharpened steel happened at a full gallop, and the sound of it was sickening. Men and horses screamed in protest as they were slashed, pummeled, and crushed in the violent explosion of natural force.
Arrows filled the sky like streaks of windblown rain. The Valleyan archers up on the walls made full use of the advantage they had over those below them. Lord Brach ordered his archers to shoot at them, to make cover for the men trying to get into the city. He sent other troops of archers to fill the open gateways with flying death. The ranks of pikemen, and the untrained slashers, were ordered to crowd the breaches and get through any way they could manage. Before long, the battle was raging on both sides of the wall.