The Sword of Retribution

Pargonn - Part 6

     The trogs of the Copper Mountains were the next to speak. Their delegate was a trog of the Underberg Clan whose flaming red trophy cords stood out vividly against the dull grey clothing that swaddled his entire body, but even with all that insulation it seemed to Resalintas that he was still shivering, as if he missed the cosy warmth of their great tunnel cities. He informed them that the subterranean warren cities of their realm, connected by tunnels as wide as motorways and hundreds of miles long, were assembling an army of forty thousand that would be ready to march out to the terror of the Shadowhosts within a couple of weeks.

     This news was greeted with great joy by most of the delegates sitting around the table, but Resalintas was sceptical, remembering the trogs’ account of themselves in the last war. In their own tunnels, which had ceilings so low that an average sized human could not stand upright inside them, the trogs were terrifying opponents whom few people would be brave or foolish enough to want to fight, but out in the open, where a human’s greater height and reach counted for more than the trogs’ legendary stamina and constitution, the short, stocky demihumans stood little chance in an even fight. Even so, though, an army of forty thousand trogs was not to be sneezed at, and every contribution was welcome.

     No-one else was yet involved in the war, since Belthar, Fu Nang and the Great Lake, between them, completely surrounded the Shadowlands and the enemy could not attack any other lands until it had found a way of breaching one or another of these obstacles. The Calmanian delegate stood up, however, and told the council that they had observed Shadowsoldiers practicing sailing in boats around the edges of the Great Lake, and that they suspected the enemy to be preparing a great armada of fighting ships and troop carriers, something they had never done before, in which case no nation on or in the Great Lake would be safe.

     The other Calmanian delegate then stood and added that they believed that the pakin-kho, an evil, aquatic race who inhabited the Great Lake, had come into the possession of several hundred potions of elemental control, and that they suspected them of having formed an alliance with the Shadowhosts, for what purpose, no-one knew. The combination of pakin-kho and Shadowsoldiers, however, was terrifying to the Calmanians, the Morlanders and the Nilanders, who envisaged an army of water elementals rising out of the lake and up the beaches like a forest of colossal waterspouts, sweeping away their shore defences and clearing the way for a Shadowhost sea landing. Once they had a bridgehead on the lake’s southern coast, there would be nothing to stand in their way until they reached Samnia, and after that, the great shae nations.

     Resalintas wasn’t so sure, though. “I don’t think you need have any immediate fear,” he told the lakeshore dwellers. “I doubt that the Shadowlord will want to open a third front until he’s sure of his victory over Belthar and Fu Nang.”

     “Then what’s he going to do with his armada, assuming he has one?” asked the senior Calmanian delegate. “He must be planning to attack someone on the lake. Who, if not us?”

     “Us,” said Lanaris flatly. “He’s going to attack Pargonn, and try to wipe out the Fellowship.”

     Resalintas nodded gravely. “It makes sense,” he said. “Why would he want to attack Calmany, or Morland or Niland or any of the other nations and city states around the Great Lake? Once Belthar and Fu Nang have fallen, they’ll be his to take any time he wants. The destruction of the Fellowship, on the other hand, would be a great victory for him, and a major blow to us. Just think what he could do with the teleportation network, never mind anything else.”

     “Let him come!” said the dor-maja, speaking for the first time with a deep, rumbling voice. “I and my siblings will be waiting for him, as will my friends, the royal dragons, and our island’s human defenders. Our wizards, priests and paladins. We are not entirely defenceless, Captain.”