Cloak of Titans

By Jonathan Moeller

The point of no return is here.

My name is Nadia, and I'm a Marshal of the High Queen of the Elves.

That means it's my job to keep the peace between the humans, Elven commoners, and Elven nobles under my command.

So when one of the Elven nobles pushes things too far, it might mean civil war between the High Queen and the rebel nobles.

But the civil war is itself a trap because the malignant wizards of Singularity have been preparing for this moment for a very, very long time...

...and their deadliest weapons are ready.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Moeller
• Release date: May 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224235797

Jonathan Moeller

Standing over six feet tall, Jonathan Moeller has the piercing blue eyes of a Conan of Cimmeria, the bronze-colored hair of a Visigothic warrior-king, and the stern visage of a captain of men, none of which are useful in his career as a computer repairman, alas.He has written the "Demonsouled" trilogy of sword-and-sorcery novels, and continues to write the "Ghosts" sequence about assassin and spy Caina Amalas, the "$0.99 Beginner's Guide" series of computer books, and numerous other works.Visit his website at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.comVisit his technology blog at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed

Book preview

1

INEVITABLE

Today I’m going to tell you how I caused a civil war.

I wish it hadn’t happened the way it did.

I look back and wonder what I should have done differently.

If there was anything I could have even done differently. If I had been smarter and stronger, maybe I could have avoided it. Or if I had been more merciful.

Or if I had been more ruthless and killed a lot of people when I had a chance

Maybe I should have just walked away.

Do you want to know what the worst part is?

I don’t think I could have done anything different. I couldn’t have made better choices.

Perhaps there never was any other way.

The trouble began on May 19th, Conquest Year 319.

Or it actually began way before that. Like the first time the Army of the Great Gate repulsed the orcs of Rakh Torbal, and Warlord Kaldraxar took that personally. Or when I helped Morvilind destroy the Archons, and Singularity decided that the time was right to return and conquer Earth and Kalvarion. Or when Duke Vashtyr decided that the Elven nobles ought to return to Kalvarion and reimpose serfdom on the Elven commoners.

Or it began when the High Queen and the Elves conquered Earth.

See, that’s why I hate history so much. It’s never over. It keeps coming back to haunt me, and it feels personal. Someone made a decision three hundred years before I was even freaking born, and the consequences keep turning up to bite me in the ass.

Maybe in a thousand years, someone will be mad about the decisions I made.

But May 19th, Conquest Year 319.

The decisions I made that day had some serious consequences.

I was in my office at Fort Casey reviewing the endless streams of reports that went to the Marshal of the Great Gate. A few years earlier, when I had become the Marshal, the Army of the Great Gate had been a couple of hundred guys, and Fort Casey had been a warehouse. Now I presided over a military organization with thousands of people. I even had a newly built town under my authority – Gate City – where the people who worked at the Gate complex could live without contributing to the endless traffic snarl. Gate City even had its own newly-elected sheriff and council to handle their affairs without my intervention.

The Great Gate, the endless flow of commerce through it, the shipping complex, Gate City, the Army of the Great Gate, all of it was my responsibility.

If I stopped to think about it too much, it became overwhelming. How the hell had all this happened? A few years ago, I had been stealing things for Morvilind and trying to find enough money to pay my rent. How had I gone from that to a Marshal of the High Queen?

But I knew how it happened, didn’t I? Morvilind and the Mage Fall. Nicholas Connor and the Sky Hammer. Sergio Cortez and the Crystalmorph.

The Eternity Crucible.

No, don’t think about that.

I had become one of those people who stayed busy to keep my mind from starting to chew on itself. Maybe I always had been, even before the Eternity Crucible, and I was just more aware of it now.

Anyway, with the help of my husband, Sir Trandor, Lady Terynda, Beauregard Byrd, and some excellent advice from Duke Tamirlas and Duke Carothrace, I had assembled a good team to help me run this place. I could delegate a lot of stuff. That said, there were always still a lot of things that required my personal attention.

As I mentioned, I often did not feel suited to the job, but I never walked away from it because I didn’t think anyone else would do it as well.

I’m aware that’s a contradiction, thank you.

I was reading a report about the construction of the new permanent barracks when my desktop phone rang.

That shook me out of my thoughts, and I looked around my office. Despite all the growth at Fort Casey over the last several years, I still had my original office with its unadorned concrete floor and its hastily installed walls. The room had a single window that looked towards the parking lot, though my security team had insisted on replacing it with bulletproof glass. Three guest chairs sat before my desk since I frequently had meetings in here. Three monitors rested on my desk, showing a combination of reports and camera feeds from the fort’s security cameras.

It occurred to me that my former master Lord Morvilind had frequently worked at a desk with three monitors. I wondered if I had gotten the habit from him and decided that I would really rather not know.

I picked up the phone’s handset. Hello?

Marshal, this is Lieutenant Alderson at the main gate, said a man’s voice. Goblin King arrived through a rift way thirty seconds ago with four others. I repeat, Goblin King has arrived through a rift way.

Goblin King referred to Krathamyn, the chieftain of a goblin tribe that I had coerced into the service of the Marshal of the Great Gate. I hadn’t assigned him a code name, but Byrd had nicknamed him Goblin King, and the name had spread through the Army of the Great Gate. I didn’t know if Krathamyn knew about it or not.

Considering Krathamyn wasn’t an actual monarch but a brigand chief, he ought to have been flattered.

The arrangement had been mutually beneficial. Between their keen sense of smell and ability to sense aetheric currents, goblins could navigate the Shadowlands with great skill while avoiding the many, many dangerous creatures that lurked there. Krathamyn warned us when raiders from the Shadowlands targeted the Great Gate, and we paid his tribe a stipend so he wouldn’t steal from us.

When Krathamyn showed up out of the blue, it meant one of two things. Either he was going to try to negotiate for more money (again), or he had come to warn us of an impending attack.

It might be both at the same time.

Okay, I said. Please tell him that I’m on my way and will be there shortly. Give him and his soldiers some of the jerky and beer from the supply room. Since I was technically Krathamyn’s overlord and he was my vassal, I was obliged to serve him food whenever he showed up. After some experimentation, we discovered that goblins really liked Brauner Farms brand beef jerky and draft beer.

Acknowledged, said Alderson, and the call ended.

I started to reach for the phone’s keypad, intending to call someone to ask Riordan to join me at the front gate, but stopped, annoyed at myself. Had I really been Marshal for so long that I had gotten in the habit of ordering people to do things I ought to do myself? I put down my desk phone, picked up one of my cell phones, and tapped the contact icon for Riordan.

He picked up on the second ring. Everything all right? His deep voice, with a hint of Texas twang, always reassured me when I heard it.

So far, I said. Are you free? Krathamyn just showed up at the front gate.

That can’t be good. He paused and said something to someone else. I’ll be there shortly. Sir Trandor is coming as well.

Trandor had been an Elven knight for longer than the United States had existed as a nation, and in the course of his long life, he had dealt with goblins many times. Something of his fearsome reputation as the Master of Illusions had made its way to the goblin tribes because Krathamyn lost some of his braggadocio while Trandor was around.

The goblins might have been able to sense aetheric currents, but that wouldn’t do them any good against an illusionist of Trandor’s skill.

Trandor’s always welcome to come to a goblin party, I said. Though I think he’d rather be anywhere else.

I believe, Riordan said, that Sir Trandor said intimidating goblins is one of the few pleasures left at his age. I heard Sir Trandor say something exasperated-sounding in the background.

Then let’s not deny him, I said. Meet you at the front gate in a few minutes.

We said that we loved each other, and then I ended the call. I left my office, walked through the outer office, where several corporals and hired administrators handled the endless correspondence and paperwork required of a Marshal of the High Queen, and headed outside. Fort Casey was large enough that we had a lot of ruggedized four-wheel drive electric carts to get around in a hurry. At least that was what they were technically called – they looked like chunky golf carts. Serving as the Marshal was frequently onerous, but it did have some perks, and one of them was that I got to reserve a cart all to myself. Lower-ranking officers in the Army of the Great Gate were sometimes just out of luck if they wanted a cart.

I drove across the fort at a good clip, the cart’s wheels whirring beneath the asphalt. It made me miss my motorcycle, but I hadn’t taken it out yet this year. The snow had cleared up a little during the embassy from Nerzuramaxis a few months earlier, but then a lot more snow had dumped onto Wisconsin and most of the Midwest. At the end of May, it had only just started melting, and there were still big snowbanks piled near both the prefabricated buildings and the more permanent ones.

A short drive took me to the front gate of Fort Casey, which consisted of four lanes for traffic and a fortified gate booth that looked less like a toll booth and more like a fortified bunker. The guards let me pass, and I spotted another cart just outside. My husband Riordan waited in the driver’s seat, Sir Trandor sitting next to him. I slowed to a halt, and Riordan pointed.

Despite the need for space at both Fort Casey and the Great Gate complex, I had left clear land for a good distance around the massive security fence that marked the boundary of the fort. The Army of the Great Gate needed space to stage and maneuver when necessary. That, and if the warehouses and truck lots of the Gate complex came right up to the fort’s fence, it would be a security nightmare.

We had covered the area of the fort with Seals of Shadows to prevent incursions from the Shadowlands, which meant Krathamyn and his entourage usually popped out of their rift ways in the fields around the fort. I spotted the distant figures of Krathamyn and several of his goblin warriors watched over by some of the men from the front gate. I nodded to Riordan, and we drove over the muddy grass until we were a few yards from the goblins.

We got out of the carts, and I looked at Riordan. Or looked up at him since he was at least a foot taller than I was. And a lot wider in the shoulders. Which could be a lot of fun under the right circumstances (like, when we were alone together behind a locked door), but it also helped make him one of the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters I had ever seen.

Sir Trandor waited next to him, leaning on his cane. Elves lived a lot longer than humans, and they didn’t show the signs of age as much as we did. Which meant that Trandor was one of the oldest Elves I had ever met. Deep lines scored his face, his hair was a white mane, and sometimes a tremor went through his hands.

I had learned a lot from him over the last year. I was one of the strongest human wizards on Earth and a match for many Elven nobles in terms of raw power, but my magical education had been haphazard. Morvilind had taught me only spells that would make me useful to his goals. Arvalaeon had taught me spells for the same reason and then thrown me into the Eternity Crucible. I had picked up other spells along the way, sometimes from friends, sometimes stealing them from enemies, but Trandor was the first Elven noble who had taken the time to teach me.

Most of his lessons involved subtlety. I had enough magical strength that I could do the equivalent of punching my way out of most situations, but that didn’t always work. Conserving my strength and using it as little as possible in a fight gave me a greater chance of winning.

Because I knew I was going to fight Maestro again someday.

Thanks for coming, I said. Let’s go see what Krathamyn wants.

More money, no doubt, said Riordan.

Always, said Trandor, but he would not come here without reason.

I approached the goblins, Riordan and Trandor following me. Goblins look a little like orcs – the same blue skin and something similar about the shape of the skulls. There are more differences than similarities, though. Goblins are shorter and less bulky than orcs, and their noses and ears are larger. They have significantly keener senses than orcs and enjoy violence much less. When they fought, they preferred to do so from ambush and with overwhelming force to minimize risk.

I could relate. Fighting fair was for chumps.

Six of the goblins wore a mixture of chain mail and ballistic plates, swords on their belts, and crossbows and rifles slung over their shoulders. They held bottles of beer and bags of Brauner Farms beef jerky. Krathamyn stood in their midst. He wore the same kind of armor though his was more expensive, and he had golden rings glittering in his pointed ears and his nose. The goblin chieftain also had a hideous golden cloak that looked like something a professional wrestler would wear while walking to the ring. From what I had learned of goblins, they considered shiny ostentation a sign of authority, power, and, to use the politest possible term, male potency.

My lord Krathamyn, I said in the Elven tongue.

Marshal, said Krathamyn in his watery voice. You smell like you have drunk too much coffee.

He was probably right.

What brings you to Wisconsin? I said.

Bah, said Krathamyn. I don’t know why you opened the Great Gate here. In winter it is too cold, in summer it is too hot. He paused to shove some jerky in his mouth. You should have opened it somewhere else. Like California, or maybe Italy.

How did he know about Italy? Never mind.

Lord Morvilind chose to open the Great Gate here, I said. Would you have wanted to argue with him about it? The thought of Krathamyn arguing with the Magebreaker was hilarious. Or really dark. Also implausible, since Krathamyn’s survival sense was far too honed for him to have ever come anywhere near Kaethran Morvilind.

Not particularly, said Krathamyn.

But I don’t think you came to Fort Casey to complain about the Wisconsin weather, I said.

No. Goblins were alien enough from humans that I sometimes had trouble reading their expressions, but I had gotten better at it, and I could see Krathamyn’s emotional aura anyway. I have bad news. The orcs of Rakh Torbal are preparing to attack Fort Casey.

Another raid? I said. The orcs of Rakh Torbal often tried to steal some of the endless flow of goods that moved through the Great Gate between Earth and Kalvarion. The Army of the Great Gate had repulsed many of those raids, though sometimes the orcs got away with valuable cargoes. An entirely new category of commercial insurance had been created to cover losses inflicted by raiders attacking the Gate complex.

But the conflict had grown worse because Warlord Kaldraxar of Rakh Torbal was a vengeful asshole. For one thing, the defeated raids enraged him. For another, I had done a couple of things that his anger-addled brain interpreted as personal insults. I was friends with the dragon Delaxsicoria, which offended Kaldraxar since he had a grudge against Delaxsicoria’s late uncle Malthraxivorn.

Kaldraxar was also unhappy because I had accepted Krathamyn as a vassal, and he had several grievances against Krathamyn’s tribe because they kept stealing his stuff.

The Warlord’s biggest problem with me had occurred earlier in the year when the embassy from the dwarves of Nerzuramaxis arrived at Fort Casey. The dwarves had defeated some of Kaldraxar’s raids, and he decided to get vengeance by wiping out the dwarven embassy. The Army of the Great Gate had repulsed the attack, and Kaldraxar had decided to blame me, personally, for that.

There hadn’t been any attacks from Rakh Torbal since then, which made me uneasy, because it meant that Kaldraxar was busy preparing a nasty surprise.

No, said Krathamyn. Bigger than a raid. Much bigger. We think he wants to burn Fort Casey to the ground. Sends a message, you know?

Man. The thing about being a pessimist is that it sucks to be right all the time.

How many soldiers, Lord Krathamyn? said Trandor.

Krathamyn gave Trandor a wary glance but answered the question. About three thousand. They are staging in the Shadowlands away from the Warded Ways, so the servants of your High Queen have not detected them. They have numerous battle wizards with them, and they have brought heavy weapons.

What kind of weapons? said Riordan.

Guns. Like, big guns. The sort you have to assemble on a wagon, said Krathamyn.

Artillery, supplied one of the goblin warriors.

I knew that, said Krathamyn with annoyance.

Firearms didn’t work in the Shadowlands. Which meant that Kaldraxar intended to bring his artillery weapons to Earth, set them up, and start raining shells on Fort Casey. Or on the Gate Complex or Gate City. The area around the Great Gate had been so built up that Kaldraxar’s gunners wouldn’t need to be all that accurate to kill a lot of people.

How long do we have until they attack? I said.

Krathamyn shrugged. A day. Maybe two. They’re in a big hurry. They know the High Queen’s Inquisition will eventually figure out they’re hiding in Earth’s umbra. Krathamyn offered a toothy grin. Goblin teeth were very sharp. But the orcs aren’t clever enough to catch us. We know they’re coming for you, and now you can set up a big nasty surprise for them.

Yeah, I said, thinking hard. For the entire time I had been Marshal of the Great Gate, we had been on the defensive. Orcish raiders popped out from the Shadowlands, we slapped them back, and on and on the cycle went. We were always on the back foot.

But maybe now we had a chance to turn it around.

Kaldraxar was vengeful and a bit irrational, but he wasn’t stupid. If we could inflict a big enough loss on him, he might decide to focus his attention on other grudges. Otherwise, his soldiers might conclude that someone else ought to take up the mantle of the Warlord of Rakh Torbal.

And if the orcs of Rakh Torbal ended up having an internal power struggle, that would take off a lot of pressure on the Army of the Great Gate.

What are your commands, Marshal? said Trandor, speaking formally for the benefit of Krathamyn and his warriors.

Lord Krathamyn, I said. I think you and your scouts will need to stay at Fort Casey for a few days.

His dark eyes narrowed. What? Why? I don’t want to. And how much extra compensation will we receive?

I answered the questions in the order he would care about them. We will negotiate an extra rate of pay. I will want you and your scouts to lead us to Kaldraxar’s forces in the Shadowlands. I cut him off before he could protest. I don’t expect you to fight, and you can remain hidden. But I intend to give Kaldraxar a bloody nose and make him look bad in front of his soldiers. He wants to kill you just as badly as he wants to kill me, remember.

Like I would forget, muttered Krathamyn.

You will find this is well within the scope of your vassalage agreement, I said. And if we discourage Rakh Torbal from future raids, your life will be easier. You’ll still get paid the same but for a lot less work. And maybe you won’t have to sleep with one eye open in case Kaldraxar decides to come after you personally.

Goblins are too clever to be ambushed, said Krathamyn. Which was entirely untrue, since I had bullied him into my service after rescuing him from one of Kaldraxar’s ambushes. But this plan seems wise to me. We shall accept lodging at Fort Casey for now.

Great, I said, turning to Riordan and Sir Trandor. Let’s find a place for our guests to stay, and then we need to have a meeting. Maybe we can discourage Kaldraxar from attacking the Gate complex ever again.

Krathamyn opened a rift way and brought over more of his scouts, and we installed the goblins in one of the prefabricated barracks. I put Lady Terynda in charge of making sure they were fed, which wasn’t that difficult since goblins just wanted more beer and beef jerky, along with some ranch tortilla chips.

I called together the chief officers of the Army of the Great Gate to plan our attack.

We met in one of the conference rooms in the main building, not far from my office. Riordan was there, as was Sir Trandor since both the commoner Elves and the noble Elves respected him. Beauregard Byrd, who was in command of the military police, and Colonel Nash, who commanded the quick response force, both came as well. Consul Harmathyr, who served as both the mayor and the military commander of the Elven free city of Castaris, also attended since he was in overall charge of the Elven militia soldiers from Castaris who served in the Army of the Great Gate.

Two Elven nobles who currently served as officers in the Army of the Great Gate sat on the other side of the table.

Harmathyr kept glaring at them.

Baron Telomar of Port St. Lucie looked back and forth between the others. He had silver hair and brilliant purple eyes, but despite that, he looked a bit nebbish. Since he had gotten married to Duke Curantar’s daughter Valtyra, he had found a bit more confidence. He divided his time between Duke Curantar in Miami and serving as the chief auditor of the Army of the Great Gate. Given how many times contractors tried to cheat us, sometimes in subtle ways like delivering ninety boxes of bandages when we bought a hundred, his help had been invaluable.

Harmathyr didn’t glare at him very much. Harmathyr hated Elven nobles, but Telomar was too competent and inoffensive to really inspire much dislike.

Most of Harmathyr’s ire was reserved for Rymaris, the Baron of Treviso and vassal of Duke Vashtyr of Venice.

Duke Vashtyr, who wanted to abandon Earth, return the Elven nobles to Kalvarion, and reimpose serfdom on the Elven commoners…and he wanted that so badly he was willing to ally with Singularity to get it.

Like Telomar, Baron Rymaris had purple eyes, but that was where the resemblance ended. He had thick black hair, and while Elven features always looked a bit alien to humans, I could tell that Rymaris was the more handsome of the two, along with being taller and possessing wider shoulders. Height and wide shoulders were generally attractive in a human man, and the same ran true among Elves. Unlike Telomar, who was more self-effacing than he should have been, Rymaris possessed unyielding arrogance. He disdained humans as little more than semi-civilized apes and thought the Elven commoners ought to be reduced to serfdom. Rymaris had aggravated Harmathyr to the point where I had given the Baron a direct order (notarized and everything) not to do it anymore. I hoped Rymaris would disobey because it would give me an excuse to dismiss him from the Army of the Great Gate.

The Baron was too clever for that. Which was why Vashtyr had sent him here, after all. The political realities of the discord between the High Queen and Duke Vashtyr’s faction meant that Vashtyr had been able to insist that one of his supporters serve as an officer at Fort Casey. So the Duke had sent Rymaris here to undermine me and wait for me to screw up badly enough that Vashtyr could make an issue out of it.

That hadn’t happened yet.

I’m not claiming I’m some sort of conniving genius who was smart enough to stay two steps ahead in the political game. Rymaris was a good officer, but he wasn’t a conniving genius, either. Despite that, he knew where the red lines were, and he was smart enough not to cross them. He had complained and undermined and griped constantly, but he had never done anything that would give me iron-clad justification for dismissing him. Because if I dismissed Rymaris without adequate cause, he would go back to Duke Vashtyr and complain, and the Duke would pitch an epic shit fit which would only make things worse.

So Lord Rymaris and I had a sort of uneasy truce. He hadn’t violated any direct orders, and I hadn’t thrown him out of the Army of the Great Gate. But I knew that he was looking for a way to sabotage me, and he knew that I was looking for an excuse to dismiss him and send him back to Italy.

Fun situation, right?

All right, guys, I said. I suppose I could have said something inspiring, but that wasn’t my strength. We’ve got a problem and an opportunity. Sir Trandor?

Lord Krathamyn has brought us a report, said Trandor.

Rymaris’s mouth twisted. The goblin filth.

His reports have been accurate so far, said Trandor mildly. Rymaris shut up – Sir Trandor had enough prestige that even Rymaris didn’t want to challenge him. And I fear that Lord Krathamyn’s reports are accurate. The orcs of Rakh Torbal are gathering in Earth’s umbra. Warlord Kaldraxar intends to strike hard and fast and burn Fort Casey to the ground.

Telomar raised his hand to speak, and I nodded at him. I had tried to train him out of that habit, but I hadn’t managed it yet. Shouldn’t the Inquisition have detected them on the Warded Ways?

The orcs have been smart enough to avoid the Warded Ways through Earth’s umbra, I said. That is much more dangerous, but if you’ve got several thousand orcish soldiers, you can do it.

Several thousand? said Colonel Nash. He was a wiry, compact man with a stern expression. He hadn’t liked me very much at first, and I still don’t think he liked me very much, but we had been through enough shit together that he respected me. How many are we expecting?

At least thirty-five hundred, I said. Maybe four thousand.

Beauregard Byrd let out a low whistle. That’s the biggest group we’ve faced here yet. He was a big man with gunmetal blue eyes and a well-trimmed blond mustache. Byrd looked like a western sheriff, and to be fair, he had been a sheriff in Montana when I had recruited him for Fort Casey. That’s less of a raid and more of an invading force.

Which is why we’re going to take the fight to them before they show up here, I said. Sir Trandor.

We have one significant advantage, said Trandor. Lord Krathamyn’s scouts have spotted Kaldraxar’s force and warned us about it. But the orcs don’t know that we know they’re coming.

Rymaris frowned. Are we certain of that?

Entirely, I said.

That goblin brigand might be dealing falsely with the Army of the Great Gate, said Rymaris. They are master deceivers and can easily fool the simple-minded and the credulous.

The subtext, of course, was that I was one of the simple-minded who had been fooled by Krathamyn’s clever lies. Which was amusing, because while Krathamyn was many things, a gift for subtle deception was not among his talents.

We’ve opened rift ways and scouted it ourselves, said Riordan. "Krathamyn’s reports are accurate. There is no doubt that Kaldraxar is preparing a massive attack on