“More than we thought!” Ivan bellowed.
Cadderly held his spindle-disks and his walking stick close, hoping he wouldn’t be forced to use them. He looked around frantically, expecting and fearing that Dorigen would make her appearance, and tried to keep the spell of silence in his thoughts through the growing tumult around him.
Danica and Elbereth widened the gap ahead of Cadderly, and Ivan and Pikel were fully engaged in combat right behind him. He turned then turned back, and looked all around as the bugbears—even more poured from the tents—began to surround the small group.
Neither Elbereth nor Danica paid any heed to the events behind them. Their goal was in plain sight, and their strides quickened when a burly, brutish monster stepped from the fine tent. Both knew at once that it was Ragnor come to meet them, huge and terrible and with that telltale single tusk sticking up over his lip.
Standing at the very top of the ridge, the ogrillon grinned wickedly and beckoned them on.
Danica realized they would not get to him, though. A group of three bugbears closed from the side, and the monsters’ angle would put them between their leader and the attackers. Danica was confident that she could outdistance them if she ran full stride, but Elbereth would have no chance of getting to Ragnor.
“Run on!” she cried to the elf as she veered to the side to meet the interceptors.
She started in high, forcing the monsters to raise their spears, then dived to the grass and slid sideways, clipping their feet and sending all three tumbling down around her.
Elbereth’s first instincts were to go to her, caught in the middle of such powerful enemies, but the elf continued his course, realizing that Danica had made the move for his benefit and reminding himself that their lives were not important when weighed against the potential gains of destroying Ragnor.
If the ogrillon was afraid, he didn’t show it.
Elbereth came fast and hard, his sword weaving and thrusting, using his momentum to get in strikes too quickly for Ragnor to defend.
Blood oozed from the monster’s shoulder. Another gash lined one cheek. Still Ragnor grinned, and Elbereth’s charging advantage quickly played itself out.
It was the ogrillon’s turn.
Cadderly had never seen such brilliant teamwork before. The dwarf brothers held the higher ground, but that still didn’t bring them close to eye level with gigantic bugbears, and they were outnumbered two to one.
That hardly seemed to matter.
Ivan cut a crossing swipe with his axe, not close to hitting the mark. A bugbear waded in behind them then Cadderly understood the dwarf’s attack to be no more than a feint, drawing the monster in. Pikel suddenly broke from his own fight and followed up his brother’s swing with a low thrust from his tree-trunk club.
The lunging bugbear’s knee snapped backward—Cadderly thought that it resembled the gait of an exotic bird he had once read about—and the monster fell away, writhing in agony.
Ivan, meanwhile, had not been idle. He went with the momentum of his powerful cut, stepping beside his dipping brother and taking Pikel’s place with the other two monsters. The surprised bugbears hardly seemed to comprehend what had happened—the dwarves’ movements were so in harmony—and they didn’t understand the difference in that dwarf’s fighting style. They kept their arms extended, a proper style for defending against Pikel’s wide-armed club swings, but thoroughly useless against Ivan’s sheer ferocity.
The dwarf charged inside their long reach, butting with his antlered head, biting, kicking with his heavy boots, and waggling his double-bladed axe through a series of short chops.
One of them was down, the other running away, before Cadderly had even remembered to draw a breath.
“Oo!” Pikel howled with appreciation seeing his brother make such quick work of the two, and purposely turning his back on his remaining bugbear in the process.
“Behind you!” Cadderly cried, not knowing that the dwarf knew what he was doing.
The bugbear raised its spear over its head and leaped, but Pikel dipped low and rushed backward, slamming his back into the monster’s knees. The bugbear barely caught its balance and didn’t go headlong over the dwarf, but it would have been better off if it had. Pikel dropped down to one knee, held his club on its narrow end, and drove it straight up between the bugbear’s legs, heaving the creature from the ground.
By the time the bugbear came back down, still standing but quite winded, Pikel was behind the monster and had realigned his grip on the club. The dwarf stepped into his swing with all his bulky weight, slamming the bugbear in the lower back.
The breathless monster tried to howl, and when that didn’t work, it settled instead for slumping to its knees, clutching its blasted back and watching the world spin.
“Wish we had the time to finish a few of these,” Ivan grumbled as he and Pikel moved higher up the hill.
Many more bugbears came at them from both sides, and cries of alarm continued to sound, and not just on the grassy slope.
Cadderly clutched his weapons and continued his scan for Dorigen, though he was beginning to understand that the missing wizard was the least of their problems.
Every bugbear strike seemed to be just an inch behind the scrambling woman, and whatever contorted position Danica had to put herself into to avoid the attacks, she seemed quite able to launch her own.
One bugbear yelped in glee, thinking it had finally caught up to its prey, only to catch Danica’s foot squarely in the face.
Danica sprang to her feet, a bugbear kneeling before her. She envisioned it as a block of stone and slammed her head into the monster’s chest. Ribs—a dozen, perhaps—snapped apart, but they did so with a single sickening crack.
Then there were two.
“One more elf head for my trophy wall!” Ragnor laughed.
Elbereth got his shield up to block the ogrillon’s heavy sword, but his arm went numb under the sheer weight of that incredibly powerful blow.
“You’ll look fine next to your kinfolk!” Ragnor boasted, wiggling his elf-ear necklace for his adversary to see.
Thinking Elbereth distracted by the gruesome sight, Ragnor stepped in. Elbereth, horrified indeed, managed to skip back from the ogrillon’s strike, though he slipped on the thick grass and nearly went to one knee. He came up fast instead, stepping within Ragnor’s follow-up attack and driving his sword into the ogrillon’s thigh. A fine counter, except that Ragnor’s free hand grabbed the elf as he passed, and with tremendous strength, hurled Elbereth backward and to the ground.
The heavy sword sliced at him but buried itself halfway to the hilt into the soft ground as Elbereth rolled aside.
The elf climbed back to his feet as Ragnor withdrew his sword. Elbereth took a quick glance around and saw that all sides seemed to be caving in on his companions. If he was to gain any semblance of a victory, he would have to strike Ragnor quickly. When he took a quick survey of the ogrillon, though, that didn’t seem likely. Speed and agility were on Elbereth’s side, but Ragnor could take anything Elbereth could throw his way. Defeating the brute would require time, plenty of time, to wear the heavier monster down, nicking and jabbing until Ragnor’s blood ran from a hundred grazing wounds.
“Damn you,” Elbereth muttered, and with all his world at stake, the valiant elf launched himself at Ragnor. He hacked once with his sword then, when he was too close to use the long blade, punched fiercely with the weapon’s gem-encrusted hilt.
“No time!” Ivan bellowed, seeing that his plan could not succeed with so many bugbears, goblins, and a host of newly-arrived orogs appearing from all around the base of the ridge. He turned to Pikel and winked. “Second choice!”
“Oo oi!” Pikel heartily agreed.
Cadderly was about to ask what “second choice” might mean, when Pikel rushed right up to him, and right through him, barreling along up the hill with the stunned young scholar firmly in tow.
Ragnor and Elbereth held their deadly embrace. The elf’s
punches had bent the ogrillon’s porcine snout every which way and lines of thick blood covered the monster’s face. Still Ragnor maintained his fiendish grin.
Finally, one huge hand clamped onto the back of the elf’s neck, and Elbereth was hauled out to arm’s length. They were still too close for any effective sword strikes, but Ragnor’s sword arm, held at the wrist by Elbereth’s shield hand, hovered dangerously above the elf’s head. Elbereth feared that the ogrillon would overpower him and drive his sword hilt down onto Elbereth’s head.
The elf’s fears trebled as Ragnor pushed a hidden catch on his weapon’s crosspiece and a second blade, a gleaming stiletto, protruded from the bottom of his sword, its wicked tip just an inch from Elbereth’s head.
Elbereth struggled wildly, kicking Ragnor repeatedly about the knees and groin. The ogrillon only grinned and forced his huge arm down.
Something slammed into Elbereth’s side. He saw the sudden confusion on Ragnor’s face then the world went flying about him. He hit the waist-deep river hard, twisting an ankle and a knee in the process then he understood, for he heard Ivan griping and water gurgling.
“You pulled me from my battle!” Elbereth roared as he grabbed his sword. “I could have—”
“Died,” Ivan finished for him, though that wasn’t exactly what the elf had had in mind. “Stop yer whining, elf,” said the dwarf with a derisive chuckle. “And get me helmet, would ye?”
Elbereth blustered and growled, looking for a retort. To Ivan’s obvious surprise, though, the prince reached over and scooped the half-floating helmet from the water, even hopping a few steps downstream to recover one of the antlers, which had come loose.
Cadderly flew over the precipice next, backstepping, his scrambling feet barely able to keep up at the end of Pikel’s thick club. Both man and dwarf hit the river just a few feet from their companions. Cadderly came up spitting a stream of water and sputtering in shock. He kept enough wits about him to pull his precious pack above the water and fish out his short, stunned companion’s head.
Pikel tried to squeak his thanks but wound up sending a stream of water into Cadderly’s eye instead. The dwarf shrugged meekly and smiled.
“There she is!” they heard Ivan cry, and they looked up to see Danica spinning over the edge. The incredible monk half-ran, half-fell down the bank, grabbing for root-holds with one hand but holding her other arm, her wounded arm, tight against her body. Somewhere in the fight, Danica had reopened the arrow wound, and the sleeve and side of her tunic were stained crimson.
She managed her controlled descent, though, coming lightly into the water at the river’s edge and easily outdistancing the two bugbears that pursued her. The monsters came on stubbornly, gingerly searching for handholds as they made their way down.
A hail of arrows whistled out of the trees beyond the far bank, every shot scoring a direct hit on the vulnerable monsters. Danica had to duck aside as the two hairy forms came crashing down.
There would be no cheers from the companions, though, for another arrow whistled from the trees, burying itself into Ivan’s leg and sending the startled dwarf spinning to the ground. Before Ivan could begin to recover, fine swords landed heavily on his shoulders, one against either side of his thick, but quite vulnerable, neck.
“Uh-oh,” muttered Pikel, who understood the misperceptions enough to slip behind the cover of Cadderly’s body.
SIXTEEN
ANCIENT WISDOM
Hold! Hold!” Elbereth cried, splashing from the river and shoving aside the two elves holding swords to Ivan’s throat. “He is no enemy!”
The proclamation caught Ivan by surprise. “Thank ye, elf,” he said, grimacing in pain with every word. The black-shafted arrow was nearly halfway through his thickly muscled thigh.
The two elves, thoroughly flummoxed, dipped their shoulders under Ivan’s arms and hoisted the dwarf the rest of the way from the river.
“Away, and quickly!” one of them said. “The enemy will cross after us if we remain in the open.”
None of the weary band had to be asked twice to leave, especially since they could still hear Ragnor above the din of the rushing waters, back out of sight over the ridge, wildly bellowing orders to his soldiers.
Elbereth, most of all, looked back at that ridge. Never before had the elf prince been bested in battle, yet for all his complaining at Ivan, Elbereth had to admit that if the dwarf had not torn him from the fight, Ragnor would have killed him.
The elf prince left the river with that dark thought in mind.
The elves’ encampment wasn’t formally a war camp. Rather, it was an area where the shadowy boughs of every tree seemed to hold an archer, grim-faced and ready should the enemy attempt to cross the river.
Elbereth and his companions were met in a small clearing by welcome faces, Shayleigh and Tintagel, two elves that the prince had feared slain at Daoine Dun. They offered no smiles as they walked over to join the companions. They frowned at the sight and smell of the dwarves.
“It is good that you have returned,” Shayleigh said, her melodic voice more somber than Elbereth ever remembered hearing it. He stared long and hard at her, just then beginning to understand the depth of the defeat at Daoine Dun.
“Many have died,” added Tintagel, similarly reserved.
Elbereth nodded. “Who tends the wounded?” he asked. “Lady Maupoissant’s arm requires a new dressing and my—” he looked at Ivan curiously for a moment—“my friend has taken an arrow.”
Ivan’s eyes widened at the elf prince’s proclamation of him as a friend.
“Wow,” breathed Pikel.
“Bah! It’s nothing, elf,” Ivan growled, but when he pulled away from his supporters and tried to take a step, he nearly swooned from the pain and found that the leg would not support him.
Danica was beside the dwarf in an instant, propping him with her good arm. “Come,” she said, straining a smile. “We will go to be tended together.”
“Two old and broken travelers, eh?” chuckled Ivan.
“Not as broken as the enemies we left behind,” Danica pointed out. She noticed that Shayleigh and Tintagel had not relinquished their frowns, and she nearly growled at them as she and Ivan walked past.
“The dwarves are to be treated as allies,” Elbereth ordered, “for that they are, and let no elf consider them otherwise.”
“By whose command?” came a voice from the side, which Elbereth recognized as his father’s before he ever turned to regard the king.
“Have you taken command of the forces?” Galladel snarled, moving to his son. “Is it your right to choose our alliances?”
Danica and Ivan stopped and turned to watch. Cadderly and Pikel didn’t blink, but Cadderly dropped a hand on Pikel’s shoulder to keep the dwarf calm as the elf king walked close by them.
Elbereth wasn’t convinced that his father’s outburst was even worthy of an answer, but he knew that the trouble would only increase if he didn’t face Galladel then and there.
“I did not believe we were in a favorable enough position to refuse help,” he said.
“I never claimed to help ye, elf,” barked Ivan, wanting to put the whole thing back into a perspective that his dwarf sensibilities could accept. “Me and me brother came to watch over Cadderly and Danica, not yerself!”
“Oo oi!” Pikel agreed.
“Indeed,” said Galladel, setting his stern glare upon one brother then the other. “Do watch over Cadderly and Danica, then, and keep out of the People’s way.”
“Father—” Elbereth began.
“And I will hear no arguments from you, Prince of Shilmista!” Galladel shouted. “Where were you when Daoine Dun was overrun? Where were you while the People were slaughtered?”
For the first time since he’d met Elbereth, Cadderly thought the prince looked very small. The young scholar looked past the elf to Danica, and saw that a wetness rimmed her almond eyes. No jealousy came over the young scholar, though, for he shared Danica’s sympathy. br />
“Go off again, if you so desire,” growled Galladel. “Then, perhaps, you will not be forced to watch our final moments, the destruction of our ancestral home.”
The elf king wheeled about and disappeared into the brush.
Elbereth stood long and silent in the deepening shadows.
“They’ll not attack at night,” Tintagel offered to the companions, hoping to break the grim mood.
“Darkness favors goblins,” Cadderly said, more to continue the conversation than to argue the point.
“Not in Shilmista,” the blue-eyed elf wizard replied, forcing a smile. “Our enemies have learned to fear the darkness here. They attack only during the day. Such was the case at Daoine Dun.…” Tintagel’s voice trailed away as he mentioned the fateful battle.
Elbereth said nothing. He didn’t lower his face, refusing to dip his proud chin, as he slowly walked away.
The night was unusually chilly for late summer, and Cadderly was allowed a fire far back from the front lines. He took up his light tube and the book of Dellanil Quil’quien and began his task at translating, determined to do what he might to help the elven cause. He became distracted soon after, though, by a night bird’s melodic cries a short distance away.
A thought came over Cadderly. He placed the ancient book down and recalled the spell of silence he had memorized earlier that day. It was not an easy spell, and Cadderly had known all along that casting it would challenge him. While he was glad that Dorigen had not appeared in Ragnor’s camp, he almost wished he’d found the opportunity to take that challenge.
“Why not?” the young scholar mused.
Cadderly slipped away from the fire, narrowing the light tube’s beam to better locate the bird. He recited the runes exactly, not sure of his inflection, but confident that he would omit no words from the prescribed chant. Several heartbeats passed then Cadderly felt a strange energy building within him.