Domes of Fire

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The Trolls are doomed,’ she said rather sadly, ‘and once they’re gone their Gods will be powerless.’

  ‘Why are the Trolls doomed?’

  ‘Because they can’t change, Sparhawk. We may not always like it, but that’s the way the world is. The creatures of this world must change – or die. That’s what happened to the Dawn-men. The Trolls supplanted them because they couldn’t change, and now it’s the turn of the Trolls. Their nature is such that they need a great deal of room. A lone Troll needs fifty or so square leagues of range, and he won’t share that range with any other Troll. There just isn’t enough room left for them any more. There are Elenes in the world now as well, and you’re cutting down trees to build your houses and to clear fields for your crops. The Trolls might have survived if they only had to live with Styrics. Styrics don’t chop trees down.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not that we’re really all that fond of trees. It’s just that we don’t have very good axes. When you Elenes discovered how to make steel, you doomed the Trolls – and their Gods.’

  ‘That lends some weight to the notion that the Troll-Gods may have allied themselves with someone else,’ Sephrenia noted. ‘If they can understand what’s happening, they’re probably getting desperate. Their survival depends on preserving the Trolls and their range.’

  Sparhawk grunted. ‘That might help to explain something that’s been bothering me,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’ Sephrenia asked him.

  ‘If there’s someone involved as well as the Troll-Gods, it might account for the differences I’ve been feeling. I’ve been getting this nagging sense that things aren’t quite the same as they were last time – jarring little discrepancies, if you take my meaning. The major discrepancy lies in the fact that these elaborate schemes with people like Drychtnath and Ayachin are just too subtle for the Troll-Gods to understand.’ He made a rueful face. ‘But that immediately raises another problem. How can this other one get the co-operation of the Troll-Gods if he can’t explain what he’s doing and why?’

  ‘Would it offend your pride if I offered you a simpler solution?’ Danae asked him.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘The Troll-Gods know that others are smarter than they are, and the one you call “our friend” has a certain hold over them. He can always cram them back into Bhelliom and let them spend several million years in that box on the sea-bottom if they don’t co-operate. Maybe he’s just telling them what he wants them to do without bothering to explain it to them. The rest of the time, he could just be letting them blunder around making noise. All that crashing through the bushes would certainly help conceal what he’s doing, wouldn’t it?’

  He stared at her for a long time. Then he laughed. ‘I love you, Aphrael,’ he said, lifting her in his arms and kissing her.

  ‘He’s such a nice boy,’ the little Goddess beamed to her sister.

  Two days later, the weather changed abruptly. Heavy clouds swept in off the Tamul sea several hundred odd leagues to the east, and the sky turned suddenly murky and threatening. To add to the gloom, one of those ‘breakdowns in communications’ so common in all government enterprises occurred. They reached a clan border marked by a several-hundred-yard-wide strip of open ground about noon only to find no escort awaiting them. The clan which had brought them this far could not cross that border, and, indeed, looked nervously back toward the safety of the forest.

  ‘There are bad feelings between these two clans, Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa advised gravely. ‘It is a serious breach of custom and propriety for either clan to come within five hundred paces of the line between them.’

  ‘Tell them to go on home, Atan Engessa,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘There are enough of us here to protect the queen, and we wouldn’t want to start a clan war just for the sake of maintaining appearances. The other clan should be along soon, so there’s no real danger.’

  Engessa looked a bit dubious, but he spoke with the leader of their escort, and the Atans gratefully melted back into the forest.

  ‘What now?’ Kalten asked.

  ‘How about some lunch?’ Sparhawk replied.

  ‘I thought you’d never think of that.’

  ‘Have the knights and the Peloi draw up around the carriage and get some cooking fires going. I’ll go tell Ehlana.’ He rode back to the carriage.

  ‘Where’s the escort?’ Mirtai asked brusquely. Now that she was an adult, Mirtai was even more commanding then she had been before.

  ‘I’m afraid they’re late,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘I thought we might as well have some lunch while we’re waiting for them.’

  ‘Absolutely splendid idea, Sparhawk,’ Emban beamed.

  ‘We thought you might approve, your Grace. The escort should be here by the time we finish eating.’

  They were not, however. Sparhawk paced back and forth, chafing at the delay, and his patience finally evaporated. ‘That’s it!’ he said loudly. ‘Let’s get ready to move out.’

  ‘We’re supposed to wait, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana told him.

  ‘Not out in the open like this, we’re not. And I’m not going to sit here for two days waiting for some Atan clan-chief to mull his way through a message.’

  ‘I think we’d better do as he says, friends,’ Ehlana told the others. ‘I know the signs, and my beloved’s beginning to grow short-tempered.’

  ‘-Er,’ Talen added.

  ‘You said what?’ Ehlana asked him.

  ‘Short-tempered-er. Sparhawk’s always short-tempered. It’s only a little worse now. You have to know him very well to be able to tell the difference.’

  ‘Are you short-tempered-er right now, love?’ she teased her husband.

  ‘I don’t think there is such a word, Ehlana. Let’s get ready and move on out. The road’s well-marked, so we can hardly get lost.’

  The trees beyond the open space were dark cedars with swooping limbs that brushed the ground and concealed everything more than a few yards back into the forest. The clouds rolling in from the east grew thicker and the light back among the trees grew dim. The air hung motionless and sultry, and the whine of mosquitoes seemed to grow louder as they rode deeper into the woods.

  ‘I love wearing armour in mosquito country,’ Kalten said gaily. ‘I have this picture of hordes of the little blood-suckers sitting around with teeny little hammers trying to pound their beaks straight again.’

  ‘They won’t really try to bite you through the steel, Sir Kalten,’ Zalasta told him. ‘They’re attracted by your smell, and I don’t think any living creature finds the smell of Elene armour all that appetising.’

  ‘You’re taking all the fun out of it, Zalasta.’

  ‘Sorry, Sir Kalten.’

  There was a rumble far off to the east.

  ‘The perfect end to a day gone sour,’ Stragen observed, ‘a nice rousing thunderstorm with lots of lightning, hail, driving rain and howling winds.’

  Then, echoing down some unseen canyon back in the forest there came a hoarse, roaring bellow. Almost immediately there came an answer from the opposite direction.

  Sir Ulath swore, biting off curses the way a dog tears at a piece of meat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Sparhawk demanded.

  ‘Didn’t you recognise it, Sparhawk?’ the Thalesian said. ‘You’ve heard it before – back at Lake Venne.’

  ‘What is it?’ Khalad asked apprehensively.

  ‘It’s a signal that it’s time for us to fort up! Those are Trolls out there!’

  CHAPTER 22

  ‘It’s not perfect, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring said a bit dubiously, ‘but I don’t think we’ve got time to look for anything better.’

  ‘He’s right about that, Sparhawk,’ Ulath agreed. ‘Time’s definitely a major concern right now.’

  The Peloi had ranged out into the surrounding forest in search of some defensible position. Given their nervousness about wooded terrain, Kring’s horsemen had displayed a great deal of courage in the search.

&nbs
p; ‘Can you give me some details?’ Sparhawk asked the shaved-headed Domi.

  ‘It’s a blind canyon, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring replied, nervously fingering the hilt of his sabre. ‘There’s a dried-up stream-bed running down the centre of it. From the look of it, I’d say that the stream runs full in the springtime. There seems to be a dry waterfall at the upper end. There’s a cave at the foot of the dry falls that should provide some protection for the women, and it’ll be a good place to defend if things get desperate.’

  ‘I thought they already were,’ Tynian noted.

  ‘How wide is the mouth of the canyon?’ Sparhawk asked intently.

  ‘The canyon mouth itself is maybe two hundred paces across,’ Kring told him, ‘but when you go back in a ways, it narrows down to about twenty paces. Then it widens out again into a sort of a basin where the falls are.’

  ‘The bad thing about a canyon is that you’re down in a hole,’ Kalten said. ‘It won’t take the Trolls too long to go up to the canyon rim and start throwing rocks down on our heads.’

  ‘Do we have any choice?’ Tynian asked him.

  ‘No, but I thought I’d point it out.’

  ‘There’s no place else?’ Sparhawk asked the Domi.

  ‘A few clearings,’ Kring shrugged. ‘A hill or two that I could spit over.’

  ‘It looks like it’s the canyon then,’ Sparhawk said grimly. ‘We’d better get there and start putting up some sort of fortification across that narrow place.’

  They gathered closely around the carriage and pushed their way into the forest. The carriage jolted over the rough ground, and on several occasions fallen logs had to be dragged out of the way. After about five hundred yards, though, the ground began to slope upward and the trees thinned out.

  Sparhawk pulled Faran in beside the carriage.

  ‘There’s a cave ahead, Ehlana,’ he told his wife. ‘Kring’s men didn’t have time to explore it, so we don’t know how deep it is.’

  ‘What difference would that make?’ she asked him. Ehlana’s face was even more pale than usual. The bellowing of the Trolls far back in the forest had obviously unnerved her.

  ‘It might be very important,’ he replied. ‘When you get there, have Talen explore the place. If it goes back in far enough or branches out, you’ll have a place to hide. Sephrenia’s going to be with you, and she’ll be able to block the entrance and hide any side-chamber so that the Trolls can’t find you if they manage to get past us.’

  ‘Why don’t we all just go into the cave? You and Sephrenia can use magic to block the entrance, and we can just sit there until the Trolls get bored and go away.’

  ‘According to Kring, the cave’s not big enough. He’s got men out looking for another one, but we know this one’s there. If something better turns up, we’ll change the plan, but for right now this is the best we can manage. You’ll take the other ladies, Patriarch Emban and Ambassador Oscagne and go inside. Talen will go in with you, and Berit and eight or ten other knights will cover the entrance to the cave. Please don’t argue, Ehlana. This is one of those situations where I make the decisions. You agreed to that back in Chyrellos.’

  ‘He’s right, your Majesty,’ Emban told her. ‘We need a general right now, not a queen.’

  ‘Am I encumbering you gentlemen?’ she asked tartly.

  ‘Not in the slightest, my Queen,’ Stragen said smoothly. ‘Your presence will inspire us to greater heights. We’ll dazzle you with our prowess and our courage.’

  ‘I’d be happy to simulate dazzlement if we could avoid this,’ she said in a worried voice.

  ‘I’m afraid you’d have to convince the Trolls on that score,’ Sparhawk told her, ‘and Trolls are very hard to convince – particularly if they’re hungry.’ Although the situation was grave, Sparhawk was not quite as desperately concerned about his wife’s safety as he might normally have been. Sephrenia would be there to protect her, and if things grew truly desperate, Aphrael could take a hand in the matter as well. He knew that his daughter would not permit any harm to come to her mother, even if it meant revealing her identity.

  The canyon had its drawbacks, there was no question about that. The most obvious was the one Kalten had raised. If the Trolls ever reached the canyon rim above them, the situation would quickly become untenable. Kalten made quite an issue of pointing that out. ‘I told you so’ figured prominently in his remarks.

  ‘I think you’re over-estimating the intelligence of Trolls, Kalten,’ Ulath disagreed. ‘They’ll come straight at us, because they’ll be thinking of us as food, not as enemies. Supper’s more important to them than a military victory.’

  ‘You’re just loaded with cheery thoughts today, aren’t you, Ulath?’ Tynian said dryly. ‘How many of them do you think there are?’

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘I’ve heard ten different voices so far – probably the heads of families. There’s probably a hundred or so of them out there at the very least.’

  ‘It could be worse,’ Kalten said.

  ‘Not by very much,’ Ulath disagreed. ‘A hundred Trolls could have given Wargun’s whole army some serious problems.’

  Bevier, their expert on fortifications and defensive positions, had been surveying the canyon. ‘There are plenty of rocks in the stream-bed for breastworks,’ he observed, ‘and whole thickets of saplings for stakes. Ulath, how long do you think we have before they attack?’

  Ulath scratched at his chin. ‘The fact that we’re stopping gives us a bit more space,’ he mused. ‘If we were still moving, they’d attack right away, but now they’ll probably take their time and gather their forces. I believe you might want to re-think your strategy though, Bevier. Trolls aren’t going to shoot arrows at us, so breastworks aren’t really necessary. Actually, they’d hinder us more than they would the Trolls. Our advantage lies in our horses – and our lances. You really want to keep Trolls at a distance if you possibly can. The sharpened stakes would be good, though. A Troll takes the easiest way to get at what he wants – us, in this case. If we can clutter up the sides of this narrow place and funnel them through so that only a few at a time can come at us, we’ll definitely improve the situation. We don’t want to take on more of them at any one time than we absolutely have to. What I’d really like is a dozen or so of Kurik’s crossbows.’

  ‘I have one, Sir Ulath,’ Khalad volunteered.

  ‘And many of the knights have longbows,’ Bevier added.

  ‘We slow them down with the stakes so that we can pick them off with arrows?’ Tynian surmised.

  ‘That’s the best plan,’ Ulath agreed. ‘You don’t want to go hand to hand with a Troll if you can possibly avoid it.’

  ‘We’d better get at it, then,’ Sparhawk told them.

  The work was feverish for the next hour. The narrow gap was necked down even more with boulders from the stream-bed, and a forest of sharpened stakes, all slanting sharply outward, was planted to the front. There was a method to the planting of the stakes. They bristled so thickly along the sides of the gap as to be well-nigh impenetrable, but the corridor leading to the basin at the head of the canyon was planted only sparsely with them to encourage the monsters to follow that route. Kring’s Peloi found a large bramble thicket, uprooted the thorn-bushes and threw them back among the thick-planted stakes at the sides to further impede progress.

  ‘What’s Khalad doing there?’ Kalten asked, puffing and sweating with the large rock he carried in his arms.

  ‘He’s building something,’ Sparhawk replied.

  ‘This isn’t really the time for the construction of camp improvements, Sparhawk.’

  ‘He’s a sensible young man. I’m sure he’s usefully occupied.’

  At the end of the hour, they stopped to survey the fruits of their labours. The gap had been narrowed to no more than eight feet wide, and the ground at the sides of the gap was dense with chest-high stakes angled so that they would keep the Trolls on the right path. Tynian, however, added one small embellishm
ent. A number of his Alciones were driving pegs into the middle of the pathway and then sharpening the protruding ends.

  ‘Trolls don’t wear shoes, do they?’ he asked Ulath.

  ‘It’d take half a cow-hide to make shoes for a Troll,’ Ulath shrugged, ‘and they eat cows hide and all, so they’re a little short of leather.’

  ‘Good. We want to keep them in the centre of the canyon, but we don’t want to make it too easy for them. Barefoot Trolls aren’t going to run through that stubble-field – not after the first few yards, anyway.’

  ‘I like your style, Tynian,’ Ulath grinned.

  ‘Could you gentlemen stand off to one side, please?’ Khalad called. He had cut two fairly sturdy saplings off so that the stumps were about head high and had then lashed a third across them. Then he had strung a rope across the ends of the horizontal sapling and drawn it tight to form a huge bow. The bow was fully drawn, tied off to another stump at the rear, and it was loaded with a ten-foot javelin.

  Sparhawk and the others moved off to the sides of the narrow cut, and Khalad released the bow by cutting the rope that held it drawn. The javelin shot forward with a sharp whistling sound and buried itself deep into a tree a good hundred yards down the canyon.

  ‘I’m going to like that boy,’ Kalten smiled. ‘He’s almost as good at this sort of thing as his father was.’

  ‘The family shows a lot of promise,’ Sparhawk agreed. ‘Let’s position our archers so that they have a clear shot at that gap.’

  ‘Right,’ Kalten agreed. ‘What then?’

  ‘Then we wait.’

  ‘That’s the part I hate the most. Why don’t we grab something to eat? Just to pass the time, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The storm which had been building to the east all morning was closer now, the clouds purplish-black and seething. There were flickers of lightning deep inside the cloud bank, and the thunder rolled from horizon to horizon, shaking the ground with every peal.