Chapter 27

Tiderun Shore, the Imperial League

Everything was quiet as the sun rose. Even the birds ceased their songs. The men of the Sixth, of Coldhope, of the fishing villages, and of Malton's ruins—all stood speechless. The only sounds were the creak of leather and the rattle of mail. All were in place and all had prayed to their gods, if they had any. They held their weapons and waited.

From the top of the ruined tower, among the tangled bird's nests, Forlo saw it all. His men, standing ready, resigned to their fate, but not to go to the hereafter unaccompanied by their enemies. The shadows of the horde, gathered on the yonder shore, biding. He wondered if he would see the one who led them, the chief who had gathered so many savages together, before he fell. It seemed a faint hope.

And between the two armies, the Run. Already the tides were low, the waters dotted with land where there had been none an hour before. It churned and foamed in places and formed whirlpools in others. The dark shores glistened, spangled with tidal pools and gasping sea creatures. Ordinarily, commoners would be swarming over the rocks, scavenging for the bounty the tides had left behind—crabs and clams, urchins and sea turtles, and thousands of flopping fish. There would have been feasting that night, in the nearby towns. That day, though, the only ones gathering to feast were the skyfishers and crows, who circled above, squalling. They always sensed when a bloodbath was near.

"Not long now," said Grath. He stood at Forlo's side, following his friend's gaze. "I should get down to the men."

Forlo grunted, but said nothing, so Grath tarried.

Fortunately, a few of the married men had possessed the sense to leave when Grath dismissed them. There had been about sixty in the cohort who had families. Some two dozen rode away last night, going back to their wives and their children. No shame, Forlo had said, no recriminations—but they had left with eyes lowered, disappearing up the rocky slopes into the mist like ghosts. The rest of his mismatched army had stayed, stubborn as dwarves. He was still there only because he had to be. He was their commander, and it was his duty. If he were an ordinary soldier, he would be riding like mad to put as much ground as he could between himself and the coming battle.

Grath looked at his friend. Forlo appeared lost once again in the darkness of his memories. Thinking of the little, bloodstained ghouls that had defended Ondelos in that fell temple.

Grath coughed, breaking into Forlo's reverie. He saluted, hand over fist. "Fight well, Barreth."

"And you," Forlo replied, returning the gesture. "It's been an honor to command you."

"If we get out of this," Grath replied with a grin, "the beer's on me."

Forlo clapped him on the arm. "Go."

Grath went. When the sound of his feet on the steps faded away, Forlo bowed his head and blew out a long breath. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and waited for his head to clear. The morning wind tugged at his cloak, cool and soothing. He turned his face into the wind and let it wash over him. Was Essana standing somewhere in the same wind?

He heard footsteps again and looked over his shoulder. It was Iver. The soldier's face was pale as he came up the stairs. Looped through his belt were two banners: one red and one blue. A fast horse waited at the tower's base, ready for the ride to Coldhope.

"I wish you'd pick someone else for this duty, sir," he said.

Forlo snorted. "Don't lie, lad. Any of the others would gladly take your place."

"Is there any hope?"

Forlo shrugged. "There's always hope. The Third Destruction could come. A god could ride down from the clouds. Their prince could fall from his horse and break his neck. Whatever, it's out of my hands."

Iver nodded, his face grim, staring out at the Run. Forlo did too. It had dropped more, maybe twenty feet in the last three minutes. There were more pools, the islands were bigger and the eddies were stronger. The sun had climbed all the way above the horizon and was moving higher, unstoppable. The moons were sinking together on the far side of Krynn, pulling the seas down.

I wish they had never come back, Forlo thought. I wish we still had the one, pale moon. Then we would be safe. He chuckled at the irony of it: the end of the Godless Night, a glorious day in Taladas, had sealed his doom.

"Look," said Iver. "They're moving."

The shapes across the Run were shifting: moving forward and massing at the water's edge. He imagined the Uigan, gripping their reins and their bows and their curved swords, tensed in their saddles like coiled springs, ready to thunder across the strait. So damned many… .

He drew his sword and raised it to his lips. The metal was cold, but he pictured her as he kissed it, and felt her mouth against his. Then he lowered the blade and thoughts of Essana left his mind. There was only the enemy, inching closer along what had been sea floor just hours before.

The water kept draining away.

"Wretched Ones, to the front!" roared Chovuk Boyla, waving with his shuk. "Gharmu, get your men up there!"

The shaman of Xagal bowed, loping away and screaming to his men. A chorus of guttural, bestial cries arose in response, and crude weapons were thrust into the air. The goblins swarmed forward, on foot and wolfback, pushing gleefully past the horsemen. It was a glorious day for the Wretched Ones: they would be the first across, the first to spill their enemies' blood.

They would also be the first to feel their enemies' steel, so the men let them go. The goblins massed at the head of the horde, a sea of ruddy flesh and moldering furs, dotted here and there by poles sporting the rotting remains of those they'd conquered in the campaign. Stupid creatures, they hungered for battle, for blood, and nothing more. They didn't know why Chovuk had chosen them. But the Uigan understood: the goblins were expendable, good for wearing down the defenders across the Run, testing them.

If there were any defenders. Hult had yet to see any signs of life among the trees and rubble on the strait's far side.

"They lie hidden," said Chovuk, sensing his misgivings. "Cowards, they fight to trap, to ambush. But they are not enough. We are ten thousand and more—they might stop half our number, with the luck of the gods beside them, but they cannot stand against this many."

"Not with hosk'i imou merkitsa by your side," agreed Eldako, fingering his bow. The elf stared across the water, his painted face a gruesome mask.

Chovuk nodded. "Remember your place. Don't waste your arrows on the bull-men. Find their commanders, the officers and the marshal, if you can. Feather their skulls."

Eldako looked grim. He didn't need to be reminded. He wheeled his slender gray horse and rode away from the Boyla. Chovuk stood nearly alone. The Tegins were with their clans, where they belonged. Only Hult remained by his master's side, and he did not speak. Neither man had said a word to the other since morning. They sat their horses atop a rocky crag, worn by surf and crusted with drying salt—and, below, barnacles. From here, they could see the retreating hither shore, and the far side as well. The Wretched Ones crept forward as the waters retreated, gnashing and gibbering and howling for the slaughter. Soon.

And then, so suddenly it seemed a miracle, the waters vanished altogether.

The islands became mounds, and the mounds became hills. Sea yielded to dry land studded with lakes and ponds, and thousands of dying fish, lobsters, and stranger beasts lay stranded and suffocating in the strangeness of the air. A few dozen yards from the road, a gigantic serpent with blood-red scales and flippers tipped with massive claws lay writhing and thrashing, wheezing pitifully as its gills fought against the air. The thing had to be eighty feet long, and could have sunk a small ship without much trouble. The failing tide had betrayed it and left it as vulnerable as the day it hatched from its egg. Its yellow eyes bulged without comprehension as it slowly died.

The Lost Road lay bare and gleaming in the sunlight: rock of white and deep gray, buckled and spotted with colorful coral, and dotted with creatures both spiny and shelled. Here, before the First Destruction, folk of the old kingdoms, the lost, long-dead kingdoms, had traveled north and south. The Tiderun lay empty, the halves of Hosk united again as they had been in those olden days, before the rain of fire ravaged Taladas.

It was a miraculous sight, one clerics and scholars often invoked as a worldly wonder. The horde was already a quarter of the way across, having followed the retreating waterline. Now that the Run had emptied altogether, leaving the way open, they broke loose and charged.

Or, rather, some did. In fact, to Forlo's surprise, only the foremost ranks of the throng picked up their pace, racing across the damp and broken rocks. The rest stayed behind, stopping to watch what would happen. Forlo frowned, looking to Iver, who held up a hand to shade his eyes.

"Goblins," the young man said. "A thousand."

Forlo nodded, understanding. The goblins were crowbait, nothing more. They would die beneath the blades of the Sixth, stupidly believing they held a hope of winning through. He'd fought goblins before, in the eastern provinces abutting the Steamwalls. A thousand weren't enough to overwhelm his lines. Weren't even close.

But that wasn't the point, and he knew what the Uigan chieftain was about. The goblins would try his defenses, and give the horde some sign of what it faced. Forlo saw several horses break away from the main mass, following the goblins toward the battle, keeping at a distance all the time. Scouts, they would stay out of bowshot and ride back to the main body when the fighting was done, to report what they had seen.

"Whoever this Boyla is, he's smart," Forlo said. "Iver, go down to Grath and tell him to lighten our archers' fire. Make it look like we only have half as many bows as we do. Leave the rest as a surprise for the main force."

The guardsman saluted and sprinted away, down the steps. Forlo looked back at the charging goblins, now less than a mile from the southern shore. He could hear them baying and barking like mad dogs, waving spears and cudgels in the air. Occasionally one would lose his footing on the Road and vanish beneath his fellows' flapping feet, only to emerge again behind the mass as a trampled smear upon the stones. Forlo's lip curled: he hated goblins. He had never seen fighters so mindless and undisciplined. His boys would have no trouble with them. He only wished there was a way to do it without giving away all the traps and pits his men had laid upon the shore.

Ah, well.

As he'd suspected, the riders following the goblins reined in a few hundred yards from shore, not far from the writhing, suffocating sea serpent. The horsemen halted, watching as the goblins swarmed up the slick slopes toward dry land. More goblins fell and died, their bodies tumbling back downhill.

Iver came bounding up again, taking the stairs two at a time and breathing hard. He answered Forlo's look with a nod: already the archers on the canyon's edges were pulling back, some lowering their bows altogether to hide from view. The rest waited, watching as the goblins came closer… closer… .

The traps took almost two hundred of the creatures, the ground opening up to swallow the horrid beasts, who died shrieking on sharpened stakes below. Their cries of agony and alarm filled the air. Many more of the Wretched Ones made it through, though, and kept coming. The bowmen fired down at them, cutting them down in waves—but still not enough died. With the shafts raining down in half the numbers they could have, nearly half of the goblins survived to reach the spot where the main body of soldiers stood.

The line buckled a little when the mad little creatures crashed into it, and some men perished in the initial shock. The ones who didn't fall locked shields and pushed back, stabbing with spear and sword—the kind of precision and cooperation the Uigan and the Wretched Ones would never have. The goblins' onslaught crumbled, falling into ruin beneath the blades. Screeches and whimpering filled the air.

Forlo winced at the slaughter and spat, trying to clear the bitter taste from his mouth. There was no glory in this kind of fighting, and while goblins were the most reviled of all the races he couldn't help but feel a measure of pity for them and their single-minded need to catch, crush, and destroy. It was their undoing. Soon the ground was slick with black goblin blood, and the corpses were piled high upon the ravine's floor.

Brave in numbers, goblins were cowards once outfought. They were also thick-witted, and didn't realize at first their predicament. Finally, panic set in and the remaining mass—less than a hundred strong—broke up, running back down the gauntlet they had just passed through, fleeing toward the Tiderun. Forlo's archers picked off most of them, and a few more were actually dumb enough to fall into the pits. The rout dwindled, as the rest managed to flee back down to the stones of the Road. Back toward the horde.

"Never make it," muttered Forlo.

Iver glanced at him. "Sir?"

Forlo said nothing, only nodded for him to watch.

The scouting party still sat their horses by the sea serpent, whose throes had weakened as its strength gave out. The serpent lay still, its gills fluttering, its needle-fanged mouth working feebly. As Forlo expected, the riders had bows. They fitted arrows on their strings and pulled them back. The goblins, foolish creatures that they were, never saw the arrows coming. They were cut down like summer barley. Then, when the last of the Wretched Ones lay dead, bloody and riddled on the rocks, the riders wheeled and galloped back the way they'd come.

There was some cheering down in the valley, mostly from the villagers and the youngest soldiers. Forlo felt a scornful laugh rise within him and fought it back. Bit by bit, the celebration died down as the veteran warriors explained the strategy to the rest. Grim silence followed. Some of the soldiers moved to clear away the goblin bodies, or to bear their fallen fellows away from the line. By his crude tally, Forlo guessed he'd lost about three dozen men to the goblins. Not a great loss, but more than he'd hoped.

The soldiers gazed beyond the battlefield again, pointing with swords slick with black blood. Forlo looked out toward the Run. The scouts were back with the main body of the horde, no doubt describing all they had seen. The Boyla would know much of what he faced.

Forlo and his men watched the riders, a dark mass that stretched almost halfway across the dry strait, moving to form a broad line, across the full width of the Lost Road. They would come, soon enough.

"It's started."

Shedara glanced sideways along the length of Coldhope's western wall. Lady Essana stood alone, her long, dark hair streaming in the wind. She stared beyond the forests and the hills, as if she could see far enough to know what was happening on the battlefront. Her cheeks were wet and her eyes were filled with a hurt that made Shedara's mouth run dry.

"The fighting's begun," she murmured.

She was right, Shedara knew. She'd marked the moons last night, all of them full—even Nuvis, invisible to all but those who knew its power. To her right, beyond the cliffs, the Tiderun stood dry. A kelp-covered shipwreck lay naked in the silt, canted at an odd angle and surrounded by dead and dying sharks. She bowed her head a moment, thinking of Forlo and his men.

Essana turned to look at her. "I will die here," she said. "In my home, as is right. But I will not be a plaything for these barbarians. Will you help me?"

"Help…?" Shedara asked, then stopped, understanding what the woman was asking.

"You know how to use those," Essana said, pointing.

Shedara looked down at her knives, then shook her head.

"Please," Essana insisted. "You know what they'll do to me. And to you. Take my life and run as fast and as far from here as you can."

"I'm sorry, milady. I cannot."

Essana looked at her, hurt, her eyes shining. After a moment, she shrugged, letting out a long, trailing sigh. Unsteadily, for she was great with child, She climbed up onto the battlements and perched on a merlon, looking to the west. She steadied herself, then began to lean forward.

Shedara caught up to her in three steps, yelling meaningless words as she grabbed the woman by the neck of her gown and dragged her off the stone, back to the catwalk. Essana struggled, her face pale and her eyes wild. It took a spell to calm her, a quick burst of the silver moon's power, pulled into Shedara's body with one breath, then flowing into the grief-crazed woman with the next.

"Ast tasarak sinularan krynawi," she spoke.

The magic went to work, easing the fear and despair in Essana's face as her eyes closed. She fell into a deep slumber. The spell would last for hours. Nothing could break it, short of drawing the Lady of Coldhope's blood. Shedara stared at her, at the peace in her sleeping face, so strange after the desolation that had been there before: not terror, but emptiness and hopelessness. She smoothed away an errant lock of Essana's hair, then rose and turned to face the two remaining guards, men barely old enough to shave, who ran toward her with fear in their faces and weapons drawn.

"What happened?" asked one, kneeling down beside Essana.

Shedara shook her head. "Do not worry over that," she said. "The lady is well. Take her to her chambers and lay her in her bed. See that her rest is not disturbed." She turned to go.

The second guard reached for her arm and nearly grabbed it before she pulled it away. "What are you doing?" he asked.

She gave him a long, hard look. "The only thing I can do, now."

If they had tried to stop her, then, she would have killed them. They must have seen that in her eyes, because neither made another move toward her. They turned instead to their mistress. Shedara didn't give Essana another glance. Later, if she saw the blue banner, the elf would take the woman from here. Until then, she hardly needed to pay the sleeping noblewoman any mind.

Down the stairs to the courtyard she went and on toward the keep. She had much to do and little time left to do it.