Chapter Nineteen

Clouds skimmed the edges of the quarter-moon, casting strange shadows that raced across the surface of the earth like night birds ahead of the advancing Dwarves. It was the slow, deep hour before sunrise, when death is closest and dreams hold sway in men’s sleep. The air was warm and still, and the night hushed. There was a sense of everything slowing, of time losing half a tick in its clockwork progression, of life drifting momentarily from its inexorable pathway so that death, for a few precious moments, might be further delayed.

The Dwarves had slipped from the trees of the Anar in a wave of dark forms that seemed to flow like a river. They were several thousand strong, come down through the Wolfsktaag out of the Pass of Jade a dozen miles north of where the army of the Warlock Lord was encamped. It was two days since the army had passed south of Storlock, and while the Dwarves had watched its progress closely, they had determined to wait until now to attack.

They eased their way down the line of the trees to where the Rabb dropped away in a long, low swale close to a small river called the Nunne. It was there that the Northland army, unwisely, had chosen to make its camp. To be sure, there was water and grass and space to sprawl out, but it gave away the high ground to an attacker and exposed two flanks of the army to an enfilading strike. The army had set watch, but any watch was easily dispatched, and even the presence of the roving Skull Bearers was no deterrent to men in a desperate situation.

Risca gave them cover when they were close enough that cover mattered. He sent images of himself south below the Nunne to distract the winged hunters, and when the clouds masked moon and stars completely, the Dwarves went in. They crept swiftly across the last mile separating their strike force from the sleeping army, killed the sentries before they could sound an alarm, took the high ground north and east above the river, and attacked. Stretched out across the ridge of the high ground for half a mile in either direction, they used longbows and slings, and they raked the Trolls and Gnomes and monsters of darkness with volley after volley. The army came awake, men screaming and cursing, racing to put on their armor and to take up their weapons, falling wounded and dead in midstride. A cavalry assault was mounted in the midst of the confusion, a doomed counterattack that was cut to pieces as it charged up the incline from the maelstrom of the camp.

One of the Skull Bearers circled out of the dark and swept down on the Dwarves in retaliation, claws and teeth exposed, a silent stalker. But Risca was expecting this, his attention given over to preparing for it, and when the Skull Bearer appeared, he let it come almost to the earth before he struck at it with his Druid fire and flung it away, burned and shrieking.

The strike was swift and measured. The damage inflicted was largely superficial and of no lasting consequence to an army of this size, so the Dwarves did not linger. Their primary purpose was to cause disruption and to draw the enemy away from its intended line of march. In that, the Dwarves were successful. They fled back into the trees, taking the most direct route, then turned north again for the Pass of Jade. The enemy was quick to give pursuit. A large force was mounted and gave chase, the size of the Dwarf party having not yet been determined. By sunrise, the pursuers were closing on the Dwarves as they neared the mouth of the Pass of Jade.

Everything was going exactly as Risca had planned.

“There,” said Geften softly, pointing into the trees fronting the pass.

Below, the last of the Dwarf strike force was filing through the pass and dispersing into the rocks above, taking up positions next to the men already in place, four thousand strong. Behind them, less than a mile away, the first movements of their pursuers could be detected in the still, deep shadows of the predawn forest. Even as he watched, Risca could see the movement widen and spread, like a ripple from a stone thrown into the center of a still pond. It was a sizable force that had come after them, much too large for them to defeat in a direct engagement, even though a large part of the Dwarf army was assembled here.

“How long?” he asked Geften in response.

The Tracker shrugged, a small movement, spare like all his gestures, like the man himself, unobtrusive and restrained. Coarse, unruly gray hair topped an oddly elongated head. “An hour if they stop to debate the wisdom of coming into the pass without a plan.”

Risca nodded. “They’ll stop. They’ve been burned twice now.”

He smiled at the older man, a gnarled veteran of the Gnome border wars. “Keep an eye on them. I’ll tell the king.”

He abandoned his position and moved back into the rocks, climbing from where Geften monitored their pursuers’ progress.

Risca felt a wild excitement course through him, fueled by the knowledge that a second battle lay just ahead. The strike at the Northland camp had only whetted his appetite. He breathed the morning air and felt strong and ready. He had waited all his life for this, he supposed. All those years shut away at Paranor, practicing his warrior skills, his fighting tactics, his weapons mastery.

All for this, for a chance to stand against an enemy that would challenge him as nothing at Paranor ever could. It made him feel alive in a way he could not ignore, and even the desperation of their circumstances did not lessen the rush of excitement he felt.

He had reached the Dwarves three days earlier and gone at once to Raybur. Already alerted to the presence of the Northland army, already certain of its intent, the king had received him. Risca merely confirmed what he knew and gave further impetus to his need to act. Raybur was a warrior king as Risca was a warrior Druid, a man whose entire life had been spent in battle. Like Risca, he had fought against the Gnome tribes when he was a boy, a part of the Dwarf struggle to prevent Gnome encroachment on those lands in the Lower and Central Anar that the Dwarves had considered theirs for as long as anyone could remember. When he became king, Raybur had pursued his cause with a singlemindedness that was frightening. Taking his army deep into the interior, he had pushed back the Gnomes and extended the boundaries of his homeland until they were twice their previous size, until the Gnomes were so far north of the Rabb and east of the Silver River that they no longer threatened. For the first time in centuries, all that lay between was safe for the Dwarves to settle and inhabit.

But now the challenge was mounted anew, this time in the form of the army that approached. Raybur had mobilized the Dwarves in preparation for the battle that lay ahead, the battle that everyone knew they could not win without help, yet must fight if they were to survive. Risca had told them that the Elves were coming.

Bremen had charged that it must happen, and Tay Trefenwyd, whom he would trust with his life, had gone west to make it so. Yet it remained for the Dwarves to buy the time that was needed for that help to arrive. Raybur understood. He was close with Bremen and Courtann Ballindarroch, and he knew both to be honorable men. They would do what they could. But time was precious, and nothing could be taken for granted. Raybur understood that as well. So Culhaven was evacuated — it was there that the Northland army would come first, and the Dwarves could not defend their home city against so massive a force. Women, children, and old people were sent deep into the interior of the Anar, where they could be safely hidden away until the danger was over.

The Dwarf army, in the meantime, went north through the Wolfsktaag to face the enemy.

Raybur turned as Risca approached, looking away from his commanders and advisors, from Wyrik and Fleer, the eldest of his five sons, from the charts they studied and the plans they had drawn. “Do they come?” he asked quickly.

Risca nodded. “Geften keeps watch over their progress. He estimates we have an hour before they strike.”

Raybur nodded and beckoned the Druid to walk with him. He was a big man, not tall, but broad and strong through the chest and shoulders, his head huge and his features prominent, his weathered face bearded and creased. He had a hooked nose and shaggy brows that gave him a slightly bestial look, but beneath his imposing exterior he was warm and exuberant and quick to laugh.

Older than Risca by fifteen years, he was nevertheless as physically imposing as the Druid and more than a match for him in an even contest. The two were very close, more so in some ways than with their own families, for they shared common beliefs and experiences and had come from hard lives and close escapes to live as long as they had.

“Tell me again how you will make this happen,” the king directed, putting his arm around Risca and steering him away from the others.

“You know that already,” Risca responded with a snort. The plan was theirs, devised by Risca and approved by the king, and while they had shared it in general with the others, they had kept the specifics to themselves.

“Tell it to me anyway.” The gruff face glanced at him, then looked away. “Humor me. I am your king.”

Risca nodded, smiling. ‘The Trolls and Gnomes and what have you will converge on the pass. We will try to stop them from entering. We will make a good show of it, then fall back, apparently beaten. We will delay them through the mountains for the next day or so, slowing but not stopping them. In the meantime, they will have moved the rest of their army south to the Silver River. Dwarves will flee at their approach. They will find Culhaven abandoned. They will discover that no one challenges them. They will think that the whole of the Dwarf army must be fighting in the Wolfsktaag.”

“Which is not far from the truth,” Raybur grunted, rubbing at his beard with one massive hand.

“Which is not far from the truth,” Risca echoed. “Sensing victory, because they know the geography of these mountains, they will seize the Pass of Noose and wait for their comrades to drive us south through the valleys into their arms. The Gnomes will have assured them that there are only two ways out of the Wolfsktaag — through the Pass of Jade north and the Pass of Noose south. If the Dwarf army is trapped between the two, they have no chance of escape.”

Raybur nodded, worrying his upper lip and the edges of his mustache with his strong teeth. “But if they advance on us too quickly or too far...”

“They won’t,” Risca cut him short. “We won’t let them. Besides, they will not take that kind of chance. They will be cautious. They will worry that we will find a way around them if they proceed too quickly. It will be easier to let us come to them. They will wait until they see us, and then strike.”

They moved to a flat shelf of rock and sat down side by side, staring off into the interior of the mountains. The day was sunny and bright, but the Wolfsktaag, away from the entrance to the pass and deep into the valleys and ridges that crisscrossed its vast interior, was shrouded with mist.

“It is a good plan,” said Raybur finally.

“It is the best we could devise,” Risca amended. “Bremen might do better if he were here.”

“He’ll come to us soon enough,” Raybur declared softly. “And the Elves with him. Then we’ll have this invader in a place not so much to his liking.”

Risca nodded wordlessly, but he was thinking back to his encounter with Brona not so many nights earlier, remembering what he had felt when he realized the extent of the Warlock Lord’s power, remembering how the other had paralyzed him, had almost had him in his grasp. Such a monster would not be easily overcome, no matter the size or strength of the force sent against him.

This was more than a war of weapons and men; it was a war of magic. In such a war, the Dwarves were at a decided disadvantage unless Bremen’s vision of a talisman could be brought to pass.

He wondered where the old man was now. He wondered how many of his four visions were taking shape.

“The Skull Bearers will try to spy us out,” Raybur mused.

Risca pursed his lips and considered. “They will try, but the Wolfsktaag will not be friendly to them. Nor will it make any difference what they see. By the time they realize what we have done, it will be too late.”

The king shifted. “They will come for you,” he said suddenly, and looked at the Druid. “They know you are their greatest threat — their only threat besides Bremen and Tay Trefenwyd. If they kill you, we have no magic to protect us.”

Risca shrugged and smiled. “Then you had better take good care of me, my king.”

It took the Northlanders longer than Geften had estimated to launch their attack, but it was fierce when it came. The Pass of Jade was broad where it opened to the eastern Anar, then narrowed abruptly at the twin peaks that formed its entrance into the Wolfsktaag. Having determined beforehand that Dwarf resistance would be strong, the army of the Warlock Lord threw the whole of its force into the gap, intent on breaking through on the first try.

Against a less well prepared defender, they would have succeeded. But the Dwarves had held the passes of the Wolfsktaag for years against Gnome raiders and in doing so had learned a trick or two. The size of the Northland force was already negated to some extent by the narrowness of the pass and the ruggedness of the terrain. The Dwarves did not try to block the Northland charge, but assailed it from the protection of the slopes. Pits had been dug into the winding floor. Massive boulders were tumbled from above and spiked barricades swung into place. Arrows and spears rained down. Hundreds of attackers died in the first rush. The Trolls were particularly determined, huge and strong and armored against the missiles sent to kill them. But they were ponderous and slow, and many fell into the pits or were crushed by the boulders. Still they advanced.

They were stopped finally at the far end of the pass. Raybur had caused a log wall to be built at the back of a trench filled with dead wood, and on the Northlanders’ rush he had the whole of it fired.

Pressed forward by those who followed and too heavy themselves to climb free, the Trolls died where they stood, burned to the bone.

The screams and the stench of their ruined flesh filled the air, and the attack broke off.

They came again at midday, less reckless this time, and again they were beaten back. They attacked once more at nightfall. Each time the Dwarves were forced a little deeper into the pass. Positioned on both sides of the draw, Raybur and his sons directed the Dwarf defense, holding as long as they reasonably could before withdrawing, giving ground grudgingly, but judiciously, so that no more lives were lost than necessary. Raybur commanded the left flank in the company of Geften while Wyrik and Fleer commanded the right. Risca was left to choose his own ground. The Dwarves fought bravely, pressed at every turn by a force at least three times their size, seasoned from countless battles. No winged hunters or creatures of the netherworld came at them in daylight, so Risca did not waste his magic in support of their defense. The plan, after all, was not to win the battle. The plan was to lose it as slowly as possible.

Nightfall brought a break in the hostilities and a new quiet to the mountains. Mist slipped down from the higher elevations in the slow melting of the light to close about defender and attacker alike. The silence grew pervasive as vision narrowed and shortened, and small breezes, damp and cloying, slithered out of the rocks to caress and tease. There were living things in the touch of those breezes, invisible and shapeless, but as certain as midnight.

They were creatures of the Wolfsktaag, beings formed of magic as old as time and as needful as men’s souls. The Dwarves knew of them and were wary of their intent. They were forerunners of things larger and more powerful still and not to be listened to. They whispered lies and false promises, rendered dreams and treacherous visions, and to heed them in any way was to invite death. The Dwarves understood this. Knowledge was what protected them.

Not so with the Gnomes who camped opposite them at the head of the pass. The Gnomes were terrified of these mountains and the things that dwelled within. Superstitious and pagan, wary of all magic and particularly of the sort that resided here, they would have preferred to avoid the Wolfsktaag entirely. There were gods here to be prayed to and spirits to be appeased. This was sacred ground. But the power of the Warlock Lord and his dark followers frightened them even more, so they closed ranks with the more stolid and less impressionable Trolls. But they did so reluctantly and with little heart, and the Dwarves made ready to use their fear against them.

As Risca had foreseen, the Northland army mounted a new attack several hours before dawn, when darkness and brume still masked its movements. They came silently and in force, massing on the floor of the pass and along its higher slopes and ridges, intent on sweeping over the Dwarves through sheer strength of numbers. But Raybur had withdrawn his line of defense a hundred yards farther back into the pass from where the battle had ended at dusk. Between the two lines, the Dwarves had built piles of green wood and new leaves and left them ready to light. On the floor of the pass, fresh barricades and trenches had been readied, staggered at intervals between the fires. When the Northlanders reached the expected Dwarf line of defense, they found the position deserted.

Had the Dwarves abandoned the pass? Had they fallen back under cover of darkness? Momentarily confused, they hesitated, milling about as their leaders deliberated. Finally, they started forward once more. But by now the Dwarves were alerted to the attack.

Risca used his magic to light the fires that dotted the slopes and floor of the pass, and suddenly the Northlanders found themselves engulfed by a blanket of smoke that choked and blinded. Eyes tearing, throats clogging, they came doggedly on.

Then Risca sent the wraiths. He created some from magic, lured some from the mist, and sent all into the smoke to play. Things of tooth and claw, of red maw and black eye, of fears real and imagined, the wraiths closed on the gasping, half-blind Northlanders.

The Gnomes went mad, shrieking in terror. Nothing would hold them against this. They broke ranks and ran. Now the Dwarves struck, slingers, throwers, and bowmen sending their deadly missiles into the heart of the attacking force. Steadily they pushed the attackers back. The assault stalled and fell apart as men died at every turn. By dawn, the pass belonged to the Dwarves once more.

The Northlanders attacked again the next day, refusing to give up, determined to break through. Their losses were frightful, but the Dwarves were losing men as well, and they had fewer lives to spare. By midaftemoon, Raybur had begun making preparations to withdraw. Two days was long enough to stand against this army. Now it was time to retreat a bit, to draw the enemy on. They waited until nightfall, until darkness had closed down about them once again. Then they fired a last trench of deadwood topped with leaves and green saplings so that the smoke would mask their movements and slipped away.

Risca stayed behind to make certain they were not followed too quickly. With a small band of Dwarf Hunters, he defended the narrowest point of the deep pass against a tentative assault before falling back with the others. Once a Skull Bearer showed itself, trying to wing beneath the layers of mist and smoke, but Risca countered with the Druid fire and flung it away.

They marched all night after that, traveling deep into the mountains. Geften led them, a veteran of countless expeditions, familiar with the canyons and defiles, ridges and drops, knowing where to go and how to get there. They avoided the dark, narrow places where the monsters dwelled, the things that had survived since ancient times and lent substance to the superstitions of the Gnomes. They kept to the high open ground where possible, sufficiently concealed by darkness and mist that they remained hidden from their pursuers. The Northland army would have scouts as well, but they would be Gnomes, and the Gnomes would be cautious. Raybur’s force moved swiftly and deliberately. When the army of the Warlock Lord found them, it would again be on ground of their choosing.

By the following day, after the Dwarves had stopped to rest for several hours at dawn and were again on the march, a messenger arrived from the smaller force that defended the Pass of Noose at the south end of the mountains. The balance of the army of the Warlock Lord had arrived, pressing inward from the lower end of the Rabb to set camp. An attack would probably be launched by nightfall. The Dwarves could hold the pass for at least a day before yielding. Raybur looked at Risca and smiled. A day would be long enough.

They let the Northland army coming down from the Pass of Jade catch up to them that afternoon, when the sun was already gone behind the peaks and the mist was beginning to creep down out of the higher elevations like vines in search of light. They waited in a canyon where the floor rose steeply through a maze of giant rocks and treacherous drops, and attacked as the Northlanders climbed out of the exposed bowl. They held their ground just long enough to frustrate the advance, then fell back once more. Darkness descended, and their pursuers were forced to halt for the night, unable to retaliate.

By dawn, the Dwarves were gone. The Northlanders pressed on, anxious to end this game of cat and mouse. But the Dwarves surprised them again at midday, this time leading them into a blind pass, then tearing at their exposed flanks as they sought to withdraw. By the time the Northlanders had recovered, the Dwarves had disappeared once more. All day it went on, a series of strikes and withdrawals, the smaller force taunting and humiliating the larger. But the south end of the mountains was drawing near, and the Northlanders, furious at their inability to close with the Dwarves, began to take heart from the fact that their quarry was running out of places to hide.

The contest had grown serious. One false step and the Dwarves would be finished. Messengers raced back and forth between those who harassed the enemy coming down out of the north and those who still held the Pass of Noose south. Timing was important. The enemy south pressed hard to claim the Pass of Noose, but the Dwarves held firm. The Pass of Noose was more easily defended and difficult to take, no matter the size of the force at either end. But the Dwarves would yield it up at dawn and fall back, slowly, deliberately, letting the Northlanders believe they had prevailed. The army of the Warlock Lord would claim the pass and then wait for their comrades to drive the overmatched and beleaguered Dwarves onto their spearpoints.

Dawn arrived, and while one army of Northlanders occupied the Pass of Noose, the other drove relentlessly south. The Dwarves, caught between, had nowhere left to run.

All that day, Raybur’s army fought to slow the southward advance. The Dwarf King used every tactic he had mastered in thirty years of Gnome warfare, hammering at the invaders when there was opportunity, creating opportunity when none presented itself. He divided his army in thirds, giving the largest of the three over to his generals to command so that they might provide an obvious target for the enemy to pursue. The two smaller companies, one commanded by himself, one by his eldest son Wyrik, became pincers that harried the Northlanders at every turn.

Working in unison, they drew the enemy first one way and then the other. When a flank was exposed by one, the second would be quick to strike. The Dwarves twisted and wound about the larger army with maddening elusiveness, refusing to be pinned down, pressing the attack at every turn.

By nightfall, they were exhausted. Worse, the Dwarves from the north had been backed up against those from the south. The two joined and became one, both having retreated as far as they could, and suddenly there was no place left for either to go. Night and mist shrouded them sufficiently that running them to ground should have been postponed until morning. But instead, the hunt went on, in large part because the Northlanders were too angry and frustrated to wait. The Pass of Noose was only a few miles farther on. The Dwarves were trapped, bereft of room to maneuver or hide, and now, finally, the Northlanders were certain that their superior force would be able to exact a long-overdue retribution.

As night descended and the brume thickened along the last few miles of the valley into which the Dwarves had withdrawn, Raybur dispatched scouts to give warning of any enemy approach. Time was running out, and they must act quickly now. Geften was called, and the first of the Dwarf defenders prepared for the escape that had been intended from the beginning. The escape would commence under cover of darkness and be finished by midnight. It marked the culmination of a plan the king had settled on with Risca when the Druid had first returned from Paranor, a plan devised from knowledge possessed only by the Dwarves. Unknown to any but them, there was a third way out of the mountains. Close to where they were gathered, not far from the more accessible Pass of Noose, there was a series of connecting defiles, tunnels, and ledges that twisted and wound east out of the Wolfsktaag into the forests of the central Anar. Geften himself had discovered this hidden passage, explored it with a handful of others, and reported it to Raybur some eight years past. It was knowledge carefully protected and kept secret. A select number of Dwarves had used the passage now and again to make sure it was kept open, memorizing its twists and turns, but no others were shown the way. Risca had learned about it from Raybur on a visit home several years ago, the Dwarf King sharing the secret with the one man who was as close to him as his sons. Risca had recalled it when the Northland army had come east, and his plan had taken shape.

Now the Dwarves set the plan in motion. Slowly they began to reduce their numbers, siphoning off their strength in a long, steady line that withdrew east into the mountains, following the escape route meticulously laid out by Geften. The Northlanders approached the head of the valley, and the scouts began to report back. Yet the most dangerous part of the scheme remained. The Northlanders must be delayed until the Dwarves were safely away. With Risca accompanying him, Raybur took a small band of twenty volunteers north. They placed themselves in a jumble of rocks that overlooked the valley’s broad passage in, and when the first of the Warlock Lord’s army appeared, they attacked.

It was a precise, momentary strike, intended only to disrupt and confuse, for the Dwarves were vastly outnumbered. They used bows from the cover of the rocks, firing their arrows just long enough to draw attention to themselves before falling back. Even so, escape was difficult. The Northlanders came after them, furious. It was dark and treacherous in the rocks, a maze of jagged edges and deep crevices, and the light, as always in the Wolfsktaag, was poor. Mist curled down out of the taller peaks, masking everything on the valley floor. More familiar with the terrain than their pursuers, the Dwarves slipped quickly through the maze, but the Northlanders were everywhere, swarming over the rocks. Some of the defenders were overtaken. Some turned the wrong way. All of these were killed. The fighting was ferocious.

Risca used his magic, sending Druid fire into the midst of the hunters, chasing them back. A handful of the netherworld grotesques hove into view, lurching mindlessly after the scrambling Dwarves, and Risca was forced to stand long enough to throw them back as well.

They nearly had him then. They closed on him from three sides, drawn by the flare of his Druid fire. Weapons flew, and dark things launched themselves at him and tried to drag him down. He fought with fury and exhilaration, alive as he could not otherwise be, a warrior in his element. He was strong and quick, and he would not he overpowered. He threw back his attackers, fought off their strikes, used the Druid magic to shield his movements, and escaped them.

Then he was at the back side of the maze and racing after the last of the Dwarves. Their force had been halved, and those who remained were bloodied and exhausted. Raybur lingered until Risca caught up, grim-faced and sweating in the faint light. The battle-axe he carried had one blade shattered and was covered in blood.

“We’ll have to hurry,” he warned, lumbering forward. “They’re almost on top of us.”

Risca nodded. Spears and arrows flew at them from out of the rocks below. They charged up the valley slope, hearing the cries of the Northlanders chase after. Another of the Dwarves went down in front of them, an arrow in his throat. There were only a handful left of the twenty who had come. Risca whirled as he sensed something sweep out of the skies and sent a bolt of fire after one of the winged hunters as it swooped hurriedly away. The mist was growing thicker now. If they could stay clear of their pursuers for a few more minutes, they would lose them.

And so they did, pushing on until they were past exhaustion and running on determination alone. Eight in all, the last of the Dwarves reached the gathering place of the others, deserted now save for Geften. Wordlessly, they hastened after the anxious Tracker as he led them into the hills and the peaks beyond.

Behind them, the Northlanders swarmed into the valley, crashing through trees and brush, howling in fury. Somewhere the Dwarves were hidden and trapped. Soon they would be found.

The hunt went on, moving farther south toward the Pass of Noose.

With luck, Risca thought, the two halves of the Warlock Lord’s army would run up against each other in the mist and dark and each would think the other was their quarry. With luck, each would kill large numbers of the other before they discovered their mistake.

He moved up into the boulders that marked the beginning of the high range. They would not be followed here, not in this darkness, and by morning they would have passed the point where their tracks could be found.

Raybur dropped back and clapped a congratulatory hand on his friend’s broad shoulder. Risca smiled at the king, but inwardly he felt cold and hard. He had measured the size of the army that hunted them. He had judged the nature of the things that commanded it. Yes, the Dwarves had escaped this time. They had tricked the Northlanders into a prolonged and futile hunt, delayed their advance, and lived to fight another day.

But it would be a day of reckoning when it came.

And it would come, Risca feared, all too soon.