First King of Shannara (28 page)

Cogline snorted derisively, brushed at the air in front of him, looked off into the darkness, then wheeled back irritably. “There is a metal as strong as iron, but far lighter, more flexible, and less brittle. An alloy really, a mix of metals, that was in use in the old world, conceived of the old science. Iron mostly, tempered by carbon at high temperature. A sword forged of that mix would be formidable indeed.” He looked sharply at Bremen. “But the temperatures used in the tempering are far greater than what a smith can generate in his forge. Engines are needed to generate temperatures of this magnitude, and those engines are lost to us.”

“Have you the process?” Bremen asked.

Cogline nodded and tapped his head. “Up here. I will give it to you. Anything to send you on your way and end this pointless lecturing! Still, I cannot see its use. Without a kiln or furnace hot enough . . .”

Kinson's gaze wandered back to Mareth. She was staring directly at him, her dark eyes huge and shadowed beneath her helmet of short-cropped black hair, her face smooth and serene. In that instant, he thought he was on the verge of understanding her as he had been unable to do before. It was something about the way she was looking at him, in the openness of her expression, in the intensity of her gaze. But then she smiled unexpectedly, her mouth quirking at the corners, and her eyes shifted from his face to something she saw behind him.

When he turned to look, he found Shifter staring at him, the big moor cat's face only inches from his own, the luminous eyes fixed on him as if he were the strangest thing the cat had ever seen. Kinson swallowed the lump in his throat. He could feel the heat of the cat's breath on his face. When had it come awake? How had it gotten so close without him noticing? Kinson held the cat's gaze a moment longer, took a deep breath, and turned away.

“I don't suppose you would want to come with us?” Bremen was asking their host. “A journey of a few days, just long enough to see the talisman forged?”

Cogline snorted and shook his head. “Take your games playing elsewhere, Bremen. I give you the forging process and my best wishes. If you can make use of either, well and good. But I belong here.”

He had scribbled something on a piece of old parchment, and now he passed it to the Druid. “The best that science can offer,” he muttered. “Take it.”

Bremen did, stuffing it into his robes.

Cogline straightened, then looked at Kinson and Mareth in turn. “Watch out for this old man,” he warned. There was dismay in his eyes, as if he had suddenly discovered something that displeased him. “He needs more looking after than he realizes. You, Tracker, have his ear. Make sure he listens when he needs to. You, girl— what is your name? Mareth? You have more than his ear, don't you?”

No one spoke. Kinson' s eyes shifted to Mareth. There was no expression on her face, but she had gone suddenly pale.

Cogline studied her bleakly. “Doesn't matter. Just keep him safe from himself. Keep him well.”

He stopped abruptly, as if deciding he had said too much. He mumbled something they could not hear, then rose to his feet, a loose jumble of bones and skin, a rumpled caricature of himself.

“Spend the night, and then be on your way,” he muttered wearily.

He looked them over carefully, as if expecting to find something he had missed previously, as if thinking perhaps they might be other than who they claimed. Then he turned and moved away.

Good night, they called after him. But he did not respond. He walked resolutely away from them and did not look back.

 

XIX

 

C
louds 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 army 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 Mar that the Dwarves had considered theirs for as long as anyone could remember. When he became king, Raybur had pursued his cause with a single mindedness 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.