consternation.
This realization sounded the final alarm inside of Jaymes.
“Trumpeter! Sound the recall!” the emperor shouted.
Immediately, the brassy notes of the horn rang out. The lancers reined back, reluctantly allowing the stumbling ogres to escape as they looked back in some frustration at their army commander. But they were well- trained Solamnic Knights, so they backed away, keeping their horses-and their keen, bloody lances-trained on the shattered, fleeing enemy before them.
That was when Jaymes saw the two draconians with Ankhar take flight. He noted with some surprise they were sivaks. Those aloof and fearsome dragon-men had not served the half-giant in his previous campaign, and the emperor wondered at the meaning of their presence. Were they fleeing a lost cause?
The sivaks flapped their wings and veered away from the legion positions. A few bowmen launched arrows at them, but the draconians were smart enough to stay out of range. Banking and leveling off, they skirted around the edge of the valley. Jaymes continued to watch as they abruptly dived and came to ground just before the fringe of pine forest at the base of the eastern cliff.
Those were the same woods, he realized, where General Weaver had proposed his flanking maneuver. Jaymes had discounted such a move as impractical, deciding the terrain was too rough for troops and that such a movement would only waste valuable time. Had he been too hasty? Peering at the woods, he saw meadows within the groves, and though much of the ground was rocky, there seemed to be space between the outcrops-most of it concealed by foliage-where troops could hide themselves very effectively indeed.
“General!” cried the emperor, attracting the attention of Weaver, who was directing the heavy infantry as it cleared the buildings on the eastern side of the town. A company of halberdiers were chopping at the barricaded door of a stout house, while spearmen swarmed around the place, stabbing through the windows and the few cracks that had been chiseled in the doors.
The commander rode over at a gallop.
Jaymes, meanwhile, ordered his lancers to redeploy on the near side of the square. “Regroup! Fall back to me! Form a line here!”
“Excellency?” Weaver asked, raising his eyebrows in mute concern.
Jaymes pointed at the woods. “Keep an eye on the flank-there might be something happening over there.”
But the warning came too late. More than a thousand ogres suddenly spilled from the tangled, rocky wood at the slope of the cliff, emerging just where the draconians had landed. They came out like a tidal wave, heading straight for the legion’s unprotected rear. They were fresh veterans, not the drunkards and hangers-on they had thus far battled in the town, and they came roaring and howling.
At the same time, a surging formation of snarling wolves, each mounted by a shrieking, painted goblin, burst from behind the lumberyards along the lakeshore. The warg riders raced across the plaza, straight toward the lancers, as the horsemen struggled to reform.
Both enemy reinforcements howled maniacally, closing in on the exhausted legion from the flank and the rear. Jaymes spared one glance back at the enemy commander, standing proudly on that stone roof. He couldn’t be certain, but it looked as if Ankhar the Truth were grinning in cruel triumph.
“I see a spot of light,” reported Rogard Smashfinger, falling back from the pile of rubble where he had been excavating for the past two hours. His shift was over, but he insisted on going back for a better look, so Dram joined him in crawling forward, over the jagged boulders that had been pulled out of the plug closing off the mine.
“By Reorx, you’re right,” Dram said. He wriggled around and called over his shoulder, “Send me up a pike!”
Someone passed him the steel shaft with a sharpened head; the quarters were too tight to swing a pickaxe. The dwarf jabbed and stabbed away at the slowly widening entrance. After almost half an hour of vigorous activity, he had one more rock to clear and used the pike to lever it out of the way. It tumbled down the mountainside and cleared a gap wide enough for Dram to stick his head out.
Conscious of his safety, the first thing he did was check for ogres in the immediate area. But there seemed to be none around; apparently they had all gone back down to the town. Looking below, where he heard the unmistakable sounds of battle, Dram could see why: a legion of knights were there and had already taken back half the town. But as he stared, a horde of ogres surged out of the woods behind the relief force. At the same time, a furious cavalry battle between human horsemen and goblins mounted on warg wolves began on New Compound’s central square.
Dram went scrambling back to the huddled dwarves waiting deeper in the mine tunnel.
“The ogres are under attack!” he shouted, his words echoing loudly, almost painfully, throughout the tunnel. “Get out there! Follow me! Pull more rocks out of the way when you come!”
He pushed loose rocks before him as he squirmed out the narrow hole, knocked rubble out of the way, and shouldered aside a good-sized boulder that was blocking one side of the narrow tunnel mouth. That rock tumbled free, almost doubling the size of the opening.
Rogard and Swig Frostmead were close behind him, clearing more of the entrance and emerging in a shower of tumbling stones.
Two by two, then three by three, then four or five at a time, the formerly trapped dwarves pushed their way out of the mine, each one widening the gap just a little bit more, making it easier for those behind to scramble outside. In a few moments, a hundred dwarves had emerged, and the mine shaft was cleared to its normal width.
The rest of the residents of New Compound and the mountain dwarves of Kayolin, came spilling out in a rush and, forming in ad hoc ranks, they moved quickly down the slope toward the town. Each dwarf carried a weapon, and each dwarf heart was filled with the race’s traditional hatred of ogres-and the burning desire to avenge the damage done to their once-peaceful town.
“Hurry up!” cried Dram Feldspar. He pointed at the ogres attacking the rear of the legion, identifying them as the most urgent threat. “Take them in the flank! Let’s roll the bastards right up!”
“Who’s the slowpoke?” cried Sally Feldspar, sprinting past her husband, hammer raised over her head, short legs pumping like pistons as she rushed down the hill.
Dram didn’t even try to talk her out of joining the attack.
Instead, he just did his damnedest to catch up.
Jaymes watched as General Weaver rallied his rearguard in the face of the ogre menace pouring down from the woods. The legionnaires reacted quickly, and the New City light infantry took the first onslaught of the attack on their shields, battling with short swords and giving ground only reluctantly so that the troops behind them would have a longer time to form a more solid line.
The men who had routed away from Apple Creek fought with tenacity, courage, and a high cost in blood and lives. Slowly they inched backward, falling by the score during the brutal fighting, but buying precious time for the rest of Weaver’s men to wheel around and better meet the surprise attack.
Inevitably, the sheer weight and numbers of the ogres drove the lightly armed men out of the way, leaving more than half of them dead or dying on the ground. The ambush was almost perfectly executed, Jaymes realized with a grimace. He had only himself to blame, having been fooled by that damned half-giant he had too easily dismissed as a barbarian. Weaver had his spearmen and halberdiers formed up; only to Jaymes’s eyes they seemed a thin, tenuous line facing a torrent of howling ogres.
If they had any chance at all, it was a very slim chance. Then Jaymes saw movement on the slopes coming from the direction of the mines. It was a fresh brigade of troops, doughty dwarves racing downhill on stumpy legs, beards flying, axes raised.
“For Kayolin!” came one battle cry; “In the name of Reorx!” was another, and Jaymes knew that the dwarves of New Compound somehow had freed themselves from their prison in time to join the battle.
The dwarves spilled from the rocks and tailings of the slope, surprising the attacking ogres on the flank. Immediately the ogre force wavered, the enemy tumbling all over each other as they tried to turn and face the fresh danger. Quickly the dwarf charge shattered the attack and forced the enemy into desperate defensive maneuvers.
That left the emperor to rally his own troops in the center of town. He ordered his archers to concentrate
