The chase continued for days. A captured Devourer scout, tortured without Duwan's knowledge by pongs, gave him a word for the enemy army. Conqforce. Conquering Force. An army, the invincible formation that had driven the Great Alon from the Land of Many Brothers. Thousands strong, the enemy seemed tireless, and as the days passed the Devourer force spread out in a long line to the west, with the lead elements forcing Duwan's course into a northeasterly direction. If that continued he would be pinned against the sea.
Now the destroyed settlements were being passed, and the sight of the devastation gave new strength to the enemy. Hata marched his guardsmen and the conscripts past the settlements, giving them time to see the decaying remains of those who had died. 'No prisoners,' he said, and this order was issued until every guard and conscript muttered it under his breath as the settlements were passed.
Duwan knew that the snows would fly soon, and his plan was to use the snow as cover to move his force into the deep forests. He was in familiar territory. Ahead was the wide, sheltered canyon where he and Jai had wintered, where he had planted his grandmother and the other oldsters. He had mixed emotions. He knew that the valley would be a fine place to make a stand, and it was becoming apparent that he could not continue to outdistance the enemy.
And yet to fight in the valley would risk the death of the relatively newly planted old ones.
It was the enemy who made the decision for him. A fast moving column crossed the head of the canyon to the west and positioned itself to the north. To the east the canyon tapered off and ended in high hills.
'Here we will stand,' he told his leaders. 'If we hold them until the snows come, they will be exposed, while our forces will have the shelter of the canyon. A winter siege will favor us, for we have food in the canyon, while they will have to hunt for theirs, or have it transported from the south.'
He set up his headquarters in the cave where he had spent such a wonderful winter with Jai. The enemy could come at him from only one direction, the west. He positioned his bowmen behind tall brothers, behind boulders, with orders to fire and fall back to join the main force in defensive positions in front of the small grove where his grandmother lived on. In the following days, the enemy engaged them in probing actions. Devourers came down the steep sides of the canyon in small groups and were killed or forced to scramble up for their lives. A large force probed toward the east to find that the narrow confines of the canyon there, the steep, almost impassible hills, favored the defenders too greatly.
'There is only one way in,' Hata told Elnice of Arutan. 'Up the canyon from the west. The one who leads the pongs has chosen well. He can match our numbers in the confined floor of the canyon, but we will wear him down by repeated attacks.'
Hata, himself, led the first probe directly up the canyon and he came face to face with the tall leader he'd watched at the battle before the gate of Kooh. He tried to fight his way to where Duwan was holding, a stack of dead guardsmen before him, and got close enough to see the face of his adversary.
'You will be interested to know that an old friend of yours anchors the center of the pong line,' he told Elnice, after he'd ordered a withdrawal, leaving more of his own dead on the field than he liked to admit.
'A traitor?' Elnice snarled.
'Tomorrow, when we attack, you will see for yourself.' Elnice, surrounded by her personal bodyguard, made her way near enough to the battle line to catch a glimpse of the powerful warrior who anchored the pong line and killed her soldiers with dismaying regularity. She again felt that he was familiar, so she pushed closer. She was in no danger, for the pongs made no attempt to advance. They had established positions where the bowmen could take a toll, and the swordsmen could fight from the advantage of a small rise in the canyon floor.
'Duwan,' she gasped, when she finally got a glimpse of his face in a moment of violence, as he threw back his head to avoid a thrust and then lunged forward to slay still another of her guardsmen.
'I want him taken alive,' she told Hata, that night, when, once again, many dead littered the field of battle. 'I took him into my bed and now he betrays me. He will be peeled so slowly that he will howl for mercy.' Next day the line gave, but did not break. Little by little, the enemy pushed it back, back, until a new set of defensive positions were reached and hidden bowmen caused a temporary panic among the enemy, a panic that was halted by officers cutting off the heads of a few fleeing conscripts and lashing the others back toward the line of battle. And so it went for ten days, then fifteen.
Each day was the same. The attack began shortly after first light and continued as wave after wave of fresh troops replaced those who had taken their losses in attacking Duwan's positions. At Duwan's back, now, was the grove, the young grove of growing brothers where his grandmother lived. His losses had been severe. Each day saw fewer experienced swordsmen at the line. Worse, the supply of arrows was running out, for it was impossible to retrieve more than a handful after each battle. Pongs had died trying to retrieve arrows, for Hata had noted the arrow gathering activity after each battle and had taken steps to stop it, placing fresh troops behind the battle line to ambush the arrow gatherers. Duwan knew that defeat was inevitable. He prayed for the snows. He tried to communicate with the tall brothers, and his grandmother, but it was as if the presence of the enemy in the valley muted the whispers. He was still alone, and the hard fighting had not only depleted the pongs, it had taken its toll among the old valley Drinkers, as well. Males he had known from his first mobile days had been buried, or lay, unrecoverable, on the field of battle.
After a long, hard day of fighting he called his surviving leaders into council.
'The snows are tardy, and even if they come now it is too late,' he said.
'Our only choice is to try to salvage a portion of our remaining forces. They have fought well. They can become a cadre to form other fighting groups. It will avail us nothing if we all die here. With us will die all hope.' He outlined
