The Illearth War

pain so deep that he was not conscious of it.

But in time he recollected himself enough to raise his head, look over at Lord Mhoram. He could see the Lord dimly. His forehead was tight with pain, and his eyes bled tears.

With an effort, Troy found his voice. It was husky with emotion as he asked, “Is this what you saw last night? Is this it?”

“No.” Mhoram's reply was abrupt. But it was not abrupt with anger; it was abrupt with the exertion of suppressing his sobs. “I saw Bloodguard fighting in the service of the Despiser.”

There was a long and heartrending pause before Tull said through his teeth, “That is impossible.”

“They should not have touched the Stone,” the Lord breathed weakly. “They should not-!”

Troy wanted to question Mhoram, ask him what he meant. But then suddenly he realized that he was seeing more clearly. His fog was lifting.

At once, he rose to his knees, turned, braced his chest on the edge of the parapet. Instinctively, he tightened his sunglasses on his face.

Along the rim of the eastern horizon dawn had already begun.

Eighteen: Doom's Retreat

IMMEDIATELY, Troy jumped erect to face the sun.

His companions stood with him in tense silence, as if they intended to share what he would see. But he knew that even the Bloodguard could not match his mental sight. He paid no attention to them. All his awareness was consumed by the gradual revelations of the dawn.

At first, he could see only a fading grey and purple blankness. But then the direct rays of the sun caught the platform, and his surroundings began to lift their heads out of the mist. Above the long fall into shadow, he received his first visual sense of the wide open air in which Kevin's Watch stood as if on the tip of a dark finger accusing the heavens. In the west, across a distance too great for any sight but his, he saw sunlight touch the thin snowcaps of the mountain wedge which separated the South Plains from Garroting Deep. And as the sun climbed higher, he made out the long curve of peaks running south and then west from the valley of Mithil Stonedown to Doom's Retreat.

Then the light reached down to the hills which formed the eastern border of the Plains between Kevin's Watch and Andelain. Now he could follow the whole course of the Mithil River northwest and then north until it joined the Black. He felt strangely elevated and mighty. His gaze had never comprehended so much before, and he understood how High Lord Kevin must have felt. Standing on the Watch was like being on the pinnacle of the Earth.

But the sun kept rising. Like a tide of illumination, it flooded across the Plains, washing away the last of his blindness.

What he saw staggered him where he stood. Horror filled his eyes like the rush of an avalanche. It was worse than anything he could have imagined.

He made out the Warward first. His army had just begun to march; it crept south along the mountain wedge. He saw it as hardly more than a smudge in the foothills, but he could gauge its speed. It was still two days from Doom's Retreat.

Hiltmark Quaan's force was closer to him, and farther from the Retreat. But the horsemen were moving faster. He estimated their numbers instinctively, instantly; he knew at once that they had been decimated. More than a third of the two hundred Bloodguard were gone, and of Quaan's twelve Eoward less than six remained. They hurried raggedly, almost at a dead rout.

Raging at their heels came a vast horde of kresh- at least ten thousand of the savage yellow wolves. The mightiest of them, the most powerful two thousand, bore black riders-ur-viles. The ridden kresh ran in tight wedges, and the ur-vile loremasters at the wedge tips threw torrents of dark force at every rider who fell within their reach.

In an effort to control the pace, restrain it from utter flight, Eoman turned at intervals. Twenty or forty warriors threw themselves together at the yellow wall to slow the charge of the kresh. Troy could see flashes of blue fire in these sorties; Callindrill and Verement were alive. But two Lords were not enough. The riders were hopelessly outnumbered. And they were already well beyond the Mithil River in their race toward Doom's Retreat. Even if they ran no faster, they would reach the Retreat before the marching Warward.

Quaan had been unable to gain the last day that the marchers needed.

Yet even that was not the most crushing sight. Behind the wolves came the main body of Lord Foul's army. This body was closer than the others to Kevin's Watch, and Troy could see it with appalling clarity.

The Giant striding at its head was the least of its horrors. At the Giant's back marched immense ranks of Cavewights at least twenty thousand of the strong, ungainly rock delvers. Behind them hurried an equal number of ur-viles, loping on all fours for better speed. Through their ranks, hundreds of fearsome, lionlike griffins alternately trotted and flew. And after the Demondim-spawn came a seething, grim army so huge that Troy could not even guess its numbers: humans, wolves, Waynhim, forest animals, creatures of the Flat, all radiating the fathomless blood-hunger which coerced them-many myriad of warped, rabid creatures, the perverted handiwork of Lord Foul and the Illearth Stone.

Most of this prodigious army had already crossed the Mithil in pursuit of Hiltmark Quaan and his command. It moved with such febrile speed that it was little more than three days from Doom's Retreat. And it was so mighty that no ambush, however well conceived, could hope to stand against it.

But there would be no ambush. The Warward did not know its peril, and would not reach the Retreat in time.

Like jagged hunks of rock, these facts beat Warmark Troy to his knees. “Dear God!” he breathed in anguish. “What have I done?” The avalanche of revelations battered him down. “Dear God. Dear God. What have I done?”

Behind him, Lord Mhoram insisted with mounting urgency, “What is it? What do you see? Warmark, what do you see?” But Troy could not answer. His world was reeling around him. Through the vertigo of his perceptions, his clutching mind could grasp only one thought: this was his fault, all of it was his fault. The futility of Korik's mission, the end of the Giants, the inevitable slaughter of the Warward-everything was on his head. He had been in command. And when the debacle of his command was over, the Land would be defenceless. He had served the Despiser from the start without knowing it, and what Atiaran Trell-mate had given her life for was worse than nothing.

“Worse,” he gasped. He had condemned his warriors to death. And they were only the beginning of the toll Lord Foul would exact for his misjudgment. “Dear God.” He wanted to howl, but his chest was too full of horror; it had no room for outcries.

He did not understand how the Despiser's army could be so big. It surpassed his most terrible nightmares.

Wildly, he surged to his feet. He tore at his breast, trying to wrest enough air from his unbreathable failure for just one cry. But he could not get it; his lungs were clogged with ruin. A sudden loud helplessness roared in his ears, and he pitched forward.

He did not realize that he had tried to jump until Terrel and Ruel caught his legs and hauled him back over the parapet.

Then he felt a burning in his cheeks. Lord Mhoram was slapping him. When he flinched, the Lord pulled close to him, shouted into his eyeless face, “Warmark! Hile Troy! Hear me! I understand-the Despiser's army is great. And the Warward will not reach Doom's Retreat in time. I can help!”

Dumbly, instinctively, Troy tried to straighten his sunglasses on his face, and found that they were gone. He had lost them over the edge of Kevin's Watch.

“Hear me!” Mhoram cried. “I can send word. If either Callindrill or Verement lives, I can be heard. They can