The Illearth War

sword into its belly.

Then Ruel brought other Bloodguard to his aid. In a concerted charge, ten of them hammered into the pack, shattered it. Troy righted himself, tried uselessly to straighten his missing sunglasses, then cursed himself and sent Mehryl toward the Lords again.

As he moved, he snapped a glance at the Retreat. The last of the marchers were just disappearing down the canyon.

“Do something!” he howled when he neared Lord Mhoram. “We're being slaughtered!”

Mhoram spun and shouted to Callindrill and Verement, then returned to the Warmark. “On my signal!” he yelled over the din. “Flee on my signal!” Without waiting for a reply, he pushed his Ranyhyn into a gallop and dashed toward the Retreat with the other Lords.

In a hundred yards, they separated. Verement stopped directly between the conflict and the Retreat, while Mhoram raced straight north and Callindrill ran south. When they were in position, they formed a long line across the approach to Doom's Retreat.

They dismounted. Lord Verement held his staff upright on the ground in the centre as Mhoram and Callindrill whirled their staffs and shouted strange invocations through the noise of battle. While they prepared, Troy fought his way to Quaan's side, told him what Mhoram had said. The Hiltmark accepted it without pausing. They separated, battled away toward the flanks of the struggle, spreading the command.

Troy feared that Mhoram's call would come too late. The power of ninetyscore ur-viles rapidly organized the turbulent kresh. As the Eoward gathered themselves to flee, the ur-viles wrenched the kresh away from the tearing of carcasses, bunched them again into fighting wedges, and hurled them at the warriors.

In that instant, 'Lord Mhoram signalled with his staff.

The riders sent their horses running straight toward Doom's Retreat. They seemed to rush out from under the piled spring of the wolves. Once again, the trailing warriors crashed to the ground under a massive breaker of kresh. But this time the remaining riders did not fight back. They gave free rein to the fear of their horses, and fled.

The suddenness of their flight opened a gap between them and the wolves, and the gap widened slowly as the horses at last found release for all their accumulated dread. In moments, Troy and Quaan with the last three Eoward and little more than a hundred Bloodguard flashed by on either side of Lord Verement. As they passed him, he took his staff from where he had planted it in the line between Mhoram and Callindrill, caught it by one end with both hands, and cocked it behind his head.

Then the last rider had crossed the line.

Verement swung his staff and struck the ground of the line with all his might.

Instantly, a shimmering wall of force sprang up between Mhoram and Callindrill. When the first kresh charged it, it flared into brilliant blue flame, and hurled them back.

Seeing that the wall held, Lord Mhoram leaped onto the Ranyhyn, and sprinted after the warriors. Lord Verement followed as swiftly as his sturdy mustang could carry him. When they neared Troy and Quaan, Mhoram shouted, “Make haste! The forbidding cannot hold! The ur-viles will break it! Flee!”

The warriors needed no urging, and Quaan dashed after them, stridently herding them toward the Retreat. Troy went with him. For a moment, Mhoram and Verement were right behind them. But suddenly the Lords stopped. At the same time, all the Bloodguard wheeled their Ranyhyn, and pounded back toward the forbidding.

Cursing in dismay, Troy turned to see what had happened.

Lord Callindrill was on the ground near the wall. Several badly wounded warriors had fallen from their mounts within yards of the blue fire, and Callindrill was trying to help them. Rapidly, he tore their clothing into strips, made tourniquets and bandages.

He did not look up to see his danger.

Already the ur-viles were preparing to fight the wall. They sent most of the riderless kresh running to pass around the ends of the fire. Three ur-vile wedges moved forward to attack. The rest retreated a short distance and began re-forming themselves into a huge, single wedge.

Troy kicked Mehryl into a gallop, and joined the Bloodguard following Mhoram and Verement.

Lord Mhoram was twenty yards ahead of Troy, but he could not reach Callindrill in time. The three ur-vile wedges near the fire attacked. They did not try to break the Lords' wall. Instead, the loremasters concentrated all their power in one place. With a harsh clang, they struck their iron staves together. A great spew of liquid force gushed from the impact, splashed into the forbidding fire, and passed through it.

In black, burning gouts, the corrosive fluid dropped toward Callindrill. It fell just short of him, did not touch him. But it hit the ground with a concussion that flung him and the injured warriors into the air like limp bundles.

When they flopped down again, they lay still.

At once; the three wedges hurried aside, and the new, single, massed wedge started lumbering toward the wall.

Simultaneously, the first kresh rounded both ends of the fire.

The next instant, Lord Mhoram threw himself from his Ranyhyn's back, landed beside Callindrill. A quick glance told him that the warriors were dead; the force of the concussion had killed them. He concentrated on Callindrill. Touching the Lord's chest with his hands, he confirmed what his eyes told him; life still flickered in Callindrill, but his heart was not beating.

Then Troy reached Mhoram's side, and the Bloodguard poised themselves to defend the Lords. On horseback, Verement worked at the wall of forbidding, tightened' it against the assault of the wedge. But it could not withstand fifteen hundred ur-viles. The wedge moved slowly, but it was hardly twenty yards from the fire. And kresh poured around the ends of the wall now pelting toward the Bloodguard and Lords. The Bloodguard moved out to meet the wolves, but a hundred Bloodguard could not hold back five thousand kresh for long.

“Flee!” Mhoram yelled. “Go! Save yourselves! We must not all die here!”

But he did not wait to observe that no one obeyed him. Instead, he bent over the fallen Lord again. Holding, his lower lip in his teeth, he massaged Callindrill's chest, honing to renew his pulse. But his heart remained motionless.

Mhoram drew a sudden sharp breath, raised his fist, and hammered once with all his might on Callindrill's chest.

The blow jolted the Lord's heart. It lurched, stumbled, then broke into a limping beat.

Mhoram shouted for Morril. At once, the Bloodguard leaped down from his Ranyhyn, caught Callindrill in his arms, and sprang up again. Seeing this, Lord Verement broke away from the forbidding wall, started back toward Doom's Retreat. Mhoram and Troy mounted, surged away from the wall after him.

The Bloodguard followed in a protective ring around the Lords.

A moment later, the massed ur-vile wedge hit the wall and tore it. Dark, liquid power shredded the blue flame, ripped it into fragments and scattered it. Instantly, the rest of the kresh flooded after the escaping Ranyhyn. And the wolves pouring around the ends of the wall changed direction to intercept the riders.

But the Ranyhyn outdistanced them. The great horses of Ra pulled past Verement and thundered toward Doom's Retreat.

Ahead, under the late afternoon shadow of the cliffs, Hiltmark Quaan was urging the last of his warriors into the canyon.

Maddened by the escape of so many prey, the kresh howled with rage, and swung to converge on Lord Verement.

His mustang ran hard and bravely. But it was already exhausted; slowly the kresh gained on it. Before it had covered half the distance to the Retreat, Troy could see that it would lose the race.

He called for help, but the Bloodguard did not respond. Only Thomin, the Bloodguard personally responsible for Verement, remained behind. Incensed, Troy started to go back himself, but Mhoram stopped him by shouting, “There is no need!”

Thomin waited until the last possible moment-until the kresh were raging at the