“You lot!” The bellow was Owen’s voice, roaring above the din. Ulf couldn’t see the Viking, but as the crowd grew suddenly quiet he sensed that the human warrior had waded into the celebration. Goblins yelped in dismay, and several abruptly flew through the air, tossed by blows of Owen’s hamlike fists. “Stop this commotion right now! Or I’ll have yer heads on pikes over the lakefront wall!”
“What for you make ruckus?” demanded another voice, and Ulfgang saw Hiyram swagger through his fellow goblins, jabbing his finger at a chest here, meeting a belligerent eye there. “We’s gotta fight Delverdwarfs-not you too each other!”
Sheepishly, the carousing goblins shuffled from the street, filing into the large manors that had been given them as barracks. But by then Ulf was already moving, pushing through the goblins until he caught up to Owen and Hiyram.
“I’ve got to get to Natac!” He barked frantically, trying to get the goblin’s attention.
“We’ll take you to’m-I’m wantin’ to tell about this mess, anyway,” Hiyram said disgustedly. He looked as though he wanted to take off after the retreating goblins, but Owen, at least, seemed to sense the dog’s urgency. Moving at a trot, they started up the Avenue of Metal.
N atac tried to deny the truth of the message, but deep in his heart he felt the reality of Miradel’s loss. He listened in dull horror to Ulfgang’s dispassionate report. For a long time the warrior couldn’t seem to speak, couldn’t make his mouth shape the words he wanted, needed to say.
“Why?” he croaked, finally. “Why kill her?”
“I think they wanted to capture her, really,” suggested the white dog. “I saw a piece of net there. And water, and marks of fire. It seems she put up a fight.”
“And she will be avenged,” Natac said, though the phrase, the very intention, seemed a hollow mockery. “We’ll start by figuring out how to face this raft, this ‘floating island’ that you spotted.”
He looked around the table in his headquarters chamber. Natac’s subordinate captains watched him warily. Deltan and Galewn, the giants representative of Nayve’s Senate, were there. That pair were responsible for the two forces who had held the causeway against every attack over the last twenty-five years. Karkald, too, was present, as were Tamarwind and Roland Boatwright. Owen and Fionn stood on the other side of the table, Owen with Hiyram and the Irishman with Nistel. They were gathered in a room of metal, with an iron floor and vaulted ceiling of bronze. At the door stood a guard, a giant armed with a massive, hook-bladed halberd and wearing a cap of shiny steel.
The general was acutely conscious of the meeting that had been in progress prior to Ulf’s arrival. It had been a routine affair, a report from the garrison on the Metal Causeway, the awareness that the enemy’s heavy galleys had stayed off the lake since the ships had been destroyed by Karkald’s seaborne batteries.
The training of the gnomes and goblins was proceeding slowly, and Natac fervently hoped that he could continue to spare both big regiments the shock of mortal combat. For years they had been part of the army, of course, but they had been spared many of the ravages suffered by the giants and elves. He admitted to a quiet affection for the diligent gnomes, typically pudgy, bespectacled, and squinting, yet so earnestly intent on becoming warriors, on redeeming the disgrace of their flight during the Battle of the Blue Swan. But in truth they weren’t warriors, and Natac had done everything he could to keep them out of harm’s way.
And the goblins, too, he found strangely likable. Rude and disorganized to the core, they still possessed the exuberance of healthy, fast-growing children-even if they should have decided to grow up long ago. Still, he couldn’t bear the thought of putting them into battle, any more than he could have accepted sending his own ten- or twelve-year-old sons into a mortal fight.
So instead, the defense of Circle at Center had fallen to the elves and the giants. So far they had done an effective job, but Natac admitted private concern at the reports of this great raft. How would it be used? And if it came toward the city, how could they hope to stop it?
“The caravels will sortie at the first sign of this raft,” he said, indicating the map spread out before them. “We can’t let them get on the flank or rear of the causeway. We have to assume it’s got a wooden structure, and if it’s wood it can be burned.”
As the others nodded in agreement at his sage pronouncement, Natac felt a stab of guilt. He could only hope that he was right.
“W hat in the Seven Circles is that?” growled Rawknuckle Barefist. He held a great axe against his chest, caressing the smooth handle, taking comfort in the keen steel blade that Karkald had given him twenty years before. The giant squinted across the lake, staring at movement he perceived through the mists of the Lighten Hour. Around him, the forty others of his company, hulking and bearded warriors to a man, stirred from their rest, a few picking up their weapons to join their chieftain.
Theirs was a lonely outpost, a wide spot on the middle of the causeway amid the generally placid waters of the lake. The small island boasted flat ground, a few trees, and benches and shelters for travelers’ rests. The smooth causeway departed from the islet in two directions, in the direction of metal toward the lakeshore, and in the opposite bearing toward the city, and the Center of Everything. In that direction the company of Deltan Columbine’s archers was rousing itself, cooking fires ignited and lookouts joining the giants in staring across the lake.
Now, just past Lighten, mist shrouded the water in gauzy curtains, visibility closed in enough that the giant chieftain knew he couldn’t be looking at the far shore. And yet something solid stretched across his view, more suggested than substantial in the vaporous air-but far, far closer than any land should be.
“Looks like the lakeshore is moving,” suggested his comrade Broadnose, with a noisy snuffle. He went back to the haunch of mutton that served as his breakfast.
“Well, I know what it looks like,” snapped Rawknuckle. “I want to know what it is!”
A great wall seemed to emerge from the mist, pushing through the water so slowly that it raised barely a ripple on the smooth surface. Far to the right the barrier seemed to curve away, and it was there that he caught a hint of a wake-long, rolling ripples coursing across the still water, confirming that the vast shape was in fact moving closer.
“It’s gotta be that raft we was warned about. Give a rise on the horn,” Rawknuckle decided. Young Crookknee, the bugler, hefted the instrument and placed his lips against the mouthpiece. Once, twice, and again he boomed long, lowing notes. The sound resonated across the water, many seconds later echoing back from the heights of Circle at Center.
“ ’Eh, chief. They’re coming the same old way, as well,” muttered Broadnose, lifting his bearded chin to point down the causeway in the direction of the enemy camp.
“No centaurs in front, this time,” said Rawknuckle regretfully. “I guess we’ll have to save the pikes for later.” He was disappointed. The last time this position had been attacked, the Crusaders had come at them with a rushing mob of centaurs. The giants had blocked the causeway with a bristling array of long-hafted spears, and dozens of centaurs had spilled blood and guts when they collided with the immobile line. The attack had been brutally shattered, without a giant suffering a serious wound, so in practicality Rawknuckle knew that the enemy tactic was unlikely to be repeated. Instead, it would be cast upon the growing pile of ideas that had been discarded by one side as the other found an effective countermeasure.
This time, the front rank of the attackers was a line of giants. Each bore a large wooden shield, and a club, hammer, or axe. By advancing in shoulder-to-shoulder formation with shields held high, they left little target for the elven archers who were forming to back up the giants.
“Where do you want us?” asked Deltan Columbine. The famed archer and poet stood ready with two hundred of his deadly bowmen. In past engagements they had formed on the city side of the little islet, shooting over Rawknuckle’s company to shower the attackers forced to concentrate on the causeway.
“I don’t like the look of that,” Rawknuckle declared, indicating the massive raft. “Why don’t you give us some room to fall back-say a few hundred yards? We could use your covering fire if that big thing floats in on our flank. And it’s just possible we’ll have to get out of here in a hurry.”
“You got it, Chief,” Deltan agreed. He crossed to his men and started them filing onto the causeway toward the city, while the giant turned around and watched nervously as the raft, and the rank of Crusaders on the causeway, moved steadily closer.
N atac and Karkald stood atop one of the towers flanking the end of the causeway. From here they could get only a vague sense of the true vastness of the raft.
“They must have taken the breakwater out of the harbor,” the warrior observed. “Just pushed the damned
