fell to the ground as corpses, yet as more and more of them died, the piles of corpses did not swell to the heights he would have expected. It was as if the flesh of these warriors gradually dissolved, even as additional ranks of ghost warriors kept rushing forward to replace the gaps left by the slain. As fresh bodies collapsed on top of the pile, those at the bottom slowly vanished into the dirt.
Tamarwind took a glimpse along the length of his line, heartened to see that most of the pikes were still in position. A few elves had fallen, but the attackers that pressed between the long shafts were quickly felled by swordsmen. All told, the line was holding well.
Indeed, so effective were the pikes that the attackers seemed to be focusing on the junctures where the giants-and Tamarwind-fought. One of the tall defenders groaned aloud and staggered backward, clutching his belly where it had been ripped open by a Viking’s battle-axe. The other giants were bleeding from scores of cuts on their legs and hips, and the elf wondered how much longer they would be able to hold.
But for now, the attackers could make no progress, and at the cost of blood and pain and sweat, Tamarwind and his warriors battled on.
He marched up the beach in a file of ten thousand warriors, his Enfield heavy and lethal in his hands. A flash of light and heat erupted to his right, sending fiery bits of metal through the column. Warriors to both sides of him fell, keening their death wails, while a tongue of fire reached around to singe his arm. But he ignored the flash of pain, stepping over the bodies of the slain without a second thought. In a few minutes his ghost flesh had healed, leaving not so much as a sign of his wound.
The beach was littered with bodies, and more of the silvery fireballs were erupting to all sides. The warrior looked at the top of one of the high sand dunes just as another barrage came forth from that place. He watched as the spheres scattered through the air, falling along the file of warriors advancing to his left. It was a good shot: the entire line erupted into flame and death over a hundred feet of its length, warriors blazing, stumbling, and falling as the incendiary explosive seared undead flesh.
But there, too, the loss was ignored by the survivors, more and more warriors kicking through the smoldering sand, tightening up the column, marching inexorably inland.
The warrior wanted to charge up the dune, to strike with his bayonet against the purveyors of those fiery assaults, but that was not the direction he was ordered to go. Instead, he heard the words of his captain, the croaky and rasping sound that seemed to come from within his skull, urging him to tighten up the rank, to speed up into a trot.
The same command must have been delivered to the whole file, because now the column was moving at a lumbering run, feet in sandals and boots churning through the sand, bearing the attackers closer to the sounds of battle. He pushed along behind the warrior in front of him, a fellow Tommy from the fields of Flanders. Behind him came a pair of fierce-looking warriors in face paint and feathers, each bearing a stone-headed tomahawk.
The enemy came into view, a long front of short, bearded warriors protected by steel breastplates, helmets, and shields. They were squat and powerful looking, with feet spread wide, and short-bladed weapons-swords, daggers, axes-wielded opposite the round shields. All along the front the ghost warriors were attacking, and these creatures-gnomes, the warrior called up from some recess of knowledge-were holding their ground with courage and skill.
He opened his mouth and found himself making a strange noise, a boiling gurgle of sound that seemed to propel him forward with great fury. The Tommy before him went down, thigh hacked by a gnomish sword, and then he was into the line, thrusting the Enfield forward with a practiced stab, bypassing the small shield, penetrating the bristling beard to jab the bayonet into the gnome’s throat, above his protective plate. Immediately the white whiskers were stained red, and the little fellow tumbled backward, dropping his blade from nerveless fingers.
And the warrior charged ahead, pushing through the gap in the gnomish line. Another diminutive warrior charged, then fell back, gagging through the blood of the awful thrust into his mouth. The two Iroquois came behind, one falling dead, the other bringing the stone tomahawk hard against a gnomish helm. The blow knocked the defender to the side, and the painted warrior snatched up a metal axe, pushing onward as the captain urged more of his troops through the breach.
Slogging ahead, his rifle light in his hands, the warrior looked in astonishment at the green, grassy field beyond the line. Never in his fighting in France had he beheld such a glorious sight; there, even a successful attack had only yielded another field of mud, another trench and fencing of barbed wire.
But here, the enemy line was broken! Ghost warriors poured through the breach, a hundred strong in the first minute, a thousand more coming as the gnomes to either side were butchered and driven away.
Natac and Regillix Avatar had flown back and forth above the front throughout the long day of fighting. Twice they had landed, once to patch a breach in the elven lines, and again to repel a sudden rush, warriors charging up a dune to try to take one of Gallupper’s battery positions. Each time the dragon had breathed a fiery cloud of death, disrupting the attacks enough so that additional troops could rush to the danger spot and hold the tide.
The Tlaxcalan was proud to the point of awe as he witnessed the doughty defense. There were four possible routes off of the beach, each leading toward a wide valley in the range of hills just beyond the coast. Each of these routes was defended by an army of nearly ten thousand Navyian fighters. To the right were two elven forces, the troops of Barantha on the far right, with the forces of Argentian, commanded by Tamarwind Trak, just to the left of that formation.
Third from the right was the rank of gnomes, a number of forces mustered from Circle at Center, the Ringhills, and the Lodespikes. These warriors were small but well armored and tightly packed; for hours they had stood up to the press of attackers without any sign of wavering. Finally, on the left, the trolls of King Awfulbark of Udderthud were waging deadly combat, tearing at the ghost warriors with their great claws, lifting and rending with brutal force. The trolls suffered grievous wounds, but the injured simply fell back from the line until, a few minutes later, their hurts were healed.
Between each of these armies, as well as posted on the heights to the left and right of the entire force, emplacements of batteries showered fiery barrages onto the beaches. The attackers pushed right through the flaming onslaughts, but that didn’t keep them from exacting a terrible toll.
Now, as the dragon took to the air once more, Natac strained to see into the distance, wanting to insure that the positions remained intact. He was disturbed to see a lot of activity behind the gnome position, and as Regillix flew him closer, his worst fears were realized.
“They have breached the line,” he observed, the dragon nodding grimly in agreement.
“Shall we land and try to block that up?” asked the serpent skeptically.
“No, there are too many of them,” Natac admitted, cursing the luck that had kept them away from this spot. A few minutes earlier they might have made a difference; now, the attackers had spilled through the line in a flood. The two wings of the shattered gnomish army were falling back, away from the breach, and the press of attackers surged inland unabated. Already thousands of them were turning right, to come at the flank of the trolls, or left, to push against the vulnerable end of the elven position.
Regillix dipped a wing, curling into an arc around the shattered position. Natac was tempted to go down and help the gnomes-they could insure escape for at least some of the nearly surrounded fighters-but he acknowledged a more important role for the sake of the whole army.
“Let’s land behind Tamarwind and give him warning. With luck, the elves can pull away before they’re surrounded, and we can be on our way to warn Awfulbark and his trolls.”
“Aye,” grunted the dragon unhappily. “A bitter choice, that, but the only one we can make.”
Already he was veering downward, gliding to a patch of open ground behind the rank of Tamarwind Trak’s elves. Natac took one glance back, saw a hundred gnomes vanish under the onslaught of the unholy attack. He thought of Nistel, of King Dimwoodie, and the other great gnomes he had known, and tears rose to his eyes.
“You will be avenged, my loyal warriors,” he muttered, before turning to the task of saving the rest of his army to fight another day.
M IRADEL walked through the beech trees on the fringe of the Grove. A long reflecting pool stretched toward the College, the pillared ramparts and marble towers mirrored perfectly in utterly still water. The sun was climbing, the Hour of Darken well advanced, and the purple twilight seemed to add an ethereal luminescence to the view, brightening the alabaster stone beyond that of the midday sun.
Other druids wandered past, heads down, silently treading across the grassy floor, the smooth walkways leading between the trunks of the great oaks.
Miradel found Shandira at the edge of the pool. She looked like a statue, regal and tall and, even amid the
