The fact irritated him, but it didn’t surprise him. From what Jubal had learned, it seemed that the British and French and German generals were making the same crude and unimaginative attempts at battle that had characterized so much of the conflict he had known as the War for Southern Independence. These obtuse leaders expended their men in fruitless charges, and the spirits of the dead only served to expand the enemy’s fleet. At least Grant had learned his lesson at Cold Harbor. Would the same ever be said of the brutes who were methodically sending the young manhood of their respective nations into the meat grinder of trenches, machine guns, barbed wire?
It made him tired just thinking about it, and he couldn’t afford fatigue. Now, here, he had important work to do.
Juliay joined him, moccasins silent as the shadow in which they both sought concealment. He felt her hand in his, and he was heartened again, ready for the task at hand.
“There is one Delver behind us, another pair across the river right here,” she said, barely voicing the words, pointing to indicate location.
He nodded, saw the two dwarves, dark metal armor seeming to absorb the little starlight penetrating the narrow valley. Knowing the preternaturally keen hearing of his enemies, Jubal carefully shrugged the small crossbow from its sling across his shoulder, pointed to his quarry, and started to carefully move down the slope toward the stream. Juliay, in the meantime, backtracked toward the lone Delver on their side of the water.
Finding a boulder with a relatively flat top, Jubal stretched out on the crude platform and leveled his crossbow, the razor-edged dart of steel homed on the breastplate of the nearest dwarf. The water was near, no more than fifteen feet below, but still it slipped past with an eerie, nearly soundless rush. Over that faint hiss he heard a grunt, then a jarring clatter as of an armored body rolling down the hill; he knew that Juliay had done her job.
The two Delvers heard the noise, too, stiffening, then crouching in the shelter of a rocky outcrop. Julbal winced; he had lost his shot.
He remained steady, holding his bead on the place where the dwarves had vanished. In a few moments a light flared down the valley, Juliay setting off her coolfyre torch. Not wanting to impair his night vision, Jubal avoided even a glance at the source of the illumination, knowing that Juliay would likewise keep her eyes away from the night-bursting brilliance.
The diversion was enough to draw the two dwarves forward. Jubal could see the blank helmet plates, completely covering the eyeless faces as featureless as shadows. He was not fooled; bitter experience had proved that, since coming to Nayve, these dark-dwelling dwarves had somehow learned to see. How they did so remained a mystery. For this mission it was enough to know that they could be distracted and alarmed by a sudden light. Now, the duo of Delvers crept along the steep trail, each armed with a pair of multiple-bladed knives, attempting to sneak up on whoever was making this brightness.
Jubal aimed carefully and shot the first one, the dart punching through the dwarf’s side just below his upraised arm. The force of the missile knocked the stricken Delver to the side against the rising slope. The wounded dwarf kicked and tried to make a noise before he started to roll down toward the water.
The second spun around and dove for the shelter of the rocky outcrop. With a smooth gesture Jubal nocked in a second dart, brought up the weapon, then shot in a single, continuous motion. The dwarf was pierced in the guts and cried out pathetically as he, too, rolled down to the water. For a moment Jubal was reminded of Gettysburg, the dreadful stillness after he had joined Pickett’s attack. One of his men had made a moan that sounded exactly like the cry of the dying dwarf. Mercifully, the noises ceased as the dwarf plunged beneath the surface of the stream.
Knowing he had no time to lose, Jubal jumped to his feet and hastened along the narrow valley, meeting Juliay as she descended to the water’s edge, upstream of where all of the dead dwarves had fallen in. She kicked off her moccasins and buckskin leggings before wading into the waist-deep stream. In seconds Jubal had joined her.
They knew that Belynda Wysterian had chosen this spot with care, when the elfwoman had studied this valley in her Globe of Seeing. The water slowed and meandered here, the current’s impetus diluted at a bulge in the channel. Since it did not form a natural eddy, it was not a perfect place for the imminent magic, but those imperfections explained why this locale was so lightly guarded. All of the true eddies, where the stream swirled of its own accord, were heavily guarded by Delvers and harpies. This mission was only possible because Jubal and Juliay had selected a poorly defended section of this unique and precious stream-the waters that Juliay herself had discovered fifty years ago.
Before the mission could be performed, they would have to create a disruption in the flow, a curl in the river so that the water spun through a circle, forming a vortex to anchor the spell that the sage-enchantresses in Circle at Center were prepared to cast.
“How much time do we have?” whispered the man from Virginia.
“I reckon a half hour,” Juliay replied. “We’d better get to work.”
Jubal was already probing along the shore, where he found a bank of small boulders. Many of them were loose, and he hoisted one in both his hands, carrying it toward the middle of the meandering stream. He dropped it in place, and the druid added another to the pile.
Working quickly, the two humans pulled rocks from the shoreline and laid them on the streambed, raising a quasidam in a matter of a few minutes. They were gasping for breath and exhausted when they crawled from the water, but they could see that the flow, before continuing down the channel, now spun through a rapid, circular swirl.
Sitting down upon a flat-topped boulder, they watched, knowing they would not have long to wait. Jubal was not surprised to see faint illumination sparkle in the air-the aura of magic being cast at night. In the space of three or four heartbeats the brightness took on a humanlike, though overlarge, form. In the next instant the light was gone, replaced by the hulking shape of the giant, Rawknuckle Barefist.
Jubal was about to offer a greeting when the giant waved his hand and pointed up. “Harpies! Belynda spotted them in her Globe. They’re diving at you right now!”
Instantly the man toppled onto his back, clacking another dart into the spring of his crossbow. Julay rolled behind the boulder, nocking an arrow and drawing back her bowstring. Rawknuckle, meanwhile, raised his massive battle axe and looked at the sky.
Jubal saw wings, huge and dirty gray, spread wide to slow the harpy’s headlong dive. He fired at the darkness between those wings and heard the shriek of pain, proof that he had found his target. The filthy beast crashed into the water, vomiting oily bile that slicked the surface and hissed into flame when it contacted the air. More specks of fire appeared, spattering the ground around him, gobbets spat by flying harpies as two more swept past.
Rawknuckle cursed as one of the fiery globules thwacked onto his shoulder. He swung the axe, the attacker flying past just too high-but not beyond the reach of the crossbow. Jubal cracked off another shot, and the harpy fell with a crippled wing. The giant stalked over to the spitting, infuriated creature and whacked off the grotesque, vulturian head with one swift blow, while Juliay brought the last one down with a well-placed arrow.
“Any more?” asked the man, crossbow at the ready, eyes scanning the starlit sky.
“Belynda sent me ahead to tell you about those three,” the giant replied, wiping his axe blade on the harpy’s limp wing. “But there will be more on the way, you can bet, as soon as they know we’re here.”
“Let’s move, then!” Juliay urged.
By then more lights swirled, a dancing pattern of sparkling brightness cycling around the whirling water. Tamarwind Trak appeared, the elf blinking slightly and shaking his head to get over the disorienting sensation of the teleport spell. Belynda came next, followed by the druids Cillia and Waranda. Last to arrive was the centaur, Galluper, who shook his mane of thick, dark hair and snorted anxiously. Six water casks were strapped, three on each side, across Galluper’s sturdy, equine back.
The travelers went to work without any wasted motion, each taking one of the casks and lowering it to the stream. The centaur paced on the bank above, a sturdy bow, with arrow ready, in his hands.
Jubal pulled the cork from his keg and held it in the stream, allowing the silky water to pour into the container. Around him the others were doing the same, maintaining the filling even as they cast anxious glances at the sky.
Juliay was the first to finish. She stood her cask up and slammed in the cork. Rawknuckle was there, and he
