The gnomish companies that had formed the battle reserve also fought valiantly. At first they rushed forward to meet every breakthrough, firing lethal volleys of steel bolts from their crossbows. But it was the same story with them: there were too few reserves, too many breakthroughs. When the last of the gnomes had charged into position, the ghost warriors simply broke through in more places, breached the wall to the right and the left, poured onward with unstoppable pressure.
The breastwork still stood, but in many places the invaders began to force their way over the top. Tamarwind and Jubal tried to rally their elven troops along a section of the center, and Awfulbark pleaded with his trolls and elves on the left, but they were already too few for the task. The ghost warriors claimed the top of the wall in sections and spread out to the right and left, striking the defenders in the flank, clearing longer and longer stretches of the great rampart.
The defenders were forced into smaller pockets, finally defending only those sections of the wall where the batteries could cover them from above. In long stretches the warriors of Nayve were left with no choice but to flee the wall, breaking into small groups and scrambling up the rough slopes of the Ringhills.
O N the plain, Crazy Horse rode his fifth horse into the fray. The Hyaccan cavalry and their human allies attacked by the hundreds now, not the thousands, and each valiant charge left fewer of them to withdraw. But the leadership of their own khandaughter and the Sioux war chief, together with the plentiful supply of fresh mounts, allowed them to strike deep into the enemy ranks with each charge. Because of these attacks, the right flank of the wall was the one section that had held without wavering.
The battle had changed for them during the second day, however, when the Delver dwarves had advanced, taking over from the ghost warriors who had faced the riders earlier in the battle. These armored dwarves attacked with discipline and skill, and this forced the riders to increased desperation with each attack. The iron golems marched in front, gigantic and crushingly powerful, striding across the field with such force that nothing could stand in their path. The Sioux chief dodged around one of the massive giants-he had quickly learned to avoid these gargantuans, for no weapon he bore seemed to have any impact-and charged again into the ranks. His sword chopped down, again and again. Most of these creatures were faceless, and he killed them with dispassion.
Whirling through the melee, Crazy Horse spotted Khanwind, riderless, bucking in the midst of a horde of ghost warriors. Frantically he charged in, laying about with his sword until he drove back the ring of attackers and found Janitha, facedown in the dirt, surrounded by metal-clad dwarves. With a lean from his horse’s back and a strong grasp of her arm, he lifted her over the pony’s withers, spurring the steed away just a few feet in front of the furious attackers.
He checked for her pulse, and she opened her eyes, alive and feisty. He was surprised by how happy that made him.
“You ought to be more careful,” said the Sioux.
“Put me back on my horse,” she said, struggling to sit, facing him on the shoulders of the small pony. “And I’ll show you careful!”
He laughed in warlike delight, guiding his pony toward Khanwind as he held a firm grasp around the elfwoman’s slender waist. “What happened to put you on the ground?” he asked.
“I was hit by the ugliest bastard I have ever seen,” she replied, rubbing her hip where a purple bruise showed between the links of her elven chain mail. “I’ll remember his face until I die: a mass of red nostrils, and jaws of shiny silver, like teeth that had been welded over the scarred flesh of his face. He’s a captain of those dwarves-and I wanted him!”
“I will find him, and kill him for you!” Crazy Horse pledged, as Janitha nimbly sprang across to Khanwind, who nickered in delight at the return of his rider. The ponies and their riders raced together, back into the fray.
Zystyl cast a wary glance toward the great army marching on his right. The ghost warriors disturbed him, frightened him in some way that touched upon his arcane senses. He could smell their wrongness, and he feared that corrupt presence. He was determined to go none too close to the eerie horde.
Nevertheless, his dakali compelled him to attack, and so he had done, urging the army of Nightrock into an offensive against the far right end of the dirt wall. He understood that he was to interpose his dwarves and golems as a barrier between the ghost warriors and the elven cavalry that had vexed them so constantly during the fight.
He expected the charge, and when it came, his iron golems knocked many ponies and their riders to the ground, crushing both with stomping pressure and lethal smashes. But he did not expect so many of the accursed elves to ride right between the mechanical giants. Suddenly they were everywhere, chopping and kicking and charging through the neat Delver ranks. The little horses were shockingly fast and savagely warlike; they evaded the blows of the dwarven weapons even as they pressed home the charge, their riders striking down Delver after Delver. Even the mounts fought, kicking, biting, and trampling wherever they could. Zystyl’s troops were veterans of centuries of campaigning, but never had they faced a persistent, mobile attack like this. They found it demoralizing and, for a long time, were unable to press the advance. Instead, the great regiments milled around like giants swatting at biting flies.
Still, they fought well, and neither did they retreat. Zystyl himself swung his mace when a rider came close. Once he took a blow at a beautiful elven female, squealing in pleasure as his blow knocked her from the saddle. He had moved forward, eager for the kill, but the swirl of battle carried him away.
The arcane did not see the new attacker coming for him, not until it was too late. This was a bronze-skinned man, not a fair elf, and he was nearly naked as he rode an unsaddled horse, his black hair trailing in a long plume. Despite his lack of armor, he somehow evaded all the cutting steel of the Delver foot soldiers, striking through the ranks as if he sought Zystyl on some personal mission of revenge. The arcane raised his sword to parry, but the weapon was bashed painfully against his own face by the force of the rider’s blow.
Then he was on the ground, tasting blood-his own blood! “No!” he croaked. “This cannot be!” He barely felt the next blow as the human’s sword stabbed through his throat, but he couldn’t breathe nor even move; it was as if he was pinned to the ground.
His strength waned rapidly, flowing from his flesh as freely as the blood that drained from his body into the dirt. His last thought was stark, painful, and undeniable.
It was not fair that he should die like this!
The trolls were handled more roughly even than the other defending forces. Many of Awfulbark’s warriors had been permanently slain by the grisly attacks. The ghost warriors had learned from their past encounters: now when they pulled or knocked down a troll, they stood and hacked the creature until there was nothing left but a patch of gore. From such total brutality, even the regenerative forest trolls were unable to recover.
At last the king stood alone on a section of the wall, ghost warriors swarming over the rampart to either side. He roared and slew with his sword any attacker careless enough to come within range here. Awfulbark was ready to die here. And why not? Surely this was the end of the world!
It was Roodcleaver who grabbed him by the back of his neck and roughly pulled him away. The two trolls tumbled down the back of the wall together. The king stood at the bottom, angrily brushing himself off.
“Why I not fight?” he demanded. “Die like king!”
“Die like fool!” she retorted, further assailing his dignity. “You want to fight, come up hill with me. Stay here and we die. Go, and we fight some more. Maybe die up there, you want to die so bad! So go!”
It was hard to argue with that kind of logic, though the king made a valiant effort to come up with some devastating reply. But his mind was a blank, as usual. There was nothing left to do but follow his wife up the hill, and stay alive.
“Where’s Natac?” asked Tamarwind, as he found Jubal and Juliay on a low hill, overlooking the weary withdrawal of the once-mighty army. Everywhere troops were streaming off the wall, picking paths up the slopes of the Ringhills, in between the most rugged elevations, while the ghost warriors claimed the length of the parapet and, for now, seemed to be gathering their strength before they pursued.
“He had to go back to the city… an emergency, with Miradel. If he comes back, he’ll teleport onto Hill Number One. They’re still holding there, the last that I heard… but I don’t know how long that can last,” Jubal replied, putting his arm around Juliay. “I don’t blame him. At a time like this, things coming to an end, a man should spend those minutes with the woman he loves, I reckon. Not much hope for tomorrow.”
Tamarwind felt that remark with a stab of longing. “I’ve had a thousand years that I could have spent with that woman,” he said, “and I wasted them all. Would that I could have but one of them back again, I would go to Belynda and tell her what I know.”
