Chapter 30
Because the goblin army was so widely spread, fanned across the plains in three troops, miles apart, Kolanda Darkmoor decided to move against the people at the bridge. Even though the wizard might be with them, the defenders were still only a handful. She ordered Thog to gather the main force on the central plain to await her signal.
Thus, when Wingover made his dash from the breaks to the fork-trail hill, spotters saw him from less than a mile away. The word of his sighting was relayed immediately.
'We got foragers workin' those gully-washes,' the runner said. 'They'll get him there.'
'Groups of four?'
'Like you said,' the sprinter noted, 'he won' get through. Jus' one man… they'll get him.'
Yet, moments later, the rider was seen again, farther away and past the washes, heading for the more distant of the twin hills. Kolanda swore, halted her platoon, and pulled Caliban from beneath her breastplate.
'Caliban!' she snapped. 'See for me now.' She held the withered heart to her forehead without ceremony.
'She is arrogant,' the whispering voice said. 'She will require special attention when… ah?' The voice became a hiss. 'Glenshadow!'
'See for me!' Kolanda ordered. 'The man on the horse, what is he doing?'
The view closed on the distant rider, who was swerving to climb the hill, then shifted to the hilltop, Kolanda stiffened. The wizard there stood immobile, arms outstretched, and shone with a green glare that seemed to burn through her skin. She jerked Caliban away from her forehead. 'What is that?'
'She doesn't know what has hurt us,' the feathery voice whispered. The heart vibrated in the Commander's hand, the air sizzled and trembled, and
Caliban loosed a bolt of pure energy across the miles, aimed at the wizard on the hill. Then Caliban went cold in Kolanda's palm. 'An element protects him,' it whispered. 'I could not reach him.'
'Is his magic more powerful than yours?' the woman snapped.
'She doesn't understand,' Caliban whispered. 'It is not his magic. It is something else. Wait… ah. The man has taken it. Now Glenshadow is revealed. Now I can fight him. Hold me up. I must draw power from you.'
'Wait,' Kolanda commanded. 'The thing he had, that the rider has now, is that what the dwarf is seeking?'
'She plays at riddles,' the dry voice grated. 'Hold me up.'
Kolanda felt the familiar tingling in her skin as Caliban started to restore his energy for another attack, drawing from her own reserves.
Abruptly she dropped the withered thing, letting it hang on its thong outside her breastplate. 'You will obey me,' she commanded. 'Obey or find no source for your magic. Without me, you are nothing. We do this my way.
Do you agree?'
'She oversteps,' the voice whispered, distant and dry. 'She will pay when the time is right. It must be so.'
'Another time, we can discuss it,' she said. 'But now, do you agree?'
'How can we fight as two?' the ancient voice insinuated. 'When I am at rest her armor hides me, and hides all from me except her. When I am in use, she must hold me in contact with her; she can do nothing else.'
'Do you agree?' Kolanda demanded.
'I agree,' the distant, evil voice said. 'For now. But how?'
'Like this,' she said. Reaching behind her, the Commander loosed the lacings on her breastplate, then pulled it off and threw it aside for the slaves to pick up and place in the cart. The blouse beneath it she tore from neck to waist, exposing her breasts. Caliban hung now in the cleft between them, and his voice was no longer distant.
'I can draw from her heart to fight, as well as from her head,' it admitted.
Immediately, Kolanda felt the tingling again, this time through her chest, and the surrounding air seemed to sizzle. 'My way,' she reminded.
'You can have the wizard, but not at risk of the man and the thing he carries.' The distant vision came again, but only vaguely now that Caliban was not at her eyes. Still, it was enough.
The wizard was mounting the horse, swinging up behind its rider.
Kolanda beckoned a hobgoblin. 'Noll,' she commanded, 'take the platoon at double-time and go to the bridge. Take those you find there. Kill them if they resist.' She motioned the troops forward, and they lined out at a run, followed by the cart drawn by slaves and by the swamp goblins searing them with whips to get more speed from them.
Only Kolanda and her personal guard of six selected fighting goblins remained. With them at her heels, she set off at a steady trot toward the edge of the breaks. Where the trail emerged, she would wait for the two riders coming from the hills. Caliban could have his revenge on the wizard. He could have the other man, too, as far as she was concerned, but intuition told her that the thing he carried with him must not reach the dwarf at the bridge. It must not reach Thorbardin, of course, but more than that she herself must have it.
Whatever it was, it had the power to punish Caliban.
The two men on the horse were still nearly a mile away when Kolanda
Darkmoor and her guards took up ambush positions along the trail, just where it entered the broken lands.
Half a mile to the west, Noll and his platoon of goblin warriors crept through narrow ways among heaped boulders, approaching the abutment of
Sky's End Bridge. Behind them came the cart, pulled by slaves. In the same cart Kolanda Darkmoor's lacquered steel breastplate lay atop bundles of lathed bronze darts, foraged weapons and supplies, and bits of booty picked up along the trail. Where it lay, it almost hid a sleek longbow of elven design and a single arrow… the last arrow of Garon Wendesthalas.
Weak and battered, beaten and mutilated, the elf clung to the side of the cart for support as swamp goblins harried the slaves along. He clung, and his hand was never far from the bow and the single arrow.
Wingover was long since out of sight by the time Chane and the others had crossed the arched bridge, and they settled in to wait between a pair of pillars that might once have been guard towers, flanking the east end of the bridge. Guard towers or, Chane thought, possibly counting towers for inspection of wares in transit. Idly, the dwarf found himself thinking: this might once have been a trade road. Wingover had spoken of trade roads. Probably there had been such a road, going out from
Thorbardin to points north by way of Pax Tharkas. Obviously there had once been a lot of trade between the undermountain kingdom and other realms — far more than the modest efforts of Rogar Goldbuckle and other traders produced now.
Thorbardin itself was full of things not dwarven. Elvenwares of great beauty were treasured under the mountains, as were tapestries and feather arrangements, cunning table services of carved wood made by humans somewhere, toys and folding screens, vine-laced frames for paintings, small bits of treasured ivory. Chane had seen such things all his life in
Thorbardin, but had never thought much about them. Now he realized that they were relics of some long-ago time when the gates had been open and roads had been in use for caravans to come and go upon them. Chane thought of it, and felt as though some grand thing had been lost along the way.
Wars and hostilities and conflicts among peoples had destroyed the roads, and put an end to the commerce they had represented.
This very bridge, this soaring arch across a misted gorge, might have been part of that same old route from Thorbardin to Pax Tharkas to the lands of Abanasinia…destroyed in the Dwarfgate Wars. The bridge might have been a point of registry for dwarven goods outbound, and a point of inspection for the treasures of other places, coming to the dwarven realm.
