The other soldiers who'd followed Calmora into the breach likewise cut and beat at the invaders, and all the while the lord archer calmly numbered newly dead goblins, 'Ninety-one, ninety, eighty-nine…'
The remaining goblins recognized their intrusion was failing. A few attempted a fighting retreat, but most merely broke and ran, and were cut down as they tried to scramble up and out of the trench. A couple turned and fired crossbows of their own.
A stray bolt clipped Jotharam's helm. The
When his ears ceased ringing, no goblin remained moving in the breach.
The lord archer ceased firing and dashed ahead, trampling the downed goblins as if they were mere cobblestones. Calmora fell in again at his side, and Jotharam returned to his role of trying to follow, now with a ringing in his right ear that he fancied tolled doom.
Just as Jotharam's ability to keep the two in sight neared failure, the archer and soldier paused as they drew even with Demora Tower.
A trench once connected the bunker with the base of the tower, but the hobgoblin besiegers who'd held sway beyond Sarshel filled that in long ago. A partial effort to dig the furrow anew was evident; however, the space between the new trench's endpoint and the tower stretched several hundred yards.
The lord archer and his handpicked soldier were conferring as Jotharam huffed up.
The archer was saying, '… or even south. Whatever the truth, it is vital we get a true assessment of their disposition. First, we must deal with the creatures that haven taken Demora Tower if we are to gain entry. It may not be easy.'
His eyes left the soldier and found Jotharam. One eyebrow rose in apparent surprise at seeing the messenger.
'I can help,' Jotharam explained.
'Jotharam Feor, is that you?' interrupted the soldier. 'Does your mother know you're out here?'
Jotharam started. Calmora knew who he was? Some vague recollection came to him, then, of an aunt in the militia named Calmora.
'Yes it's me; and what's it matter what she knows? I can help the lord archer!'
'How?'
'Well, uh. . before the siege my friends and I used to sneak into Demora Tower. It was just an old watchtower, and haunted, everyone thought, so only a few sentinels ever spent any time in it. Except for me and my friends. We used to play in it-' Jotharam saw by their eyes his audience was losing patience with his explanation, so he rushed to his conclusion-'and we found a secret way to the top!'
Sandy-haired Calmora shook her head, 'There's only one way in: the gate at the bottom. A single stair connects the entrance level to the observation level, where Imphras's wizards put the Wardlight. There's no room inside for secret ways in or up.'
'You're wrong,' protested Jotharam. 'The secret way is outside the tower, up the outer wall. You can only see it once you're up close, because it's hidden by a… a sort of overhang that blocks it from view.'
The lord archer rubbed his chin, spearing Jotharam with a searching glance. The boy's cheeks warmed under the stern regard, but he held the archer's eye.
'Let us try this path the courier knows about,' decided the tall man. 'But first, I must clear a route to the tower's base.'
Calmora squinted over the trench wall at the tower and said, 'It's too dark to see anything.'
'Almost,' agreed the archer, loosing an arrow. The shaft was instantly absorbed by the night. A moment later came a muffled cry and a distant, clanging thud. 'Eighty-two,' said the archer as he drew another arrow and loosed in the same motion. Another pregnant moment passed, which was followed by a similar brief wail and sound of a limp, armored body crashing to the ground.
'Eighty-one,' he intoned, then, 'Two hobgoblins were stationed just inside the tower gate. I saw Sarshel's lights reflected in their eyes.'
Calmora shook her head in mock disbelief. Jotharam began to ask another question, 'How did-'
'Now,' interrupted the lord archer. 'Run!'
Calmora grabbed Jotharam under his shoulders, and with a grunt, lifted him out of the trench. 'Show us the way,' she hissed.
Jotharam hesitated at the trench's lip, until he saw Calmora and the lord archer begin to pull themselves up. Satisfied he wasn't being sent alone into the night, he lit off toward the tower.
Darkness made the tower a slender gray blur. It seemed to reach down from the sky like one of Shar's own fingers.
Vague shapes on each side of his tentative dash resolved alternately as shrubs, boulders, and stands of weeds. He breathed in relief each time he drew close enough to recognize an obscure shape as a mundane object. He feared one of them would be revealed as the sneaking, grease-camouflaged goblin who had waylaid him earlier.
In the dark, Jotharam misjudged the final few feet to the tower. He slammed into one of the granite blocks that made up its massive foundation. The shock of impact bruised his forehead, and he bit his tongue.
'Pox and rot!' he muttered. All the minor hurts he had so far suffered that night were adding up.
Two shapes materialized from the darkness: Calmora and the lord archer.
'Where is your secret passage, then?' whispered his aunt.
Jotharam began sidling along the tower's base, widdershins from the main gate. Even as he moved away from the opening, he heard sudden guttural cries of surprise from within-other hobgoblins in the tower must have come down from a higher level to find their companions slain by the lord archer's deadly bow.
Ornate carvings crusted the tower's exterior, though many had worn and weathered away in the centuries since they were placed. No one remembered what prompted the long-dead wizard Demora to build so tall a tower that was at the same time so narrow that hardly any space resided within its slender width to house chambers of any consequence. Some argued that perhaps it had been constructed as a monument, not a serviceable structure. Yet in the centuries since Demora's departure, the tower had proved useful to Sarshel as a watchtower.
Indeed, it was from the tower's uppermost level that, five years ago, sentinels had seen the first hobgoblin army marching on Sarshel. Where so many other cities of the Easting Reach had fallen under sudden attack, Sarshel was able to prepare for the assault, and thus successfully held off the horde during the bitter years of the siege.
When Jotharam saw the griffon carving, he knew they were close. Another five steps, and his own initials stared back at him, shaky with childhood naivete. Beyond that was the slender gap that seemed a natural shadowed declivity behind a relief portrait of a long-bearded dwarf.
Jotharam slipped into the narrow gap. He heard Calmora mutter, 'By Tyr! Where'd the kid go?'
'In here,' Jotharam whispered.
He stood in a space no more than three feet on a side; at least, so his memory told him; it was almost completely dark. He reached out and brushed the cold iron rungs his hands remembered.
'There's a ladder,' Jotharam said to the archer, who was trying to fit his larger body through the narrow gap. Jotharam grasped the first rung and climbed several feet, 'It goes all the way to the top!'
'Quite a climb, then,' said the archer's silhouette below him.
'Yes, it is,' replied Jotharam, recalling how he and his friends used to rest halfway up the vertical expanse by threading ropes through the rungs and their belts. They would tie off to hang without effort until their arms ceased aching and their breathing slowed.
He began the ascent in earnest, feeling for one cool iron rung, then the next in the stygian darkness. He was careful to find his footing each time before he pulled himself to the next rung. When he craned to look behind him, he could just make out Sarshel's lights through the narrow gap where the vertical cornice didn't quite pinch the space containing the ladder into its own perpendicular tunnel.
The quiet sounds of the lord archer and Calmora ascending floated up beneath him, ringing with the slightest echo despite their relative silence. The odor of rancid standing water also filled the crevice-rain must have found someplace to pool. He hoped he wouldn't accidentally shove his hand into a stag shy;nant, muck-filled fissure in the tower's face.
At five stories his breath was rasping, and his arms burned. No doubt he was stronger than the last time he'd
