It was the gorge that the Dwarves had named the Wedge.
The members of the little company came high upon its southern slope, heads bent against the wind, cloaks wrapped tightly about their bodies as the cold and the rain seeped through. Silence hung over everything, the roar of the wind sweeping from their ears all sound save its own, and there was a deep and pervasive sense of solitude in each man’s mind. The company walked through scrub and pine, making its way upward with slow, steady progress, feeling the whole of the skyline close down about it as the afternoon faded and night began to creep slowly in. Foraker led the way; this was his country and he was the most familiar with its tricks. Garet Jax followed, as black and hard as the trees they slipped through; then came Slanter, Jair, and Edain Elessedil. Giant Helt brought up the rear. No one spoke. In the stillness of their march, the minutes dragged by.
They had passed over a gentle rise and come down into a stand of glistening spruce when Foraker suddenly stopped, listened, then motioned them all into the trees. With a word to Garet Jax, the Dwarf slipped from them and disappeared into the mist and rain.
They waited in silence for his return. He was gone a long time. When he finally reappeared, it was from a different direction entirely. Signaling for them to follow, he led them deep into the trees. There they knelt in a circle about him.
«Gnomes,” he said quietly. Water ran from his bald head into his thick beard, curling in its mass. «At least a hundred. They’ve secured the bridge.»
There was shocked silence. The bridge was in the middle of supposedly safe country — country that was protected by an entire army of Dwarves stationed at the fortress at Capaal. If there were Gnomes this far west and this close to Culhaven, what had befallen that army?
«Can we go around?» Garet Jax asked at once.
Foraker shook his head. «Not unless you want to lose at least three days. The bridge is the only passage over the Wedge. If we don’t cross here, we have to backtrack down out of these mountains and circle south through the wilderness.»
Rain spattered down their faces in the silence that followed. «We don’t have three days to waste,” the Weapons Master said finally. «Can we get past the Gnomes?»
Foraker shrugged. «Maybe — when it’s dark.»
Garet Jax nodded slowly. «Take us up for a look.»
They climbed into the rocks, circling through pine, spruce, and scrub, boulders damp and slick with rain, and mist and deepening night. Silent shadows, they worked their way ahead, Elb Foraker in the lead as they crept cautiously into the gloom.
Then a flicker of firelight shone through the gray, its faint, lonely cast washed with rain. It slipped from beyond the rocks ahead of them. As one, they crouched from its eyes and crawled slowly on, up to where they could peek above the rim of a ridgeline and look down.
The sheer walls of the Wedge dropped away below, misted and rainswept as the night came down. Spanning the massive drop was a sturdy trestle bridge built of timber and iron, fastened to the cliff rock at a narrows, and pinioned with Dwarf skill and engineering against the thrust and bite of the wind. On the near side of the bridge, a broad shelf ran back to the ridgeline, thinly forested and covered now by Gnome watchfires in the shelter of makeshift lees and canvas tents. Gnomes huddled everywhere — about fires in shadowed knots, within the cents silhouetted against the firelight, and along the shelf from ridgeline to bridge. On the far side of the gorge, nearly lost in the dark, a dozen more patrolled a narrow trail that ran back from the drop over a low rise to a broad, forested slope that fell away a hundred yards further on into the wilderness.
At both ends of the trestle bridge, Gnome Hunters stood watch.
The six who crouched upon the ridgeline studied the scene below for long moments, and then Garet Jax signaled for them all to withdraw into the shelter of a clump of boulders below.
Once there, the Weapons Master turned to Helt. «When it’s dark, can we slip past?»
The big man looked doubtful. «Maybe as far as the bridge.»
Garet Jax shook his head. «That’s not far enough. We have to get beyond the sentries.»
«One man might do it,” Foraker said slowly. «Crawl under the bridge; crawl along the braces. If he were quick enough, he could slip across, kill the sentries and hold the bridge long enough for the others to follow.»
«This is madness!» Slanter exclaimed suddenly, his rough face shoving into view. «Even if you manage somehow to make it to the far side — past those dozen or so sentries — the rest will be after you in a minute! How will you escape them?»
«Dwarf ingenuity,” Foraker growled slowly. «We build things better than most, Gnome. That bridge is rigged to collapse. Pull the pins on either side and the whole thing drops into the gorge.»
«How long to pull the pins?» Garet Jax asked him.
«A minute, maybe two. It’s been expected for some time that the Gnomes would try to flank Capaal.» He shook his head. «It worries me, though, that they’ve done it now and no one’s stopped them. They’re bold to seize the bridge as openly as this. And the way they’ve camped suggests they aren’t much concerned about being caught from the other direction.» He shook his head once more. «I’m worried for the army.»
Garet Jax brushed the rain from his eyes. «Worry about them another time.» He glanced quickly at the others. «Listen carefully. When it’s dark, Helt will lead us through the camp to the bridge. I’ll cross underneath. When I dispose of the sentries, Elb and the Gnome will cross with the Valeman. Helt, you and the Elven Prince use long bows to keep the Gnomes on this side of the bridge until the pins ate pulled. Then cross when you’re called and we’ll drop the bridge.»
Elb Foraker, Helt, and Edain Elessedil nodded wordlessly.
«There’s more than a hundred Gnome Hunters down there!» Slanter pointed out heatedly. «If anything goes wrong, we won’t have a chance!»
Foraker looked coldly at the Gnome. «That shouldn’t bother you, should it? After all, you can pretend you’re with them.»
Jair glanced quickly at the Gnome, but Slanter turned away without comment. Garet Jax came to his feet.
«No sound from here forward. Remember what we have to do.
They climbed back onto the ridgeline, then huddled patiently within the rocks and watched as the night descended. An hour slipped away. Then two. Still the Weapons Master kept them where they were. Darkness fell over the whole of the gorge, and the rain and the mist passed across it like a veil. The cold began to deepen, settling through them with numbing bitterness. Below, the fires of the Gnome Hunters grew brighter against the black.
Then Garet Jax brought his arm up, and the little company rose. They slipped from the rocks like bits of scattered night and began their descent toward the Gnome encampment. They went one after another, Helt leading the way, slow and cautious as he picked his path downward. The fires burned closer, and then voices became audible in the rush of wind and rain — low, guttural, and sounding of discomfort. The six forms crept past fire and tent, bent low within shadows that spread from rock and trees into the night. The company circled left about the encampment, and only Helt’s night vision kept them from wandering off the drop.
The minutes slipped away, and the slow crawl through the enemy camp dragged on. Jair could smell food cooking as the wind blew the odor back in his face. He could hear the voices of the Gnomes, their laughter and grunts, and see the movement of the toughened bodies passing in the faint light of the fires. He tried hard not even to breathe, willing himself to become one with the night. Then suddenly it occurred to him that if he wanted to, he really could become one with the night. He could use the wishsong to make himself invisible.
And then he realized that he had just stumbled on a better way to get them all across the bridge.
But how was he going to let the others know what it was?
They had crept to the edge of the gorge and were beyond the shelter of rocks and trees. Only the open face of the cliff stretched ahead. They edged forward, crouched low against the night. There were no fires here, and so they stayed hidden in the mist and the rain. Ahead, the bulk of the trestle bridge loomed through the dark, its wooden beams glistening with rain. Gnome voices came softly from above, brief and cryptic as the sentries hunched down within their cloaks and stared longingly at the warmth and cheer of the camp behind them. Silently, Helt took the company down beneath the bridge to where the supporting beams were anchored in the rock. Yards away, the empty depths of the Wedge opened in a monstrous chasm, wind howling through its cavernous stomach across the rock.
