east, and the valley far below remained in deep shadows, as if night lingered in the woods. He could see thousands of flickering yellow campflres amid the trees, as distant and small as the stars in the predawn sky. He could also see that the invaders were preparing themselves for the steep climb to the gates of Dengar, gathering their companies in a long column along the road below the ramp. He surveyed the sky quickly, but there was no sign yet of the Masters.
'This would seem to be the day,' Dorinn commented. 'I should pass the command of the upper city to you, considering your experience.'
Korinn shook his head firmly. 'You've prepared the defenses of this city, and you know best what to do. I don't know what strength of arms or weapons you might have at hand. And you've had your own share of experience.'
'I appreciate your confidence,' his brother said sincerely. 'But to speak candidly, I have other reasons for giving you command. If the Masters come, I see no reason to waste the lives of our soldiers trying to hold the upper city when the passages below are far more defensible. My intention is to defy the senate's orders and abandon the upper city, but my concern is that I will be branded a coward and the defense of the city will be given to someone more willing to make foolish and hopeless gestures. They will be less willing to call you a coward. They would accept your actions as inevitable.'
'I appreciate your concern,' Korinn said pensively, 'but I will not accept your command. I will support your decisions completely. They will not dare to call both of us cowards.'
He turned away, but Dorinn stopped him. 'We both know which of us is to be the next king. You should have the command of our defenses so that you will have the honor of the victory.'
'It remains to be seen which of us will sit on the throne,' Korinn told his brother firmly. 'I believe that the throne would be well served by your patience and wisdom. But since dwarves often see valor above wisdom, you would do well to earn such an honor for yourself.'
The invaders began the slow climb up the steep approach to the gates of Dengar in the middle of the morning, but they seemed to be in no hurry. Perhaps having learned a lesson at Fort Dengar, they placed a heavily armored fighting force in the lead. They pushed before them sturdy barricades to turn aside any boulders and carried large shields over their heads to protect themselves from projectiles hurled from the cliffs above. Korinn watched them from the wall above the gate, trying to guess what they would do when they came within striking distance. He wondered if they would spend their own strength on an assault when the Masters could tear away the city defenses so much more quickly and easily.
He also kept in mind that a second army could arrive as soon as that very evening. That left him with some difficult questions in guessing the intentions of his enemies. The enemy force below Dengar gave every appearance of preparing for an immediate attack, while a second army was only hours away. Either the invaders wanted to initiate a siege of the city by getting a force to the top of the plateau, or they expected the appearance of the Masters to turn this first assault into an inevitable conquest of Upper Dengar. Korinn thought it wise to be prepared for the worst.
He waited a moment while his brother spoke briefly with a messenger, relaying orders to move troops to the front wall. Once the soldier had left with his assignment, Korinn moved closer so that they could speak quietly.
'I may be guessing, but I believe that the Masters will be here soon,' he explained. 'When their troops got in trouble at Fort Denwarf, they were ready to move in quickly. Of course, when Stahl was besieged, I never saw any of the Masters above the city. Then again, I was miles away by that time.'
'I won't argue with you,' Dorinn said, glancing briefly over the wall at the approaching invaders. 'What do you think?'
'I suspect that these forces are advancing up the ramp to be ready to move in when the Masters drive us from the wall. That places us in a very difficult situation. We can't allow those forces to come up the ramp, but the Masters are going to intervene if things go badly for their boys.'
Dorinn nodded. 'Then we must do all the damage we can as quickly as we can, but we also must be ready to withdraw to the tunnels. I think we can handle that.'
Dorinn left at once to put the new plans into action. With the enemy already on the march, the defenders of Dengar had only a short time to make any changes in tactics. Since his brother was more familiar with the forces at hand, Korinn was satisfied to leave such matters entirely to Dorinn. Instead, he remained at the wall watching the advance of the enemy, trying to anticipate what would happen in the next few hours. He expected the Masters to appear at any time, probably as their army neared the gate. Once the dwarves began their attempt to repel the enemy's advance, he knew that the gemstone dragons were likely to come in a hurry.
When the first of the invaders had come halfway up the long ramp, Korinn began to feel the rising tension not only in himself but in all the grim dwarvish warriors stationed along the wall. The ramp twisted back and forth on itself, with first one side and then the other looking out over the steep slope of the escarpment. The first of the defensive traps was located just beyond the army's present location, at a point where there was no room to turn and no place to run. The invaders came on until their vanguard moved slowly, steadily up the longest straight length of the road in the very center of the climb and was nearing the next sharp turn.
A deep rumble shook the wall where Korinn stood, as if the spine of the mountain itself had suddenly snapped, reverberating for a long moment through even the deepest caverns of the lower city. The invaders on the ramp paused for a moment, waiting in apprehension as the vibration in the stones on which they stood died away. Then, just as they began to feel that the danger had passed and began to resume their climb, the seemingly solid stone of the mountainside crumbled and the entire middle length of the ramp broke free and began to slide away. The long line of soldiers, including their beasts and their armor and their great war machines, fell away in a cascade of broken stone, sweeping down the steep slope in a deadly avalanche, carrying away even more segments of the invading army on the slopes below.
Within moments, the lower half of the escarpment disappeared beneath a great cloud of brown dust, billowing out across the valley below, so that Korinn was unable to see the bottom. Even after the lower half of the ramp disappeared in a spreading cloud of dust, he could hear the cries of the injured and the shouts of terse orders. The dwarves along the wall began to cheer and to call out fierce challenges, greatly heartened by the swift, devastating rout of the first assault.
Korinn knew that any other army would have just been dealt a serious setback. The invaders had lost at least several thousand soldiers, but they had tens of thousands waiting in the valley below. A large portion of the middle of the ramp had been destroyed, creating an obstacle that would bring most armies to a stop for days. But he was certain that the Masters were out there somewhere, watching and waiting.
Indeed, the answer was at hand almost at once. The dwarves fell silent as the dark, menacing forms of dragons passed almost directly overhead, the unearthly forms of gemstone dragons as they moved down from the upper slopes of Point Everast. With all their attention focused on the invaders below, the dwarves hadn't even seen them approaching. They flew swiftly over the city, passing just over the wall in an almost contemptuous gesture, then circled around tightly as they braced their wings to drop toward the forests below.
Following their line of flight, Korinn leaned out over the parapet, but he couldn't see the gemstone dragons once they had dropped down beneath the cloud of dust created by the avalanche. Even after the cloud of dust began to settle, he couldn't tell for certain just what the Masters intended. For the moment, they seemed to be devoting their full attention to restoring order among their troops and preparing for a new assault. Companies of soldiers had been gathered into precise columns and stood ready, although Korinn could not imagine what they proposed to do next. The ramp was closed to them, unless they were reckless enough to swarm over the wreckage of the center loop while the dwarves sent a deadly hail of stones and arrows down upon their heads.
Many long, anxious moments passed while the invaders reorganized. Their new tactics seemed to defy reason: they were not gathered on the road at the base of the ramp but in two large groups well to either side. A pair of alien dragons moved behind each of the two large companies of soldiers. Standing at the parapet of their high walls, the dwarves were utterly silent as they watched and waited in apprehension. Then the Masters stood up on their hind legs, their long, proud necks held high and their wings spread out behind their backs for balance. Facing the wall of the escarpment, they lifted their forelegs in a gesture that was clearly a part of some invocation of magic.
The jewel-like armor of the strange dragons began to glow, two like ruby, one with the clear light of crystal,
