Mathi approached the tent. She heard Balif snarl, “Get back!”
“This is no time for vanity,” Mathi said. “I’m coming in.”
The general’s response was a low, throaty growl that would have stopped a charging wolf. With the hounds still baying in the woods and Lofotan shouting for him, Mathi braced herself and strode straight into the tent.
She looked at the general of the Speaker of the Star’s armies, lying on his side, panting. There was just enough of his original form left in him to make his appearance even more grotesque.
“I … shall kill … you!”
“You’ll have to stand in line, my lord! The nomads are coming!”
“Think … I don’t … know?”
“We need you, sir. We need everyone, every hand!”
Balif’s panting sound like laughter. “I … have no … hands left.”
“Then lie here and die! I’ve no more time to waste on you!”
She raced to where Lofotan, the scribe, and the centaurs waited. Seeing the elf warrior with his helmet on gave Mathi an idea. She diverted to Balif’s tent and got the general’s polished helmet, with the white horsehair plume on top. She held it out to Lofotan.
“I can’t wear the general’s armor,” he said.
“Wear it, captain. Be our general in this last fight.”
Taking in the expressions on the centaurs and the scribe, Lofotan removed his simple headgear and donned Balif’s helmet.
The baying hounds abruptly ceased their song. Everyone on the hill stirred nervously. Only the dogs’ handlers could silence them so suddenly. The enemy must be close.
They were. Daylight glinted off bits of armor and naked blades down at the tree line. Mathi couldn’t count them scattered among the trees, but it looked like several hundred men on foot, milling around in the greenery.
Between them they had seven bows. Centaur bows were simple curved staves, which lacked the range and power of Lofotan’s elegant Silvanesti weapon. They also used stone arrowheads, not bronze like the elf’s. Against fur-clad nomads it might not make much difference, but if there was much armor distributed among Bulnac’s men, the centaurs’ arrows would be almost useless.
Nevertheless they braced and stood ready. Mathi swallowed hard. If only the kender had been as steadfast as Zakki and his comrades.
After a short period of disorder, the nomads advanced up the hill. They came on in no formation, just a ragged line with men bunched together around individual leaders. It was close to two hundred yards from the forest edge, to where Lofotan stood. He pointed his arrow skyward and released. Plunging out of the lightening sky, Bulnac’s men couldn’t see it coming. It hit a nomad in the center of the line. He threw up his hands and went down. His friends stood around him momentarily, then resumed their advance.
Lofotan loosed arrow after arrow. He never missed. His targets were thickly clustered together. The morning light was against them, but they doggedly came on. At a hundred fifty yards some of the nomads halted and loosed their own arrows. Things were hectic on the hilltop as everyone dodged incoming missiles. To Mathi, who had never been on the receiving end of archery in broad daylight, it seemed as though the arrows flew and fell very slowly. When they hit the ground they only buried a few inches of shaft. Were they really dangerous?
Her curiosity was answered when one of the centaurs was hit in the palm of one hand. The nomad arrow penetrated for half its length. It was a horrible looking wound, but the tough centaur snapped the hardwood shaft with his teeth and pulled the arrow out.
The nomads’ archery sputtered and ended. Too many of their comrades were in front of them, and they no longer had a clear field of fire. From the heights, Lofotan had a perfect view. The centaurs joined in, and they attacked the advancing humans without mercy.
Beating their swords against their wooden shields the nomads kept coming, shouting their chief’s name over and over, like a spell to insure victory.
Without anyone in overall command, the mob of nomads began shifting to their left. The gap in the stake line lay that way, and even though they could have squeezed between the stakes at any point, the warriors naturally made for the easier path.
Lofotan lowered his bow. Mathi asked, “Are you out of arrows?”
“No, but there’s no point using them all now.” He called for the others to form beside him with weapons drawn.
“We’ll charge them when they enter the gap,” he said. The narrow way would cause the nomads to bunch together, hampering their movements and their ability to use their weapons.
“Now, forward!”
They trotted toward the fence gap. As they passed the supply tent, the canvas sides billowed out, and a dark shape burst out of the front. A blood-chilling howl rang from the hilltop.
Balif had joined the fight.
Mathi checked Lofotan. The elf warrior kept his eyes straight ahead, not paying the slightest attention to the misshapen creature entering the battle on their side.
Balif reached the enemy first. They gave ground before his charge, unsure what they faced. He batted away the spears they jabbed at him. The beast’s jaws opened wide, revealing a jaw full of long yellow teeth. A human archer took aim, but Zakki put an arrow in him first. Balif sprang at the enemy, bowling over three when he landed. His power was terrifying. He had claws on all four limbs, and he ripped his way through the lightly clad nomads. What his talons did not shred, his teeth tore apart.
The nomads were surprised to be attacked by an animal, but they were men of field and stream, used to hunting animals of all kinds. They rallied, trying to ring in the beast and cut him down. Fortunately for Balif, Lofotan’s band arrived.
They battered the nomads back, breaking the circle and freeing Balif. He snarled defiance and stormed into danger again. The centaurs fought valiantly, not only with sword and spear but with their front hooves too. Lofotan moved like a dancer, slashing in and out among the nomads with ruthless precision. But for all their ferocity, bravery, and skill, they were thirteen against hundreds. Nomads flowed left and right, getting behind the defenders. Two of Zakki’s centaurs went down in quick succession to thrown spears. Treskan did his best, which wasn’t much, so he settled for keeping the enemy off Lofotan’s back. Mathi could do little but parry and block sword and spear thrusts. The circle shrank and shrank. When Mathi’s heels bumped the elf’s she knew the end was near.
And then, a miracle.
At two-score points along the slope of the hill dirt flew upward. Holes opened in the ground, holes that had been covered with panels of woven vines and camouflaged with dirt. Pouring out of these holes came kender- hundreds of kender. Decked out in a motley collection of found weaponry they mixed with the nomads and fell upon them from all sides. In the time it took for a sparrow to cross the ridge the course of the battle completely reversed. The nomads broke. They ran for the woods, many with two or three kender clinging to them, battering them with swords, knives, stones, or sticks. The ring of bloody blades that threatened to close around Lofotan’s defenders disintegrated. Zakki and his warriors took up their bows, stinging the retreating enemy. Treskan and Mathi were content to watch the humans flee, stunned by the sudden turn of fate.
Balif chased them, howling for more blood. When a stout warrior turned to spear the general, Lofotan raised his bow and shot him down. Pointed ears laid back against his head, Balif howled and charged the next nearest nomads. He pursued the enemy into the woods.
Mathi saw the concern on Lofotan’s face. Alone in the woods, Balif could be ambushed at any time. There was nothing Lofotan could do. Sound tactics required him to remain on the hill no matter what his cursed leader did.
The Longwalker hailed them. “Greetings, noble friends! We have won!”
“Only the first throw,” Lofotan said. Uncharacteristically, he smiled broadly at the kender chief, however. “I wish you could have told us what you were planning!”
“We thought we were going to die!” Treskan added.
“Many apologies, but it was vital that the humans not know about our wall-less walls.”
The Longwalker explained that the kender had begun tunneling into the bluff since the first night they
