later, plunging into the heart of the troll that had somehow slipped around him. Fortunately-and it was the only good fortune they had right now-the steep sides of the ravine kept most of their hulking attackers in front of them.
Hal turned back to the pressing numbers there. Daggrande, his crossbow slung over his back, now hacked with the keen blade of his battle-axe. Jhatli, following the orders of the two soldiers, had fallen back, and now sent his arrows arcing over their heads into the monsters that crowded the bottom of the narrow ravine.
Halloran didn’t have time to see if Erixitl and the two old men had disappeared from view. A heavy club descended toward his skull and he skipped to the side, striking off the arm that bore it. A green – taloned troll lunged for him, and he sent the beast crawling, legless, back to its compatriots.
Daggrande hacked into the leg of another troll, crippling it. The stocky dwarf ducked nimbly away from yet another of the creatures, springing up beside Halloran to drive a third monster back with sharp chops of his own dripping blade.
“Can’t… hold out… much longer,” he gasped.
The bands of pluma around Hal’s wrists sustained him, driving his blows with tremendous force. The magic couldn’t overcome his own rapidly growing fatigue, however, but he roughly forced it away from his awareness. Hammering his weapon with brutal, mindless strength, he
bashed and hacked and crushed the attackers in the apparently endless horde.
“Go,” he panted. “Take the kid… see that others get to safety! I’ll hold them off… as long as I can!”
With the fury of desperation, Halloran suddenly attacked, driving the whole pack of beasts away from him with a whirlwind series of blows. One troll, too slow to retreat, howled in agony as Helmstooth sliced open his gut. Daggrande, following, silenced the brute with one chop of his
axe. “Can’t leave you now,” growled Daggrande. “Not when we
just got back together again!”
“We’ve had some good fights, eh?” Halloran fell back slightly, catching his breath while the monsters recouped their courage. His throat tightened at the evidence of the dwarf’s loyalty.
“ None better than this one.” The dwarf, too, gasped for air, then raised his axe in the face of renewed attack.
A trio of massive trolls forced their way to the front of the monsters packing the ravine floor. Each held an obsidian-studded maca, and they loomed high over Halloran even as they crouched and advanced.
A sudden shower filled the air over the ravine as shapes darted through the air like locusts, or driving rain… or arrows! Soundlessly, a volley of sharp missiles dropped from the high ground into the close-packed ranks of the trolls. The unseen archers launched another volley, and the attention of the monsters immediately shifted to this new threat.
“Where are those corning from?” demanded Daggrande,
astonished. “From our friends, whoever they are,” Hal answered,
equally dumbfounded.
The beasts howled in pain and chaos, turning their faces skyward in time to receive another volley of dark, stonetipped missiles. As the trolls plucked the arrows free and the bleeding wounds slowly closed, yet another shower sent stone tips digging painfully into monstrous flesh. The arrows came from the shoulder above the ravine floor, but still the archers remained unseen.
Then the narrow gulley resounded with fresh, hearty whoops of combat. Growling and cowering, the trolls raised their weapons and gaped upward, confused and frightened.
“Look! Here they come!” Halloran pointed upward as the
fringe of the ravine suddenly shifted into movement. Their
rescuers, they saw, had lain in plain sight on the slope above
but were so effectively camouflaged that they had been
virtually invisible.
They saw a swarm of small figures pouring into the ravine from the rim of the gulley to their left. Howling with instinctive fury, the new attackers descended upon (he creatures before Hal and Daggrande, striking them with sharp, brutal strokes of their stone axes.
“I can’t believe it,” Daggrande declared, lowering his axe and watching the light, too astonished and too exhausted attack.
“They’re dwarves.’”
From the chronicles of Coton:
In the light of day, we tremble now, as the bloody hand of Zaltec is nigh.
We wait for the future, our fate determined by the strong. arms and keen weapons of a soldier, a dwarf, and a youth; and though the enemy numbers many, our faith is great, for” the one true god of goodness watches over us.
We three, two old men-one blind, the other sworn MS silence-and a young woman who grows more round with child every passing day, can do naught for the battle. Yet our fate is tied irreversibly to those who strike blows in the name of Qotal.
And so we pause in the heights of the twisting ravine. The horse can climb no farther by this path, and even could we proceed, we have no future if our friends fall in this light.
But again the blessings of Qotal are manifest.
Now we find proof of goodness and also the truth of legEND: WE learn that the Hairy Men of the Desert do to fact exist. Indeed they have saved us, for the beasts of the Viperhand flee back to their master, bleeding and defeated We greet our saviors with curiosity, and so do they regard us – but we are allies in a great cause, and in our first contest together we have prevailed.
And now only the desert extends around us, and our goal beckons to the east.
10
STALKERS IN THE JUNGLE
Halloran thought that it must be the strangest victory celebration ever. The companions sat beneath the desert sky,] its immaculate dome of stars arcing from horizon to horizon, among a throng of a thousand dwarves. No fire blazed, even though the night was chill, and their newfound allies spoke in subdued, almost awestruck, tones.
From somewhere, Luskag, the chief of the desert! dwarves, had produced a number of jars of a bitter draft, more powerfully intoxicating than anything Hal had yet sampled in Maztica. Now they sat in groups, gathered along a wide, flat bluff, drinking the liquor and basking in the glow of victory.
Jhatli amused the dwarves by whooping and dancing about, describing to anyone who would listen the deadly rain of arrows with which he had showered the trolls. The youth spun wildly and leaped into the air, and the gruff dwarves chuckled at the spectacle.
Daggrande and.Luskag, meanwhile, talked earnestly in the dwarven tongue that linked them, They passed one era the gourds of drink between them, and Hal wondered] blearily whether the two of them would be able to finish the thing. After all, he himself had had only a few swigs, yet already he found a strange nonchalance flowing gently through his limbs.
“Sure,” he said to the grinning desert dwarf who squatted beside him. “I’ll have another taste.” The stuff coated hid tongue like pungent ink and cut a swath of fire down his throat, but then in his belly it became a flame of gentle warmth.
Daggrande clumped over to him, walking with a steady-gait. Vet when Hal looked at his friend’s face, he saw that the dwarf’s eyes blazed and his cheeks were flushed with a
ruddy glow.
“This was their first battle ever!” exclaimed the dwarf, collapsing beside Hal.
