have left us without making sure our spirits were cared for after we died. In my heart, I prefer to believe that I’ll see them all again-my grandfather, Sturm, Flint, Tanis, Tas… and Swiftraven will be waiting for us, too.”
She shook her head. “I wish I had your faith, Father.”
“You will, when your pain subsides,” he answered. He pointed up at the sky. “Do you see that star?”
Reluctantly, she looked. Most of the new stars had faded into the violet, pre-dawn glow, but one light lingered longer than the others. It shone red, like a glowing ember, above the northern horizon.
“Paxina tells me the Silvanesti elves have a name for it,” Riverwind said. “They call it Elequas Sori-the Watcher in the Dark. They say that to look upon it is to know peace, that we are not alone.”
Brightdawn looked at the red star a long time, and finally she relaxed in her father’s grasp. He let her go, smiling kindly. “You should go to your sister, child,” he said. “Moonsong will want to see you when she wakes. But first… I have brought you something.”
He reached over his shoulder and unslung his bow from his back. Wordlessly, he offered it to Brightdawn.
She looked at it a moment, then her gaze dropped to Swiftraven’s arrow. Its steel head gleamed in the morning light. She took the bow from her father, fitted the shaft on it, and pulled back the string, aiming out across the meadow. Then she fired.
The arrow carried a long way, soaring high against the brightening sky.
Chapter 20
Two weeks passed.
When Moonsong recovered from her injuries, she offered her skills as a healer to Arlie Longfinger, who consented gladly. Then she visited Stagheart and lay with him in his sickbed, holding him while he wept.
“Forgive me,” he pleaded, sobbing quietly.
She kissed him gently, tasting the salt of his tears. “Oh, my love,” she told him. “There is nothing to forgive.”
Meanwhile, the kender continued to prepare for war. Riverwind, Kronn, and Brimble Redfeather held more drills atop the walls. Brightdawn helped Catt and Paxina oversee the daily struggle to keep the people fed as the town’s foodstocks dwindled.
Then, one warm evening early in the month the kender called Blessings, the ogres launched their attack.
They came at twilight, when the shadows of the Kenderwood were long upon the land. They were only a fraction of the whole horde, marching across the field toward the city’s east wall, but their numbers were still vast: two thousand ogres-two full war bands-all howling for blood.
Thousands of kender, packed shoulder to shoulder atop the wall, peered between the merlons, watching the ogres advance. Some were resolute, their mouths drawn into tight, lipless lines as their hands twisted around their weapons. Others grinned and laughed, shouting at the onrushing attackers with mocking, singsong voices. Still others, who had come off watch only a short time before and had been called back when the alarm sounded, leaned sleepily against the battlements, their shoulders stooped and eyes drooping. A few took quick swigs from jugs of kender lager or flasks of lukewarm tarbean tea. Archers fitted arrows onto bowstrings; slingers tucked stones into the pouches of their hoopaks and chapaks. In the courtyard below, kender grabbed flagstones and hauled them up to the catwalk; the wall’s defenders would not be throwing kurpa melons at their assailants today. Others carried up buckets of steaming pitch, which they poured into the waiting cauldrons instead of the water they had used in the drills. They wrinkled their noses against the pungent smell, taking care not to touch the searing-hot kettles, then tossed the buckets back down into the courtyard when they were empty. Then they grabbed up weapons and squeezed into place at the battlements with the rest of their fellows. The tension on the wall was like the tingling of the air before a thunderstorm.
The ogres were already halfway across the meadow when Riverwind dashed up the steps, joining Brimble and Kronn on the battlements. He stared over the merlons, down at the city’s attackers, and said nothing.
“Why aren’t they sending more?” Kronn wondered aloud. “Can they take the city with so few?”
Brimble shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “But that’s not what they’re aiming to do.”
“They’re going to test our defenses,” Riverwind agreed. He bent his bow around his leg, strung it quickly, and readied an arrow. “They’ll engage us, try to find our weaknesses, then withdraw. Brimble, you should get your men in position.”
The grizzled kender had already turned to bark at his troops. Archers and slingers ran to their posts, then stood ready, waiting expectantly as their foes moved toward the town. Then, when the ogres were in range, they raised their weapons and began to fire.
The first volley of shafts and stones slammed into the front ranks of the horde, a rain of death that felled a hundred ogres in an instant. The second flight streaked into their midst, but the attackers were ready for it. They stopped, raising their shields over their heads to block the barrage. Even so, three score of their number dropped, dead or dying.
When the ogres lowered their shields and began to move again, they did so at a run, charging toward the walls. Kendermore’s defenders slew another hundred and fifty attackers before they reached it. Riverwind picked off three ogres with his bow, and Kronn and Brimble pelted the attackers with stones hurled from their chapaks.
Then the wall shuddered, dust rising from its flagstones, as the ogres slammed against it with all their might.
Brimble blew on his whistle. “Rocks!” he roared, his shout carrying above the din of the attacking ogres.
As the archers and slingers continued to pepper the town’s assailants, other kender picked up stones from the battlements and heaved them off the wall. The rocks ranged from stones the size of a kender’s fist to great slabs so heavy it took two kender to lift them. They crashed down upon the horde, smashing the ogres’ upraised shields and crushing whatever they struck. The ground beneath the wall quickly grew littered with rubble and broken bodies.
Below, ogres heaved javelins with all their might; many of the spears clattered uselessly against the wall, but here and there they flew true, arcing over and between the merlons to impale the kender atop the battlements. Some of the dead collapsed on the catwalk. Others fell from the wall, their arms and legs windrnilling as they plummeted to the hard ground. One javelin flashed by Riverwind, lodging in the stomach of the archer to his right. The skewered kender, a woman with a bright red topknot, staggered and fell back, screaming, into the courtyard below. Her cries ended with a crunching of bone as she struck the cobblestones.
“Cauldrons!” Brimble roared. He lifted a stone the size of his head and hurled it down, smashing an ogre’s skull. “Move it, you laggards!” he bellowed, and blew on his whistle. “Douse them now, before you get stuck with one of those spears!”
Obediently, the kender nearest the steaming kettles grabbed up their pry bars and began to heave, tilting the cauldrons. The thick, black pitch was more stubborn than water to pour, but the kender heaved with all their might, and soon steaming tar splashed down upon the ogres. Cries of agony rose from the ground below. The pitch clung to whatever it hit, and black-drenched ogres howled, clawing at their faces and bodies as it scalded their flesh. Several archers nocked arrows wrapped in oil-soaked rags and touched them to nearby braziers. The arrows burst into flame, and at another shouted order from Brimble they loosed their shafts toward the pools of pitch below. Fires leapt into life where the arrows struck, killing many more ogres. The stench of burning rose from below, mixing with the brimstone reek of the wind. Black smoke filled the air.
“That’s it!” Riverwind shouted. He loosed another arrow, which flashed through the air, hitting an ogre in the neck. “You’re doing it! Keep at them!”
The assault continued in this way for an hour, though to Kendermore’s defenders it felt more like an eternity. In time, half the attacking ogres lay unmoving at the base of the wall, pierced and smashed and burnt. But half still remained, and the supplies of arrows and slingstones on the battlements ran perilously low. One by one, the archers and slingers cast their weapons aside and joined their fellows at rock-heaving.
“There!” Kronn cried, pointing out across the meadow. “Ladders coming! They’re going to try and scale the wall!”
