Jotharam sprinted across Sarshel to deliver the document. He'd turned over the leather courier bag to the garrison lieutenant with such alacrity the lieutenant had immediately praised Jotharam to the garrison captain.
The captain, impressed, asked Jotharam to run the evening's orders out to the soldiers manning the north bunker. The captain was unaware of Jotharam's interdiction, and that sending Jotharam beyond the Sarshel Wall was taboo.
Jotharam didn't tell him otherwise. The young man had been issued arms and armor.
And here I am, he thought.
Would he be allowed to keep his borrowed panoply? What if—
A blistering, burning ball of flame bounded up from somewhere beyond the far trees. Slender rivulets of fire chased around the blazing sphere, like smoldering snakes eating their own tails.
All thoughts fled. Jotharam's eyes followed the blazing orb of destruction as it arced upward, slowed, then curved back toward the earth. Was it some sort of signal? A spell of warning? Maybe a—
The blazing fist smashed down, striking the city of Sarshel's westernmost wall. Stones exploded away from the impact, and the ground shuddered.
Shrapnel clipped his cheek. Jotharam couldn't hear his own yell over the roar of flames and cracking stone.
Three more points of light popped up from beyond the trees, each arcing up and slowing, pausing as if to look down on Sarshel. As their trajectories, too, slowly curved back toward the ground, toward the wall, Jotharam finally understood.
Sarshel was under attack.
* * * * *
The north bunker was composed of a series of trenches that paralleled Sarshel's northernmost wall. A stone blockhouse squatted at the dugout's western end. The blockhouse was a small, boxlike structure, partially dug into the earth.
Jotharam sprinted along the west wall, running north toward the blockhouse, panting with more than effort. Blind fear propelled him. In the gathering gloom, he couldn't judge his true distance from the gleams twinkling through the arrow slits of the blockhouse. Was it a hundred feet, or a thousand? All his thoughts seemed brittle and fragmented.
Cruel, strident horns brayed from the west. A low rumble answered, quickly crescendoing into the combined battle scream from thousands of unseen throats. Hobgoblin throats!
A figure darted into Jotharam's desperate path. The boy tripped, and the figure shrieked. Jotharam's eyes were jerked away from their hypnotic connection with the blockhouse lights when he fell hard on his face.
He struggled back to his feet. Had he stumbled over a lost child? He turned to look back. Not a child...
A creature, shorter than himself and with long green ears, glared at him from a distance of three feet. A goblin, in chain mail smeared with dirt-black grease.
The goblin hissed and lunged with a short sword dark as obsidian.
Jotharam stepped back, twirled, and ran. Something patted him on his shoulder, but no pain came. He kept running.
He realized he was screaming, repeating a single word over and over: 'Help!'
He ceased shouting; he needed all his breath to sprint for his life! His borrowed armor banged painfully against his limbs.
Twenty feet, forty feet. . . eighty. His breath seared his chest as he strained forward. Was the goblin right on his heels? He felt like collapsing, but instead he pushed harder.
He reached the blockhouse, despite anticipating a goblin blade in his back even in that very last moment. Without slowing, Jotharam dived headlong into the open trench in front of the blockhouse.
Soldiers milled within the trench. Sarshel infantry were scrambling for their helms, their shields, their swords, rekindling their readiness in the aftermath of the unexpected attack. Jotharam lay dazed at their feet.
'Goblins,' he cried. They ignored him.
They already knew.
Jotharam pulled himself upright on the earthen wall of the trench and glanced back the way he'd come. No hint of his long-eared pursuer was visible.
But there was movement in the direction from which he'd just come yelling into the bunker.
High up along the western wall of the city stood a lone figure in silver robes. The figure rose off the wall and into the air as if pulled up on a great hook, one hand gripping an oaken staff, the other gesticulating with purposeful vigor.
It was one of the war wizards Imphras had installed in the city! Imphras had brought them with him when he'd ended the siege. Jotharam's heart lifted with the wizard's altitude.
Before the wizard could get off a spell, a curtain of arrows with heads blazing red fire rose from the ground, too many to count. The mass of arrows arced and passed through the air where the bearded man screamed desperate magic. The wizard was wiped out of the sky as if by a club swung by a mountain giant.
A soldier near Jotharam yelled, 'By Imphras's left testicle, there must be thousands!'
A voice, distorted with distance, yelled from somewhere far away, '. . . outer perimeter. . . goblins everywhere, I tell you we. . . overrun!'
A tall man exited the bunkhouse. He held a bow longer and thicker than any Jotharam had ever seen. He was clad in green and brown leathers. From his belt dangled a quiver inscribed with patterns of leaf and vine. Dozens of gold-fletched arrows nestled within, as well as four arrows each of a single color: one emerald, one scarlet, one silver, and one black.
The archer looked directly at Jotharam. He said, 'Messenger! What news from inside the walls? Did Imphras send you?'
Jotharam looked dumbly down at his courier's satchel, then back up. 'Uh, no. . . these orders came before the attack.'
'Damn.' The archer glanced east down the trench, then northeast, to give an appraising look at the detached spire called Demora Tower, which rose up just beyond bowshot.
Opposite the bunkhouse, the trench complex wound eastward, shadowing Sarshel's north wall. However, Demora Tower had no visible connection to the bunker's protecting trenchwork. It stood alone.
For the last few years, Demora Tower had languished in the hands of the hobgoblins that besieged the city.
That changed when Imphras arrived. He'd retaken the tower before he broke the siege. From its vast height, arrows and spells could be directed down on advancing enemies. More important, it was the highest point around, perfect for spying out enemy encampments.
Several more soldiers hurried from the bunkhouse, still arranging weapons and armor. The one in the lead bore the insignia of a commissioned officer in Sarshel's army. The archer grabbed the newcomer by the arm and said, 'What forces were deployed in yon tower, Commander?'
'L-lord Archer,' stuttered the commander, 'We have a complement of twenty within—'
'Had, not have,' the tall man snapped. 'Otherwise they would have warned us of the hobgoblin counterattack before it was launched.'
The commander stared dumbly, confusion making his mouth slack, his eyes too large. 'No, I received reports just this afternoon of a shift-change—'
'The complement in the tower was assassinated by the enemy, else we'd have had warning. Demora is held by the hobgoblins. They likely look down on us even now, watching in fiendish glee how we run about like startled fowl under their surprise attack,'
The archer's features, his striking clothes, and telltale armament finally registered in Jotharam's overstimulated brain. The man was indeed who the soldier named, Imphras's own companion, the renowned Lord Archer. Jotharam gaped. The man was a legend, said to be a human foundling raised by elves in the glades of the Yuirwood, whose arrows never missed their—
The lord archer stabbed a finger at Demora Tower and said, 'I must gain entry and see the shape of the
