three enemies, two man-sized hobgoblins and a hairy-looking beast nearly the size of an ogre.
'Seventy-three, seventy-two,' said the lord archer, then, 'Calmora!'
Calmora looked up even as the near-ogre dashed forward, arms to each side, its legs pumping toward a lethal speed. She tried to leap away but stumbled on a dead goblin lying behind her. Calmora's attacker smashed into her without slowing.
Both went over the edge. Even as they vanished from view, the soldier raised her sword as if to attack.
'No!' croaked Jotharam, running forward a few steps before stumbling to a helpless stop.
All was silent in Demora Tower. The lord archer lowered his bow and said, 'Come away from the edge.'
* * * * *
Utter darkness filled the air beyond the tower, and foreboding stillness seemed to leech strength straight from Jotharam's limbs. His eyes were tacky with unwept tears. He'd known the soldier so briefly. ...
If it was. true Calmora was a relative, then when he returned to Sarshel he would tell his mother the story of Calmora's bravery. She had the resources to commission a memorial for the brave warrior. A monument of black marble.
Jotharam wanted to wrench his mind away from the vision that played over and over, of Calmora's surprised look as she vanished off the edge, even as she hacked at the creature that pushed her off.
The boy turned from the dark expanse of sky and dark and asked, 'Why isn't the Wardlight completely broken?'
The lord archer continued to tinker with the bits and pieces pulled from the strange device by the hobgoblin assassins, but he said, 'Perhaps they didn't have time. Or they didn't want to create a suspicious racket by breaking the glass and shattering the crystal.'
'Hmm. How does it work, then?'
The archer grunted, pulled a slender rod from a socket he'd just placed it in, turned it around, and replaced it. Then he replied, 'Once each day, the Wardlight can summon a sunlike flash so potent all the surrounding land is revealed, even in darkest night. If I can get it to function, we will know the threat truly faced by Sarshel.'
'I wonder how late it is?'
'Just past middark,' answered the lord archer, a hint of impatience threading his tone. He picked up a glass sphere, which by some miracle hadn't rolled off the tower's open pagodalike zenith. The glowing coin hanging around his neck threw the archer's distorted, hunched shadow upon the upcurved ceiling.
'How is it coming?' Jotharam wondered.
'If you leave off interrupting me, I will likely succeed.'
'Sorry,' breathed the adolescent.
'Now then. . .' muttered the archer, as he made some final adjustment.
There came a
The lord archer placed his hand upon an engraved palm print etched into the Wardlight's side.
The enveloping night broke wide open by a shining light that bloomed somewhere above Demora Tower. Radiance beat down from the arcane outburst to bathe the countryside. Jotharam saw all Sarshel revealed, like a toy city, in an instant. Beyond it was Lake Ashane to the east, and the battle-scarred wilderness all around, for miles in all directions. And on that plain, an army crawled forward from out of the west.
A small army to be sure, filled with black shapes mostly squat, though a few were trollish in their gangly, stoop-shouldered height. They advanced on Sarshel in a long, thin line, inching forward like the tide in a slow but unstoppable march.
A flight of burning arrows took to the sky, unleashed from the attacking line. A few fell short of Sarshel's west wall, but many scored the stone edifice, or plunged into the bunker to find the terrified flesh of defenders unlucky enough to have been standing in the trajectory of a lethal shaft.
The advancing hobgoblin line screamed and jeered. The trolls threw boulders, and goblins waved spears and torches, and sang a song of torture and woe.
Cruel horns sounded. The line surged forward, with black-gauntleted hobgoblins at the fore swinging glowing warhammers. The defenders on Sarshel's west wall answered with their own tempest of arrows, which plowed into the advancing line. Many hobgoblins fell, but many more retreated, screaming dire promises in their debased language.
The line surged forward yet again, gaining ground by increments.
However, even Jotharam's untrained eye could see the attacking army was too thin to hold the ground they gained against the still confused defense, should that defense finally firm up.
On the other hand, from the viewpoint of the defenders on the ground, the line must have seemed like the vanguard of an army of immense size. Only Demora's height revealed the line as a slender threat, scarcely wide enough to withstand even a single charge, should any dare it.
'Is that all there are?' wondered Jotharam.
'No, it is a diversionary force,' said the lord archer. 'Look!' He pointed east, where Lake Ashane kissed Sarshel's port district in a wide bay. Even as the Wardlight's radiance dimmed, Jotharam saw the true threat.
Hundreds of small boats, canoes, and crude rafts floated the still water of Lake Ashane, silently converging on the docks. As the commotion and clamor of the obvious attack pulled defenders to the west, the true threat to Sarshel prepared a massive onslaught from the east.
The Wardlight guttered and failed. Night returned.
'We must get word to Imphras straight away,' came the lord archer's voice from behind Jotharam. The courier nodded but remained staring out into the darkness, his eyes still resting on the memory of what had just been revealed. The archer continued, 'Once he knows their true strategy—oh!'
An awful hiss jerked Jotharam's gaze back into the tower cupola.
A short sword dark as obsidian protruded from the lord archer's stomach, just below his sternum. The lord archer collapsed to one knee, clutching vainly at the blood-soaked blade.
A creature with long green ears and wearing chain mail smeared with black grease stood just beyond the lord archer's reach, grinning with needle-sharp teeth.
Jotharam cried, 'I know you!'
It sniggered and said in broken Common, 'Good thing I follow you, little one. Very tricky, but your tricks done now. Imphras and Sarshel soon both dead.'
Jotharam yelled unintelligibly and hurled himself at the foul assassin, his own sword somehow unsheathed and in his hand, stabbing, slicing, tearing ...
The goblin evaded, dancing back. Jotharam bulled forward. His fury at seeing the lord archer so sorely wounded washed away his fear. Besides, the little cur was without its sword!
The courier landed a cut on its shoulder, but the goblin used the opportunity to slip inside Jotharam's guard. Like a performer delivering a kiss, it leaned forward and bit the boy's exposed neck.
Jotharam hooted with astonishment and dropped his sword. The goblin bit down harder. Jotharam heard it giggle through its clenched teeth. A warm spurt of blood ran down Jotharam's neck and flowed under his gambeson. Fear returned, but his rage was the stronger. A red haze fell before his eyes, and he roared.
He grabbed the clinging goblin with both hands. It would not relinquish its grip. Like a dog with its jaws around a succulent bone, the goblin clung to his neck. Jotharam's first instinct was to forcefully shove it away, but he had a sudden image of his neck being ripped out as he forced the creature off.
Instead, he started to squeeze. He clutched the creature around its throat and throttled it with all his fury- fueled strength.
The goblin maintained its grip only a few heartbeats more before its jaws loosened. It tried to gasp and squeal. Too late.
Jotharam did not relinquish his choke hold until the creature was as limp as a rag.
He threw the flaccid body to the floor, his own breath coming in great heaves. Then he remembered the goblin assassin's obsidian sword.
'Lord Archer!' Jotharam ran to the wounded man.
The archer half-reclined against the Wardlight. A still-enlarging pool of blood surrounded him. His eyes were
