heard a grunting moan, one of the guttural battle-chants of the goblins. The head of their column came around the bend in the trail, shields up.
Asayaga called out another command. Some of the men around him started to back up. Asayaga said a single word and more began to back up. The goblins nervously edged forward.
Suddenly the front rank of Tsurani broke completely, turned and bolted, a few of the men casting aside goblin shields they had picked up earlier in the fight. Soon the entire Tsurani unit was churning up the pathway, men shouting in alarm and panic.
The forward line of goblins cautiously lowered their shields, a few barked out taunts and began to come forward, and within seconds the entire goblin column was in hot pursuit, all semblance of order broken.
Dennis, legs trembling so that he felt he might collapse, pressed on up the path, the fleetest of the Tsurani already sprinting past him. He felt a hand grab him by the elbow as if to help pull him along and he shrugged it off. He caught glimpses of his own men falling back along either side of the narrow trail, more than one of them looking nervously at Dennis.
Straight ahead the trail all but gave out and Dennis reached the spot where he had stood only minutes before. This time he was down on his knees, gasping for air. His men had made this climb only once, but he had been up and down every step of the way, moving back and forth as the running battle ebbed and flowed. In spite of Asayaga’s offer for him to sleep first, he had not laid his head down the entire night, but instead had stood watch, agreeing with Tinuva to the elf’s plan to go forward as a scout and as a first warning, and then he had waited tensely for hours for the horn call that would be the alarm for them to move.
The world seemed to be out of focus. It was difficult to see, for fleeing Tsurani troops were all around him. Through a gap in their ranks he saw the swarm of goblins coming up the trail less than twenty yards away.
Asayaga shouted out a command and miraculously every Tsurani soldier fell into place, assuming his proper place in line and file. In an instant the Tsurani were charging and in spite of Dennis’s orders several of his men slammed arrows into the disorganized goblin ranks, while his light skirmishers swarmed to either side of the trail.
The Tsurani hit the goblins like a battering ram, bowling over the forward ranks, sending their dying bodies crashing backwards, while Kingdom troops swarmed in on the flanks.
The slaughter was horrifying: within seconds a score of goblins were dead, or gasping out their last breaths and the rest were running in panic back down the hill.
Asayaga emerged from the ranks, a grin lighting his features as he staggered up the last few steps of the trail to stand before Dennis.
‘Stupid creatures, you would think the same trick would not work twice.’
Dennis nodded in agreement.
Asayaga looked past him and his features dropped. ‘The trail. What now?’
‘We go up into the rocks.’
‘I thought there was a pass?’
Dennis did not reply.
From further down the mountain it did indeed look as if there was a pass, but that had only led them though the first layer of the mountain range; this higher second barrier had been concealed beyond. It was territory he had never ventured into and even Gregory had seemed a bit off-balance at first when they had glimpsed the higher range beyond. Only Tinuva had pushed onward without comment.
‘Where are the elf and the Natalese?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? So what are we to do?’
‘I told you, we go up into the rocks.’
‘And I thought the goblins were stupid. You lead us up here? Better we had never crossed the river.’
‘I didn’t ask you to come along on this,’ Dennis snapped. ‘You could have stayed on the other side of the damned river for all I care. We’re here, this is it, so get used to it!’
‘That is your answer, Hartraft? If we survive this day, tonight, at sunset, we settle things. I will not march another day with you if this is what your leadership brings us to.’
‘Fine then, at sunset, damn you.’
‘Might I interrupt?’
It was Gregory.
Dennis looked up at him, not sure if he should be glad or start swearing about the fix they were in.
‘We have the trail.’
‘Where does it go?’ Dennis asked.
‘That’s just it,’ Gregory replied. ‘I’m not quite sure.’
‘I thought you knew these mountains?’
‘I never said that. You’ll recall I said I might know a way, but I’ve never been up this far before. The one pass I was certain about was the road leading up from the bridge held by the Dark Brothers.’
Dennis stood up wearily. ‘If this involves any more climbing …’ he grumbled.
Gregory had already turned his horse, pausing to look back down the side of the mountain. ‘We’d better move sharply. They’re deploying out.’
Dennis looked over the edge of the steep slope and saw dark figures moving outward, all of them dismounted. There were hundreds of them, and this time the moredhel were joining in. It is simple enough, Dennis realized, now that we are pinned down they simply spread out, don’t attack frontally, and go to sweep around the flanks, then close in.
Several of his men were throwing rocks and shouting angry taunts, but most were too far gone with exhaustion to react, simply falling in behind Gregory and Dennis because that was what they had always done. Gregory led the way, the trail running flat and parallel to the mountain for fifty yards then turning sharply around the flank of a massive boulder.
As they turned the side of the boulder Dennis felt a gust of cold wind and looking straight ahead he saw a narrow cleft. There were mountains several hundred yards beyond, but it appeared as if the slope ahead dropped straight down.
Once past the boulder Gregory stopped and dismounted, motioning for Dennis to follow. After another dozen yards the trail turned again and Dennis felt his stomach knot up. A few more paces and it was a vertical drop of five hundred feet or more. He had always hated heights and instinctively he backed up.
‘Well that’s just great,’ he gasped. ‘Now what, we jump?’
‘Look,’ Gregory said, pointing forward and to their left.
The trail, clinging to the north side of the canyon continued onward for a hundred yards, and then ended at a rope bridge that spanned the chasm.
‘What in the name of the gods?’ Dennis asked, for once caught completely off guard and willing to admit it.
‘Tinuva remembered there had been a trail here, and long ago a bridge, but it was destroyed a hundred years or more ago. Someone’s rebuilt it.’
