First King of Shannara (21 page)

Then more Gnomes appeared, a new band, this one spilling out of its hiding place within the outpost, which was now barely visible through the stalks of corn. These Gnomes were afoot, but began a determined charge forward to intercept the Elves, obviously intent on slowing them until the arrival of their mounted brethren. Tay gritted his teeth as he ran. There was no help to be had from the outpost. Now there was only Vree Erreden's intuition and the draw.

Jerle Shannara sprinted past him effortlessly, feet flying across the plowed earth as he tore through the corn rows for the hills. Others surged ahead as well, swifter afoot than Tay. Laboring heavily, his breath a sharp pain in his chest, the Druid suddenly panicked. What if the horses that Vree Erreden had sensed were part of another trap? What if there were Gnomes sitting astride them, waiting? Frantically, he tried to cast his net of magic beyond the hills to discover if there was cause for his fear, but his strength was failing and he could not manage the reach.

Shouts, raucous and jarring, rose from the pursuing Gnomes. Tay ignored them. Vree Erreden appeared beside him again, running close, in better shape than Tay would have imagined. Tay yelled at him in warning, but he did not seem to hear. He passed Tay by and went on. Tay now trailed everyone. It was the price you paid for living a sedentary life, he thought ironically.

Then Jerle Shannara broke from the cornfield and began to race up the line of hills. As he did so, a shrill whinny and a pounding of hooves rose from behind the crest. Dust lifted in a cloud in the clear afternoon air. Jerle slowed, unsure of what he faced, reached quickly for his sword, and drew it free. His Elven Hunters raced to protect him. Metal blades glittered in the sun, the light dancing from their polished surfaces in sudden explosions of brightness.

In the next instant a line of horses surged into view, charging out of the sun's glare in a burst of sound and color. There were a dozen, maybe more, all roped together, galloping out of the late-afternoon swelter to take shape like a mirage brought to life.

A single rider led them, bent low over the lead mount.

Tay Trefenwyd slowed to a ragged halt at the edge of the cornfield, his heart beating wildly, his pulse pounding in his head.

The rider was Preia Starle.

She swept by Jerle Shannara without slowing, releasing several of the mounts as she did, the ropes tossed to his waiting hands. She rode on, dropping off the horses one by one to the Elven Hunters she passed. Straight for Tay she came and reined to a wild halt before him.

“Climb on, Tay Trefenwyd, and we'll ride for our lives! The Gnomes are all about!” Blood flecked her face and tunic. He could see cuts and bruises on her face. She wheeled her mount into him so hard she nearly knocked him down. “Get on!” she screamed.

There was no time to think about it. The others of the little company were already mounted and racing away. Tay stepped into the stirrup she had kicked free and swung up behind her. “Hold tight to me!” she cried.

In a whirlwind of dust and grit and a pounding of hooves, they charged after the others.

 

It was a terrifying flight. The Gnomes afoot had spread out across the fields before them in an effort to block their escape, some with slings, some with bows. North, visible now for the first time, the Gnomes on horseback appeared. Together, they outnumbered the Elves nearly four to one. They were clearly too many to defeat in a pitched battle.

Jerle Shannara took the lead and rode straight at the Gnomes afoot. The reason for his decision was obvious. The only hope for the Elves was to outdistance the Gnomes on horseback, and the only way to do that was to get ahead of them and stay there. If they swung left, which was what the Gnomes on foot were trying to make them do, they would be forced back up into the low hills and slowed, allowing the Gnomes on horseback to cut them off. If they swung right, they would be heading directly at their mounted pursuers. There was, of course, no point in turning back. What was left, then, was to go forward, to break past the Gnomes afoot and ride west, because everyone knew, Elves and Gnomes alike, that the Gnome didn't live who could outride an Elf.

Down through the corn rows raced the Elven Hunters, some in one field, some in another, spread out as far as they could manage so as to thin the ranks of the enemy archers and slingers, to confuse and divide, to break free of the trap. The Gnomes darted here and there, calling out wildly, trying to track their prey. The Elves stayed low astride their mounts, presenting the smallest targets possible. Only Jerle defied the odds, rising in his stirrups, howling like a madman at the Gnomes before him, his sword swinging above his head like a deadly scythe. From his position far to the left, Tay could just make him out, charging into the teeth of the Gnome line, the big bay he rode leaping recklessly through the furrowed rows. Tay knew what his friend was doing. He was trying to draw as many of the Gnomes as possible to him to give his companions a better chance.

Then Preia hissed at him to stay down, and the burly sorrel she rode swerved sharply along a shallow draw, breaking out of the field close against the line of hills. Tay thought he heard something whip past his head. He lowered himself over Preia's slender back, a protective cloak, hanging tightly to her waist. He could feel her body move in front of him, leaning this way and that, her horse responding each time. He had a glimpse of someone running toward them, a blur of arms and legs amid the cornstalks. Something small and hard slammed into his shoulder, and he felt his arm go numb. His grip on Preia loosened, and he thought he might fall, but she reached back for him with one arm, helping him keep his seat. They reached the west end of the field, vaulted a drainage ditch to a wide swath of grassland, and galloped into the open. Tay risked a glance over his shoulder. Gnomes knelt at the edge of the corn and slung their stones and fired their arrows in obvious rage. But already the missiles were falling short of their mark.

Tay looked ahead again. Elven riders streamed out abreast of them in a ragged line, racing toward the sunset, past the abandoned outpost buildings and into the grasslands beyond. Tay tried to count their numbers, tried to determine if Jerle in particular was all right, but the landscape was clouded by dust and cloaked in a damp shimmer of late-afternoon heat, and he quickly gave up and concentrated all of his efforts on not falling off the horse.

The Elves joined up again not far beyond the outpost and began to pace their horses against the demands of their flight. Miraculously, all had escaped, most uninjured. Jerle Shannara was barely scratched. Tay discovered that he had been struck on the shoulder by a slinger's stone and sustained a deep bruise. The numbness was already fading, replaced by a dull pain. Nothing broken, he decided, and pushed the matter aside. The Gnomes on horseback chased after them, swinging west across the grasslands when they realized that their quarry had broken through the trap in the cornfields. But they had already ridden their horses a long way to get this far, and they did not know the country as the Elves did. Taking the lead once more, Jerle Shannara chose the path most advantageous to his company. This was his homeland, and he knew it well. Where the land dipped suddenly, he could find the high passage. Where sinkholes or bogs threatened, he was forewarned to swing wide. Where rivers flowed swift and broad, he could point to the shallows. The chase wore on, but the Gnomes fell steadily farther behind, and by nightfall they were no longer visible against the darkening horizon.

Even so, and after they had slowed their horses to a walk to guard against injury in the dimness of the clouded night sky, they went on for a time, unwilling to risk a chance discovery. Jerle took them north along a creek bed, hiding their passing while changing their direction. The darkness cloaked them, a welcome friend. The heat of the day seeped away and the air cooled. A thin rain fell for a time, then passed on. They rode in silence, save for the splashing of the horses in the shallow water and, when they left the stream, the muffled thud of their hooves in the soft earth.

When he could do so safely, Tay bent close to Preia's ear and whispered, “What happened to you?”

She glanced back at him, her eyes startlingly bright amid the crosshatched damage to her face. “A trap.” Her voice was a low, angry hiss. “Kipp had gone on ahead to secure the horses at the first outpost. I was scouting against discovery by the Gnome Hunters we had determined were in the area. But they were waiting for us. I was lucky. Kipp wasn't.”

“We found Kipp, Jerle and I,” he said softly.

She nodded, no response. He wanted to tell her what he had done and why, but he could not bring himself to speak the words.

“How did they know?” he pressed.

He could feel her shrug. “They didn't. They guessed. The outposts are no secret. The Gnomes knew we would come searching for the Black Elfstone. They simply waited for us. They are waiting at all of the outposts, I imagine.” She paused. “If they had known our plans exactly, if they had known how to find us, they would have gotten me as well as Kipp. But I found them just before they found me.”

“You had to fight to get away, though. We found your bow.”

She shook her head. “I was afraid you would. It could not be helped.”

“We thought . . .”

“I dropped it fleeing them,” she cut him off before he could say what they had thought. “Then I went after Kipp. That was where the fighting took place. At the outpost, just after they seized him. But there were too many for me. I had to leave him.”

The words were edged with bitterness. It had cost her to tell him this. “We had to leave him as well,” he admitted.

She did not turn. “Alive?”

He shook his head slowly.

He felt her sigh. “I could not get back to warn you. There were too many Gnomes between us. I had to go on ahead to try to secure the horses. I knew that without horses, we were finished. I thought, too, that I could draw some of them off.” Her laugh was small and hollow. “Wishful thinking, I'm afraid. Anyway, I was able to steal a horse from under their noses last night while they slept, ride it south to an outpost beyond the valley that I knew they would not have discovered, secure these horses we ride now, herd them back again, and hide until you appeared.”

Tay stared at her, astonished. “How in the world did you manage all that in one day?”

She shrugged. “It wasn't that hard.” There was a long pause, with only the soft thud of the horses' hooves. “Not as hard as what you had to do.” She looked back at him once more, her smile sad and uncertain. “You did well, Tay.”

He forced himself to smile back. “You did better.”

“I wouldn't want to lose you,” she said suddenly, and turned away.

He sat silent behind her, unable to offer a reply.

 

They rode on through the night and made camp just before dawn in a shallow ravine grown thick with slender-boughed ash and white birch. They slept only a few hours, rose, ate, and went on. The rain had returned, a steady drizzle, and with it a mist that clouded the whole of the land in roiling gray. The mist and the rain hid them, and so they pressed on through that day and the next and deep into the second day's night, hidden from those who searched for them. Tay rode point with Preia Starle, using his magic to scan the heavy gloom, worried not so much that they might be discovered by Gnome Hunters as that they might accidentally stumble across them. They walked their horses most of the time, anxious to save their strength for when it would be needed and to guard against missteps in the rain-soaked earth.

Tay and Preia did not talk, concentrating on keeping watch, he with his magic, she with her eyes. But they pressed close against each other in the rain, and for Tay, that was enough. He allowed himself to imagine they meant more to each other than they did. It was a pointless exercise, but it made him feel for a short time as if he had found a place for himself in the world beyond Paranor. He thought that if he tried hard enough, perhaps he could find a way to belong again, even without Preia. He knew that she could not accompany him, but perhaps she could help him find a path. He held her loosely about the waist, shielding her from the weather with his taller frame, feeling the heat of her body seep into his. He wondered at how he had gotten to where he was in life. He wondered at the choices he had made and whether, if made over again, they might be different.

They slept near dawn of the third day, finding shelter this time in a grove of towering hardwoods set back within a blind draw at the edge of the Kensrowe. They had traveled far north of where they had come into the valley, and were now close to its west end. Ahead lay the dark stretch of the Innisbore and the pass through Baen Draw that would take them to the Breakline. Tay had found no trace of Gnomes that day. He was beginning to believe they had outdistanced their pursuers and would lose them for good in the tangle of the mountains ahead.

Tay rose early and found Jerle Shannara already awake, standing at the edge of the camp looking out into the new day. It was gloomy and dark once more, the weather unchanged.

The big man turned at his approach. “Tay. Too short a night, wasn't it?”

Tay shrugged. “I slept well enough.”

“Not like you're used to sleeping, though. Not like you did at Paranor with the Druids, in a bed, in a dry room, with hot food waiting when you rose.”

Tay moved up beside him, avoiding his gaze. “It doesn't matter. The Druids are all dead. Paranor is gone. That part of my life is over.”

His friend's blue eyes studied him shrewdly. “Something bothers you. I know you too well to miss it. You've been distracted these past few days. Is it Retten Kipp? Is it what you had to do to release him from his pain?”

“No,” Tay answered truthfully. “It is more complicated than that.”

Jerle waited a moment. “Am I to guess or would you rather I simply left the matter alone?”