The Measure of the Magic (50 page)

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AC WEN WAS NOT FEELING GOOD ABOUT THINGS
as he climbed toward Aphalion Pass, leaving Arborlon and the Elves behind. First Panterra Qu had vanished beneath the Belloruusian Arch in exactly the same way that Phryne Amarantyne had disappeared a few days earlier, and no amount of searching the Ashenell with Prue Liss or waiting patiently for a miracle to bring Pan back yielded any sort of useful result. Then Prue disappeared, as well—not as Pan had done, walking beneath the arch, but by simply abandoning him and departing the cemetery and the city entirely. No reason, no explanation, and apparently no thought for Xac, save the cryptic message she had left with that other boy, Alif or whatever his name was. Up and gone, running off as if she knew where she was going but was not about to share that information with him.

So now that everyone he had been entrusted with helping had vanished, he was beginning to regard himself as fairly useless. As much as he prided himself on always being ready to deal with trouble, he had failed miserably here. But rather than stew about it, he had accepted
his failure and set out for Aphalion, intending to give a report to Tasha and Tenerife, hoping they might have a suggestion about what to do next.

Certainly, he didn’t.

Of course, there was still a chance that Prue had gone north instead of south, intending to seek help from the Orullians, just as he was doing. She was determined to find Pan, so whatever she did would be governed accordingly. If she thought she could get what she needed from the brothers, she would go to them. It was a long shot at best, but he kept an eye out for any sign of her footprints.

He found nothing.

Not that this was much of a surprise to him. His tracking skills were rudimentary, and the trails leading up to Aphalion were so thoroughly covered with boot prints by Elven Hunters coming and going that it would have been virtually impossible for anyone—except perhaps Pan—to separate out a single set.

So he pushed on as quickly as he could, knowing that the best thing he could do at this point was to get to where he was going and give his report. Afternoon passed into evening and evening into night. He stopped to sleep for several hours before continuing on, the way clear enough with moonlight flooding out of a cloudless sky.

It was almost midday of the following day when he neared the pass and caught sight of a solitary Elven Hunter coming down off the slope ahead of him. They were on course to intersect, so the boy drew to a halt and waited for the other to reach him.

By then, Xac Wen could tell from the man’s face that something was dreadfully wrong.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“The Trolls have attacked the pass!” The Elf blurted it out in a series of gasps that suggested he had been doing more than sitting around while this was going on. “We need more fighters or we’ll be overrun. I’m on my way to tell the Queen.”

As if that will do any good
, the boy thought. Then he changed his mind; the Queen was as much at risk as any of them. Surely, she would send reinforcements, if only to protect her throne.

“You have to turn around and go back,” the messenger insisted. “It’s too dangerous up there for a boy.”

“I can’t,” Xac Wen said, quickly conjuring up an excuse. “I have a message of my own for Haren Crayel. I’ll go back after I deliver it.”

The Elven Hunter gave him a long look, then shrugged and trotted away. It wasn’t his concern.

Xac gave him a final glance before continuing on, picking up his pace as he did so, anxious now to discover what was happening. With Arik Siq a prisoner at Glensk Wood, he wondered how the Drouj had learned the location of the passes. But there might have been someone else—another Drouj—who had escaped the struggle with Sider Ament.

Whatever the case, the result was the same. Defensive walls and bulwarks notwithstanding, the Elves were in trouble.

As he reached the entrance to the pass, he saw the first indications of how serious that trouble was. Elves were running back and forth in front of him, and some were carrying litters bearing wounded. A makeshift shelter had been created out of canvas stretched across a timber frame, and it was already filling up. Elven Hunters manned the ramparts, but the fighting didn’t seem to have reached them yet. They were facing forward down the pass, watching whatever was happening farther on, but not doing much of anything other than that.

The boy decided immediately that he was going over the wall and out to where the fighting was taking place. He would find the Orullians there.

Because he had been up in the pass not too long before, he knew where to go to find what he needed. He rushed over to the supply racks, snatched up a chain-mail vest and a bow and arrows. He had his hunting knife with him already, but it was a poor weapon in a fight like this. In point of fact, not much of anything was of use if he got himself into a hand-to-hand-combat situation. He was too small and slight to stand up to even the weakest Troll. He remembered how dwarfed he felt when Arik Siq had come hunting for him on the Carol an heights. If he were brought to bay, he would be dispatched with little effort. The best thing for him to do was to stay out of reach and use the bow.

Of course, the best thing would be to find Tasha and Tenerife, give his report, and get out of there. But he was astute enough to realize that it might not be simple to do that. Unless he was badly mistaken, the Orullians would be right in the thick of the fighting.

Donning his gear, shouldering the bow and arrows, and pulling the visor of his helmet down over his face to conceal his youthful features, he set out for the defensive wall. Mingling with a couple of other Elven Hunters, he went up behind them on one of the ladders and then followed them down the other side. No one said anything. He was tall enough to pass for one of them with the vest and helmet in place. He kept his head down and his feet moving, acting as if he had someplace to go and no time to stop and talk.

Luck was with him. He cleared the wall and the chaos he encountered just beyond and continued up the defile with a handful of others. The clash of weapons and the shouts and screams of combatants rose from somewhere ahead, beyond what he could see. Streams of Elven Hunters passed one another coming from and going toward the fighting, and the ferocity of the sounds made Xac Wen turn cold inside. He knew he was in over his head, that he had never fought in a real battle and had no training for doing so. He might have imagined what it would be like, but already he could tell that the reality would be something else entirely.

Just stay calm
, he told himself.
Don’t panic
.

But when he was through all the twists and turns, facing toward the far end of the pass from atop a narrow ridge of high ground and listening to the sounds of the madness that lay beyond, all his resolve turned to water.

The Elves had built defenses across the mouth of the pass, elevated bulwarks and shields staggered at twenty-foot intervals to provide a broken, jagged wall that could not be scaled by a large attacking force without first breaking it up into smaller units. Defenders could stand at these walls and contain a much stronger force because there was no good way to physically muscle through without facing withering crossfire from bows and arrows and spears, darts and slings and javelins, with every step.

Beyond, on slopes that fell away from Aphalion’s narrow entrance to the plains and hills of the old world, the Elves were fighting to keep the Trolls from gaining even that much of a foothold, arranged in lines across the approaches, their numbers three and four deep, with spears at the forefront, bowmen and slingers behind, and swordsmen to back them up. They occupied all the best defensive positions, deeply entrenched in clusters of boulders and behind shallow ridgelines.

But Xac Wen, with no formal training or tactical experience in the art of war, could already tell that none of this was going to be enough to stop the Drouj.

To begin with, there were thousands of them, outnumbering the Elves defending Aphalion Pass, and they were armored and bearing huge axes and eight-foot spears. They had battering rams and covered wooden shelters that rolled along on wheels to protect against attacks from the Elven longbows. They were formed up in squares and wedges, shields linked together, their attack fronts bristling with steep tips and long oak shafts to keep their enemies at bay while they skewered them. The foremost of these formations were already heavily engaged with Elf skirmishers, and their relentless, steady advance was pushing back the Elves and trampling them underfoot. Bodies lay everywhere across the slopes, and even though the uphill march was a struggle requiring enormous strength and endurance, many more Elves lay dead than Trolls.

Xac Wen watched as bowmen sent fire arrows into the battering rams, but the fires were quickly quenched with buckets of water and heavy pieces of canvas. Ravines and tangled clumps of deadwood stopped some of the siege machines, and sustained volleys from the Elven longbows slowed others. But overall, the attack was pressing ahead and gaining ground.

Before much longer, it would reach the defenders in the pass. On their right flank, the attackers were nearly to the first of the shields that stretched across the Aphalion’s heavily defended mouth.

Pushing forward to the wall itself, the boy crowded in beside Elven Hunters already in place and scanned the lines of attacking Trolls and the Elves resisting them.

That was when he caught sight of the Orullian brothers.

Mounting a counterattack, Tasha and Tenerife were leading a heavily armed contingent of Elven swordsmen from a split in the rocks perhaps a hundred yards downslope from the pass into the teeth of the nearest square. Where they had come from was anybody’s guess, but the boy supposed they must have found their way there by scaling the cliff walls inside the mouth of the pass and then descending again somewhere outside. What mattered was that they had managed it and were making a desperate effort to block the Drouj advance.

Xac Wen almost went over the wall in response to the rush of excitement
that momentarily pushed aside his fear and fed him with a sudden, impetuous courage. But the realization that he lacked any weapon for close-in fighting stopped him from what would have been a foolish decision, and instead he drew back and held his position.

On the right flank, the Elves had reached the Troll square, and working in pairs just at the edge of the extended lances they used thin metal shields on which to impale the deadly steel points. Once the iron tips were caught on the shields, they could not be withdrawn without pulling back the shafts, and the Elves rushed forward between the clusters of useless wooden spear shafts in a sustained charge that took them right up against the Troll front. Tasha led the way, as big as any Troll and twice as fierce, howling the Elven battle cry, his great sword cutting into the vulnerable front line of the attack. Some of the Elves died in the attempt, but most got close enough that they were able to use Trolls at the forefront of the square as shields against those coming from behind. Shoving them backward in a dramatic show of sheer strength, the Elves broke down the attack and went right into the heart of the square.

But the victory was short-lived. Almost as soon as the first square disintegrated, two more appeared to take its place, positioned in a pincer movement so as to trap the Elves between them. Tasha saw what was happening and sounded a warning. The Elves withdrew, taking their wounded with them, leaving the Trolls with nothing but open ground and empty air. Longbows covered their retreat, and for a moment the attack stalled out.

Tasha and Tenerife came over the wall, bloodied and sweating and cursing in the worst language Xac Wen had ever heard—and that was saying something. The Elven Hunters at the wall moved aside to let the returning fighters get past and into the cool shadows of the pass, where most collapsed, throwing down their helmets and weapons and taking long drinks of water from a bucket and ladle being passed around.

The boy started over, and then hesitated, not certain that he wanted to face the Orullians when they looked so angry. But by then, it was too late. Tenerife had seen him.

“Xac Wen, you wolf’s pup!” he yelled at the boy. “What are you doing here? Haven’t we trouble enough without you adding to it? Where are Pan and Prue?”

Tasha was on his feet and on top of Xac Wen with a single leap. He took hold of the boy’s tunic and lifted him up to eye level. “You haven’t a brain in your head, you little lizard! Now, what’s this about? How did you get past the wall?”

Xac, sputtering and cursing some himself, demanded to be put down before he would answer. Only then, when Tasha had complied and both brothers were standing right in front of him, did the boy fill them in on what had happened to their friends.

“I didn’t know what to do when Prue disappeared, so I came here. I can go look for them some more, but I don’t know where to start. Tasha, it’s not my fault that this happened!”

Tasha nodded grimly. “No one said it was.” He looked at his brother. “I don’t think we can help them just now. And I don’t want to send this boy off on his own searching.”

“No, this will have to wait,” Tenerife agreed.

Shouts came from the defenses. The Trolls had broken through the last defenders stationed outside the mouth of the pass and were advancing in force.

Tasha glanced over his shoulder at the dark forms closing on their position. “Too many for us to stop. We have to draw back to the larger wall and hope that holds. Come, Tenerife. Let’s do what we can. Xac Wen, you get out of here right now. All the way out. Back behind the walls at the head of the pass. Now, you little guttersnipe!”

The boy took off at a run, not daring to challenge Tasha face-to-face. But as soon as he had gone a short distance, he stopped and looked back. The Elven Hunters at the defenses, Tasha and Tenerife among them, had formed up in a defensive line to stop the Drouj advance. Already, the boy could see the dark armored forms advancing on the pass, coming through the last of the outer defenses, scrambling over them and through the ravines and gullies, forming up their attack lines for a final surge. Already the boy could tell that when that surge came, it would sweep the Elven defenders away like dead leaves.