by Paul S. Kemp
Jotharam's opportunity to prove his bravery for Sarshel failed before he was ever allowed a chance; Imphras broke the siege in just two days and was received into the city with adoration and fanfare.
Hope of permanently driving back the hobgoblins was born. Some said Imphras would be made king if he succeeded!
Marvelous, of course, except. .
Imphras's arrival made Jotharam's ambition meaningless.
The boy lost his smile and kicked at a piece of masonry, burnt and broken. A smell of something strange wrinkled his nose. Brimstone, or hellfire itself, he fancied, wielded by a goblin shaman.
The odor reminded Jotharam that he stood, after all, outside the walls without his mother's knowledge or blessing. Some danger remained; no one could argue that.
He nodded to himself. Imphras's breaking of the siege hadn't completely eliminated the hobgoblin threat. Several distinct hordes ravaged the Easting Reach, and more than a few rabid goblin companies remained unaccounted for in the last reckoning. Perhaps even now they drew nigh to Sarshel to renew their siege?
The sun finally slipped completely beneath the western peaks. Coolness touched the back of his neck.
In the growing twilight, he recalled that traveling out shy;side the wall required bravery only true warriors possessed. Warriors like him!
Jotharam's earlier delight rekindled as he ran fingers down his chain link mail.
Earlier that day, luck had deposited him in the right place at the right time. Normally, Jotharam delivered correspondence between merchant houses within the city's inmost neighborhood.
The regular garrison courier hadn't appeared that afternoon. No one else had been available to make the delivery to the edge of town on short notice. Jotharam volunteered. Despite the garrison being far beyond the boundaries set by his mother, the dispatcher gave him the message. Why not? Imphras was here!
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 block shy;house 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 i
ts 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 battle. Imphras must know the disposition of the forces drawn up against us."
He looked at the commander and said, "For that, I need a distraction. Throw a force west, toward that bluff." The archer waved his hand at a distant outcrop. "In the meantime, I will make a break for the tower."
The commander nodded, then began to bawl out orders. Nearby soldiers started to fall into line. The lord archer grabbed the closest soldier's arm and said, "Calmora, isn't it? You're with me."
The soldier, a sandy-haired, battle-hardened woman in her late twenties, yelled, "Yes, Lord!"
The two raced east down the wide furrow of the north bunker. As they ran, the lord archer drew an arrow from his quiver, and the soldier unsheathed her sword.
Jotharam glanced at the commander gathering soldiers, looked at Demora Tower, then followed the lord archer.
Beating drums, oaths to Tyr, and brutal roars thundered as the night's oncoming cloak smothered the day's last gleams. Here and there, that cloak was rent with flashes of red, yellow, and stranger hues. The shifting breeze brought odors of brimstone mingled with blood, but Jotharam ignored it all. He put his concentration into following the amazingly swift lord archer and warrior Calmora.
A sudden barrage of screams and brutish battle cries heralded the appearance of dozens of dark forms in black chain mail on the edge of the trench ahead. Soldiers in the dugout attempted to stop the breach with their bodies and half-drawn swords, while crossbowmen behind put a dozen bolts into the goblin foray.
The defending soldiers were too few to hold back the invaders. Ten hobgoblins, then a score more, breached the line and tumbled into the trench, weapons at the ready.
A melee broke out. Desperate torchbearers and crossbowmen alike were felled by the goblins' bloodthirsty swords.
The lord archer stopped forty paces from the fracas and began loosing arrows, audibly counting down his remaining bolts with each pull, "Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven.."
With each shot, a goblin crashed to the ground, an arrow transfixing its neck, eye, or mouth.
Calmora sped onward to the breach, her sword glimmering and the lord archer's arrows whining over her head. As she ran, a handful of other uncommitted soldiers in the trench gained heart by her example and ran after. Calmora and her fortuitous troop crashed together into the clump of goblin trespassers.
Calmora's sword was like a lightning storm over the sea of goblin heads. Jotharam marveled at the sandy-haired woman's martial skill.
The other soldiers who'd followed Calmora into the breach likewise cut and beat at the invaders, and all the while the lord archer calmly numbered newly dead goblins, "Ninety-one, ninety, eighty-nine…"
The remaining goblins recognized their intrusion was failing. A few attempted a fighting retreat, but most merely broke and ran, and were cut down as they tried to scramble up and out of the trench. A couple turned and fired crossbows of their own.
A stray bolt clipped Jotharam's helm. The clang and following reverberation made him stumble and curse aloud like a real soldier.
When his ears ceased ringing, no goblin remained moving in the breach.
The lord archer ceased firing and dashed ahead, trampling the downed goblins as if they were mere cobblestones. Calmora fell in again at his side, and Jotharam returned to his role of trying to follow, now with a ringing in his right ear that he fancied tolled doom.
Just as Jotharam's ability to keep the two in sight neared failure, the archer and soldier paused as they drew even with Demora Tower.
A trench once connected the bunker with the base of the tower, but the hobgoblin besiegers who'd held sway beyond Sarshel filled that in long ago. A partial effort to dig the furrow anew was evident; however, the space between the new trench's endpoint and the tower stretched several hundred yards.
The lord archer and his handpicked soldier were conferring as Jotharam huffed up.
The archer was saying, "… or even south. Whatever the truth, it is vital we get a true assessment of their disposition. First, we must deal with the creatures that haven taken Demora Tower if we are to gain entry. It may not be easy."
His eyes left the soldier and found Jotharam. One eyebrow rose in apparent surprise at seeing the messenger.
"I can help," Jotharam explained.
"Jotharam Feor, is that you?" interrupted the soldier. "Does your mother know you're out here?"
Jotharam started. Calmora knew who he was? Some vague recollection came to him, then, of an aunt in the militia named Calmora.
"Yes it's me; and what's it matter what she knows? I can help the lord archer!"
"How?"
"Well, uh. . before the siege my friends and I used to sneak into Demora Tower. It was just an old watchtower, and haunted, everyone thought, so only a few sentinels ever spent any time in it. Except for me and my friends. We used to play in it-" Jotharam saw by their eyes his audience was losing patience with his explanation, so he rushed to his conclusion-"and we found a secret way to the top!"
Sandy-haired Calmora shook her head, "There's only one way in: the gate at the bottom. A single stair connects the entrance level to the observation level, where Imphras's wizards put the Wardlight. There's no room inside for secret ways in or up."
"You're wrong," protested Jotharam. "The secret way is outside the tower, up the outer wall. You can only see it once you're up close, because it's hidden by a… a sort of overhang that blocks it from view."
The lord archer rubbed his chin, spearing Jotharam with a searching glance. The boy's cheeks warmed under the stern regard, but he held the archer's eye.
"Let us try this path the courier knows about," decided the tall man. "But first, I must clear a route to the tower's base."
Calmora squinted over the trench wall at the tower and said, "It's too dark to see anything."
"Almost," agreed the archer, loosing an arrow. The shaft was instantly absorbed by the night. A moment later came a muffled cry and a distant, clanging thud. "Eighty-two," said the archer as he drew another arrow and loosed in the same motion. Another pregnant moment passed, which was followed by a similar brief wail and sound of a limp, armored body crashing to the ground.
"Eighty-one," he intoned, then, "Two hobgoblins were stationed just inside the tower gate. I saw Sarshel's lights reflected in their eyes."
Calmora shook her head in mock disbelief. Jotharam began to ask another question, "How did-"
"Now," interrupted the lord archer. "Run!"
Calmora grabbed Jotharam under his shoulders, an
d with a grunt, lifted him out of the trench. "Show us the way," she hissed.
Jotharam hesitated at the trench's lip, until he saw Calmora and the lord archer begin to pull themselves up. Satisfied he wasn't being sent alone into the night, he lit off toward the tower.
Darkness made the tower a slender gray blur. It seemed to reach down from the sky like one of Shar's own fingers.
Vague shapes on each side of his tentative dash resolved alternately as shrubs, boulders, and stands of weeds. He breathed in relief each time he drew close enough to recognize an obscure shape as a mundane object. He feared one of them would be revealed as the sneaking, grease-camouflaged goblin who had waylaid him earlier.
In the dark, Jotharam misjudged the final few feet to the tower. He slammed into one of the granite blocks that made up its massive foundation. The shock of impact bruised his forehead, and he bit his tongue.
"Pox and rot!" he muttered. All the minor hurts he had so far suffered that night were adding up.
Two shapes materialized from the darkness: Calmora and the lord archer.
"Where is your secret passage, then?" whispered his aunt.
Jotharam began sidling along the tower's base, widdershins from the main gate. Even as he moved away from the opening, he heard sudden guttural cries of surprise from within-other hobgoblins in the tower must have come down from a higher level to find their companions slain by the lord archer's deadly bow.
Ornate carvings crusted the tower's exterior, though many had worn and weathered away in the centuries since they were placed. No one remembered what prompted the long-dead wizard Demora to build so tall a tower that was at the same time so narrow that hardly any space resided within its slender width to house chambers of any consequence. Some argued that perhaps it had been constructed as a monument, not a serviceable structure. Yet in the centuries since Demora's departure, the tower had proved useful to Sarshel as a watchtower.
Indeed, it was from the tower's uppermost level that, five years ago, sentinels had seen the first hobgoblin army marching on Sarshel. Where so many other cities of the Easting Reach had fallen under sudden attack, Sarshel was able to prepare for the assault, and thus successfully held off the horde during the bitter years of the siege.