by Paul S. Kemp
When Jotharam saw the griffon carving, he knew they were close. Another five steps, and his own initials stared back at him, shaky with childhood naivete. Beyond that was the slender gap that seemed a natural shadowed declivity behind a relief portrait of a long-bearded dwarf.
Jotharam slipped into the narrow gap. He heard Calmora mutter, "By Tyr! Where'd the kid go?"
"In here," Jotharam whispered.
He stood in a space no more than three feet on a side; at least, so his memory told him; it was almost completely dark. He reached out and brushed the cold iron rungs his hands remembered.
"There's a ladder," Jotharam said to the archer, who was trying to fit his larger body through the narrow gap. Jotharam grasped the first rung and climbed several feet, "It goes all the way to the top!"
"Quite a climb, then," said the archer's silhouette below him.
"Yes, it is," replied Jotharam, recalling how he and his friends used to rest halfway up the vertical expanse by threading ropes through the rungs and their belts. They would tie off to hang without effort until their arms ceased aching and their breathing slowed.
He began the ascent in earnest, feeling for one cool iron rung, then the next in the stygian darkness. He was careful to find his footing each time before he pulled himself to the next rung. When he craned to look behind him, he could just make out Sarshel's lights through the narrow gap where the vertical cornice didn't quite pinch the space containing the ladder into its own perpendicular tunnel.
The quiet sounds of the lord archer and Calmora ascending floated up beneath him, ringing with the slightest echo despite their relative silence. The odor of rancid standing water also filled the crevice-rain must have found someplace to pool. He hoped he wouldn't accidentally shove his hand into a stag shy;nant, muck-filled fissure in the tower's face.
At five stories his breath was rasping, and his arms burned. No doubt he was stronger than the last time he'd climbed the rungs as a child, but on the other hand he weighed more now than at age ten. Nor had steel armor tried to drag him off the rungs at every step with its extra weight.
Jotharam paused and rested by hanging off his rung from his armpits. Not really that comfortable, but he had no rope.
A hand brushed his foot below. He whispered, "Hold on, I have to rest."
The lord archer's voice floated up, ''Time is not our ally."
The adolescent nodded, realized the archer couldn't see him, and said aloud, "Just a few moments. Otherwise I'll fall and take the lot of you with me."
"A moment, then," agreed the lord archer. Then, "Your discovery of this side route to the top could make all the difference. Tell me, son, what did Calmora say your name was?
"Jotharam. Jotharam Feor." In the face of the archer's sudden compliment, he recalled his courtly manners, and added, "I am honored to make your acquaintance, Lord."
The man chuckled, "I'm no lord when out in the field. I'm a soldier, same as you."
The archer, not realizing Jotharam's true status, unintentionally paid him an even greater compliment. Pride opened a new reservoir of strength he'd doubted heartbeats earlier.
"I feel better now. I'm ready to go all the way to the top.
"Very good," said the lord archer.
From farther below, he heard Calmora mutter, "I needed the rest, too, Joth. But upward and onward, aye?"
Jotharam said, "There's a space at the top where we can all rest again," and renewed the climb.
Pride or no, when he finally pulled himself over the lip at the ladder's apex, the nausea of exhaustion threatened to loose the contents of his stomach.
Memory told him the ladder emptied into a chamber some eight feet on a side, a minor sublevel immediately below the tower's main observation level above. A series of narrow steps along the inner side of the chamber led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. He and his friends had always been too afraid to try to open it, lest their truancy so far beyond Sarshel be discovered and punished.
"Jotharam?" came a bare whisper. "Can we risk a bit of light?"
"Yes," he huffed, hoping the sound of his panting couldn't be heard in the chamber above.
A tiny blue glow appeared like twilight's first star, then swelled to the luminosity of a candle. Jotharam had to shade his eyes from the glare. The light emanated from a silver piece held by the lord archer. A hole pierced the silver disc, and a leather thong ran through it. In his other hand, the archer held a small bag from which he had apparently pulled the ensorcelled coin.
The illumination revealed a space very similar to Jotharam's memory of it, though it was smaller than he'd recalled, and the narrow stone stairs along the inner wall of the chamber were steeper, and. . something wet dripped down from the trapdoor they led to.
"What-?"
"Blood, of your countrymen, no doubt," said the archer. "The goblins eradicated the sentinels. Let us go quietly, and pay back the goblin assassins in similar coin."
Calmora pulled her sword from the sheath at her belt as she ascended the narrow stair. Jotharam heaved himself off his hands and knees and pulled out his short sword, knowing that without training, he could contribute little.
The lord archer hung the glowing coin around his neck from its thong, then moved to stand next to Calmora. They looked up at the blood-stained trapdoor, only half a foot over their heads. The archer whispered to the soldier, "Precede me, and if you can, clear a bit of space so I can fire my bow. Tyr willing, we shall take them by surprise."
Calmora pulled back on the latch that held the panel in place, producing a slight squeal. Without waiting to see if the noise produced any reaction from above, she put both hands over her head and slammed the trapdoor open. Calmora pulled herself upward, and with a leg up from the lord archer, vaulted up and out into the observation level.
Even as the lord archer swarmed after Calmora, a guttural cry of alarm pealed from somewhere above. A shadow passed across the face of the open trapdoor, then came a metallic clang. Several more oafish voices shouted, and amid those cries, Jotharam could hear Calmora's voice, "For Imphras! For your deaths!"
Jotharam ran up the stairs and looked up. The lord archer stood right above, his booted toes overhanging the trap shy;door. His bow delivered a steady stream of fletched death to enemies Jotharam couldn't see. With each shaft fired, he uttered its number.
When the archer turned slightly to get a better lead on his next target, Jotharam jumped and managed to get his fingers over the trapdoor's lip.
He'd have to pull himself up without help. After the grueling climb, he wondered if he had the strength to gain the observation level without help. He grunted, contracting his arms, and with a sudden lunge, got an elbow over the edge. After that, he was able to swing up a leg and scramble up out of the hole.
A great device on iron legs squatted in the very center of the observation level. It seemed composed of crystal, glass, and iron, though many of its parts were ripped from their housings and scattered on the floor. Jotharam hoped it wasn't the Wardlight Calmora had mentioned earlier in the bunker dugout, though he supposed it had to be.
Besides the Wardlight, several crumpled and broken forms lay clumped about the open-walled chamber. A few wore the uniforms of Sarshel and must have been the sentinels the hobgoblins murdered.
All the rest were dead or dying hobgoblins and goblins, many with terrible slashes still welling blood, others with arrows jutting from their chests, necks, and heads.
Several figures struggled perilously close to the edge. One was Calmora. She simultaneously struggled with three ene shy;mies, 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 van
ished 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 click, and a low hum. Then, "That is it. Pray to whatever deity you revere that it proves sufficient."
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 shin shy;ing 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 open but glassy. He no longer clutched at his terrible wound. Instead, he struggled with his quiver.
"Lord Archer, let me help you!" Jotharam grabbed the quiver from the man's shaking hands. "Do you have a healing draught in your quiver? Is there another compartment?"
The man shook his head and said in an alarmingly breathy voice, "I have none. I left them in the bunkhouse. No- Jotharam, listen to me, now! I have something very important to tell you."
"Yes, what?"
&nb
sp; "Reach into my quiver and pull out the black arrow."
"Yes, very well… I have it."
"Good, that's a good lad. Now, Jotharam, you must deliver that arrow to Imphras. He will know. . what it means. When he sees this shaft, he will know the message comes directly from his lord archer. We worked out the signal years ago, but never had call to use it, till now. Emerald is west, scarlet south, silver north, and black… means the foe attacks from the west."
"I can't just leave you-"
"You can, and you will!" interrupted the archer, his voice suddenly echoing with a portion of its original strength. "Are you a sworn soldier of Sarshel? Then obey your commanding officer, a prerogative I claim now. Climb down the secret way and bring that arrow to Imphras as quick as your legs can carry you."
Unable to speak for fear he would sob, Jotharam only nodded, then saluted. The lord archer returned his salute with a shaking hand.
Jotharam turned, scrubbing at his eyes with the palm of his free hand. In the other, he clutched the lord archer's message.
He held the arrow's smooth shaft in his teeth as he hung for a moment from the trapdoor opening, then dropped onto the narrow space below.
Before he put his hands to the rungs to begin the long descent, he transferred the arrow to his empty sheath-his sword remained behind on the floor next to the strangled goblin and the dying lord archer.
He shook his head and started down the ladder. He had a duty to perform. If he didn't get the message to Imphras, more than the tall man he left behind would die tonight.
His descent through the narrow, lightless shaft was easier than the ascent. He was used to the spacing, even if he couldn't see the rungs, and he moved in the direction his heavy armor wanted to drag him.
Jotharam's foot jarred a grunt from him when he reached the shaft's bottom sooner than he expected. In the darkness of the concealed niche, he carefully removed the arrow from his sheath and held it tightly.