by Terry Brooks
Yet somehow he must. For that was all that was left to him. That was the only choice he had been given.
He must, or the Elves would be destroyed.
The Northland army came again an hour before sunset, appearing out of the scorched, dusty, smoke-shrouded grasslands like disembodied wraiths. Foot soldiers marched in behind massive shields constructed of wood so green it would not burn. Cavalry rode their flanks to ward against attacks from the cliffs north and south. They advanced slowly and steadily out of the haze, the grass fires having burned themselves out earlier, though the air was still acrid and raw. They skirted the charred pits and their crumpled dead, and once inside the valley they began to probe for new traps. Five thousand strong, they were packed close behind their shields, and their weapons bristled at every turn. The drums beat in steady cadence and they chanted as they marched, boots thudding, iron blades and wooden hafts rapping in time. They brought up their siege towers and catapults and set them in place at the valley entrance. A vast, dark mass, they rose up against the coming night until it seemed as if there were enough of them to overrun the entire world.
Jerle Shannara had drawn his army deeper into the valley, bringing them back to a midway point before setting their lines. He had chosen a position where the valley began to rise toward the Rhenn’s narrow western pass, giving his Hunters the high ground on which to position themselves. His tactics necessarily changed now, for the wind had shifted within the valley, blowing back against the defenders, and fire would only aid the enemy here. Nor had he ordered pits dug this deep within the valley; there would not be enough room to maneuver his own army if he did, and besides, the enemy would be looking for them now.
Instead, he had ordered dozens of spiked barricades built, ties sharpened at both ends and lashed crosswise to a central axle so that they resembled cylindrical pinwheels. Each was twenty feet in length and light enough to haul forward and set in place so that the downward-pointing spikes were jammed into the earth. These he had positioned at staggered intervals in a narrow ribbon all across the width of the Rhenn just below his forward lines.
When the army of the Warlock Lord spilled into the valley and began its determined march forward, the first resistance it encountered was the maze of spiked barricades. As the front ranks of the enemy reached them, Jerle Shannara ordered his bowmen, set in lines of three behind cover along the slopes, to loose their arrows. The Northlanders, slowed by the barricades and unable to push them aside, could not escape. Caught in a withering crossfire, they were killed by the dozens as they sought to crawl over, under, or past the spikes. The cavalry tried to mount a sustained charge against the Elves positioned on the heights, but the slopes were too steep for horses and the Northland riders were swept down again.
Screams rose from the dying, and the attack stalled. The Northlanders hid behind their shields, but they could not advance their cover beyond the Elven barricades. Axes were brought up to hew through the barricades, but those who rushed out to chop apart the spiked pinwheels lasted only moments. Worse, to break past even one of the barricades required cutting it through in a dozen places. The light failed, dusk descended, and the world turned shadowy and uncertain. The Northlanders brought fire to the barricades and set some ablaze, but the Elves had purposely made them of green wood. The grasses caught fire, but the Elves had dug trenches to separate themselves from the barricades, and the fires burned themselves out east of the defensive lines.
The Elves waited until darkness began to mask everything, then counterattacked from the slopes in a series of controlled strikes. Because the Elves had the Northlanders bottled up on the valley floor, their target was certain even in the deepening gloom. One company after another came down off the heights, forcing the Northlanders to turn first one way and then another to defend themselves. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting ensued, and the valley became a charnel house.
Still the enemy would not fall back. Northlanders died by the hundreds, but there were always more waiting to be brought up, a huge, massive force crushing relentlessly inward. Even as the Elves fought to hold their positions against those already in place, reinforcements were advancing. Slowly, inexorably, the enemy pushed forward. The barricades held the Northland army in check at the valley’s center, but the slopes were being overrun. The Elves under Cormorant Etrurian who held the cliffs were slowly driven from their defensive positions and compelled to fall back. Foot by foot, yard by yard, the Northlanders advanced, seizing the heights and breaking free of the vise that Jerle Shannara had clamped about them.
Word of what was happening reached the king. The skies were clouded and rain was beginning to fall, turning the ground slick and treacherous. The sounds of battle echoed off the slopes of the valley, creating a maelstrom of confusion. The darkness made it virtually impossible to see anything beyond a few yards. Jerle Shannara took only a moment to consider. Quickly he sent runners to withdraw Etrurian’s men to the barricades established as a redoubt high on the slopes parallel to his own lines. There they were to stand and hold. He sent runners to pull back Arn Banda and the longbows. Then he marshaled two companies of Elven Hunters under Rustin Apt and formed them up to attack. When Etrurian’s fighters and the bowmen were safely withdrawn, he ordered pikes brought to the fore, and he marched his command directly into the heart of the enemy advance. He engaged the Northlanders just as they were breaking through on the right flank and pinned their front ranks against the barricades. He ordered torches lit to identify their position to the reentrenched bowmen, then had them rake the enemy from the slopes.
Caught in an enfilading fire, the Northlanders rallied under a massive clutch of Rock Trolls and counterattacked. They shoved and twisted their way past the barricades and hammered into the Elven Hunters. Huge, winged shapes appeared out of the smoky haze as Skull Bearers took to the skies to lend their support. The line of defense buckled. Grizzled Rustin Apt went down and was carried from the field. Trewithen and the Home Guard hurried forward to reinforce the sagging defense, but the enemy were too many and the entire Elven front began to collapse.
In desperation, Jerle Shannara put his spurs to Risk and charged into the battle himself. Surrounded by Home Guard, he cut his way into the enemy front, rallying his Elven Hunters to him. Northlanders came at him from all sides. They tried to drag him from his horse, to knock him from the saddle, to do anything to slow him. Behind him, the Elven army, battered and worn, surged to its collective feet and followed in his wake. Battle cries rose out of the shrieks and moans of the injured and dying, and the Elves thrust into the Northlanders yet again. Jerle fought as if he might drive the enemy all the way back to the Northland by himself, his gleaming sword catching light from the torches, ringing out as it hammered down against enemy weapons and armor. Massive Trolls appeared in his path, great faceless monsters with battle-axes. But the king cut his way through them as if they were made of paper, refusing to be stopped, seemingly invincible. He outdistanced even his personal guard, and his soldiers threw themselves at the enemy in an effort to reach him.
Then lightning struck an outcropping on the slope closest to where the battle was being fought, and fiery clots of earth and shards of broken rock exploded skyward and showered across the valley floor. Men covered their heads and cowered at the fury of the explosion, and for just an instant time froze. As the Northlanders hesitated, turned momentarily to statues, Jerle Shannara stood tall in his stirrups and thrust the Sword of Shannara skyward in defiance of everything. Battle cries rose from the throats of his men, and they charged into the enemy with such ferocity that they overran them completely. Those farthest away and yet able to escape retreated behind the shattered barricades, the fight gone out of them. For a moment they held their ground in the forest of jagged wooden bones and scorched earth. Then sullenly, wearily they withdrew to the Rhenn’s east pass.
Massed against the barricades, streaked by rain, dirt, sweat, and blood, Jerle Shannara and the Elves watched them go.
The victory for th
is day, at least, belonged to them.
XXXI
Dawn broke through skies turned gloomy and gray from the night’s heavy rain, and the scorched and rutted floor of the Valley of Rhenn was blackened and steaming in the half-light. Drawn up in their ranks, weapons held ready, eyes peering expectantly through the gloom, the Elves stood waiting for the attack they knew would come. But no sound came from the heavy mist that cloaked the camp of the army of the Warlock Lord within the valley’s eastern pass, and nothing moved in the empty, blasted landscape before them. The light brightened with the sun’s rise, but the mist refused to thin and still there was no sign of an attack. That the massive army had withdrawn was unthinkable. All that night it had scratched and worried at itself like a stricken animal, the sounds of pain and anguish rising up out of the mist and rain, transcending the fading thunder of the receding storm. All that night the army had tended to its needs and regrouped its forces. It held the eastern pass entire, the floor and the heights alike. It brought forward all of its siege machines, supplies, and equipment, and settled them within the lines of its encampment across the broad mouth of the pass. Its progress might be slow and lumbering, but it remained an inexorable, unstoppable juggernaut.
“They’re out there,” muttered one-eyed Arn Banda, standing just to Bremen’s left, his face twisted in a worrisome scowl.
Jerle Shannara nodded, his tall form fixed and unmoving. “But what are they up to?”
Indeed. Bremen pulled his dark robes closer to his lean body to ward off the dawn chill. They could not see the far end of the valley, their eyes unable to penetrate the gloom, but they could feel the enemy’s presence even so. The night had been filled with sound and fury as the Northlanders prepared anew for battle, and it was only in the last hour that they had gone ominously still. The attack this day would take a new form, the old man suspected. The Warlock Lord had been repulsed the previous day with heavy losses and would not be inclined to repeat the experience. Even his power had limits, and sooner or later his hold on those who fought for him would weaken if no gains were made. The Elves must be driven back or defeated soon or the Northlanders would begin to question the Master’s invincibility. Once that house of cards began to topple, there would be no stopping it.
There was movement to his right, small and furtive. It was the boy, Allanon. He glanced over surreptitiously. The boy was staring straight ahead, his lean face taut, his eyes fixed on nothing. He was seeing something, though—that much was clear from his expression. He was looking through the mist and gloom to something beyond, those strange eyes penetrating to what was hidden from the rest of them.
The old man followed the direction of the boy’s gaze. Mist swirled, a shifting cloak across the whole of the valley’s eastern end. “What is it?” he asked softly.
But the boy only shook his head. He could sense it, but not yet identify it. His eyes remained fixed on the haze, his concentration complete. He was good at concentrating, Bremen had learned. In fact, he was better than good. His intensity was frightening. It was not something he had learned while growing or been imbued with as a result of the shock he had suffered in the destruction of Varfleet. It was something he had been born with—like the strange eyes and the razor-sharp mind. The boy was as hard and fixed of purpose as stone, but he possessed an intelligence and a thirst for knowledge that were boundless. Just a week earlier, following the night raid on the Northland camp, he had come to Bremen and asked the old man to teach him to use the Druid magic. Just like that. Teach me how to use it, he had demanded—as if anyone could learn, as if the skill could be taught easily.
“It takes years to master even the smallest part,” Bremen had replied, too stunned by the request to refuse it outright.
“Let me try,” the boy had insisted.
“But why would you even want to?” The Druid was genuinely perplexed. “Is it revenge you seek? Do you think the magic will gain you that? Why not spend your time learning to use conventional weapons? Or learning to ride? Or studying warfare?”
“No,” the boy had replied at once, quick and firm. “I don’t want any of that I don’t care about revenge. What I want is to be like you.”
And there it was, the whole of it laid bare in a single sentence. The boy wanted to be a Druid. He was drawn to Bremen and Bremen to him because they were more kindred than the old man had suspected. Galaphile’s fourth vision was another glimpse of the future, a warning that there were ties that bound the boy to the Druid, a promise of their common destiny. Bremen knew that now. The boy had been sent to him by a fate he did not yet understand. Here, perhaps, was the successor he had looked so long to find. It was strange that he should find him in this way, but not entirely unexpected. There were no laws for the choosing of Druids, and Bremen knew better than to try to start making them now.
So he had given Allanon a few small tricks to master—little things that required mostly concentration and practice. He had thought it would keep the boy occupied for a week or so. But Allanon had mastered all of them in a single day and come back for more. So for each of the ten days leading up to now, Bremen had given him some new bit of Druid lore with which to work, letting him decide for himself which way to take his learning, which use to employ. Caught up in the preparations for the Northland attack, he had barely had time to consider what the boy had accomplished. Yet watching him now, studying him in the faint dawn light as he gazed out across the valley, the old man was struck anew by the obvious depth and immutability of the boy’s determination.
“There!” cried Allanon suddenly, his eyes widening in surprise. “They are above us!”
Bremen was so shocked that for a moment he was rendered speechless. A few heads lifted in response to the boy’s words, but no one moved. Then Bremen swept his arm skyward, showering the gloom with Druid light in a wide, rainbow arc, and the dark shapes that circled overhead were suddenly revealed. Skull Bearers wheeled sharply away as they were exposed, their wings spread wide as they disappeared back into the haze.
Jerle Shannara was beside the Druid in a moment. “What are they doing?” he demanded.
Bremen’s eyes remained fixed on the empty skies, watching the Druid light as it faded away. The gloom returned, fixed and pervasive. There was something wrong with the light, he realized suddenly. The look of it was all wrong.
“They are scouting,” he whispered. Then, turning quickly to Allanon, he said, “Look out across the valley again. Carefully this time. Don’t try to see anything in particular. Look into the haze and the gray. Watch the shifting of the mists.”
The boy did, his face screwed up with the effort. He stared at nothing, his gaze hard and intense. He quit breathing and went still. Then his mouth dropped open, and he gasped in shock
“Good boy.” Bremen put his arm about the youngster’s shoulders. “I see them now, too. But your eyes are the sharper.” He turned to face the king. “We are under attack by the dark things that serve the Warlock Lord, the creatures he has summoned from the netherworld. He has chosen to use them this day rather than his army. They come at us from across the valley floor. The Skull Bearers spy out the way for them. The Warlock Lord uses his magic to conceal their approach, changing the light, thickening the mists. We do not have much time. Deploy your commanders and have your men stand firm. I will do what I can to counter this.”
Jerle Shannara gave the order and his Elven commanders scattered to their units, Cormorant Etrurian to the left flank and an injured, but still mobile, Rustin Apt to the right. Kier Joplin was already in place, the cavalry drawn up behind the foot soldiers in relief. Arn Banda raced away to the south slope to alert the archers positioned there. Prekkian and the Black Watch and Trewithen and most of the Home Guard were being held in reserve.
“Come with me,” Bremen said to the king.
They set off for the far right of the front lines, the king, the Druid, Allanon, and Preia Starle. They walked quickly through the startled Elven Hunters to the foremost ranks of the army, and t
here the Druid wheeled back again.
“Have those closest raise their weapons and hold them steady,” the Druid ordered. “Tell them not to be afraid.”
The king did so, not bothering to ask why, trusting to the Druid’s judgment. He gave the order, and spears, swords, and pikes lifted overhead in response. Bremen narrowed his gaze, clasped his hands before him, and summoned the Druid fire. When it was gathered in a bright blue ball in the cup of his hands, he sent bits and pieces of it spinning away to bounce from weapon to weapon, from iron tip to iron tip, until all had been touched. The bewildered soldiers flinched at the fire’s coming, but the king ordered them to stand firm and they did so. When all the weapons of one unit were thus treated, they moved on to the next and repeated the process, passing down the ranks of uneasy soldiers, the Druid imbuing the iron of their weapons with his magic while the king reassured them of the need, warning them at the same time to be ready, advising them that an attack was at hand.
When it came, the Druid magic was in place and the core of the Elven army warded. Dark shapes hurtled out of the gloom, launching themselves at the Elven ranks, howling and screaming like maddened animals, things of jagged tooth and sharpened claw, of bristling dark hair and rough scales. They were creatures of other worlds, of darkness and madness, and no law but that of survival had meaning for them. They fought with ferocity and raw power. Some came on two legs, some on four, and all seemed born of foul nightmares and twisted images.