Emily received armour made of white iron, so cleverly worked that it was light but could turn any blade or point. On her head, she wore a helm of the same metal crested with a dragonfly, whose wings were two long, blue plumes. She worried that she wouldn’t learn in time how to use the sword at her side or her shield (emblazoned with a flying dragonfly).
Adam wore blue chain mail as light as Emily’s armour and just as strong. A rampant dragon with ferocious teeth crested his helm, its tail draped loosely behind the helm and between Adam’s shoulders. He preferred to keep his goblin sword, which, at first, irritated Balom. But as Adam pointed out, he was used to it now, and it had served him well, accounting for goblins and spriggans. He accepted his new shield with pleasure, proud to see that the dwarves had given him a recumbent dragon as an emblem.
On Blitz and Oakman, they rode either side of Balom the Black’s pony at the head of the Dwarfish army. Since news had reached Balom that the river border with the Marshland Goblins was under threat, they were on their way to the Twin Towers, which held the bridge over the river. It was a race against time because whoever held the towers also held the future of the Dwarfish lands.
An anxious, enthusiastic army of young and not-quite-so-young dwarves left the cheering crowds of women, children and decidedly ancient dwarves behind. The enthusiasm for armour, banners and weapons and the great adventure was not shared by Adam, Emily or Balom, who understood and feared the price to be paid if they were to thwart Pride.
The dwarves, who had not fought for many dwarf lifetimes, had no warfare experience, and it showed. Adam suggested to Balom that the columns were getting ragged and strung out. But Balom’s eagerness to press on to the Twin Towers with his way of not taking advice was to cost them dearly.
Too late, Adam burst out, “I’m not going any farther, Balom!” Adam grabbed the angry dwarf’s reins. “Until we’ve regrouped. Strung out like this, we’re easy prey for the enemy.”
“What enemy?” Balom boomed, snatching back his reins. “There is no foe in Dwarfish lands! We have to get to the towers as quickly as possible—or else there will be!” The dwarf’s thick eyebrows met menacingly.
“Look back,” Adam was worried, “can you see all of our army?” He answered his question, “No! Are you sure the rear-guard and the supply carts are safe? No!” Adam watched doubt replace the stubbornness in Balom’s eyes. “Balom,” he added quickly, “our enemy is terrible; we must take care.”
“Adam’s right,” Emily said, drawing near to lend her support, but just how right, Balom was to find out all too soon. For the moment, he agreed to call a halt for the main body of the army to regroup. Time passed, but there was no sign of the rear-guard or their carts.
Before long, it was clear that something was wrong. With heavy heart, Balom ordered his troops to retrace their steps.
After an hour, they came upon a frightful scene. Horror replaced the dwarves’ early morning enthusiasm for adventure. The bloodied bodies of friends and relations lay broken on the ground. Many of the dwarves covered their faces while others wept openly. Balom supervised the grim task of burying their dead. There was no trace of the enemy, so they could only guess who was responsible for the slaughter. Whoever they were, they weren’t experts in warfare because they had left the laden supply carts untouched: without them, the Dwarfish army would have had to turn back. When they had finished their work, Balom drew his sword and boomed out: “I, Balom the Black, swear to avenge the death of our comrades! As the first step towards the glorious victory, I charge Adam the Dragonteaser with the rank of Supreme Commander of the Dwarfish Forces!” He turned to Adam with tears in his eyes. “I beg you to accept,” he said in a low voice, “you are more worthy.”
Adam nodded without a word, and the dragon-tail of his helm beat against his mailed shoulders as if in encouragement. At his nod, a gruff, angry cheer burst from the dwarves, who now bore no resemblance to that morning’s host. They set off in a tight, orderly formation with fury burning in their breasts and fierce loyalty to their new commander in their hearts.
Towards mid-afternoon, Adam halted his columns. Pointing away to the east, he drew Emily and Balom’s attention to a dark, moving mass against the skyline. Peering hard, they could see a halo of dust around the dark form.
“Danger!” Adam said. “They are moving fast in this direction, but this time we’ll be ready for them.”
Since dwarves fight with the battle-axe, they need room to swing the double-headed weapon. Adam divided them into three well-spaced groups: Emily to the left and Balom to the right. The dwarves waited silently and tense, each with legs apart and battle-axe head down between his feet. All eyes were on the approaching force in the distance, with every dwarf promising himself vengeance for his fallen companions.
The first sounds reached them before their eyes could make out any detail of the distant moving mass. A sound they hadn’t expected carried to them: the barking of dogs.
Hundreds of hounds of every shape and size bounded towards them, yapping and barking. On their backs were two and sometimes three little riders armed with slings. The leading dog had one rider only. It was a big, brown and white, shaggy dog with Lar on its back.
With some difficulty, Lar managed to stop the headlong gallop of four hundred dogs carrying eight hundred pixies and four hundred brownies. Or rather, Guess was in charge of the hounds, growling his orders here and there, according to what Lar wanted.
It was only after four hundred mixed mongrels, hounds and mastiffs were finally stretched out on the ground, tongues lolling and chests heaving, that Adam, Emily, and Lar were joyfully reunited in front of an army of astonished dwarves.
“Where is Palustric?” Lar’s eyes searched among countless dwarves in vain.
After exchanging only vital news, the Dwarfish columns moved off again, this time flanked by the hound-riders from Halewood and Elm-dale. Balom the Black led them to the nearest stream, where at last, the dogs could have a well-deserved drink. Here, they made their night camp, lit fires and ate together.
As they dined, they caught up on their other news. Lar explained how he had travelled quickly and almost safely across the goblin marshlands on Guess’s back to Halewood. There, Guess had gathered all these hounds that had come to war as pixy and brownie steeds. Pixies, he told Adam and Emily solemnly, could ride dogs quite happily. Horses were a different matter, he didn’t know why, but horses brought out something primitive and uncontrollable in pixy nature. Lar glanced over to where the horses were tethered and began to tremble, a wild look coming into his squinting eyes. “But I’ve made my pixies promise not to go near the horses; the brownies know they’ve got to keep an eye on things as far as that’s concerned.”
“What did you mean when you said almost safely?” Emily asked, thinking it better to change the subject.
Lar stopped trembling while his eyes slowly lost their wild look.
“Ay, almost safely, Mistress,” he smiled, his yellow eyes gentle now as he looked at Guess. We travelled quickly, and, with my hearing and his nose, there was no danger of meeting up with goblins.”
“Do marshland goblins smell, Lar?”
“All goblins stink, Mistress. They are not the cleanest of creatures!” Lar smiled at Lupp’s high fluting laughter. Lex held his nose with his long-nailed fingers and winked at Adam.
“That Highland innkeeper didn’t smell,” Adam said in an attempt at fairness.
“The Marshland ones are the worst!” Lupp said quickly, causing the pixies and brownies around the campfire to burst into high, tinkling laughter until tears rolled down their cheeks.
Adam looked at Emily and shrugged. They waited until the little creatures had calmed. Then, Emily said, “Tell us about your journey, Lar.”
“Ah, Mistress, the marshlands are foul-smelling places.” Several pixies began to snigger at this. “There’s a criss-cross of pathways, and it’s easy to lose your way. If you lose the path, you can sink into the bog and drown. That’s wher
e hounds are so useful.” Lar looked gratefully at Guess. “They never put a paw wrong.”
“Guess!” Emily called the shaggy hound, which slowly rose and crossed over to sit by her. Emily stroked him behind his ear. “Tell him he’s a very smart hound, Lar.”
Lar said something in a low, growling voice; Guess beat his tail on the ground and licked Emily’s hand.
“Oh, Lar, will you teach me to speak to animals?” she gasped eagerly.
The little pixy smiled and shook his head. “That would take many moon-risings, Mistress; there is a war to be fought.”
“When we’ve won the war,” Emily insisted. She had Jasmine in mind.
“Ay, when we’ve won the war,” Lar said slowly, but his voice held the sudden, heavy weariness which had come over the group at the thought of what faced them.
Everyone sat in gloomy thought, but then Balom broke the silence. “Come on pixy!” he boomed. “Cheer us with the tale of your adventures!”
“Ay!” Lex urged.
“Go on, Lar!” Adam encouraged his little friend.
“Well, the worst moment came on our third day in the Black Mire, the worst part of the marshlands.”
Lex’s mouth dropped open. “He crossed the Black Mire!” he said to Lupp, next to him.
“Ay,” nodded Lar, “to go around it takes many days, we did not wish to lose time. But ’tis a place of stinking ponds and ditches or slime and quag. One false step and you are lost, sucked under. ’Tis a land worthy of the Hag herself.” Lar paused and sipped from a cup of honeyed water. “In this vile place, we came to a hummock of land, where reeds marked the limits of a soft, grassy island. We thought well to eat there and snatch what rest the bothersome insects would allow. ’Twas here that I saw her…a pixy maiden so fair of face, with long, cascading hair and the deepest, greenest eyes.” Lar shuddered as he recalled every detail, “She smiled so sweetly that I forgot to ask myself where she had come from or what she was doing in such a hateful place. Dear sir, said she, please help me, for I have hurt my leg and cannot walk farther. Oh, her voice was clear as a meadowlark,” Lar had a faraway look as he spoke, “how could I resist one so fair? I stepped over to her and took her in my arms, where she pressed her lovely self against my chest. Ah, my friends, at that moment I was lost, believe me. When she whispered, take me down to the reeds, I live that way, like a fool, I began to walk towards the treacherous ground—had it not been for Guess—”
The great dog’s ears pricked up at his name, his tail beat the ground, while Emily hugged him around his neck.
“My foot touched the first soft ground, and I would have been lost forever, but Guess’s furious barking snapped me out of my trance. My right leg was already up to the knee in ooze and…” a look of disgust came across Lar’s face, “and in my arms was no pixy beauty, but a foul bog hag. A green-faced, whiskery hag with weedy hair and sharp teeth, ready to drag me down to a watery end.” Lar shuddered, his face wrinkling even more in revulsion.
“You were lucky, Lar,” Adam smiled, “that Guess made you hear.”
“Ay, the lucky man has bread and a friend, is it not so, Master?”
“I knew you couldn’t tell us a whole tale without one of your sayings, Lar!” Adam laughed while Lar went on to tell of his other adventures so that the company’s mood was much lighter as they prepared to settle down for the night.
The Dwarfish army rose with the sun, setting off in a tight formation. As before, Lar’s pixies and brownies rode at their flank. The morning passed uneventfully with them covering a lot of ground. Over lunch, Balom told Adam and Emily that, at this rate, they would reach the Twin Towers before sunset.
It wasn’t long after lunch that the first warning sign of opposition appeared. Where there once had been a lovely, wooded valley along the river on the Dwarfish bank was a sorry sight. Blackness replaced the greenery because all the trees were charred and felled.
“Goblin handiwork,” Balom growled through clenched teeth.
Before long, his words were proven true: there had been fighting. Balom rode across to a dead goblin, whose black blood was dry on his chest.
“Dead a couple of days, I’d say,” boomed Balom. “But I don’t understand.”
They rode on in silence, with Balom frowning and looking even more confused. As they rode, they passed over other fallen goblins.
“What's the matter, Balom?” Emily asked.
The dwarf shook his great, black head. “The Marshland goblins have crossed the river past the towers, but there were no dwarves to meet them. Who, then, killed them? And why have the woods been put to the torch?” Emily could see the problem. The borderland dwarves had retreated days ago; many were now marching in this army, so there should have been no defenders to halt the goblin advance.
“Unless…” Emily hesitated.
“Ay?”
“You know what goblins are like. I’ll bet they fought among themselves.” She warmed to her idea. “They’d quarrel with their own shadow, they burnt the woods because they love destroying things.”
Balom tugged at his bushy beard. “You may be right,” he growled, “it would be in their nature. In any case, the goblins are here in our lands,” he boomed. “Yet,” he shook his shaggy head, “it was not their work yesterday morning, for they leave their dead where they fall.”
“You mean the rear-guard?” Emily asked.
Balom nodded. “Goblins would have destroyed the carts, too.” He reined in his pony, and the others also halted. Balom squinted against the strong sunlight and pointed to a curve in the river: “Not far, around the bend in the river stand the two towers which guard the bridge. We now know they are in goblin hands.” He took Adam’s mailed arm. “Do you propose a headlong assault?”
“The trees are down, there’s no cover. We can’t hide our numbers or take them by surprise.” Adam stroked Oakman’s ear as he thought. He remembered his history lessons at school, which weren’t much help since he hadn’t taken interest in siege warfare. “I don’t know,” he said lamely. “Perhaps we should go and have a look. How strong are the walls?” he asked, hoping to sound convincing.
“Impenetrable.” Balom nudged his grey pony forward, unconvinced.
The Twin Towers lay below them, impressive bastions on the river bank. They were joined by a gateway whose iron portcullis blocked the entrance and exit to a fine stone bridge which spanned the river on five arches. Everything was silent, but they knew that the towers were full of eyes, watching and waiting.
“Built in the Old Days,” Balom said with the tone of a dwarf proudly asserting that there was no way to break down the towers.
“Now what?” Emily said with the tone of a sister challenging her brother.
“Why don’t you think of something?” Adam snapped grumpily.
“You’re the Supreme Commander of the Dwarfish Forces,” Emily said sarcastically.
“That’s true,” Adam said in a determined voice, ignoring his sister’s tone. “So, we should build ladders and siege towers…on wheels,” he added.
“What with?”
“Wood.”
“What wood?”
“From the trees,” Adam waved his arm behind him.
“Which trees?” Emily stepped up the sarcasm. “They’re all burnt, or haven’t you noticed?”
Balom, Lar, Lex and Lupp and others near enough to hear their leader’s difficulty looked at Adam anxiously. Adam had forgotten this essential fact, and looking at the massive walls of the towers, he panicked. Without thinking, he blurted out: “We’ll build a battering ram.”
Groans greeted his words.
“What with?” Emily tormented her brother, who hadn’t got a clue. “Fine Supreme Commander!” she hissed under her breath. She had resented Balom’s decision from the start because she was older than Adam and in this white armour, she fancied herself as a Joan of Arc figure. She’d forgotten the lesson learnt only a few days ago in the Theatre of Pride and that she couldn’t use a sword. She was a
s brave as Adam though and as bright, even if she daydreamed more than her brother.
“We’ll have to undermine the walls,” she said with an air of command. “We’ve got spades on the carts.”
“They’ll throw things down on us while we’re digging,” Adam objected.
“Of course,” Emily replied coldly, “that’s normal in warfare. You don’t think we can take those towers without losses, do you, Supreme Commander?”
Luckily, just before Adam could lose his temper, Lar’s high voice put an end to the matter.
“Look, Mistress!” the pixy’s sharp ears had noted the squeal of a winch. The heavy portcullis slowly raised.
“They've decided to attack us.” Balom couldn’t believe their good luck. He looked to Adam for orders; at least he hadn’t lost all faith in the Dragonteaser.
“That solves our problem,” Adam said, relieved. He quickly gave orders to spread their forces as before, but this time he split the dog-riders and placed them on each flank to encircle the enemy. They were ready for battle. Their banners fluttered proudly in the breeze, the sun flashing off their sharp battle-axes. Some time passed, but the enemy did not come out of the open gate.
When at last, there was movement, only one small figure emerged from the gateway: the figure of a woman walking with difficulty and leaning on a stick. Her grey cloak had a hood.
36
“Sapiens!” Adam shouted joyfully and spurred Oakman down the hill to meet her.
Once the dwarves, pixies, brownies, dogs, ponies, horses and carts were all safely inside the towers, there was time for explanation. Sapiens presented Xylor, the leader of the forest elves, and Montor of the mountain elves. Both almost as tall as Adam, they were slim with long, golden hair. The light seemed to shine in their faces while their voices were sweet to the ear. No wonder, thought Emily, that legend related that elves taught the other races the art of speech and song. She looked at Xylor, who smiled at her, causing her heart to beat faster and her face redden; she looked quickly at the floor.
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