The First King of Shannara

He eased back into the rocks, slipped off his travel cloak, and began to strip away his weapons. He supposed his mind had been made up from the moment the idea had entered his head. Kill the Warlock Lord and put an end to this madness. He was the best suited of any of them to make the attempt. This was the ideal time, when the Northland army was still close to home and Brona believed himself safe from attack. Even if he died, too, it would be worth it. Risca was willing to make that sacrifice. A warrior was always prepared to make that sacrifice.

When he was down to his boots, pants, and tunic, he shoved a dagger in his belt, picked up his battleaxe, and started down through the rocks. It was nearing midnight by the time he reached the foot of the mountains and started across the plains. Overhead, the Skull Bearers still circled, but he was behind them by now and cloaked in magic that concealed him from their spying eyes. They were looking outward for enemies and would not see him. He walked easily, loosely, his approach silent in the black, the light of the campfires masking him from those who might notice his approach. Their sentry system was woefully inadequate. A perimeter of guards, a mix of Gnomes and Trolls, had placed themselves too far apart and too close to the light to be able to see anything coming in out of the dark. The skies were clouded and the night air was hazy with smoke, and it would take sharp eyes under the best of circumstances to catch sight of any movement on the plains.

Still, Risca took no chances. He came in at a crouch when the cover of grasses and scrub thinned, picking his place of approach carefully, choosing one of the Gnome sentries as a target. Leaving the battleaxe in the long grass, he went in with only the dagger.

The Gnome sentry never saw him. He dragged the body back out into the grasses, concealed it, wrapped himself in the fellow’s cloak, pulled up the hood to hide his face, picked up the axe again, and started in.

Another man would have thought twice about just walking right up to an enemy camp. Risca gave it barely any thought at all.

He knew that a direct approach was always best when you were trying to catch someone off guard, and that you tended to notice less of what was right before your eyes than of what lurked at the fringes of your vision. The tendency was to discount what didn’t make sense, and a lone enemy strolling right past you into the center of your own heavily armed camp made no sense at all.

Nevertheless, Risca stayed at the edges of the firelight as he entered, and he kept the cloak in place. He did not skulk or lower his head, for that would signal that something was wrong. He moved as if he belonged and did not alter his approach. He passed the outer perimeter of guards and fires and moved into the center of the camp. Smoke wafted past him, and he used it like a screen.

Shouts and laughter rose all about, men eating and drinking, telling tales and swapping lies. Armor and weapons clinked, and the pack animals stamped and snorted in the hazy dark. Risca moved through them all without slowing, never losing sight of his destination, now a ragged jut of poles and dark pennants lifting above the swarm of the army. He carried the battleaxe low against his side, and he projected himself through his magic as a soldier of no consequence, as just another Gnome Hunter on his way to somewhere unimportant.

He passed deep into the maze of fires and men, skirting wagons and stacks of supplies, tethered lines of pack animals and menders engaged in repair of traces and equipment, and vast racks of pikes and spears, their shafts and armored tips angling skyward. He kept to the portions of the camp that were occupied by Gnomes when he could, but now and again was forced to pass through clusters of Trolls. He shied from them as a Gnome might, deferential, wary, not showing fear, but not challenging either, turning away from them as he approached, not quite meeting the craggy, impersonal faces, the battle-hardened stares. He could feel their eyes settle on him and then move away. But no one stopped him or called him back. No one found him out.

Sweat ran down his back and under his arms, and it was not from the heat of the night. Now men were beginning to sleep, to roll themselves into their cloaks next to the fires and go quiet.