The First King of Shannara

Jerle Shannara took the lead and rode straight at the Gnomes afoot. The reason for his decision was obvious. The only hope for the Elves was to outdistance the Gnomes on horseback, and the only way to do that was to get ahead of them and stay there. If they swung left, which was what the Gnomes on foot were trying to make them do, they would be forced back up into the low hills and slowed, allowing the Gnomes on horseback to cut them off. If they swung right, they would be heading directly at their mounted pursuers. There was, of course, no point in turning back. What was left, then, was to go forward, to break past the Gnomes afoot and ride west, because everyone knew. Elves and Gnomes alike, that the Gnome didn’t live who could outride an Elf.

Down through the corn rows raced the Elven Hunters, some in one field, some in another, spread out as far as they could manage so as to thin the ranks of the enemy archers and slingers, to confuse and divide, to break free of the trap. The Gnomes darted here and there, calling out wildly, trying to track their prey. The Elves stayed low astride their mounts, presenting the smallest targets possible. Only Jerle defied the odds, rising in his stirrups, howling like a madman at the Gnomes before him, his sword swinging above his head like a deadly scythe. From his position far to the left, Tay could just make him out, charging into the teeth of the Gnome line, the big bay he rode leaping recklessly through the furrowed rows. Tay knew what his friend was doing. He was trying to draw as many of the Gnomes as possible to him to give his companions a better chance.

Then Preia hissed at him to stay down, and the burly sorrel she rode swerved sharply along a shallow draw, breaking out of the field close against the line of hills. Tay thought he heard something whip past his head. He lowered himself over Preia’s slender back, a protective cloak, hanging tightly to her waist. He could feel her body move in front of him, leaning this way and that, her horse responding each time. He had a glimpse of someone running toward them, a blur of arms and legs amid the cornstalks. Some thing small and hard slammed into his shoulder, and he felt his arm go numb. His grip on Preia loosened, and he thought he might fall, but she reached back for him with one arm, helping him keep his seat. They reached the west end of the field, vaulted a drainage ditch to a wide swath of grassland, and galloped into the open. Tay risked a glance over his shoulder. Gnomes knelt at the edge of the corn and slung their stones and fired their arrows in obvious rage.

But already the missiles were falling short of their mark.

Tay looked ahead again. Elven riders streamed out abreast of them in a ragged line, racing toward the sunset, past the abandoned outpost buildings and into the grasslands beyond. Tay tried to count their numbers, tried to determine if Jerle in particular was all right, but the landscape was clouded by dust and cloaked in a damp shimmer of late-afternoon heat, and he quickly gave up and concentrated all of his efforts on not falling off the horse.

The Elves joined up again not far beyond the outpost and began to pace their horses against the demands of their flight. Miraculously, all had escaped, most uninjured. Jerle Shannara was barely scratched. Tay discovered that he had been struck on the shoulder by a slinger’s stone and sustained a deep bruise. The numbness was already fading, replaced by a dull pain. Nothing broken, he decided, and pushed the matter aside. The Gnomes on horseback chased after them, swinging west across the grasslands when they realized that their quarry had broken through the trap in the cornfields. But they had already ridden their horses a long way to get this far, and they did not know the country as the Elves did. Taking the lead once more, Jerle Shannara chose the path most advantageous to his company. This was his homeland, and he knew it well. Where the land dipped suddenly, he could find the high passage. Where sinkholes or bogs threatened, he was forewarned to swing wide. Where rivers flowed swift and broad, he could point to the shallows. The chase wore on, but the Gnomes fell steadily farther behind, and by nightfall they were no longer visible against the darkening horizon.

Even so, and after they had slowed their horses to a walk to guard against injury in the dimness of the clouded night sky, they went on for a time, unwilling to risk a chance discovery. Jerle took them north along a creek bed, hiding their passing while changing their direction. The darkness cloaked them, a welcome friend. The heat of the day seeped away and the air cooled. A thin rain fell for a time, then passed on. They rode in silence, save for the splashing of the horses in the shallow water and, when they left the stream, the muffled thud of their hooves in the soft earth.

When he could do so safely, Tay bent close to Preia’s ear and whispered, “What happened to you?”

She glanced back at him, her eyes startlingly bright amid the crosshatched damage to her face. “A trap.” Her voice was a low, angry hiss. “Kipp had gone on ahead to secure the horses at the first outpost. I was scouting against discovery by the Gnome Hunters we had determined were in the area. But they were waiting for us. I was lucky. Kipp wasn’t.”

“We found Kipp, Jerle and I,” he said softly.

She nodded, no response. He wanted to tell her what he had done and why, but he could not bring himself to speak the words.