“What’s happened?” he asked.
“The Trolls have attacked the pass!” The Elf blurted it out in a series of gasps that suggested he had been doing more than sitting around while this was going on. “We need more fighters or we’ll be overrun. I’m on my way to tell the Queen.”
As if that wil do any good, the boy thought. Then he changed his mind; the Queen was as much at risk as any of them. Surely, she would send reinforcements, if only to protect her throne.
“You have to turn around and go back,” the messenger insisted. “It’s too dangerous up there for a boy.”
“I can’t,” Xac Wen said, quickly conjuring up an excuse. “I have a message of my own for Haren Crayel. I’ll go back after I deliver it.”
The Elven Hunter gave him a long look, then shrugged and trotted away. It wasn’t his concern.
Xac gave him a final glance before continuing on, picking up his pace as he did so, anxious now to discover what was happening. With Arik Siq a prisoner at Glensk Wood, he wondered how the Drouj had learned the location of the passes. But there might have been someone else—another Drouj—who had escaped the struggle with Sider Ament.
Whatever the case, the result was the same. Defensive walls and bulwarks notwithstanding, the Elves were in trouble.
As he reached the entrance to the pass, he saw the first indications of how serious that trouble was. Elves were running back and forth in front of him, and some were carrying litters bearing wounded. A makeshift shelter had been created out of canvas stretched across a timber frame, and it was already filling up. Elven Hunters manned the ramparts, but the fighting didn’t seem to have reached them yet. They were facing forward down the pass, watching whatever was happening farther on, but not doing much of anything other than that.
The boy decided immediately that he was going over the wall and out to where the fighting was taking place. He would find the Orullians there.
Because he had been up in the pass not too long before, he knew where to go to find what he needed. He rushed over to the supply racks, snatched up a chain-mail vest and a bow and arrows. He had his hunting knife with him already, but it was a poor weapon in a fight like this. In point of fact, not much of anything was of use if he got himself into a hand-to-hand-combat situation. He was too small and slight to stand up to even the weakest Troll. He remembered how dwarfed he felt when Arik Siq had come hunting for him on the Carol an heights. If he were brought to bay, he would be dispatched with little effort. The best thing for him to do was to stay out of reach and use the bow.
Of course, the best thing would be to find Tasha and Tenerife, give his report, and get out of there. But he was astute enough to realize that it might not be simple to do that.
Unless he was badly mistaken, the Orullians would be right in the thick of the fighting.
Donning his gear, shouldering the bow and arrows, and pulling the visor of his helmet down over his face to conceal his youthful features, he set out for the defensive wall.
Mingling with a couple of other Elven Hunters, he went up behind them on one of the ladders and then followed them down the other side. No one said anything. He was tall enough to pass for one of them with the vest and helmet in place. He kept his head down and his feet moving, acting as if he had someplace to go and no time to stop and talk.
Luck was with him. He cleared the wall and the chaos he encountered just beyond and continued up the defile with a handful of others. The clash of weapons and the shouts and screams of combatants rose from somewhere ahead, beyond what he could see.
Streams of Elven Hunters passed one another coming from and going toward the fighting, and the ferocity of the sounds made Xac Wen turn cold inside. He knew he was in over his head, that he had never fought in a real battle and had no training for doing so. He might have imagined what it would be like, but already he could tell that the reality would be something else entirely.
Just stay calm, he told himself. Don’t panic.
But when he was through all the twists and turns, facing toward the far end of the pass from atop a narrow ridge of high ground and listening to the sounds of the madness that lay beyond, all his resolve turned to water.
The Elves had built defenses across the mouth of the pass, elevated bulwarks and shields staggered at twenty-foot intervals to provide a broken, jagged wall that could not be scaled by a large attacking force without first breaking it up into smaller units.