The boy started over, and then hesitated, not certain that he wanted to face the Orullians when they looked so angry. But by then, it was too late. Tenerife had seen him.
“Xac Wen, you wolf’s pup!” he yelled at the boy. “What are you doing here? Haven’t we trouble enough without you adding to it? Where are Pan and Prue?”
Tasha was on his feet and on top of Xac Wen with a single leap. He took hold of the boy’s tunic and lifted him up to eye level. “You haven’t a brain in your head, you little lizard! Now, what’s this about? How did you get past the wall?”
Xac, sputtering and cursing some himself, demanded to be put down before he would answer. Only then, when Tasha had complied and both brothers were standing right in front of him, did the boy fill them in on what had happened to their friends.
“I didn’t know what to do when Prue disappeared, so I came here. I can go look for them some more, but I don’t know where to start. Tasha, it’s not my fault that this happened!”
Tasha nodded grimly. “No one said it was.” He looked at his brother. “I don’t think we can help them just now. And I don’t want to send this boy off on his own searching.”
“No, this will have to wait,” Tenerife agreed.
Shouts came from the defenses. The Trolls had broken through the last defenders stationed outside the mouth of the pass and were advancing in force.
Tasha glanced over his shoulder at the dark forms closing on their position. “Too many for us to stop. We have to draw back to the larger wall and hope that holds.
Come, Tenerife. Let’s do what we can. Xac Wen, you get out of here right now. All the way out. Back behind the walls at the head of the pass. Now, you little guttersnipe!”
The boy took off at a run, not daring to challenge Tasha face-to-face. But as soon as he had gone a short distance, he stopped and looked back. The Elven Hunters at the defenses, Tasha and Tenerife among them, had formed up in a defensive line to stop the Drouj advance. Already, the boy could see the dark armored forms advancing on the pass, coming through the last of the outer defenses, scrambling over them and through the ravines and gullies, forming up their attack lines for a final surge. Already the boy could tell that when that surge came, it would sweep the Elven defenders away like dead leaves.
But the Elves had realized this as well and were prepared for it. Forming ranks three men deep, they notched arrows to their longbows, lined themselves across the width of the pass, and in sustained volleys fired into the Troll lines. The pull required to draw an Elven longbow was immense, and the velocity and force of the shaft once released massive. Xac Wen had seen Tasha put an arrow all the way through a tree trunk a foot in diameter. So when the arrows were released into the armored ranks of the Trolls, they went right through the protective metal to the flesh beneath. The Trolls died in clusters, impaled repeatedly. The Elves fell back, formed up, and fired into the enemy ranks again.
But the Trolls kept coming, using shields to absorb or deflect some of the arrows, keeping their ranks filled with new bodies as dead and wounded fell by the wayside.
They had seen most of what there was in the way of defensive tactics in their time as soldiers, and they were not about to let the Elven bowmen stop them now.
On they came, and slowly but steadily, the Elves gave ground.
Xac Wen gave ground with them, retreating amid a cluster of others who were not at the forefront of the fighting, making his way back through the twists and turns of
Aphalion Pass toward the defensive walls at the far end. He held his bow and arrows ready, prepared to fight if it became necessary, aware of how fragile the line of fighters ahead of him would become if a sustained rush were mounted.
Shouts and the brittle clang of metal weapons echoed through the defile walls, a din so cacophonous that it threatened to overwhelm the boy’s courage.
He lost track of where he was, moving back in fits and starts, jostled by those about him who were doing the same, trying hard to concentrate on not stumbling and falling.
He was afraid if he fell that the crush might stop him from rising again in time to avoid the wave of fighters coming after.
Then, suddenly, he was bathed in an unexpected wash of sunlight, the walls parting abruptly to form a huge arena space within the center of the passageway. It was here, he realized, that Tasha and Tenerife, leading the little company of friends from Arborlon and Glensk Wood, had come looking all those weeks ago to discover if the protective walls of the valley were really down.
It was here they had encountered the dragon.
Without even thinking about it, he lifted his gaze toward the gap in the cliffs that opened to the sky.