Kitabı oku: «The Complete Tamuli Trilogy: Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City», sayfa 24

‘They won’t really try to bite you through the steel, Sir Kalten,’ Zalasta told him. ‘They’re attracted by your smell, and I don’t think any living creature finds the smell of Elene armour all that appetising.’

‘You’re taking all the fun out of it, Zalasta.’

‘Sorry, Sir Kalten.’

There was a rumble far off to the east.

‘The perfect end to a day gone sour,’ Stragen observed, ‘a nice rousing thunderstorm with lots of lightning, hail, driving rain and howling winds.’

Then, echoing down some unseen canyon back in the forest there came a hoarse, roaring bellow. Almost immediately there came an answer from the opposite direction.

Sir Ulath swore, biting off curses the way a dog tears at a piece of meat.

‘What’s wrong?’ Sparhawk demanded.

‘Didn’t you recognise it, Sparhawk?’ the Thalesian said. ‘You’ve heard it before – back at Lake Venne.’

‘What is it?’ Khalad asked apprehensively.

‘It’s a signal that it’s time for us to fort up! Those are Trolls out there!’

Chapter 22

‘It’s not perfect, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring said a bit dubiously, ‘but I don’t think we’ve got time to look for anything better.’

‘He’s right about that, Sparhawk,’ Ulath agreed. ‘Time’s definitely a major concern right now.’

The Peloi had ranged out into the surrounding forest in search of some defensible position. Given their nervousness about wooded terrain, Kring’s horsemen had displayed a great deal of courage in the search.

‘Can you give me some details?’ Sparhawk asked the shaved-headed Domi.

‘It’s a blind canyon, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring replied, nervously fingering the hilt of his sabre. ‘There’s a dried-up stream-bed running down the centre of it. From the look of it, I’d say that the stream runs full in the springtime. There seems to be a dry waterfall at the upper end. There’s a cave at the foot of the dry falls that should provide some protection for the women, and it’ll be a good place to defend if things get desperate.’

‘I thought they already were,’ Tynian noted.

‘How wide is the mouth of the canyon?’ Sparhawk asked intently.

‘The canyon mouth itself is maybe two hundred paces across,’ Kring told him, ‘but when you go back in a ways, it narrows down to about twenty paces. Then it widens out again into a sort of a basin where the falls are.’

‘The bad thing about a canyon is that you’re down in a hole,’ Kalten said. ‘It won’t take the Trolls too long to go up to the canyon rim and start throwing rocks down on our heads.’

‘Do we have any choice?’ Tynian asked him.

‘No, but I thought I’d point it out.’

‘There’s no place else?’ Sparhawk asked the Domi.

‘A few clearings,’ Kring shrugged. ‘A hill or two that I could spit over.’

‘It looks like it’s the canyon then,’ Sparhawk said grimly. ‘We’d better get there and start putting up some sort of fortification across that narrow place.’

They gathered closely around the carriage and pushed their way into the forest. The carriage jolted over the rough ground, and on several occasions fallen logs had to be dragged out of the way. After about five hundred yards, though, the ground began to slope upward and the trees thinned out.

Sparhawk pulled Faran in beside the carriage.

‘There’s a cave ahead, Ehlana,’ he told his wife. ‘Kring’s men didn’t have time to explore it, so we don’t know how deep it is.’

‘What difference would that make?’ she asked him. Ehlana’s face was even more pale than usual. The bellowing of the Trolls far back in the forest had obviously unnerved her.

‘It might be very important,’ he replied. ‘When you get there, have Talen explore the place. If it goes back in far enough or branches out, you’ll have a place to hide. Sephrenia’s going to be with you, and she’ll be able to block the entrance and hide any side-chamber so that the Trolls can’t find you if they manage to get past us.’

‘Why don’t we all just go into the cave? You and Sephrenia can use magic to block the entrance, and we can just sit there until the Trolls get bored and go away.’

‘According to Kring, the cave’s not big enough. He’s got men out looking for another one, but we know this one’s there. If something better turns up, we’ll change the plan, but for right now this is the best we can manage. You’ll take the other ladies. Patriarch Emban and Ambassador Oscagne and go inside. Talen will go in with you, and Berit and eight or ten other knights will cover the entrance to the cave. Please don’t argue, Ehlana. This is one of those situations where I make the decisions. You agreed to that back in Chyrellos.’

‘He’s right, your Majesty,’ Emban told her. ‘We need a general right now, not a queen.’

‘Am I encumbering you gentlemen?’ she asked tartly.

‘Not in the slightest, my Queen,’ Stragen said smoothly. ‘Your presence will inspire us to greater heights. We’ll dazzle you with our prowess and our courage.’

‘I’d be happy to simulate dazzlement if we could avoid this,’ she said in a worried voice.

‘I’m afraid you’d have to convince the Trolls on that score,’ Sparhawk told her, ‘and Trolls are very hard to convince – particularly if they’re hungry.’ Although the situation was grave, Sparhawk was not quite as desperately concerned about his wife’s safety as he might normally have been. Sephrenia would be there to protect her, and if things grew truly desperate, Aphrael could take a hand in the matter as well. He knew that his daughter would not permit any harm to come to her mother, even if it meant revealing her identity.

The canyon had its drawbacks, there was no question about that. The most obvious was the one Kalten had raised. If the Trolls ever reached the canyon rim above them, the situation would quickly become untenable. Kalten made quite an issue of pointing that out. ‘I told you so’ figured prominently in his remarks.

‘I think you’re over-estimating the intelligence of Trolls, Kalten,’ Ulath disagreed. ‘They’ll come straight at us, because they’ll be thinking of us as food, not as enemies. Supper’s more important to them than a military victory.’

‘You’re just loaded with cheery thoughts today, aren’t you, Ulath?’ Tynian said dryly. ‘How many of them do you think there are?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘I’ve heard ten different voices so far – probably the heads of families. There’s probably a hundred or so of them out there at the very least.’

‘It could be worse,’ Kalten said.

‘Not by very much,’ Ulath disagreed. ‘A hundred Trolls could have given Wargun’s whole army some serious problems.’

Bevier, their expert on fortifications and defensive positions, had been surveying the canyon. ‘There are plenty of rocks in the stream-bed for breastworks,’ he observed, ‘and whole thickets of saplings for stakes. Ulath, how long do you think we have before they attack?’

Ulath scratched at his chin. ‘The fact that we’re stopping gives us a bit more space,’ he mused, ‘If we were still moving, they’d attack right away, but now they’ll probably take their time and gather their forces. I believe you might want to re-think your strategy though, Bevier. Trolls aren’t going to shoot arrows at us, so breastworks aren’t really necessary. Actually, they’d hinder us more than they would the Trolls. Our advantage lies in our horses – and our lances. You really want to keep Trolls at a distance if you possibly can. The sharpened stakes would be good, though. A Troll takes the easiest way to get at what he wants – us, in this case. If we can clutter up the sides of this narrow place and funnel them through so that only a few at a time can come at us, we’ll definitely improve the situation. We don’t want to take on more of them at any one time than we absolutely have to. What I’d really like is a dozen or so of Kurik’s crossbows.’

‘I have one. Sir Ulath,’ Khalad volunteered.

‘And many of the knights have longbows,’ Bevier added.

‘We slow them down with the stakes so that we can pick them off with arrows?’ Tynian surmised.

‘That’s the best plan,’ Ulath agreed. ‘You don’t want to go hand to hand with a Troll if you can possibly avoid it.’

‘We’d better get at it, then,’ Sparhawk told them.

The work was feverish for the next hour. The narrow gap was necked down even more with boulders from the stream-bed, and a forest of sharpened stakes, all slanting sharply outward, was planted to the front. There was a method to the planting of the stakes. They bristled so thickly along the sides of the gap as to be well-nigh impenetrable, but the corridor leading to the basin at the head of the canyon was planted only sparsely with them to encourage the monsters to follow that route. Kring’s Peloi found a large bramble thicket, uprooted the thorn-bushes and threw them back among the thick-planted stakes at the sides to further impede progress.

‘What’s Khalad doing there?’ Kalten asked, puffing and sweating with the large rock he carried in his arms.

‘He’s building something,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘This isn’t really the time for the construction of camp improvements, Sparhawk.’

‘He’s a sensible young man. I’m sure he’s usefully occupied.’

At the end of the hour, they stopped to survey the fruits of their labours. The gap had been narrowed to no more than eight feet wide, and the ground at the sides of the gap was dense with chest-high stakes angled so that they would keep the Trolls on the right path. Tynian, however, added one small embellishment. A number of his Alciones were driving pegs into the middle of the pathway and then sharpening the protruding ends.

‘Trolls don’t wear shoes, do they?’ he asked Ulath.

‘It’d take half a cow-hide to make shoes for a Troll,’ Ulath shrugged, ‘and they eat cows hide and all, so they’re a little short of leather.’

‘Good. We want to keep them in the centre of the canyon, but we don’t want to make it too easy for them. Barefoot Trolls aren’t going to run through that stubble-field – not after the first few yards, anyway.’

‘I like your style, Tynian,’ Ulath grinned.

‘Could you gentlemen stand off to one side, please?’ Khalad called. He had cut two fairly sturdy saplings off so that the stumps were about head high and had then lashed a third across them. Then he had strung a rope across the ends of the horizontal sapling and drawn it tight to form a huge bow. The bow was fully drawn, tied off to another stump at the rear, and it was loaded with a ten-foot javelin.

Sparhawk and the others moved off to the sides of the narrow cut, and Khalad released the bow by cutting the rope that held it drawn. The javelin shot forward with a sharp whistling sound and buried itself deep into a tree a good hundred yards down the canyon.

‘I’m going to like that boy,’ Kalten smiled. ‘He’s almost as good at this sort of thing as his father was.’

‘The family shows a lot of promise,’ Sparhawk agreed. ‘Let’s position our archers so that they have a clear shot at that gap.’

‘Right,’ Kalten agreed. ‘What then?’

‘Then we wait.’

‘That’s the part I hate the most. Why don’t we grab something to eat? Just to pass the time, of course.’

‘Of course.’

The storm which had been building to the east all morning was closer now, the clouds purplish-black and seething. There were flickers of lightning deep inside the cloud bank, and the thunder rolled from horizon to horizon, shaking the ground with every peal.

They waited. The air was dead calm and sultry and the knights were sweating uncomfortably in their armour.

‘Can we think of anything else?’ Tynian asked.

‘I’ve contrived a few rudimentary catapults,’ Bevier replied. ‘They’re hardly more than bent saplings, so they won’t throw very big rocks, and their range is limited.’

‘I’ll take all the help I can get when it comes to fighting Trolls,’ Ulath told him. ‘Every one of them we knock down before they get to us is one less we’ll have to fight.’

‘Dear God!’ Tynian exclaimed.

‘What?’ Kalten demanded with a certain alarm.

‘I think I just saw one of them back at the edge of the forest. Are they all that big?’

‘Nine feet or so tall?’ Ulath asked quite casually.

‘At least.’

‘That’s fairly standard for a Troll, and they weigh between thirty-five and fifty stone.’

‘You’re not serious!’ Kalten said incredulously.

‘Wait just a bit and you’ll be able to weigh one for yourself.’ Ulath looked around at them. ‘Trolls are hard to kill,’ he cautioned. ‘Their hides are very tough, and their skull-bones are almost a half-inch thick. They can take a lot of punishment when they’re excited. If we get in close, try to maim them. You can’t really count on clean kills with Trolls, so every arm you chop off is one less the Troll can grab you with.’

‘Will they have weapons of any kind?’ Kalten asked.

‘Clubs are about all. They aren’t good with spears. Their arms aren’t hooked on right for jabbing.’

‘That’s something, anyway.’

‘Not very much,’ Tynian told him.

They waited as the thunder moved ponderously toward them.

They saw several more Trolls at the edge of the forest in the next ten minutes, and the bellowing roars of those scouts were obviously summoning the rest of the pack. The only Troll Sparhawk had ever seen before had been Ghwerig, and Ghwerig had been dwarfed and grossly deformed. He quickly began to revise his assessment of the creatures. They were, as Ulath had stated, about nine feet tall, and they were covered with dark-brown, shaggy fur. Their arms were very long, and their huge hands hung below their knees. Their faces were brutish, with heavy brow-ridges, muzzle-like mouths and protruding fangs. Their eyes were small, deep-set and they burned with a dreadful hunger. They slouched along at the edge of the forest, not really trying to conceal themselves, and Sparhawk clearly saw that their long arms played a significant part in their locomotion, sometimes serving as an additional leg and sometimes grasping trees to help pull themselves along. Their movements were flowing, even graceful, and bespoke an enormous agility.

‘Are we more or less ready?’ Ulath asked them.

‘I could stand to wait a little longer,’ Kalten replied.

‘How long?’

‘Forty or fifty years sounds about right to me. What did you have in mind?’

‘I’ve seen about fifteen different individuals,’ the big Thalesian noted. ‘They’re coming out one by one to have a look, and that means that they’re all more or less gathered just back under the trees. I thought I’d insult them for a while. When a Troll gets angry, he doesn’t really think. Of course Trolls don’t have very much to think with in the first place. I’d like to provoke them into an ill-considered attack if possible. If I really insult them, they’ll scream and howl and then come rushing out of those woods foaming at the mouths. They’ll be easy targets for the bowmen at that point, and if a few of them get through, we can charge them with our horses and the lances. We should be able to kill quite a few of them before they come to their senses. I’d really like to whittle down their numbers, and enraged Trolls make easy targets.’

‘Do you think we might be able to kill enough of them to frighten the rest away?’ Kalten asked.

‘I wouldn’t count on it, but anything’s possible, I suppose. I’d have sworn that you couldn’t get a hundred Trolls to even walk in the same direction at the same time, so the situation here’s completely new to me.’

‘Let me talk with the others before we precipitate anything,’ Sparhawk told him. He turned and walked back to where the knights and the Peloi waited with their horses. Vanion stood with Stragen, Engessa and Kring. ‘We’re about ready to start,’ Sparhawk told them.

‘Did you plan to invite the Trolls?’ Stragen asked him. ‘Or are we going to begin without them?’

‘Ulath’s going to see if he can provoke them into something rash,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘The stakes should slow them down enough so that our archers can work on them. We really want to thin them out a bit. If they manage to break through, we’ll charge them with lances.’ He looked at Kring. ‘I’m not trying to insult you, Domi, but could you hold back a bit? Ulath tells us that Trolls take a lot of killing. It’s a dirty business, but somebody’s going to have to come along after we charge and kill the wounded.’

Kring’s face clearly registered his distaste. ‘We’ll do it, friend Sparhawk,’ he agreed finally, ‘but only out of friendship.’

‘I appreciate that, Kring. As soon as Ulath enrages them enough to get them moving, those of us at the barricade will come back and get on our horses to join the charge. Oh, one thing – just because a Troll has a broken-off lance sticking out of him doesn’t mean that he’s out of action. Let’s stick a few more in each one then – just to be on the safe side. I’ll go advise the ladies that we’re about to start, and then we’ll get on with it.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ Vanion said, and the two of them walked back up the canyon towards the cave-mouth.

Berit and a small group of young knights stood guard at the entrance to the cave. ‘Are they coming?’ the handsome young man asked nervously.

‘We’ve seen a few scouts,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘We’re going to try to goad them into an attack. If we have to fight them, I’d rather do it in the daylight.’

‘And before that storm hits,’ Vanion added.

‘I don’t think they’ll get past us,’ Sparhawk told the youthful knight, ‘but stay alert. If things start to look tight, pull back inside the cave.’

Berit nodded.

Then Ehlana, Talen and Sephrenia emerged from the cave.

‘Are they coming?’ Ehlana asked, her voice slightly shrill.

‘Not yet,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘It’s just a question of time, though. We’re going to try to goad them a bit. Ulath thinks he might be able to enrage some of them enough so that they’ll attack before the rest are ready. We’d rather not have to face them all at once if we can avoid it.’ He looked at Sephrenia. ‘Are you up to a spell or two, Sephrenia?’

‘That depends on the spell.’

‘Can you block the cave mouth so that the Trolls can’t get at you and the others?’

‘Probably, and if not, I can always collapse it.’

‘I wouldn’t do that except as a last resort. Wait for Berit and his men to get inside with you, though.’

Talen’s fine clothes were a bit mud-smeared. ‘Any luck?’ Sparhawk asked him.

‘I found a place where a bear spent last winter,’ the boy shrugged. ‘It involved a bit of wriggling. There are a couple of other passageways I want to look at.’

‘Pick the best one you can. If Sephrenia has to bring down the cave-mouth, I’d like to have you all back where it’s safe.’

Talen nodded.

‘Be careful, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana said to him, embracing him fiercely.

‘Always, love.’

Sephrenia had also embraced Vanion, her admonition echoing Ehlana’s. ‘Now go, both of you,’ she added.

‘Yes, little mother,’ Sparhawk and Vanion said in unison.

The two knights started back down the canyon. ‘You don’t approve, do you, Sparhawk?’ Vanion asked gravely.

‘It’s none of my business, my friend.’

‘I didn’t ask if it was any of your business, I asked if you approved. There wasn’t any other way, you know. The laws of both our cultures prohibit our marrying.’

‘I don’t think the laws apply to you two, Vanion. You both have a special friend who ignores the laws when she chooses to.’ He smiled at his old friend. ‘Actually, I’m rather pleased about it. I got very tired of seeing the pair of you moping about the way you were.’

‘Thanks, Sparhawk. I wanted to get that out into the open. I’ll never be able to go back to Eosia, though.’

‘I’d say that’s no great a loss under the circumstances. You and Sephrenia are happy, and that’s all that matters.’

‘I’ll agree there. When you get back to Chyrellos, try to put the best face on it you can, though. I’m afraid Dolmant will burst into flames when he hears about it.’

‘He might surprise you, Vanion.’

Sparhawk was a bit startled to discover that he still remembered a few words in Troll. Ulath stood in the centre of their narrow gap, bellowing at the forest in that snarling tongue.

‘What’s he saying?’ Kalten asked curiously.

‘It wouldn’t translate very well,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Trollish insults lean heavily in the direction of body-functions.’

‘Oh. Sorry I asked.’

‘You’d be a lot sorrier if I could translate,’ Sparhawk said, wincing at a particularly vile imprecation Ulath had just hurled at the Trolls.

The Trolls, it appeared, took insults very seriously. Unlike humans, they seemed not to be able to shrug such things off as no more than a customary prelude to battle. They howled at each new sally from the big Genidian Knight. A number of them appeared at the edge of the wood, foaming at the mouth and stamping in rage.

‘How much longer before they charge?’ Tynian asked his tall blond friend.

‘You can’t always tell with Trolls,’ Ulath replied. ‘I don’t think they’re accustomed to fighting in groups. I can’t say for sure, but I think one of them will lose his temper before the others, and he’ll come rushing at us. I’m not positive if the others will follow.’ He roared something else at the huge creatures at the forest’s edge.

One of the Trolls shrieked with fury and broke into a shambling, three-legged run, brandishing a huge club in his free hand. First one Troll, then several others, began to run after him.

Sparhawk glanced around, checking the positions of his archers. Khalad, he noted, had given his crossbow to another young Pandion and stood coolly sighting along the shaft of the javelin resting across the centre of his improvised engine.

The Troll in the lead was swinging wildly at the sharpened stakes with his club, but the springy saplings bent beneath his blows and then snapped back into place. The enraged Troll lifted his muzzle and howled in frustration.

Khalad cut the rope holding his over-sized bow drawn back. The limbs of the bow snapped forward with an almost musical twang, and the javelin shot forward in a long, smooth arc to sink into the Troll’s vast, furry chest with a meaty-sounding ‘chunk!’

The Troll jerked back and stood staring stupidly at the shaft protruding from his chest. He touched it with one tentative finger as if he could not even begin to understand how it had got there. Then he sat down heavily with blood pouring from his mouth. He grasped the shaft feebly with both hands and wrenched at it. A fresh gush of blood burst from his mouth, and he sighed and toppled over on one side.

‘Good shot,’ Kalten called his congratulations to Sparhawk’s squire, who, with the help of two other young Pandions was already re-cocking the engine.

‘Pass the word to the other archers,’ Khalad called back. ‘The Trolls stop when they come to those stakes. They don’t seem to be able to understand them, and they make perfect targets when they’re standing still like that.’

‘Right.’ Kalten went to the archers on one side of the canyon and Bevier to the other to pass the word along.

The half-dozen or so Trolls who had followed the first one paid no attention to his fall and lunged on forward towards the field of sharpened stakes.

‘We might have a problem, Sparhawk,’ Tynian said. ‘They’re not used to fighting in groups, so they don’t pay any attention to casualties. Ulath says that they don’t die of natural causes, so they don’t really understand what death’s all about. I don’t think they’ll back away just because we kill all their comrades. It’s not like fighting humans, I’m afraid. They’ll make one charge, and they’ll keep coming until they’re all dead. We may have to adjust our tactics to take that into account.’

More Trolls came out of the trees, and Ulath continued to shout obscenities at them.

Kalten and Bevier returned. ‘I just had a thought,’ Kalten said. ‘Ulath, will the females attack too?’

‘Probably.’

‘How do you tell the females from the males?’

‘Are you having urges?’

‘That’s disgusting. I just don’t want to kill women, that’s all.’

‘Women? These are Trolls, Kalten, not people. You can’t tell a female from a male unless she’s got cubs with her – or unless you get very, very close to her – and that’s not a good idea. A sow will tear off your head just as quickly as a boar will.’ The Genidian went back to shouting insults.

More Trolls joined the charge, and then, with a vast roar, the entire edge of the woods erupted with the monsters. They did not pause, but joined the loping charge.

‘That’s it,’ Ulath said with a certain satisfaction. ‘The whole pack’s committed now. Let’s go get our horses.’

They ran back to join the others as the several Cyrinics manning Bevier’s improvised catapults and the Pandions working Khalad’s engine began to launch missiles at the oncoming Trolls. The archers at the canyon walls rained arrows into the shaggy ranks. Some Trolls fell, riddled with arrows, but others continued the charge, ignoring the shafts sticking out of them.

‘I don’t think we can count on their breaking and running just because their friends have been killed,’ Sparhawk told Vanion and the others as he hauled himself onto Faran’s back.

‘Friends?’ Stragen said mildly. ‘Trolls don’t have friends, Sparhawk. They aren’t even particularly fond of their mates.’

‘What I’m getting at is the fact that this is all going to be settled in one fight,’ Sparhawk said to them. ‘There probably won’t be a second charge. They’ll just keep coming until they break through or until they’re all dead.’

‘It’s better that way, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring said with a wolfish grin. ‘Protracted fights are boring, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I wouldn’t say that, would you, Ulath?’ Tynian asked mildly.

The knights moved into formation, their lances at the ready as the Trolls continued their bellowing advance.

The first half-dozen or so Trolls that had been in the forefront of the charge were all down now, either dead or dying of arrow wounds, and the front rank of the bellowing horde was faltering as sheets of arrows struck them. The Trolls at the rear, however, simply ran over the top of their mortally wounded companions. Mouths agape and fangs dripping, they charged on and on.

The sharpened stakes served their purpose well. The Trolls, after a few futile efforts to break through the bristling forest, were forced into the narrow corridor where they were jammed together and milled impatiently behind the brutes who were leading the charge as Tynian’s sharpened pegs protruding from the ground slowed the rushing advance of the leaders. Not even the most enraged creature in the world charges very well on sore paws.

Sparhawk looked around. The knights were drawn up into a column, four abreast, and their lances were all slightly advanced. The Trolls continued their limping charge up the gap until the first rank, also four abreast, reached the end of the stake-lined corridor where it opened out into the basin. ‘I guess it’s time,’ he said. Then he rose up in his stirrups and roared ‘Charge!’

The tactic Sparhawk had devised for the Church Knights was simple. They would charge four abreast into the face of the Trolls as soon as the creatures came out into the basin. They would drive their lances into the first rank of Trolls and then veer off, two-by-two, to the sides of the gap so that the next rank of four could make their charge. Once they had moved out of the way, they would return to the end of the column, take up fresh lances and proceed in an orderly fashion to the front rank again. It was, in effect, an endless charge. Sparhawk was rather proud of the concept. It probably wouldn’t work against humans, but it had great potential in an engagement with Trolls.

Shaggy carcasses began to pile up at the head of the gap. A Troll, it appeared, was not guileful enough to play dead. He would continue to attack until he died or was so severely injured that he could not continue. After several ranks of the knights had struck the Trollfront, some of the brutes had as many as four broken-off lances protruding from them. Still the monsters came, clambering over the bleeding bodies of their fellows.

Sparhawk, Vanion, Kalten and Tynian made their second charge. They speared fresh Trolls in the raging front, snapped off their lances with well-practised twists of their arms and veered off to the sides.

‘Your plan seems to be going well,’ Kalten congratulated his friend. ‘The horses have time to rest between charges.’

‘That was part of the idea,’ Sparhawk replied a bit smugly as he took a fresh lance from the rack at the rear of the column.

The storm was nearly on them now. The howling wind shrieked among the trees, and lightning staggered down in brilliant flashes from the purple clouds.

Then, from back in the forest there came a tremendous bellow.

‘What in God’s name was that?’ Kalten cried. ‘Nothing can make that much noise!’

Whatever it was, was huge, and it was coming toward them, crushing the forest as it came. The raging wind carried a foul, reptilian reek as it tore at the visored faces of the armoured knights.

‘It stinks like a charnel-house!’ Tynian shouted over the noise of the storm and the battle.

‘Can you tell what it is, Vanion?’ Sparhawk demanded.

‘No,’ the Preceptor replied. ‘Whatever it is, it’s big, though – bigger than anything I’ve ever encountered.’

Then the rain struck in driving sheets, obscuring the knights’ vision and half-concealing the advancing Trolls. ‘Keep at them!’ Sparhawk commanded in a great voice. ‘Don’t let up!’

The methodical charges continued as the Trolls doggedly pushed through the mud into the killing zone. The strategy was going well, but it had not been without casualties. Several horses were down, felled by club strokes from wounded and enraged Trolls, and a few armoured knights lay motionless on the rain-swept ground.