The Wide World's End by James Enge Read Free Book Online Page A

the hill and embraced it like a child embracing her mother. Presently she leapt up.
    â€œ Lukharnadh hai, ruthenen! ” she cried. “Be ready, too, Guardians of the south! I hear dwarvish boots on these hills. I hear the tramp of many slender feet. The battle is joined and comes toward us!”
    Guardians and dwarves alike leapt to their feet. Rynyrth ran up and down their lines, arranging them in ranks of three.
    Aloê reflected that the command of three had shrunk to one. A glance at Thea’s face, rueful in shadows, showed that her comrade was thinking the same thing. But the anarchy of the Wardlands worked because people were willing to let the work be done by the one who could do it best. In this place, in this hour, it was Rynyrth.
    Rynyrth returned to them, saying as she approached, “Each fighter has only so many gravebolts, and the Khnauronts drink life, as Rokhlan Earno has told us. A warrior without bolts, or who has been wounded, must make place in the front for another. The unwounded shall be a wall for the wounded.”
    â€œEarno told you,” said Lernaion, “yet I think you knew it already.”
    â€œIt was in Harven Morlock’s last message to us.”
    â€œHmph. He takes a lot on himself.”
    Aloê didn’t like where this conversation was going. It wasn’t for Guardians to be keeping needful knowledge from the Guarded, but Lernaion seemed to think that Earno and Morlock should have done so. She wondered if Rynyrth would be offended, but the dwarf said only, “He was ours before he was yours. He will be ours again when you are done with him. You will pardon him, I hope.” As she spoke, she unslung her songbow, drew a gravebolt from her quiver, twirled it and set it to the bow. The Guardians, more slowly, with less practiced hands, did likewise.
    They all waited as the stars spun slowly beyond the moons overhead, and the rumbling in the hills grew louder.
    There were lights, now, casting distorted shadows on the steep gray hillsides—real lights, not the deceptive glare of banefire. Aloê could hear the clash of metal on metal but no voices yet.
    Stick-thin figures stumbled into sight, lit indirectly by the approaching lights. Most clutched a wand with a clawed end in one hand and a stabbing weapon in the other; some had only the stabbing weapons. The wandbearers pointed their wands at the wandless, who thrashed about and fell and crawled and were suddenly still.
    â€œYou see it, harven ?” Rynyrth hissed in her ear. “These beasts eat their wounded, like pus-rats. Those clawed sticks: those are the lifetakers.”
    More Khnauronts flooded into view. There were very many of them—hundreds or thousands—many times the little company stationed on the Hill of Storms.
    But they were not alone. Beyond them, driving them, came a cohort of bearded dwarves. They marched in close ranks; each dwarf bore a glass shield in one hand and a spiked silver mallet. Floating above them like banners, supported by nothing Aloê could see, were coldlights illumining the battle.
    The dwarven soldiers used the spikes on their mallets to stab, but swung the weights to break weapons or lifetakers when they could. Their progress was slow but relentless.
    The slopes opposite them suddenly bristled with gray shadows and fire-red eyes: the Gray Folk, driving another mob of Khnauronts before them.
    â€œThe moment will be soon,” Rynyrth said. “When they know we are here, blocking their retreat, they will charge the hill or attempt to flee up the valley to our south. We must be ready.”
    â€œWe should tell the others,” Thea said.
    â€œMy people know, and they will tell their allies, as I tell you.”
    Now, at last, they heard the distant sound of shouting. Opposite the Hill of storms, to the west, Aloê saw a cloud of torches, dark human shapes among them. She thought some of them were carrying pitchforks.
    It was the so-called