The Complete Tamuli Trilogy: Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City

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

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