The spring rains had left the ground soft, and Czrak had fumed as the large, heavily laden wains mired down in the mud. Twice they had waited for darkness so the humanoids could leave the wagons and help push the vehicles onto firm ground, but they had completed the first part of the journey without being discovered.
The elves in the western arm of Sielwode kept an eye on the plain near the eaves of the wood, but seldom bothered travelers who stayed out of the forest. The elves even expected the caravans to angle close to the outlying trees, since the only place the Star Mirror Stream could be forded by wagons was less than half a mile from the wood.
“How long before nightfall?” he asked.
“The sun is even now on the horizon, Great One,” Demloke replied. “An hour. Two at most. We are even favored by the weather. The sky is clouding over and will hide the moon this night.”
Impatience pulsed in his veins, and the discomfort of his long journey seemed to double as Czrak waited for full darkness. His first failures had made him cautious. He ordered Demloke to bring his wagon up close to the stream, turning it so he could slide out into the water. With luck, any elf watching would think they were planning to fill water kegs. Before they crossed the stream? He decided not to worry about that one little lapse in logic.
At full dark, he gratefully slid out of the wagon and into the water, discovering the one complication he had not considered. The recent rains had swelled the stream. He could move easily on the water, but after many years in the swamps, he had not given a thought to the current. His progress up the Star Mirror Stream would be difficult. Before they could travel a mile into the forest, the elves would be alerted.
Cald, back on guard duty in the Muirien Grove, had learned not to spend all his time standing. He was sitting at the base of the tree that for months had been his station. He was fighting to keep his eyes open when he heard the whistled alarm.
“Intruders following the Star Mirror Stream … humans, goblins, gnolls, orogs …” They were accompanied by some creature the watchers could not identify.
Cald jumped to his feet but stayed at his station. Around him he could hear the slight movements of the elves who also stood guard. They strung their bows and loosened their swords in their scabbards.
“Are we needed?” Cald whistled back. He waited while questions and answers passed through the forest.
“Hundreds of invaders … Come.”
Hialmair stepped out of the shadows, a dark object separating himself from the black column of a tree. Cald, with his human eyes, would not have recognized the elf if he had not known his position.
“Will you take the lead?” the human youth asked. Elven eyes were better at finding a path in the darkness, and speed was necessary if they were to hold the invaders at the edge of the forest.
But could they hold them? Cald wondered. Since the defection of two thirds of their forces, the defenders of the western arm numbered just over a hundred, and a third of them were patrolling different sections of the wood.
Cald followed Hialmair as the elf led at a run. They leapt across the stepping-stones in the Moon Stream and paralleled its course, racing along the eastern bank.
From the west came the calls of a great cat of Sielwode, and from closer, the deep rumble of a carrion crawler. The beasts of the wood were anticipating a feast when the battle was over.
For five miles, Cald followed the leading elf until they came to a bend in the stream and another set of stepping-stones, hidden by the high water.
Hialmair leapt from stone to stone, relying on his memory. Cald, traveling partially by memory and his ability to see the faint splashing, followed. Directly to the south, they heard the sounds of fighting. They traveled less than a mile when they came upon Eyrmin and the thirty elves who had been in Reilmirid when the alarm sounded through the forest.
The prince was sheltered behind a large tree, listening to the report of two elves. One was being bandaged by Glisinda.
“I don’t know what it is,” Saelvam said as Cald arrived. “Huge, bloated, but with a face that is a parody of humanoid …”
“It has some terrible power,” the other said.
“And stink like the Gorgon,” Stognad, the goblin, said as he trotted up. He saw Cald. “Told you about that stink, but you didn’t listen.”
“How could it be the Gorgon?” Eyrmin asked, ready to listen to the goblins at last. “The tales say he cannot leave his mountains, and if he did he would come from the north, not the west.”
“Like Gorgon but not him,” Stognad said. “Me plenty good remember stink of power from awnshegh.”
“Another awnshegh?” Eyrmin’s eyes sparkled in the light of his sword, Starfire, which had been lightly glowing. The blade detected the presence of evil.
“It’s traveling up the stream,” Saelvam said as Glisinda finished his bandage. “From what we could see of it, a huge human”—his eyes flickered as he noticed Cald—“humanoid face, a sluglike body. I think I saw two humanoid arms and eight large, hairy legs like those of a water spider. A creature out of nightmares.”
A dozen elves came in sight, sprinting from tree to tree as they retreated. Behind them, a party of goblins appeared, and the prince waved the wounded elf back deeper into the woods. The rest took up positions and waited. The goblins were in bow range, but they, too, ducked from tree to tree.
Eyrmin forsook the shelter of the tree to crouch behind a thick bush, and Cald joined him.
“They’re very cautious,” Cald said as he waited by the prince for a target.
“Saelvam and Cloasien have accounted for nearly a score.” Eyrmin said. “I’m short six arrows, but they all found targets.”
“Are they protected by any sort of magic?” Cald asked, thinking of the deflected arrows in the wood when they had first faced this new awnshegh’s forces. He and the elves had thought that first fifty to be the minions of the Gorgon. Looking back, he remembered the warnings of Bersmog and Stognad. Neither Cald nor Eyrmin had listened to the goblins, but if they had understood, what could they have done about it?
Cald spotted a creature sticking its head out from behind a tree, but before he could be sure of his aim, the creature ducked back. It peered out twice more, and by then, Cald had recognized the pattern of its movement. The fifth time it stuck its head out, Cald’s arrow caught the humanoid in the eye.
Eyrmin struck down two, but part of his attention was on the wood around them and farther to the south. He lowered his bow, giving a whistling call for retreat.
“They’re flanking us,” he told Cald, who lacked the sharp hearing of the elves.
By Eyrmin’s orders, they moved back, spreading out through the wood on both sides of the stream. Every arrow brought down a goblin, gnoll, or human, but even if every shaft found a target, scores of invaders would remain in the woods after the defenders’ quivers were empty.
The elves harried the front ranks, slipping from tree to tree, planting their arrows deep in the thick bodies of the goblins, who were in the vanguard. Every time they killed one, two others took its place.
Eyrmin whistled to Cald, ordering him to drop out of the line and move north to discover how far the advancing forces were spread. Cald reluctantly obeyed, knowing the elven prince was trying to keep him out of danger. Still, they did need to know, so he backed away from the retreating line and hurried off. He had traveled only a few steps when he was joined by Bersmog. Over the goblin’s shoulder was draped a ragged fur, badly tanned and smelly. The fresh blood that stained one side indicated its wearer no longer needed it.