The dwarfs came on, closing to five hundred yards of the walls. At such a distance Thoriol could clearly see the details on their armour — the sigils, the battle-runes, the daubs and spots of blood. Every tattooed and bearded face was twisted into hatred, warped by a single-minded desire to break the walls, to drag them down, to drown the city in blood.
So many.
Then, with no obvious order given, the host stopped. Every dwarf halted his march and stood perfectly still. The war-drums ceased. The horns stopped. For an awful moment, the entire plain sank into a fragile silence.
It seemed to go on forever. As if in some bizarre dream, the two armies faced one another across the empty land, uttering no words and issuing no challenge.
Then, as suddenly as the dwarfs had stopped, each raised his weapon above his head. Tens of thousands of mauls, axes, short-swords, flails, warhammers and crossbows pointed directly at the walls, each one aimed in ritual denunciation.
Khazuk! came the cry — an immense, rolling, booming challenge. Every wrong, every grievance, was distilled into that one word and hurled up at the white walls of the city like a curse.
Khazuk!
The din of it was incredible, a roar that seemed to fill the heavens and the earth. Thoriol had to work hard not to fall back from the parapet edge, to creep into the cool shade of the stone and escape the horror of it.
Khazuk!
The third shout was the greatest, a mighty bellow that felt as if it would shatter crystal and dent stone. In its wake the war-horns started up again, underpinned by the frenzied beating of drums. The host began to move once more, but this time the shouts of challenge did not stop. Tor Alessi was besieged by it, surrounded by the maelstrom.
‘Hold fast,’ warned Baelian. His voice was as steady as the granite around them. Thoriol wondered if anything scared him.
Four hundred yards. Trumpets sounded on the elven battlements, almost drowned by the surge of noise out on the plain.
‘Prepare,’ ordered Baelian, just as hundreds of other company captains did the same. Tens of thousands of archers stooped for their first arrow, fixing it against the string and preparing for the draw.
Three hundred yards; just on the edge of their range. Thoriol held his stance, feeling like his muscles were about to seize up. He felt nauseous, and swallowed hard.
A second trumpet-blast rang out.
‘Draw,’ ordered Baelian, notching his own arrow.
Thoriol heaved the string to his cheek. He held it tight, feeling the feathers of the arrow’s fletching against his forefinger.
Two hundred and fifty yards. Optimal range. The dwarfs must have known it, but they just kept on marching, still chanting, shouting, challenging and making no effort to evade the storm to come.
This was it. This was the culmination of everything he’d been working for, the final fruits of a foolish flight to Lothern away from the deadening hopes of his father.
Perhaps he might catch sight of me in all this, thought Thoriol dryly. Perhaps he might approve. Perhaps, for once, I might make him proud.
Then the final trumpet-blast, the signal to release. Up until now it had all been a mere shadow-play, a rehearsal, a toothless precursor.
‘Let fly!’ ordered Baelian.
As one they loosed their arrows, and the sky went dark.
Drutheira woke with a start. For a moment she had no idea where she was or what she was doing. Sevekai’s face had been in her dreams again, chiding her for leaving him. She hadn’t had visions of him for a long time, not since Bloodfang’s presence had been in her mind.
It unsettled her. Sevekai was gone, dead, his body rotting at the foot of a mountain gorge. He had no business still affecting her, skulking in her dreams like a spectre of Hag Graef.
It was dark — pitch dark. For a moment she feared she’d slept far into the night, but then, as her awareness returned, she remembered having to tie strips of her cloak around her eyes to blot out the sun. She ripped them off and the light came back as intensely as ever, burning like a brand thrust into her face.
Blinking heavily, she gradually remembered where she was: a shaded hollow under a tumbled cliff of red-brown stone, the best shade she’d been able to find. The cliff wound its way south-east, following the course of an old dried-up river. She’d followed it, unable to stomach the brackish seawater where she had waded ashore and unable to find more promising tributaries.
So far all she’d found was damp mud caking in the heat. The need for liquid was becoming pressing — despite the oppressive warmth she was no longer sweating, and her head felt thick and clogged.
It had been foolish to fall asleep. More than foolish — dangerous.
She looked around her, squinting against the hard light on the rocks. No sign of movement, pursuit or tracks.
Drutheira pushed herself to her feet, collecting her staff and leaning on it heavily. For the first time ever she regretted having spent so long cultivating the arts of Dhar at the expense of all else. It might have been nice to conjure up something to drink. She could have fooled herself easily enough with chimeras of wine or ice-cool water but the effects would not last. The only things her sorcery could genuinely construct out of nothing were destructive — the bolts of aethyr-lightning that tore through armour, the snarls of unnatural flame that crisped flesh and melted eyes.
It suddenly struck her as so pointless, so wasteful. Out here, in the parched hinterland, she was no better than any mortal.
Drutheira started to limp, keeping to the shade of the cliff to her left. Ahead of her the path wound along the foot of the cliff, choked with loose stone. To her right ran the base of the dry riverbed, the far shore of which rose up again a few hundred yards distant in another cliff face. Its twin rock-tumbled edges were far apart, enclosing a shallow dusty bowl between them, but they gradually drew closer together the further she went.
In time the riverbed narrowed to a gorge. The sun sailed westward, still horrendously hot. Drutheira’s mouth became too dry to open without pain. Her lips cracked and bled, and she breathed through her nostrils as sparingly as possible.
The passing hours gave her no fresh indication of where she was. She remembered vague rumours of a vast land to the south of Elthin Arvan. Malekith had been interested in it, saying that he sensed some strange and potent magic brewing there, but that had been decades ago and Drutheira suspected he didn’t truly understand what he was speaking of. As far as she was concerned the place she was in had no magic about it at all, let alone strange and potent magic. It was a forgotten land, a between-place wedged amid greater realms, no doubt destined to remain barren forever.
She caught sight of bushes clustered in the lee of the nearside gorge-wall. They were harsh, dense things — black-leaved, bristling, no more than five feet tall — but it was a hopeful sign. It might even mean water.
She picked up her pace, ignoring the protests from her strained leg-muscles and forcing herself to keep going. She had another day, perhaps two, before the thirst would get her, and she had absolutely no intention of meeting her end in such an undistinguished place.
It was then that she sensed it, hovering close, barely noticeable but wholly unmistakable.
Drutheira crouched low, hugging the rock wall once more and letting its shadow slip over her. She scanned the landscape around her, sniffing, her eyes wide and her senses working hard.