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but now welcomed new ally, fought with renewed strength.
The Plated Folk forces faltered, then redoubled their attack.
Weaver archers and retiarii wrought terrible destruction among
them, and the warmlander bowmen had easy targets helplessly
ensnared in sticky nets.
A new problem arose. There was a danger that the growing
mountain of corpses before the wall would soon be high
enough to eliminate the need for ladders.
All that night the battle continued by torchlight, with
fatigue-laden warmlanders and Weavers holding off the still
endless waves of Plated Folk. The insects fought until they
died and were walked on emotionlessly by their replacements.
It was after midnight when Caz woke Jen-Tom from an
uneasy sleep.
"Another cloud, my friend," said the rabbit. His clothing
was torn and one ear was bleeding despite a thick bandage.
Wearily Jon-Tom gathered up his staff and a handful of
small spears and trotted alongside Caz toward the wall. "So
they're going to try dropping troops behind us at night? I
wonder if our aerials have enough strength left to hold them
back."
"I don't know," said Caz with concern. "That's why I was
sent to get you. They want every strong spear thrower on the
wall to try and pick off any low fliers."
In truth, the ranks of kilted fighters were badly thinned,
while the strength of their dragonfly opponents seemed nearly
the same as before. Only the presence of the Weavers kept the
arboreal battle equal.
But it was not a swarm of lumbering Plated Folk that flew
out of the moon. It was a sea of sulfurous yellow eyes. They
fell on the insect fliers with terrible force. Great claws
shredded membranous wings, beaks nipped away antennae
and skulls, while tiny swords cut with incredible skill.
It took a moment for Jon-Tom and his friends to identify
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the new combatants, cloaked as they were by the concealing
night. It was the size of the great glowing eyes that soon gave
the answer.
"The Ironclouders," Caz finally announced. "Bless my
soul but I never thought to see the like. Look at them wheel
and bank, will you? It's no contest."
The word was passed up and down the ranks. So entranced
were the warmlanders by the sight of these fighting legends
that some of them temporarily forgot their own defensive
tasks and thus were wounded or killed.
The inhabitants of the hematite were better equipped for
night fighting than any of the warmlanders save the few bats.
The previously unrelenting aerial assault of the Plated Folk
was shattered. Fragmented insect bodies began to fall from
the sky. The only reaction this grisly rain produced among the
warmlanders beneath it was morbid laughter.
By morning the destruction was nearly complete. What
remained of the Plated Folk aerial strength had retreated far
up the Pass.
A general council was held atop the wall. For the first time
in days the warmlanders were filled with optimism. Even the
suspicious Clothahump was forced to admit that the tide of
battle seemed to have turned.
"Could we not use these newfound friends as did the
Plated Folk?" one of the officers suggested. "Could we not
employ them to drop our own troops to the rear of the enemy
forces?"
"Why stop there?" wondered one of the exhilarated bird
officers, a much-decorated hawk in light armor and violet and
red kilt. "Why not drop them in Cugluch itself? That would
panic them!"
"No," said Aveticus carefully. "Our people are not pre-
pared for such an adventure, and despite their size I do not
think our owlish allies have the ability to carry more than a
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single rider, even assuming they would consent to such a
\ proposition, which I do not think they would.
"But I do not think they would object to duplicating the
actions of the Plated Folk fliers in assailing opposing ground
forces. As our own can now do."
So the orders went out from the staff to their own fliers and
thence to those from Ironcloud. It was agreed. Wearing dark
goggles to shield their sensitive eyes from the sun, the owls
and lemurs led the rejuvenated warmlander arboreals in dive
after dive upon the massed, confused ranks of the Plated Folk
army. The result was utter disorientation among the insect
soldiers. But they still refused to collapse, though the losses
they suffered were beginning to affect even so immense an
army.
And when victory seemed all but won it was lost in a
single heartrending and completely unexpected noise. A sound
shocking and new to the warmlanders, who had never heard
anything quite like it before. It was equally shocking but not
new to Flor and Jon-Tom. Though not personally exposed to
it, they recognized quickly enough the devastating thunder of
dynamite.
As the dust began to settle among cries of pain and fear,
there came a second, deeper, more ominous rumble as the
entire left side of the Jo-Troom wall collapsed in a heap of
shattered masonry and stone. It brought the great wooden
gates down with it, supporting timbers splintering like fire-
crackers as they crashed to the ground.
"Diversion," muttered Flor. "The aerial attack, the para-
chutists, the beetles... all a diversion. Bastardos; I should
have remembered my military history classes."
Jon-Tom moved shakily to the edge of the wall. If they'd
been on the other side of the Gate they'd all be dead or
maimed now.
Small white shapes were beginning to emerge from the
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ground in front of the ruined wall. Waving picks and short
swords they cut at the legs of startled warmlander soldiers.
Like the inhabitants of Ironcloud they too wore dark goggles
to protect them from the sunlight.
"Termites," Jon-Tom murmured aloud, "and other insect
burrowers. But where did they get the explosives?"
"Little need to think on that, boy," Clothahump said sadly.
"More of Eejakrat's work. What did you call the packaged
thunder?"
"Explosives. Probably dynamite."
"Or even gelignite," added Flor with suppressed anger.
"That was an intense explosion."
Sensing victory, the Plated Folk ignored the depradations of
the swooping arboreals overhead and swarmed forward. Nor
could the hectic casting of spears and nets by the Weavers
hold them back. Not with the wall, the fabled ancient bottle-
neck, tumbled to the earth like so many child's blocks.
It must have taken an immense quantity of explosives to
undermine that massive wall. It was possible, Jon-Tom mused,
that the Plated burrowers had begun excavating their tunnel
weeks before the battle began.
Without the wall to hinder them they charged onward. By
sheer force of numbers they pushed back those who had
desperately rushed to defend the ruined barrier. Then they
were across, fighting on the other side of the Jo-Troom Gate
for the first time in recorded memory. Warmlander blood
stained its own land.
Jon-Tom turned helplessly to Clothahump. The Plated Folk
soldiers were ignoring the remaining section of wall and the
few arrows and spears that fell from its crest. The wizard
stood quietly, his gaze focused on the far end of the Pass and
not on the catastrophe below.
"Can't you do something," Jon-Tom pleaded with him.
"Bring fire and destruction down on them! Bring..."
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