The combination of gravity, a lack of knowledge about their foes, and the palpable fear of the retreating troops gave pause to the fresh warriors. Many of the reinforcements stepped off the road to allow the running men to pass, while others actually turned and joined the flight. It amused Ashtaway to observe the contagious nature of this panic. Soon hundreds, then thousands, of men ran from a fight that they had yet to see! Of course, Ash thought with a tight grin, when these veterans later gathered around a bivouac's campfires, their roles in this furious battle would undoubtedly be embellished.
Much of the plateau was obscured by smoke now, as more and more fires erupted from the Dark Queen's arsenals and strongholds. Knights rode back and forth, many bearing torches, chasing the fleeing animals, trying to infuse even greater panic to the stampede. Sir Kamford, Sir Blayne, and the other leaders shouted and waved their arms, seeking to collect their men into companies, reforming the ranks to pursue the attack.
Once again Ash felt the tickling sense of alarm that had disturbed him earlier in the morning-hairs prickling upward at the nape of his neck. He looked to the west, suddenly fearful, and observed a serpentine shape, ghostly white, gliding below the clouds. Other mighty, winged creatures soared just beyond-another that was white, and several of rich blue. Broad wings stroked the air, and the deadly forms gained speed as they plunged downward from the overhanging pall of clouds.
With a pang of dread, Ashtaway knew what he was seeing: the dragons of evil had taken wing and were but moments from the fight.
Chapter 19
Into Darkness
Ashtaway acted with the speed of thought, throwing back his head and drawing a deep breath. His lips stretched taut across his mouth as, cupping his hands, he released a piercing shriek. The urgent cry of the eagle keened across the valley, ringing even over the sounds of battle. Several of the knights raised their heads, looking about for the source of the sound. Instead, they saw serpentine death, plunging from the heavy layer of cloud. A white dragon in the lead shrieked in fury, and behind it other white and blue shapes thundered downward from the glowering clouds, horrific merchants of violence and death. Again Ash sent out the cry, drawing his axe and waving it above his head. Would they see him? One of the knights looked in his direction and shouted something, spurring his horse toward the wild elf. Several others wheeled to follow, and he knew that the humans had at least seen the hope he offered. Whether they could reach it in time was another question.
Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw that the iron doors to the tunnel remained open. He expected that the gully dwarves would have vanished deep into the passageway and was startled to see the group of them clustered at his feet. The little wretches had crept forward soundlessly and now eagerly observed the battle from behind the shelter of the elf's legs.
Quickly Ash sought out Toofer, fastening his gaze on the Highbulp's grimy face. "Go back. Get ready to close the doors when I tell you to! Will you do that?"
"You betcha!" Toofer's head nodded eagerly, though he made no move to return to the tunnel.
Desperately Ash looked back to the battle, where most of the knights had remounted their chargers. In small groups they galloped toward the mountain, where the Kagonesti again waved his axe.
Looking skyward, the warrior saw three white dragons, diving in the lead, and at least a pair of blues coming close behind. The knights separated, scattering not from panic, Ashtaway sensed, but training. This way they presented the fewest targets to the horrific, death-dealing breath weapons of the vengeful serpents.
"Go inside! Now!" Ash repeated, his voice a desperate growl as he saw Toofer and the other gully dwarves still watching the battle.
The Highbulp scowled suspiciously. "You want us to miss best part of fight?" he demanded.
"I want you to stay alive!" Ashtaway snarled, furious. "And just maybe, to save some of my friends! Now, go1." He punctuated the command with a menacing wave of his axe, and that was enough to send the dwarves tumbling like ninepins back toward the tunnel mouth. They took up positions at the great closing-wheels, but fortunately did not yet draw them shut.
"Wait till I tell you to close the doors!" the elf shouted, before turning back to the deadly fight.
The leading white dragon belched a cloud of frigid, killing frost. The white blast exploded downward and out, expanding across the ground, sweeping several riders and their plunging horses into the deadly effect-not to mention a few craven ogres who crouched nearby, apparently having realized they could never outrun the horses.
Dissipating almost as quickly as it had formed, the frost revealed the motionless figures of horses, knights, and ogres in its wake. The victims had not been frozen in the postures of the battle. Instead, the force of the frosty blast had sent the knights tumbling from the horses, smashing the unfortunate steeds to the ground with fatal, crushing power. The dead lay still, rigid, in postures suggesting the extreme agony and horror of their last moments.
More of the riders began to retreat, dodging through the dense clouds of smoke spewing from the coal piles. The white dragons soared after them, breathing their deadly frost, but nowhere could they catch more than two or three victims in any single explosive burst.
Breaking out of the enclosed buildings, the riders lay low across their saddles, lashing every bit of speed from the plunging mounts. The horses needed no encouragement; nostrils snorting, eyes wide with panic, the animals galloped in a desperate lather, keenly aware of the doom that soared just behind their tails.
One of the blue dragons swooped in from the flank, gliding low across the path of the knights. The monster's jaws gaped, and Ash blinked against the bright flash of lightning that burst forth-a killing bolt that seared two riders, instantly killing men and horses. The dragon slashed with its front foot, striking another armored rider from his horse as the azure wyrm swept upward for another pass. The man writhed in the serpent's crushing grip until, a hundred feet in the air, the dragon released its helpless victim. Ashtaway clenched his fists in barely contained fury as he watched the man plunge to his death.
Now the first of the riders neared the tunnel's mouth, and the Kagonesti Pathfinder gestured with his steel- headed axe. "In here! Keep going-get out of sight!"
A white dragon soared low, the cloud of his deadly breath trapping a number of riders as they crowded toward the tunnel entrance. Ashtaway tried to ignore the cries of agonized men as the killing frost embraced them, turning his eyes instead to the dozens of knights still struggling to reach shelter. Lightning crackled through the air, and more clouds of frost swept the ground, but now a steady file of horsemen galloped through the widespread iron gates, disappearing into the shadows below the mountains.
Ash recognized Sir Kamford, with Sir Blayne galloping at his side. A monstrous blue swept toward the two knights and in an eye blink the Kagonesti raised his bow and let a steel-tipped shaft fly. The arrow struck the dragon in its face, and with a roar of irritation the creature jerked its head to the side, spitting a hasty lightning bolt into the rocks before the elven archer.
Tumbling backward, Ashtaway smelled the acrid scent of the lightning strike, but realized that he was still alive. The flying dragons had all swept past, and though they quickly swerved around for another pass, most of the riders had gained the shelter of the tunnel.
Staggering to his feet, the wild elf looked back across the field. Kamford and Blayne waited beyond the gate, holding their wild-eyed, snorting horses in place with firm tugs at the reins. Apparently unconcerned with their own safety, they waited to watch the last of their men flee toward shelter.
"Start closing the gates!" cried Ashtaway, fixing his eyes on Highbulp Toofer's awestruck face. Blinking, the dwarf squinted in concentration, then shouted something to his fellows. Grunting from the effort, but working with surprising unity, the little fellows began to turn the great wheels. Ash saw the doors swivel inward, though he was dismayed by the slow progress of their movement. The gap remained plenty wide enough to
allow a dragon, on foot, to press inward after the retreating Knights of Solamnia.
A trio of knights, fleeing from the far end of the camp, seemed like the last of the riders. Ash looked at the doors, which still closed with painful slowness, then back to the three knights. Lying low across their horses' necks, the men kept their eyes fastened on the refuge, refusing to look at the death wheeling through the skies, diving toward their tails. Kamford and Blayne reined in their horses just outside the gate, staring in desperate hope at the last of their fleeing companions.
Ashtaway heard Sir Kamford's groan of dismay as two dragons, a white and a blue, dove toward the three knights. Lightning crackled, the bolt of energy vanishing into a sudden cloud of frost with an intense hiss. The stench of burned flesh rose even above the stink of the lightning, and the cloud dissipated to reveal the garishly frozen, incongruously blackened corpses of the three men and their horses.
The blue dragon swooped toward the tunnel mouth as the white tried to pull up and away, but the frost dragon moved too slowly. The trailing coil of its tail struck the blue's wing, sending the creature careening off to the side. The two serpents crashed into the ground with a shudder that Ashtaway felt through his moccasins.
Still another dragon, a white, dove toward the iron doors that gradually inched shut as the last of the fleeing riders disappeared inside. Sir Kamford and Sir Blayne were the only two knights still exposed to danger.
"Go!" cried Blayne, suddenly leaping down from his saddle. The knight drew his monstrous sword and slapped the flat of the blade against the flank of Sir Kamford's horse, sending the animal galloping inward, carrying its cursing rider into the darkness of the tunnel.
Ashtaway leapt to the doors, seeing that they were about halfway closed-still not enough of a barrier to halt a plunging dragon.
"Go, elf!" cried Sir Blayne, stepping away from the doors to face the diving dragon with his upraised blade.
Words caught in the Kagonesti's throat as Ash tried to urge the knight inward. He understood the man's sacrifice, knew that it was necessary, but in that instant wanted desperately to change his mind. Blayne had been an arrogant boor, he remembered with a pang of guilt, but there would be no faulting the man's courage.
Ash dove through the narrowing portal, hearing Sir Blayne's voice rise in a roaring challenge. "For the Oath and the Measure!" he cried, stepping forward and chopping savagely at the white's looming snout.
The serpent reared back, avoiding the blow, and the elf waited for the killing blast of frost, hoping that the deadly chill did not penetrate too deeply into the shelter of the tunnel. Curiously, the beast did not belch its murderous breath. Perhaps the monster had expended all its frigid exhalations against the fleeing knights outside.
In any event, the creature closed on Sir Blayne with wicked talons and crushing jaws. The knight's blade flashed again, and then, finally, the closing of the tunnel doors blocked the scene from view.
Gully dwarves clustered around Ashtaway, clinging to his leggings, grasping for his hands. The little creatures stared upward, horrified, at the snorting horses and grunting, cursing knights, who tried to dismount in the utter darkness of the tunnel.
"Why you bring them here?" Toofer asked in a hoarse whisper-a voice loud enough to resonate through the enclosed tunnel.
"These are my friends-and yours. You helped save them," the wild elf explained.
"But horses, too?"
Ashtaway wasn't listening. He saw Sir Kamford, numb with shock, staring at the huge doors, where the faintest trickle of light spilled through the crack in the center. Somewhere behind the elf another knight groaned as two comrades worked to set his broken arm.
The Pathfinder stepped to Kamford's side and, hesitantly, laid a hand on the man's shoulder. The knight sighed, shook his head in resignation, and turned away from the heavy iron doors.
"Our fight will make the lords proud," declared Sir Kamford wearily.
"And you? Should it not make you proud as well?" asked the wild elf.
"Aye, my friend, but with the pride comes a weighty measure of grief."
"Was this a victory against the Dark Queen?" Ashtaway asked, remembering the great fires, the scattered livestock-and the fallen knights.
"A bloody fight, but a victory indeed," Kamford agreed. He blinked, trying to see into the depths of the stygian tunnel. "At least, a victory if we can get out of here. Do you know? Are we in a trap or an escape tunnel?"
"Come over here. There's someone you have to meet. I think he can show us the way."
Chapter 20
A Parting of friends
"Go out here," Toofer said, pointing to a pair of large iron doors blocking the end of the roughly carved tunnel. The gully dwarf halted in his tracks, arms crossed firmly across his chest, as if he couldn't wait for the elf and his human companions to be gone.
Ashtaway stepped forward, Sir Kamford at his side. The knight held aloft the last of the sputtering torches that had illuminated their world during the long, often confusing march through the tunnels under the great mountain.
The portals before them resembled strongly the doors Ashtaway had discovered in the valley above Sanction- though the elf sensed that their long subterranean march had carried them well south of that dark and smoldering city. They had been underground for approximately three days, Ash guessed, though they had seen no glimpse of the sky in that time and thus had no real grasp of the duration of their sunless trek. The wild elf also deduced, based on long stretches of gradual downhill slope, that the war party had descended a considerable distance from the entrance on the mountainside.
"Go on. Git," urged the Highbulp, all but pushing the knight toward the door.
"What's outside?" Ash asked suspiciously.
"Usual stuff. Air, mountains, sky. Ground where horses can poop and not stink up tunnel."
The latter concern, the elf thought with a smile, was strongly on Toofer's mind. Though the gully dwarves had displayed a remarkable lack of fastidiousness in all aspects of their lives, the presence of the knights' mighty steeds in these enclosed tunnels had apparently proved too much for even their less-than-delicate sensibilities.
Sir Kamford called several of his men forward to work the door-opening mechanisms-capstans, he called them. The first glimmerings of daylight soon crept through the opening portals, causing the men to blink and shield their eyes until they could adjust, once again, to bright illumination.
"Your help has been very valuable," Ashtaway said to the gully dwarf Highbulp, who had begun to tap his foot in agitation.
"Never mind about that. But t'anks for killin' ol' No- Teeth. We never liked him so much."
"You're… welcome, I think," Ash said with a grin. "But to be on the safe side, I wouldn't go right back to Sanction if I were you. No-Teeth might have had some friends, and I bet they're not too happy right now."
"No friends. But still, we go to different tunnel for a while. Was getting boring, just 'open door,' 'close door' alia time. Toofer real Highbulp, gonna get me a tribe. Maybe even make a army, like you got. No horses, though."
The gully dwarf wrinkled his face and held his nose as one of the great warhorses made another contribution to the floor of the tunnel. "Canya open that door faster?" he asked.
The knights ignored him, and in truth the iron portals swung open fairly quickly. No doubt, Sir Kamford's men were as eager to get outside as the gully dwarves were to see them go. Against the brightness of a cloudless day they saw tall, leafy trees, the edge of a forest beginning a few paces beyond the tunnel doors.
"You've been a true ally," Ashtaway solemnly told Highbulp Toofer. "Among my people, we have a term of honor. We bestow it on some of our great warriors, and those leaders who have an impact on our history. We call such a hero 'Pathfinder.'"
The Kagonesti took a tiny feather from his belt pouch, a tuft of ruby-bright crimson fading into an iridescent green. He placed it behind Toofer's ear, entangling it in the loose curls of oily hair.
> "Highbulp Toofer of the Smoking Mountain, I name you'Pathfinder.'"
The gully dwarf blinked in surprise. His chest puffed outward as he stood up to his full three-foot height, beaming.
"No worries about ogres chasin' you," he said. "Highbulp Pathfinder gets 'em going on the wrong way!"
"Thanks, my friend." Ashtaway was touched by the little fellow's heart.
"And our thanks, too." Sir Kamford joined them as the knights, leading their horses, began to file out of the doorway. No more than sixty of the original hundred had survived, but they knew that-without the discovery of the tunnel-all the knights would have perished beneath frost and lightning or fang and talon. "Sorry about the mess. I suggest you leave it for the ogres to clean up," he suggested with a chuckle.
Toofer brightened still further. "That's a good idea," he agreed before turning to the dozen members of his clan who had watched, awestruck, the bestowing of the colored feather.
"C'mon, you louts!" he shouted, pulling a forked stick out of his voluminous pouch. A string of rubbery, flexible sinew linked the two split ends "We got new game wit' ogres. Everybody got a flinger?"
The Highbulp commenced describing what promised to be a very elaborate tactical plan as Ashtaway and Sir Kamford finally passed through the doors. Breathing deeply of the fresh air, the elf looked up and saw close- pressing ridges, thickly covered with broad-leaved trees. A waterfall streamed, a plume of white mist, into the head of the valley, and nearby they could hear the splashing of a shallow but fast-flowing brook. The smells were summery and the air thick enough to confirm that they had indeed descended far from the mountainous heights.
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