by Terry Brooks
Jerle Shannara sat atop his charger, a white-faced bay called Risk, and watched in silence as the enemy advanced. He did not like the effect that it was having on his men. The sheer number of the enemy was disheartening, and the sound of its coming was immense and heart-stopping. The king could feel the fear it generated in his soldiers. His impatience with what was happening began to grate on him. It began to work against his own resolve.
Finally, he could abide it no longer. Impulsively he spurred forward to the head of his army, leaving Preia, Bremen, and his personal guard staring after him in shock. Charging to the fore, exposed to all, he reined in and began to walk Risk up and down the front ranks, speaking boldly to the Elven Hunters who stood there looking up at him in delighted surprise.
“Steady now,” he called out calmly, smiling, nodding in greeting, meeting every pair of eyes. “Size alone won’t make the difference. This is our ground, our home, our birthright, our nation. We cannot be driven from it by an invader who lacks heart. We cannot be defeated while we believe in ourselves. Stay strong. Remember what we have planned for them. Remember what we must do. They will break first, I promise you. Keep steady. Keep your wits.”
So he went, up and down the lines, pausing now and again to ask a man he recognized some small question, demonstrating to them the confidence he felt, reminding them of the courage he knew they possessed. He did not bother to glance at the juggernaut that approached. He pointedly ignored it. They are nothing to us, he was saying. They are already beaten.
When the behemoth was two hundred yards away, the thunder of its approach so pervasive that there was room for no other sound, he raised his arm in salute to his Elven Hunters, wheeled Risk into their front ranks, and took his place among them. Dust gusted across the plains, shrouding the marching army and the roiling machines. Drums hammered out the cadence. The siege weapons lurched closer, hauled forward by massive ropes and trains of pack animals. Swords and pikes glittered in the dusky light.
Then, when the advancing army was a hundred and fifty yards away, Jerle Shannara signaled for the plains to be fired.
Forward raced a long line of archers, dropping to one knee to light their arrows. Six-foot-long bows were lifted and tilted skyward, and bowstrings were drawn taut and released. The arrows flew into the midst of the Northland army, landing in grasses that the Elves had soaked with oil under cover of darkness the night before, when they knew the attack was at hand. Flames sprang to life all about, rising into the dust-clogged air, blazing skyward amid the close-set enemy ranks. Down the long lines the fire raced, and the Northland march slowed and broke apart as the screams of frightened men and animals rose into the morning air.
But the army did not retreat or try to flee. Instead it charged, its forward ranks breaking free of the deadly flames. Gnome archers loosed their arrows in wild bursts, but they lacked Elven longbows and the arrows fell short. The soldiers with their hand weapons came on, howling in rage, anxious to close with the enemy that had surprised them. Fully a thousand in number, most of them Gnomes and lesser Trolls, ill-disciplined and impulsive, they surged forward into the trap that waited.
Jerle Shannara held his soldiers in place, the bowmen drawn back again into the ranks of Elven Hunters. When the enemy was close enough to smell, he brought up his sword in signal to the haulers set in lines amid the swordsmen. Back they pulled on the heavy, greased ropes concealed in the grasses, and dozens of barricades buttressed with sharpened stakes lifted to meet the rush. The attackers were too close to slow, pressed on by those who pushed from behind, and were driven onto the deadly spikes. Some tried to cut at the ropes, but the blades slid harmlessly along the greased cords. The cries of attack changed to screams of pain and horror, and Northlanders died in agony as they fell on the barricades or were trampled underfoot.
Now the Elven bowmen loosed their arrows a second time in long, steady waves. The Northlanders, slowed by the barricades blocking their path of attack, were easy targets. Unable to protect themselves, with nowhere to hide, they were felled by the dozens. The flames of the grass fires closing in from behind gave them no chance to retreat The rest of the Northland army had split apart in an effort to skirt the center of the inferno and lend support to those trapped in front. But the positioning of the siege machines and the trains of animals hauling them forward hampered their progress, and now Elven cavalry rode at them from both sides, sweeping across their flanks with javelins and short swords. One of the towers caught fire, and in an effort to douse the flames, the occupants frantically splashed down buckets of water drawn from containers stored within the wooden shell. Catapults loosed their deadly hail of stones and jagged metal, but their aim was obscured by the smoke and dust
Then Jerle Shannara had the ropes to the spiked barricades released, and the barricades dropped away. The Elves marched forward, lancers and swordsmen set in staggered lines, their ranks tight, the shield of the man on the right protecting the man on the left. Straight into the ravaged Northland front they marched, a steady, relentless advance. Dismayed at their predicament, the Northlanders who were trapped between the Elves and the fire threw down their weapons and tried to flee. But there was no escape. They were hemmed in on all sides now, and with no place to go they were quickly cut to pieces.
But the grass fires began to die, and a company of the Rock Trolls that formed the core of the Northland army’s strength marched into view, their great pikes lowered. They held their ranks and maintained their pace without slowing as they trampled over their own dead and dying, making no distinction between friend and enemy. Anything caught in their path was killed. Jerle Shannara saw them coming and gave the order to retreat. He pulled back his front lines to their original position and set them in place again. On his right, Cormorant Etrurian commanded. On his left, Rustin Apt. Arn Bandit set the bowmen amid both companies, staggering their lines, and had them loose their arrows at the advancing Trolls. But the Trolls were too well armored for the arrows to do much damage, and the king signaled the archers to fall back.
Out of the fire and smoke the Rock Trolls marched, the finest fighters in the Four Lands, massive of shoulder and thigh, heavily muscled, armored and steady. Jerle Shannara signaled anew, and up came a new set of spikes to block their path. But the Rock Trolls were more disciplined and less easily confused than the Gnomes and lesser Trolls, and they set themselves in place to push back the spiked barricades. Behind them swarmed the balance of the Northland army, appearing out of the haze in seemingly endless numbers, hauling with them their siege towers and catapults. Cavalry rode their flanks, engaging Kier Joplin’s command, keeping it at bay.
Jerle Shannara withdrew his army another hundred yards, well into the broad eastern mouth of the Rhenn. Line by line, the Elves fell back, a disciplined, orderly retreat, but a retreat nevertheless. Some among the Northland army cheered, believing the Elves had panicked. Surely the Elves would break and flee, they thought. None among them noticed the lines of small flags through which the Elves carefully withdrew and which they surreptitiously removed in their passing. Advancing implacably, relentlessly into the valley, the Rock Trolls were oblivious of the ordered form of the Elven retreat. Behind them smoke and fire gusted and died as the wind faded with the approach of midmorning. Kier Joplin’s command rode back into the valley ahead of the Northland assault, anxious to avoid being cutoff. They galloped past the foot soldiers and wheeled about on their flanks, forming up anew. The entire Westland army was in place now, stretched across the mouth of the valley, waiting. There was no sign of panic and no hint of uncertainty. They had set a second trap, and the unsuspecting enemy was marching directly into it
So it was that when the front ranks of the Rock Trolls reached the entrance to the valley, the ground beneath their feet began to give way. The heavily armored Trolls tumbled helplessly into pits the Elves had dug and concealed several days earlier and themselves carefully avoided during their retreat. The ranks parted and moved ahead, avoiding the exposed drops, but the
re were pits staggered over a span of fifty yards at irregular intervals, and the ground continued to collapse no matter which way the Trolls turned. Confusion slowed their advance, and the attack began to falter.
Immediately, the Elves counterattacked. The king signaled the men concealed on the cliffs to either side, the casks of the flammable oil were rolled down hidden ramps onto the grasslands to smash apart on exposed rocks and spill into the pits. Once more fire arrows arced skyward and fell into the spreading oil, and the entire eastern end of the valley was abruptly engulfed in flames. The Rock Trolls in the pits were burned alive. The balance of the assault came on, but the solidarity of the Troll ranks was shattered. Worse, the Trolls were being overrun by the unwitting Northlanders who had followed in their wake. Confusion began to overtake the army. The fire chased them, the arrows from the Elven longbows fell among them, and now the Elven army was marching into their midst, bearing massive, spiked rams before them. The rams tore into their already decimated ranks and scattered the Trolls further. On came the Elven Hunters, who fell upon the rest with their swords. Those trapped between the Elves and the fire stood their ground and fought bravely, but died anyway.
In desperation the remaining Northlanders charged the cliffs to either side of the pass, trying to gain a foothold there. But the Elves were waiting once more. Boulders tumbled from the heights and crushed the climbers. Arrows decimated their ranks. From their superior defensive positions, the Elves repelled the assault almost effortlessly. Below, in the inferno of the pass, the front quarter of the Northland army milled about helplessly. The attack stalled and then fell apart. Choking on dust and smoke, burned by the grass fires, and bloodied by the weapons of the Elves, the army of the Warlock Lord began to withdraw once more onto the Streleheim.
Impulsively Jerle Shannara unsheathed the sword entrusted to him by Bremen, the sword whose magic he could not command or even yet believe in, and he thrust it aloft. All about him the Elves lifted their own weapons in response and cheered.
Almost instantly the king recognized the irony of his gesture. Quickly he lowered the sword once more, a fool’s stick in his hands, a simpleton’s charm. As he wheeled Risk about angrily, his euphoria drained from him and was replaced by shame.
“It is the Sword of Shannara now, Elven King,” Bremen had told him when he had revealed to the old man after the midnight raid how the talisman’s magic had failed him. “It is no longer a sword of the Druids’ or of mine.”
The words recalled themselves now as he rode back and forth across his lines, resetting them in preparation for the next attack, the one he knew would probably come just before sunset. The Sword was back in its sheath, strapped to his waist, an uncertain, enigmatic presence. For while Bremen had been quick enough to name the Sword, he had been slow to provide reassurance that its magic could be mastered, and even now, even with all he knew, Jerle Shannara still did not feel as if it was truly his.
“It is possible for you to command the magic, Elven King,” the old man had whispered to him that night “But the strength to do so is born out of belief, and the belief necessarily must come from within you.”
They had huddled together in the dark those ten days earlier, dawn still an hour or more away, their faces smeared with soot and dirt and streaked with sweat. Jerle Shannara had come close to dying that night. The Warlock Lord’s netherworld monster had almost killed him, and even though Bremen had arrived in time to save him, the memory of how near death had come was yet vivid and raw. Preia was somewhere close, but Jerle had chosen to talk with the Druid alone, to confess his failure in private to exorcise the demons that raged within. He could not live with what had befallen him if he did not think he could prevent it from happening again. Too much depended on the Sword’s use. What had he done wrong in calling on the power of the talisman that night? How could he make certain it did not happen again?
Alone in the darkness, huddled so that the pounding of their hearts and the heated rush of their breathing was all they could hear, they had confronted the question.
“This sword is a talisman meant for a single purpose, Jerle Shannara!” the old man had snapped almost angrily, his voice rough and impatient. “It has a single use and no other! You cannot call on the magic to defend you against all creatures that threaten! The blade may save your life, but the magic will not!”
The king stiffened at the rebuke. “But you said . . .”
“Do not tell me what I said!” Bremen’s words were sharp and stinging as they cut apart his objection and silenced him. “You were not listening to what I said, Elven King! You heard what you wanted to hear and no more! Do not deny it! I saw; I watched! This time, pay me better heed! Are you doing so?”
Jerle Shannara managed a furious, tight-lipped nod, his tongue held in check only by the knowledge that if he failed to do as he was bidden, he was lost
“Against the Warlock Lord, the magic will respond when you call on it! But only against the Warlock Lord, and only if you believe strongly enough!” The gray head shook reprovingly. “Truth comes from belief—remember that. Truth comes with recognition that it is universal and all-encompassing and plays no favorites, if you cannot accept it into your own life, you cannot force it into the lives of others. You must embrace it first, before you can employ it! You must make it your armor!”
“But it should have served so against that creature!” the king insisted, unwilling to admit that his judgment had been wrong. “Why did it not respond?”
“Because there is no deception about such a monster!” the Druid replied, his jaw clenched. “It does not do battle with lies and half truths. It does not armor itself in falsehoods. It does not deceive itself into thinking it is something it is not! That—that, Elven King, is the sole province of the Warlock Lord! And that is why the magic of the Sword of Shannara can be used only against him!”
So they had debated, the argument raging back and forth, on until dawn, when they had rested at last. Afterward, the king had been left to think on what he had been told, to try to reconcile the words with his expectations. Gradually he had come to accept that what Bremen believed must be true. The magic of the Sword was limited to a single use, and though he might wish it otherwise, there was no help for it. The magic of the Sword was meant for Brona alone and no other. He must embrace this knowledge, and somehow he must find a way to make the magic, however foreign and confusing, his own.
He had gone to Preia finally, having known all along that he would do so eventually, just as he did with all things that troubled him. His counselors were there to advise him at every turn, and some—especially Vree Erreden—were worth listening to. But no one knew him as Preia did, and in truth none among them was apt to be as honest. So he had made himself confide the truth in her, though it was difficult to admit that he had failed and was fearful he might fail again.
It was later that same day, his conversation with Bremen still fresh in his mind, his memories of the previous night still vivid. The Valley of Rhenn was hushed beneath a clouded sky, and the Elves were watchful, wary of a Northland response to the previous night’s attack. The afternoon was gray and slow, the summer heat settled deep within the parched earth of the Streleheim, the air thick with dampness from an approaching rain.
“You will find a way to master this magic,” she said at once when he had finished speaking. Her voice was firm and insistent, and her gaze was steady. “I believe that, Jerle. I know you. You have never given up on a challenge, and you will not give up on this one.”
“Sometimes,” he replied quietly, “I think it would be better if Tay were here in my place. He might make a better king. Certainly, he would be better suited to wield this sword and its magic.”
But she shook her head at once. “Do not ever say that again. Not ever.” Her clear, ginger eyes were bright and sharp. “You were meant to live and be King of the Elves. Fate decreed that long ago. Tay was a good friend and meant much to both of us, but he was not destined for this. Listen to me, Jerle
. The Sword’s magic will work for you. Truth is no stranger. We have begun our lives as husband and wife by revealing truths that we would not have admitted a month before. We have opened ourselves to each other. It was difficult and painful, but now you know it can be done. You know this. You do.”
“Yes,” he admitted softly. “But the magic still seems . . .” He faltered.
“Unfamiliar,” she finished for him. “But it can be made your own. You have accepted that magic is a part of your Elven history. Tay’s magic was real. You have discovered for yourself that it could perform miracles. You watched him give his life in its service. All things are possible with magic. And truth is one of them, Jerle. It is a weapon of great power. It can strengthen and it can destroy. Bremen is no fool. If he says that truth is the weapon you require, then it must be so.”
But still it nagged at him, whispered of his doubts, and caused him to waver. Truth seemed so small a weapon. What truth could be powerful enough to destroy a being that could summon monsters from the netherworld? What truth was sufficient to counter magic powerful enough to keep a creature alive for hundreds of years? It seemed ludicrous to think that truth alone was sufficient for anything. Fire was needed. Iron, sharp-edged and poison-tipped. Strength that could split rocks asunder. Nothing less would do, he kept thinking—even as he sought to embrace the magic Bremen offered. Nothing less.
Now, riding the battlefield with the Sword of Shannara strapped to his side, his Elven Hunters buoyed by the euphoria of their victory, he wondered anew at the enormity of the responsibility he had been given to fulfill. Sooner or later he would have to face the Warlock Lord. But that would not happen until he forced a confrontation, and that in turn would not happen until the Northland army itself was threatened. How could he hope to bring such a thing about? For while the Elves had held against one assault, there was nothing to say that they would be able to hold against another, and another, and another after that—the Northland army coming on relentlessly. And if they did somehow manage to hold, how could he turn the tide of battle so that the Elves could take the offensive? There were so many of the enemy, he kept thinking. So many lives to expend and no thought being given to the waste of it. It was not so for him—and not so for the Elves who fought for him. This was a war of attrition, and that was exactly the kind of war he could not hope to win.
