The Elfstones of Shannara (31 page)

“Still alive? Why, that one will never die. You know what they call him? The Iron Man. Iron Man—that's him. That's the Commander.”

“He looks hard enough,” Ander agreed, his curiosity piqued.

The Captain motioned him closer, and for a moment each forgot whom he was addressing. “You know about Rybeck?” the Borderman asked.

Ander shook his head, and a glint of satisfaction leaped into the other's hard eyes. “You listen then. Ten years ago a band of Gnome raiders was burning and killing the people at the eastern edge of the borderlands. Vicious little rats, and a bunch of them at that. The Legion tried everything to trap them, but nothing worked. Finally the King sent the Free Corps after them—with orders to track them down and destroy them, even if it took the rest of the year. I remember that hunt; I was with the Corps even then.”

He squatted down next to a cooking fire, and Ander hunched down beside him. Others began drifting in to listen.

“Five weeks the hunt went on, and the Corps tracked those Gnomes all the way east into the Upper Anar. Then one day, when we were getting close, a patrol of our men, only twenty-three of them, stumbled into a rear guard of several hundred raiders. The patrol could have fallen back, but it didn't. These were Free Corps soldiers and they chose to fight. One man was sent back for reinforcements and the rest made their stand in this little village called Rybeck—just a bunch of nothing buildings. For three hours those twenty-two soldiers held out against the raiders—threw back every assault they mounted. A lieutenant, three junior officers, and eighteen soldiers. One of those junior officers was just a kid. Just seven months with the Corps—but already a corporal. No one knew much about him. Like most, he didn't say much about his past.”

The Captain leaned forward. “After the first two hours, that boy was the only officer still alive. He raffled the half-dozen soldiers left into a small stone cottage. Refused surrender, refused quarter. When the relief force broke through finally, there were dead Gnomes all over the place.” The man's hand tightened into a fist before Ander's face. “More than a hundred of them. All of our men were gone, all but two, and one of them died later that day. That left just one. The boy corporal.”

He paused and chuckled softly. “That boy was Stee Jans. That's why they call him the Iron Man. And Rybeck?” He shook his head solemnly. “Rybeck shows how a soldier of the Free Corps should fight and die.”

The soldiers gathered about him murmured their assent. Ander paused a moment, then rose. The Captain stood up with him, straightening himself as he seemed to remember again who it was that he was conversing with.

“Anyway, my Lord, the Commander's not here right now.” He paused. “Can I do something for you?”

Ander shook his head. “I came to ask if there was anything you need.”

“A bit to drink,” someone cried, but the Captain waved him off with a quick oath.

“We'll be fine, my Lord,” he responded. “We have what we need.”

Ander nodded slowly. Hard men, these Free Corps soldiers. They had made the long journey to Arborlon and then, with but a single night's rest, a forced march to the Sarandanon. He doubted that there really was much that they needed.

“Then I'll say good-night, Captain,” he said.

He turned and walked back toward the Elven camp, mulling over in his mind the tale of the Legion Commander they called the Iron Man.

 

XXIX

 

T
he following morning the army of the Elves and their Legion allies marched north out of the Sarandanon. With the dawn still a faint silver glow above the eastern forestline, the soldiers wound through Baen Draw and turned into the hills that lay beyond. Armor and harness jangled and creaked, boots and hooves thudded in rough cadence, and men and horses huffed clouds of white vapor in the frosty morning air. No one spoke or whistled or sang. A sense of anticipation and wariness pervaded the ranks. On this morning, Elven Hunter and Borderman knew they were marching into battle.

Up into the hills they circled, hills barren and rugged, their slopes sparse with short grass and scrub, rutted and eroded by wind and rain. Ahead, still far distant, the dark mass of the Breakline stood silhouetted against the dying night. Slowly, as the sun brightened the skyline, the mountains etched themselves out of the blackness, a maze of peaks and crags, drops and slides. The day began to warm. The morning hours slipped away and the army swung west, columns of riders and men afoot winding through gullies and over ridges, stretching out across the land. To the south, the waters of the Innisbore sparkled in flashes of blue, and above the choppy surface flew a sprinkling of white-backed gulls, their wings tipped with black, their cries shrill and haunting.

By noon, the army had reached the Breakline, and Eventine signaled a halt. The mountains loomed up against the horizon, a dark and massive wall of rock. Cliffs and spires rose thousands of feet into the sky, massed close as if some giant had gathered them within his hands and squeezed until the stone had broken and split from the pressure. Still and silent, barren and cold, they were filled with emptiness, darkness, and death.

Two passes split the Breakline, slender threads that tied the land of the Elves to the Hoare Flats. South lay Halys Cut. North lay Worl Run. If the Demons were to break through the Forbidding within the Flats as Allanon had foreseen, then, to reach the city of Arborlon, they would be forced to come east through one or both of these passes. It was there that the Elven army would try to stop them.

“We part company here,” Eventine announced when he had assembled his officers. Ander edged his mount closer to the small circle of men to hear clearly what was being said. “The army will divide. Half will march north with Prince Arion and Commander Pindanon to secure Worl Run. The other half will march south with me to Halys Cut. Commander Jans?” The bronzed face of the Free Corps Commander pushed into view. “I would like the Free Corps to march south. Pindanon, give the order.”

The ring of horsemen broke apart as the word was passed down the line. Ander glanced briefly at Arion, who met his gaze coldly and turned away.

“Ander, I want you to ride with me,” his father called over to him.

Kael Pindanon came galloping back to the King. All was in readiness. The two old comrades bade farewell to each other, hands clasping tightly. Ander looked one time more for his brother, but Arion was already moving to the head of his column.

Allanon appeared, dark face impassive. “His anger is misplaced,” the Druid said quietly, then nudged Artaq past.

Pindanon's voice rang out. Banners and lances lifted in salute as the army of the Elves split apart. Shouts and cheers broke the morning stillness, echoing through the crags and rifts of the mountain rock. For long moments the air was filled with sound, reckless and fierce. Then Pindanon's command swept north, winding into the hills in a broad cloud of dust until it was lost from view.

The soldiers of the King turned south. For several hours they worked their way along the fringe of the Breakline, following the steady rise and fall of the lowland hills. Overhead, the sun passed west across the ridge of the mountains, and shadows began to lengthen in dark swatches. The still, sultry air of midday cooled in a southerly breeze that swept out of the distant forests. Gradually the hills broadened into grasslands. At their edge, straddled by a series of narrow, ragged peaks, the dark mouth of Halys Cut opened into the rock.

Eventine brought his arm to a halt and held a brief conference with his officers. Below the eastern entrance to the pass lay several miles of open plains that ran south to the forestline. If the Demons were to find a way to cross the Breakline below Halys Cut, they could slip north through the forestland and trap the Elven army within the pass. A rear guard would be necessary to protect against that possibility. A cavalry unit could best handle the assignment; the cavalry would be of little use in any case within the narrow confines of the pass.

Ander saw his father's gaze fall briefly on Stee Jans, then move away. Elven cavalry units would form that guard, the King announced.

The order was given. The Elven cavalry detached itself from the main body of the army and began to deploy across the length of the grasslands. At a signal from Eventine, the remainder of the army turned into Halys Cut. Through the broad, shadowed gap the Elves marched, rugged cliffs towering up about them. The floor of the pass began to climb almost immediately, and the soldiers trudged upward into the rock. Quickly the air cooled, and the sound of shod hooves and booted feet striking against stone echoed eerily. As the trail continued to rise, the footing grew less sure. Loose rock littered the pathway, and cracks split its surface. Men and horses stumbled and slid with each step, and the pace slowed.

Then abruptly it stopped. Before them a huge chasm opened, a massive fissure that dropped away into black emptiness, splitting the length of the pass ahead for hundreds of yards. To the left, the trail sloped down along the mountainside, broad and even as it ran to a defile at the far end of the chasm. To the right, a narrow ledge skirted the fissure, a thin, crumbling pathway that would barely permit the passage of a single rider. All about, sheer cliff walls seemed to bend inward as they rose until all that remained of the sky was a thin, ragged blue line.

The army swung left along the broader path, staying well back of the black mouth of the chasm. When it had gained the defile, it found itself entering a canyon bright with afternoon sunlight and grown green with scrub and saw grass. Clusters of boulders dotted the canyon floor, and a thin stream trickled down out of the cliff walls and pooled in a small, brush-grown hollow. Jackrabbits bounded through the brush at the army's approach, and a scattering of birds drinking at the water's edge took sudden flight.

The Elves crossed to the far end of the canyon. There the pass opened down a broad, winding gorge into the vast emptiness of the Hoare Flats. Eventine's hand came up sharply, signaling a halt. His eyes swept the length of the gorge, past a maze of jumbled rock pockets and drops angling down through hulking cuffs and long, rugged slides. Wordlessly, he nodded. It was here that the army would make its stand.

 

Dusk crept into the Breakline, shadowed gray light chasing toward a sunset that lit the sky above the Hoare Flats in a blaze of scarlet and gold. Behind the wall of the mountains, the moon's silver disk rose above the forestland and one by one the stars winked into view. Within Halys Cut, the silence began to deepen.

Ander Elessedil stood alone on a small knoll midway down the gorge that ran to the Flats, arms cradling protectively the silver-white staff of the Ellcrys. Wordlessly he surveyed the lines of Elven Hunters and Free Corps soldiers, reconstructing in his mind for the twentieth time in the past half hour the strategy his father had devised for the defense of the pass. A broad rise straddled the pass several hundred yards from its mouth, a flat shelf of rock that overlooked a rugged slide strewn thick with loose stone and scrub. It was here that the army would make its initial stand. Archers would line the front of the rise, shooting into the Demons as they came out of the Flats through the mouth of Halys Cut to scramble up the slide. When the Demons were too close for the longbows to be effective, the archers would be replaced by a phalanx of lancers and pikemen who would bear the brunt of the assault. A second phalanx would be held in reserve to reinforce the first. The defenders would hold the rise for as long as they were able, then fall back several hundred yards to a similar position. If the gorge were lost, they would fall back to the mouth of the canyon. If that, too, were lost, the canyon itself would be defended—and so on, until the army was forced entirely from Halys Cut. It was a good plan. Ander was satisfied on thinking it through that the pass would not be easily taken. The defensive positions had been well chosen; when the attack came, it would find the Elves ready.

He lifted his gaze and stared out toward the Flats. Nothing moved. The land lay silent and empty. There was still no sign of the Demons.

Yet they would come. His hands moved slowly over the smooth wood of the Ellcrys staff, tracing the grain of the skin. His father had left the staff in his care momentarily while he had descended the slide to make his own inspection of the Elven defenses. Ander breathed the night air deeply. Would the staff truly protect the Elves? Would it lend its magic to those who were mortal men now, no longer the creatures of faerie that their forefathers had been? He looked down at it, gripping it tightly within his hands, and tried to find his own strength in its firmness. Allanon had said that the power of the Ellcrys over the Demons was carried within this staff and that it would weaken the evil and make it vulnerable to Elven weapons. Yet doubt clouded Ander's mind. The Demons were an incomprehensible evil, born of a world long since gone, a world that none but they had ever seen nor could begin to imagine.

He caught himself. None but Allanon, he corrected himself. And Allanon was himself perhaps a part of that dark, forgotten world.

His father appeared suddenly from the darkness, slipping from the shadows to stand beside him. Wordlessly, Ander passed back the Ellcrys staff. Fatigue and worry lined the old man's face, reflected in his eyes, and Ander forced himself to look away.

“Is everything all right?” he asked after a moment.

The King nodded distantly. “All of the defensive positions are established.”

They were silent again. Ander tried to think of something more that he could say. There was an uneasiness in him that would not settle, one that gave rise to a need to be close to his father. He wanted Eventine to understand this. Yet it was difficult, somehow, to speak with his father of such things. Neither of them had ever been very good at expressing feelings to the other.

His mood darkened. It was that way with Arion as well—particularly with Arion. There was a distance between them that he had never really understood, a distance that might have been shortened had either of them been able to talk about it. But neither had tried. It was worse now, of course. Arion was angered by what had taken place at the High Council, by Ander's refusal to reject Amberle as the rightful bearer of the Ellcrys seed, and by his refusal to demand of her, as Arion thought proper, an accounting of her actions; now he would not talk with his brother at all. There was such bitterness in Arion! Still, it was bitterness that Ander understood. When Amberle had left Arborlon those many months ago, abandoning without explanation her responsibilities as one of the Chosen, both brothers had experienced that bitterness—he as much as Arion because he, too, had loved the child. For too long a time he had let the bitterness blind him to everything that she had once meant to him. Yet seeing her again had allowed him to rediscover something of his old feeling for her. He would have liked to explain that to Arion; he needed to explain it. But somehow he could not seem to find a way to do so.

He started sharply as he realized that Allanon was standing beside him. The Druid had materialized from nowhere, without even the faintest whisper of those black, concealing robes. The cowled face studied him momentarily, then looked past him to his father.

“You do not sleep?”

Eventine seemed distracted. “No. Not yet.”

“You must rest, Elven King.”

“Soon. Allanon, do you think that Amberle is still alive?”

Ander caught his breath and glanced fleetingly at the Druid. Allanon was quiet a moment before answering.

“She is alive.”

When he said nothing more, Eventine looked over. “How can you know that?”

“I cannot know; it is what I think.”

“Then why is it that you think she is alive?”

The Druid's head lifted slightly, deep-set eyes studying the sky. “Because Wil Ohmsford has not yet used the Elfstones. If Amberle's life were threatened, the Valeman would use the Stones.”

Ander frowned. Elfstones? Wil Ohmsford? What was all this about? Then he remembered the second cloaked figure at the High Council, the one whom Allanon had brought into the chamber with Amberle, and who had never shown himself. That would be Wil Ohmsford.

He turned quickly to Allanon, questions forming on his lips, then caught himself and turned away again. Perhaps this was not something he should be asking about, he thought. After all, nothing had been said before. If Allanon had wanted him to know more, he would have told him. But then why had the Druid said anything at all?

Confused, he stared out across the Flats as the sun slipped beneath the horizon, the colors of the sunset fading slowly into the night.

“There are watch fires laid across the mouth of the pass,” his father murmured after a moment. “I must order them lighted.”

He walked down into the gorge, and Ander was left alone with Allanon. The two stood wordlessly, motionless statues in the growing dark, looking after the stooped figure of the old King as he wound his way down along the broken rock. The minutes slipped away. Ander thought himself forgotten when the Druid's voice floated up suddenly out of the silence.

“Would you know something more of Wil Ohmsford, Elven Prince?”

Ander stared at the big man in astonishment, then managed a startled nod.

“Then so you shall.” Allanon never even glanced at him. “Listen.”