There was an expectant silence as the sun lifted out of the horizon and the new day began. The two armies faced each other across the grassland, armor and weapons glinting, pennants flying in a soft breeze, the sky a strange mix of brightening blue and fading gray. Clouds sailed overhead in vast, thick masses that threatened rain before the day was through. The acrid smell of scorched earth wafted on the air, a residue from the watch fires doused. Horses stamped nervously and shifted in then-traces. Men took deep breaths and closed off thoughts of home and family and better times.
When the Northland army began its advance toward the valley, the earth shook with the sound. Drums thudded in steady cadence to mark time for the foot soldiers marching in step. The wheels of the catapults and siege towers rumbled. Boots and hooves thudded so heavily that the trembling of the ground could be felt all the way back to where the Elves stood waiting. Dust began to rise from the parched plains, the wind stirring it in wild clouds, and the size of the army seemed to swell even more, to rise on the dust as if fed by it. The silence shattered, and the light changed. In the roil of the dust and the thunder of the army’s coming. Death lifted its head in expectation and looked about.
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 rolling 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 die 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. Am Banda 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.