“Look out!” Dram heard Sally cry, and he threw himself down behind the dead ogre’s shoulder as a great spear stabbed past where he’d been standing. The head of the weapon was stone, a glowing green emerald, and recognizing the talisman, the dwarf shouted his defiance and spat a curse of instinctive hatred.
“You!” he roared, popping up and swinging for the haft of the spear with his axe. It was Ankhar himself, the half-giant looming over him, who barely managed to sweep his emerald-tipped weapon up and out of the path of the dwarf’s wild blow.
Dram pressed his attack, scrambling over the corpse, swinging his axe in a frenzy. Ankhar snarled and snapped with his great, tusked jaws, but the dwarf was too quick. Skidding down to the ground again, he swung his axe at the half-giant’s tree-trunk-sized leg.
But the hulking attacker displayed quick reflexes, backing away only far enough to evade the blow then pivoting and stabbing forward with that great spear. Dram parried the blow, planting his feet.
“I’ll distract him!” he heard Sally hiss into his ear. “Go for the kill!”
“No!” he cried, appalled as she darted past him and brought her massive hammer down-hard-on Ankhar’s foot. With a roar, the half-giant kicked his heavy boot, the blow catching Sally in the head, flipping her backward like a rag doll. She flew over Dram’s head, and he feared she was dead until he heard her spitting curses-the most musical sound he had ever heard in his life.
He renewed his attack with a frenzied, slashing series of swings. Each blow forced the hulking foe to step backward, and the dwarf’s momentum carried him in so close that Ankhar could not strike with his long-hafted spear. He tried to kick at Dram, but the dwarf’s axe bit home, slicing through part of the half-giant’s boot and provoking a howl of real pain.
Ankhar hastily backed away, yielding his place in the fight to a pair of ogres who lunged in from either side. Dram cut one of them down by slashing his hamstrings, and the second one fell with his belly sliced open. By then, alas, the swirl of battle had carried the enemy commander out of sight in the melee.
He went to look for Sally, finding her where she had landed, with a thud, on the road with her back against the factory wall. Her right eye was swollen nearly shut, and she seemed a little dazed as she beamed up at him proudly.
“I saw you chop him in the foot!” she cried, getting up to rejoin the battle. “The same foot he kicked me with!”
“Sally! By Reorx, I thought-you had me-I was so-”
“Oh, be quiet and kiss me. I’ll be fine,” she said. Right after Dram obliged, she added. “And it looks like we’re kicking them out of town.”
Sure enough, he noted, the ogres were pulling back from the main street. The drumming on the walls of the logging shed had ceased, and there, too, the attackers were retreating-at least for the moment. The brutes seemed content to taunt and roar at them from several hundred paces away, staying out of arrow range.
But the respite was brief; he saw Swig Frostmead come running up from the plaza. His presence that far from the lake could only mean bad news, and his words confirmed Dram’s fears.
“They’re coming along the shore!” Swig reported breathlessly. “It was a slaughter over there; I lost a hundred dwarves, and the rest of us fell back. The town will be lost.”
Ankhar limped up to Laka and Guilder, ignoring-for the moment-the pain in the foot that had been so cruelly slashed in his clash with the dwarf. He would probably lose a toe, but for the time being he had more pressing concerns. He had seen Bloodgutter’s charge carry the fight along the lakeshore, routing the dwarves who had tried to stop them. The enemy’s defenses were breaking there, and it was time for the half-giant to play his surprise trump card.
“Go now,” he said to the hob-wench and the aurak. “Fly, and take the sivaks! Go to that bridge we saw and land on it. With all your warriors, hold it, and do not let the dwarves get away.”
“Yes, lord,” Guilder replied. “We will take the bridge and hold it, as you command.”
“Aye, yes-we’ll hold it with steel and claw, and with the power of the Prince of Lies!” Laka pledged gloatingly.
“How will the Prince help hold the bridge?” asked Ankhar warily.
“With a wall-a wall of the dark god’s magic,” his stepmother explained mysteriously. “It will fill the dwarves with terror.”
“Good,” the half-giant muttered. “Build this wall on the bridge; terrify the dwarves so we can kill them all!”
He watched in awe as his stepmother hoisted her death’s-head talisman and rose into the air, taking flight. The aurak cast a magic spell to follow her, while the sivaks flapped their great wings. All together, more than forty of them zoomed into the air, soaring high above the stunned, disorganized dwarves.
Their destination was the bridge-the only route of retreat out of the town.
“It looks bad,” Dram said, agreeing with Swig’s assessment. “Let’s hurry to the bridge, then. Sound the retreat!”
He grabbed his wife by the arm and turned to go. He glanced over at the stone bridge, pretty on its three neat arches, that was the only way out of town except for the narrow side valley leading up to the first mines excavated at New Compound.
“Up there-look!” Sally cried suddenly, looking elsewhere.
“By Reorx, what’s that?” demanded Dram, at first thinking that a dense flock of massive vultures had soared down from the mountains. Very quickly he saw that those vultures had legs and arms, tails and crocodilian faces, and that they carried very deadly looking weapons in their hands. “Flying draconians?” he cried in alarm. “Swords up-make ready for attack from above!”
But it was immediately clear that those draconians were not going to swoop down on the thousand alert, aggressive dwarves milling in the center of the town. The formation flew past the dwarves, high up and out of arrow range, and the creatures started to dive down. Dram and Sally exchanged frightened looks.
Their objective was the bridge. The flying draconians came to rest along the length of the span, turning the neat stone structure into an organic arch of flapping wings and hissing, clacking jaws.
At the same time a new, dangerous commotion arose from the south. The ogres and their allies were attacking along the entire front, bursting up from the lakeshore, scrambling through the lumber yards, pushing up the main road, and pouring down every side street. Dram immediately saw the peril-retreat was cut off, and the waves of attackers had them trapped on all sides.
“We’ve got to clear the bridge!” Dram cried.
“I’ll go,” Swig shouted back. He was closer by a hundred yards, and with a loud, “You louts, come with me!” he rallied two hundred dwarves to his side. They sprinted for the bridge.
Squinting past them, Dram realized someone was waiting for them on that bridge. A grotesque creature, a withered old hobgoblin dressed in feathers and beads, was waving a club that seemed to be made out of a human skull, dancing and chittering at them. She was perched on the highest arch of the bridge.
“It’s that old hob-witch,” the dwarf said to no one in particular as he was running hard, breathing hard, and surrounded by other dwarves. “She was with Ankhar every step of the way. But she’s not going to stop us, not with a hundred draconians. We’ll cross that bridge and set off the charges and buy ourselves a little time.”
Just then the hob-wench shrieked triumphantly. When she waved her wand, it crackled with flame, green fire sizzling all around her. She howled in exultant glee as sparks flowed onto the paving stones of the bridge, spilled over the sides, and hissed into the water. A wall of fire erupted, completely sweeping across the width of the span, soaring high, searing hot. Gouts of sparks cascaded down, tumbling along the paving stones, making the bridge so hot that even the draconians leaped and scampered to get away.