Several companies of men-at-arms, including twoscore armed with longbows, stood at ease in the village commons. Thurgol counted perhaps a dozen horses, with the telltale gleam of plate mail armor reflecting from the knights lounging nearby.
"I don't think they know we're so close," observed the giant-kin. Beside him a great wolfdog, its ears raised suspiciously at the settlement of hated humans, growled ominously.
"They'll find us soon enough," replied the brutal troll.
"There's a lot of people there," Thurgol pointed out, uncomfortable with the dispassionate nature of his companion's planning.
In fact, the firbolg chieftain realized, much of the march through Winterglen had turned into an orgy of destruction, with trolls ransacking and murdering wherever humans had been encountered. They had reached more and more of the farmsteads, increasingly less isolated from each other, as they neared the coast. On the last two days, however, every settlement they found had been abandoned, with all the human refugees apparently gathering in the little fishing hamlet before them. Even the wolfdogs had found slim pickings amid the deserted farms, though in several places, the great canines had run down cows or horses enough to feed the entire horde.
"Lots of people good-make nice booty for us," Baatlrap grunted, smacking his thin, bony lips.
Thurgol shook his head. "We cross water here. Why waste time with big attack?"
The giant troll regarded the firbolg chieftain with his deep, emotionless black eyes. Baatlrap raised a gnarled fist clenched into a ball of knotty green-covered bone. "We have to take boats!" He pointed at the small fleet of fishing craft bobbing in the shelter of Codsbay. "To do that-take town first."
The firbolg warrior was forced to admit that his hulking companion had a point, though it galled him to grant anything to the monster he came increasingly to regard as a dangerous rival.
"Let's go make plan," Baatlrap grunted, turning his back on the town and starting down the hill toward the blanket of forest that flowed halfway up the gradual slope. There waited the ragged army of trolls and firbolgs that had followed these two leaders from Myrloch Vale to the northern shore of Gwynneth.
"Attack tomorrow. I tell trolls," barked Baatlrap.
The two types of creatures maintained separate camps, with the trolls gathered closer to the fringe of the forest. They passed through a muddy clearing where the gaunt, wiry beasts flopped in relaxation after a day of marching. Baatlrap stopped here among his minions, while the giant chieftain continued toward the camp of his firbolgs. As he passed, Thurgol noted with surprise that there seemed to be a lot of trolls-more than he had remembered from the previous day. Then, as he reentered the forest to find the camp of the firbolgs, he met still another band of trolls-a dozen or more-coming to join the group in the meadow.
Finally he saw, hanging listlessly from the branch of a dead tree, the woolen banner created by Garisa. The rectangular flag bore a crude replication of the Silverhaft Axe, a white image sewn on a dark green background. The old shaman had proudly produced it during the course of the march, and now she insisted that the firbolgs fly it as a banner of war wherever the trail of the campaign led. Thurgol took little note of the flag as his brain worked over the implications of the large number of trolls assembled in the adjacent camp.
True, the numbers of the giant-kin had grown somewhat as well. Several bands of firbolgs, totalling nearly a score of new arrivals, had emerged from the wilderness to accompany Thurgol's ragged tribe. He had never suspected that this many giant-kin still dwelled in the fringes of the great valley, but word of this epic march had spread to even these remote reaches. As a rule, these smaller bands had suffered even worse luck on the hunt than had the Blackleaf clan.
Word of the Silverhaft Axe had crystallized within these firbolgs an urgency that had drawn them from fifty miles away, flocking to Garisa's rude banner. Thurgol hadn't done a detailed count of his troops. Since their number clearly exceeded the combined total of his fingers and toes, an accurate numbering was more or less out of the question. Nevertheless, he had begun to suspect that the army now included nearly as many trolls as firbolgs.
Of course, on the good side, this meant that they had a fairly respectable force. They might just succeed at taking Codscove, though Thurgol realized without enthusiasm that it was likely to be a bloody affair. And ever since the first massacre of the small steading in the forest, the firbolg had felt the control of this army, of its march and perhaps even the purpose of the grand quest, slipping away.
While he pondered, a great cheer rumbled upward from the camp through the woods. Obviously Baatlrap had just told his troops of the impending attack.
Sighing heavily-the cheering depressed him-the firbolg chieftain shouted to get the attention of his own troops. The shambling giants gathered into a great circle, and Thurgol began to speak.
He very much did not feel like cheering.
Robyn spoke with Alicia and Keane in the library less than an hour after the king's departure. Even through the woman's druidic veneer of tranquility, her daughter could tell that the High Queen was furious. Her face was white, and the muscles in her neck clenched spasmodically, as if she struggled to bite back words of rage.
"How could he do something so stupid?" Alicia demanded, bound by no such sense of restraint as her mother. "Does he intend to fight a hundred firbolgs alone?"
Robyn sighed. It seemed that her daughter's fury gave her the vent she needed to relax, at least slightly. "It's not stupid," she chided Alicia gently. "Never dismiss actions that are motivated by faith as mere lack of intelligence-and remember as well, your father is not a stupid man!"
"I know!" Alicia declared in exasperation. "But at least he could have let me go along with him-or Keane, or somebody!"
"It may as well have been an army then," Robyn replied with maddening calm. "For reasons understood only by him, he had to do this alone."
"But do we have to let him?"
"Yes … and perhaps no," Robyn replied. At Alicia's look of frustration, she continued: "I have to respect his wish to travel without an army. Much as I would like to fly above him, watching, perhaps assisting him from a distance, I cannot. It would be too much of a betrayal."
"What can we do, then?" demanded Alicia.
"I'm getting to that," Robyn responded, with a calm in her voice that seemed, at least slightly, to settle her daughter's agitation. "First we will raise an army. In fact, I've ordered Earl Randolph to start the criers through Corwell Town and onto the nearby cantrevs. The full companies are to assemble below the castle by tonight."
"Will you lead them?" asked the princess.
"As long as Deirdre remains in need of care, I'll have to remain here. So no, I won't lead them. That duty, my daughter, will have to fall to you… and to Keane."
For a moment, Alicia was speechless. Never had she commanded, or even given thought to commanding, troops in the field. Yet as the idea took hold, she felt growing confidence gained from recent experiences, and she found that the notion seemed quite natural. Too, it would be a comfort to have Keane's intelligence to rely on. The fact that he would be there with her gave her a bright flare of confidence.
"Do you want us to follow the king?" asked Keane.
"Not in so many words. That would be impossible, anyway, given how quickly I expect him to travel. But if you march northward with all speed, it may be that you can reach Winterglen before all is lost."
"Mother … the route of our march … it will take us through the heart of Myrloch Vale."
Robyn bit back her emotions again. The others could see that this fact troubled her deeply. Yet here she saw no alternative. "Any other route would take at least twice as long," she admitted. "And we don't have enough seaworthy ships in the harbor to transport a large number of men by sea. It breaks my heart to send armed men through the heart of the Earthmother's domain, but if this mission has any hope of success, it lies in a speedy march to the north. I'll try to give you a map of the easiest route-and the one least likely to leave permanent scars on the wilderness."