“Perhaps. It will also be a disaster for the elves. They have given me the opportunity I have so long desired, to meet them in the open field!” Kalawax said nothing. He merely studied the human leader, his Theiwar eyes narrowed to slits. Even so, the whites showed abnormally large to either side of his pupils.
Suzine was forgotten for the moment.
“General! General!” A mud-splattered swordsman lurched through the crowd of officers and collapsed to his knees. “We attacked the elven line at the ditch, but they stopped us! My men, all killed! Only—”
Further words choked away as the general’s black-gloved hand seized the gagging messenger. Giarna squeezed, and there was the sound of bones snapping.
Casting the corpse aside, General Giarna fixed each of his officers with a black, penetrating gaze. To a man, they were terrified to the core.
“Move!” barked the commander.
The officers scattered, each of them racing to obey.
More trumpets blared, and companies of humans swarmed from across the vast encampment, charging toward the elves who stood in a semicircle before the fortress gates. The companies of Wildrunner infantry, led by Kencathedrus, met the first of these attackers with shields and swords. The clash of metal and screaming of the wounded added to the cacophony.
The humans around the fort still outnumbered the elves by ten to one, and Kith-Kanan had only committed a quarter of the defenders to this initial sortie. Nevertheless, small bands of humans acquitted themselves well, hurling their bodies against the shredding blades of the elves.
“Stand firm there!” shouted Kencathedrus, urging his horse into a gap where two elves had just fallen.
The captain maneuvered his steed into the breach while his blade struck down two men who tried to force their way past him. Swords smashed against shields. Men and elves slipped in the mud and the blood. Now the ditch served as a defensive line for two of the elven companies. Cursing and slashing, the humans charged into the muddy trough, only to groan and bleed and die beneath the swords of the elves.
Elven archers showered the human troops with a deadly rain of steel-tipped hail. The ditch became a killing ground as panicked men turned to flee, tangling themselves among the fresh troops that the human commanders were casting into the fray.
Beyond the ditch, the elven cavalry of three hundred riders plunged and raced among thirty thousand humans. But more and more fires erupted, sending clouds of black smoke wafting across the field, choking noses and throats and blocking vision.
Greedy flames licked at the wall of one tent, and suddenly the blaze crackled upward. Wreckage fell inward, revealing several rows of neat casks, the cooking and lamp oil for this contingent of the human army. One of the casks began to blaze, and hot oil cascaded across the other barrels. A rush like a hot, dry wind surged from the tent, followed by a dull thud of sound. Fiery oil sprayed outward. A cloud of hellfire mushroomed into the sky, wreathed in black smoke.
Instantly the inferno spread to neighboring tents. A hundred men, doused by the liquid death, screamed and shrieked for long moments before they dropped, looking like charred wood.
From his vantage on the tower, Kith-Kanan watched the battle rage through the camp. Though chaos reigned on the field, he could see that the sortie had affected only a relatively small portion of the human camp. The enemy had begun to recover from the surprise attack, and fresh regiments surged against the elven horsemen, threatening to cut them off from any possible retreat.
“Sound the recall—now!” Kith-Kanan barked.
The trumpeter blared the signal even as Kith finished his command. The notes rang across the field, and the elven riders immediately turned back toward the gates.
At the ditch, Kencathedrus and his men stood firm. A thousand human bodies filled the trench, and there wasn’t an elven blade that didn’t drip with gore. The infantry opened a gap in their line for the riders to thunder through as an increasing rain of arrows held the humans at bay.
Even as this was happening, Kith turned his eyes to the south, looking along the horizon for some sign that the next phase of his strategy could begin. The time was ripe.
There! He saw a row of banners fluttering above the gray, and soon he discerned movement.
“The dwarves of Thorbardin!” he cried, pointing.
The dwarves came on in a broad line, trotting as fast as their stocky legs could carry them. A throaty roar burst from their throats, and the legion of Thorbardin hastened into a charge.
The humans were pressing the elven forces at the gates of Sithelbec. From his vantage, Kith-Kanan watched with grim satisfaction as his Wildrunners managed to beat back attack after attack. To the south, some of the humans had now realized the threat lumbering forward against their backs.
“Dwarves!” The cry raced through the human camp, quickly reaching General Giarna. Kalawax, beside him, gaped in astonishment, his already pallid complexion growing even more pale.
“The dwarven legion! Hylar, from Thorbardin!” More reports, from the throats of hoarse messengers, were brought back to the general in his command tent.
“They drive against the south!”
“I knew nothing of this!” squawked Kalawax, unconsciously backing away from Giarna. The dwarf’s earlier aplomb had vanished with this new turn of events. “My spies have been tricked. Our agents in Silvanost have worked hard to prevent this!”
“You have failed!”
Giarna’s words carried with them a sentence of doom. His eyes, black and yawning, seemed to rage for a moment with a deep, parasitic fire. His fist lashed out, pummeling the Theiwar on the side of his head. But this was no ordinary blow. It connected squarely, and the dwarf’s thick skull erupted. The general’s other hand seized the corpse by the neck. His face flushed, and his eyes flared with an insane pleasure. In another moment, he cast the Theiwar—now a dried and shriveled husk—to the side. Kalawax was already forgotten as the general absently wiped his hand on his cloak, focusing on the problem of how to stem this most recent attack.
“For Thorbardin! For the king!”
A few human companies of swordsmen raced to block the surging waves of dwarves, but most of the Army of Ergoth was preoccupied with the elven sortie. Dunbarth Ironthumb led the way. A man raised a sword, holding his shield across his chest, and then chopped savagely downward at the dwarven commander. Dunbarth’s battle-axe, held high, deflected the blow with a ringing clash. In the next instant, the dwarven veteran slashed his weapon through a vicious swing, cutting underneath the human’s shield. The man shrieked in agony as the axe sliced open his belly.
“Charge! Full speed! To the tents!”
Dunbarth barked the commands, and the dwarves renewed their advance. Those humans who tried to stand in the way quickly perished, while others dropped their weapons and fled. Some of these escaped, while others fell beneath the volley of crossbow fire leveled by the dwarven missile troops. Dunbarth led a detachment along a row of tents, chopping at the guy lines of each, watching the rude shelters collapse like wilting flowers. They came upon a supply compound, where great pots of stew had been abandoned, still simmering. Seizing everything flammable, they tossed weapons and harnesses, even carts and wagons, onto the coals. Quickly searing tongues of flame licked upward, igniting the equipment and marking the spot of the dwarven advance.
“Onward!” cried Dunbarth, and again the dwarves moved toward Sithelbec. The human troops didn’t react quickly to this new threat. Small bands perished as the stocky Hylar swept around them, and the waves of the attackers gave little time for the humans to muster a stand. The sheer numbers of the defenders gave the humans an edge. Soon Dunbarth found some brave human contesting every forward step he tried to take. His axe rose and fell, and many an Ergothian veteran perished beneath that gory blade. But more and more of the humans stepped up.