shaved-headed Domi. ‘It’s a blind canyon, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring replied,
nervously fingering the hilt of his Sabre. ‘There’s a dried-up stream-bed
running down the centre of it. From the look of it, I’d say that the stream
runs full in the springtime. There seems to be a dry waterfall at the upper
end. There’s a cave at the foot of the dry falls that should provide some
protection for the women, and it’ll be a good place to defend if things get
desperate.’
‘I thought they already were,’ Tynian noted. ‘How wide is the mouth of the
canyon?’ Sparhawk asked intently. ‘The canyon mouth itself is maybe two
hundred paces across,’ Kring told him, ‘but when you go back in a ways, it
narrows down to about twenty Paces. Then it widens out again into a sort of
a basin where the falls are. ‘The bad thing about a canyon is that you’re
down in a hole,’ Kalten said. ‘It won’t take the Trolls too long to go up
to the canyon rim and start throwing rocks down ,on our heads.’
‘Do we have any choice?’ Tynian asked him. ‘No, but I thought I’d point it
out.’
‘There’s no place else?’ Sparhawk asked the Domi. ‘A few clearings,’ Kring
shrugged. ‘A hill or two that I could spit over.’
‘It looks like it’s the canyon then,’ Sparhawk said grimly. ‘We’d better
get there and start putting up some sort of fortification across that
narrow place.’ They gathered closely around the cariage and pushed their
way into the forest. The carriage jolted over the rough ground, and on
several occasions fallen logs had to be dragged out of the way. After about
five hundred yards, though, the ground began to slope upward and the trees
thinned out. Sparhawk pulled Faran in beside the carriage. ‘There’s a cave
ahead, Ehlana,’ he told his wife. ‘Kring’s men didn’t have time to explore
it, so we don’t know how deep it is.’
‘What difference would that make?’ she asked him. Ehlana’s face was even
more pale than usual. The bellowing of the Trolls far back in the forest
had obviously unnerved her. ‘It might be very important,’ he replied. ‘When
you get there, have Talen explore the place. If it goes back in far enough
or branches out, you’ll have a place to hide. Sephrenia’s going to be with
you, and she’ll be able to block the entrance and hide any side-chamber so
that the Trolls can’t find you if they manage to get past US.’ ~y don’t we
all just go into the cave? You and Sephrenia can use magic to block the
entrance, and we can just sit there until the Trolls get bored and go
away.’
‘According to Kring, the cave’s not big enough. He’s got men out looking
for another one, but we know this one’s there. If something better turns
up, we’ll change the plan, but for right now this is the best we can
manage. You’ll take the other ladies, Patriarch Emban and Ambassador
Oscagne and go inside. Talen will go in with you, and Berit and eight or
ten other knights will cover the entrance to the cave. Please don’t argue,
Ehlana. This is one of those situations where I make the decisions. You
agreed to that back in Chyrellos.’
‘He’s right, your Majesty,’ Emban told her. ”We need a general right now,
not a queen.’
‘Am I encumbering you gentlemen?’ she asked tartly. ‘Not in the slightest,
my Queen.’ Stragen said smoothly. ‘Your presence will inspire us to greater
heights. We’ll dazzle you with our prowess and our courage.’
‘i’d be happy to simulate dazzlement if we could avoid this,’ she said in
a worried voice. ‘I’m afraid you’d have to convince the Trolls on that
score,’ Sparhawk told her, ‘and Trolls are very hard to convince particularly
if they’re hungry.’ Although the situation was grave, Sparhawk
was not quite as desperately concerned about his wife’s safety as he might
normally have been. Sephrenia would be there to protect her and if things
grew truly desperate, Aphrael could take a hand in the matter as well. He
knew that his daughter would not permit any harm to come to her mother,
even if it meant revealing her identity. The canyon had its drawbacks,
there was no question about that. The most obvious was the one Kalten had
raised. If the Trolls’ ever reached the canyon rim above them, the
situation would quickly become untenable. Kalten made quite an issue of
pointing that out. ‘I told you so’ figured prominently in his remarks. ‘I
think you’re over-estimating the intelligence of Trolls, Kalten,’ Ulath
disagreed. ‘They’ll come straight at us, because they’ll be thinking of us
as food not as enemies.”Supper’s more important to them than a military
victory.’
‘You’re just loaded with cheery thoughts today, aren’t you, Ulath?’ Tynian
said dryly. ‘How many of them do you think there are?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘I’ve heard ten different voices so
far – probably the heads of families. There’s probably a hundred or so of
them out there at the very least.’
‘It could be worse,’ Kalten said. ‘Not by very much,’ Ulath disagreed. ‘A
hundred Trolls could have given Warguns’s whole army some serious
problems.’ Bevier, their expert on fortifications and defensive positions,
had been surveying the canyon. ‘There are plenty of rocks in the stream-bed
for breastworks,’ he observed ‘and whole thickets of saplings for stakes.
Ulath, how long do you think we have before they attack?’ Ulath scratched
at his chin. ‘The fact that we’re stopping gives us a bit more space,’ he
mused. ‘if we were still moving, they’d attack right away but now they’ll
probably take their time and gather their forces. I believe that you might
want to re-think your strategy though, Bevier. Trolls aren’t going to shoot
arrows at us so breastworks aren’t really necessary. Actually they’d hinder
us more than they would the Trolls. Our advantage lies in our horses – and
our lances. You really want to keep Trolls at a distance if you possibly
can. The sharpened stakes would be good, though. A Troll takes the easiest
way to get at what he wants. If we can clutter up the sides of this narrow
entrance and funnel them through so that only a few at a time can come at
us, we’ll definitely improve the situation. ”We don’t want to take on more
of them at any one time than we absolutely have to. What I’d really like is
a dozen or so of Kurik’s crossbows.’
‘I have one, Sir Ulath,’ Khalad volunteered. ‘And many of the knights have
longbows,’ Bevier added. ‘We slow them down with the stakes so that we can
pick them off with arrows?’ Tynian surmised. ‘That’s the best plan,’Ulath
agreed. ‘You don’t want to go hand to hand with a Troll if you can possibly
avoid it.’
‘We’d better get at it, then,’ Sparhawk told them. The work was feverish
for the next hour. The narrow gap was necked down even more with boulders
from the stream-bed, and a forest of sharpened stakes, all slanting sharply
outward, was planted to the front. There was a method to the planting of
the stakes. They bristled so thickly along the sides of the gap as to be
well-nigh impenetrable, but the corridor leading to the basin at the head
of the canyon was planted only sparsely with them to encourage the monsters
to follow that route. Kring’s Peloi found a large bramble thicket, uprooted
the thorn-bushes and threw them back among the thick-planted stakes at the
sides to further impede progress. what’s Khalad doing there?’ Kalten asked
puffing and sweating with the large rock he carried in his arms. ‘He’s
building something,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘This isn’t really the time for the
construction of camp improvements, Sparhawk.’
‘He’s a sensible young man. I’m sure he’s usefully occupied. ‘ At the end
of the hour, they stopped to survey the fruits of their labours. The gap
had been narrowed to no more than eight feet wide, and the ground at the
sides of the gap was dense with chest-high stakes angled so that they would
keep the Trolls on the right path. Tynian, however, added one small
embellishment. A number of his Arciones were driving pegs into the middle
of the pathway and then sharpening the protruding ends.
‘Trolls don’t wear shoes, do they?’ he asked Ulath. ‘it’d take half a
cow-hide to make shoes for a Troll,’ Ulath shrugged, ‘and they eat cows
hide and all, so they’re a little short of leather.’
‘Good. We want to keep them in the centre of the canyon, but we don’t want
to make it too easy for them. Barefoot Trolls aren’t going to run through
that stubblefield – not after the first few yards, anyway.’. ‘I like your
style, Tynian,’ Ulath grinned. ‘Could you gentlemen stand off to one side,
please?’ Khalad called. He had cut two fairly sturdy saplings off so that