Realms of War

BLACK ARROW

11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Dawndance (1095 DR)

Sarshel

Dear Madam Feor,

I have heard an account of the Last Battle for Sarshel's Wall, and of the valor of Jotharam Feor in particular, whose deeds proved instrumental in Sarshel's victory. I regret to inform you your son died bravely in the line of duty.

I know how devastating these brutal words must be that bear news of a loss so overwhelming. But know that I and reunited Impiltur itself thank you for your son's precious service.

May Tyr, Torm, and Ilmater assuage the grief of your mourning, leaving only cherished memories of your son. May they grant you solemn dignity and peace in return for your costly sacrifice given unasked, a sacrifice that preserved Sarshel against its enemies, and which may yet conclude the Kingless Years.

Yours, sincerely and respectfully,

Imphras Heltharn

A pulverized stone crunched beneath Jotharam Feor's boot as he trudged across gouged and broken ground.

Jotharam's eyes danced with anticipation. His gaze swept past the battered, chipped wall that encircled the city of Sarshel, his home. The adolescent looked without really seeing the earth scarred with months of encamped armies, swift conflicts, and spell-ignited conflagrations. Having never witnessed mass graves before, the mounds of earth dotting the far sward held no meaning for him.

Jotharam's mind was on the war, certainly. When was it not? Since the hobgoblin horde emerged from the Giantspire Mountains, anarchy had ruled the city. The goblinoid armies had overrun all the surrounding lands, but failed to sack Sarshel. Instead, they laid siege.

Only soldiers ventured beyond Sarshel's protective bastions.

But here I stride, thought Jotharam, not a soldier sworn but wearing a hauberk anyway!

He even carried a sword from the Sarshel Armory in a battered sheath. He walked beyond the wall as if on picket duty. As if he were, in truth, sworn to protect all that lay within the heavy walls.

Jotharam patted the messenger's bag slung over his right shoulder. The bag was the reason he wandered beyond the wall. It bulged with orders for the perimeter guards of the north bunker.

The adolescent grinned into the day's failing glow. The sun paused on the ragged edges of the Earthspurs as if to regard him alone. Jotharam pulled the borrowed sword from the scabbard on his belt and whirled it in the golden light. He imagined cutting down scores of desperate hobgoblin raiders.

"My blade will not be sheathed until it finds an invader's heart," he boasted. "Your days are numbered now that I have taken the field!"

Finally taken the field, he mentally appended.

His friends had been allowed to fight and defend Sarshel. Not he. It wasn't fear that prevented him from defending the city, nor any particular lack of skill. It was his mother.

A woman of noble birth and connections, his mother asked the city's soldiery to disallow his application, even when Sarshel was desperate to fill the dwindling regiments. They had obliged her request.

His fingers tightened on the hilt as he thought of his friends, who had become decorated and respected defenders while he remained safely at home with his mother.

And now the war was nearly won, without him.

Imphras, the great war captain, had come to Sarshel's rescue. Imphras was here, and with him, his legion of loyal warriors, archers, and war wizards. The man was a living legend. Tavern talk had it the force Imphras commanded had never seen defeat on the field of battle.

Jotharam's opportunity to prove his bravery for Sarshel failed before he was ever allowed a chance; Imphras broke the siege in just two days and was received into the city with adoration and fanfare.

Hope of permanently driving back the hobgoblins was born. Some said Imphras would be made king if he succeeded!

Marvelous, of course, except. .

Imphras's arrival made Jotharam's ambition meaningless.

The boy lost his smile and kicked at a piece of masonry, burnt and broken. A smell of something strange wrinkled his nose. Brimstone, or hellfire itself, he fancied, wielded by a goblin shaman.

The odor reminded Jotharam that he stood, after all, outside the walls without his mother's knowledge or blessing. Some danger remained; no one could argue that.

He nodded to himself. Imphras's breaking of the siege hadn't completely eliminated the hobgoblin threat. Several distinct hordes ravaged the Easting Reach, and more than a few rabid goblin companies remained unaccounted for in the last reckoning. Perhaps even now they drew nigh to Sarshel to renew their siege?

The sun finally slipped completely beneath the western peaks. Coolness touched the back of his neck.

In the growing twilight, he recalled that traveling out shy;side the wall required bravery only true warriors possessed. Warriors like him!

Jotharam's earlier delight rekindled as he ran fingers down his chain link mail.

Earlier that day, luck had deposited him in the right place at the right time. Normally, Jotharam delivered correspondence between merchant houses within the city's inmost neighborhood.

The regular garrison courier hadn't appeared that afternoon. No one else had been available to make the delivery to the edge of town on short notice. Jotharam volunteered. Despite the garrison being far beyond the boundaries set by his mother, the dispatcher gave him the message. Why not? Imphras was here!

Jotharam sprinted across Sarshel to deliver the document. He'd turned over the leather courier bag to the garrison lieutenant with such alacrity the lieutenant had immediately praised Jotharam to the garrison captain.

The captain, impressed, asked Jotharam to run the evening's orders out to the soldiers manning the north bunker. The captain was unaware of Jotharam's interdiction, and that sending Jotharam beyond the Sarshel Wall was taboo.

Jotharam didn't tell him otherwise. The young man had been issued arms and armor.

And here I am, he thought.

Would he be allowed to keep his borrowed panoply? What if-

A blistering, burning ball of flame bounded up from somewhere beyond the far trees. Slender rivulets of fire chased around the blazing sphere, like smoldering snakes eating their own tails.

All thoughts fled. Jotharam's eyes followed the blazing orb of destruction as it arced upward, slowed, then curved back toward the earth. Was it some sort of signal? A spell of warning? Maybe a-

The blazing fist smashed down, striking the city of Sarshel's westernmost wall. Stones exploded away from the impact, and the ground shuddered.

Shrapnel clipped his cheek. Jotharam couldn't hear his own yell over the roar of flames and cracking stone.

Three more points of light popped up from beyond the trees, each arcing up and slowing, pausing as if to look down on Sarshel. As their trajectories, too, slowly curved back toward the ground, toward the wall, Jotharam finally understood.

Sarshel was under attack.

The north bunker was composed of a series of trenches that paralleled Sarshel's northernmost wall. A stone block shy;house squatted at the dugout's western end. The blockhouse was a small, boxlike structure, partially dug into the earth.

Jotharam sprinted along the west wall, running north toward the blockhouse, panting with more than effort. Blind fear propelled him. In the gathering gloom, he couldn't judge his true distance from the gleams twinkling through the arrow slits of the blockhouse. Was it a hundred feet, or a thousand? All his thoughts seemed brittle and fragmented.

Cruel, strident horns brayed from the west. A low rumble answered, quickly crescendoing into the combined battle scream from thousands of unseen throats. Hobgoblin throats!

A figure darted into Jotharam's desperate path. The boy tripped, and the figure shrieked. Jotharam's eyes were jerked away from their hypnotic connection with the blockhouse lights when he fell hard on his face.

He struggled back to his feet. Had he stumbled over a lost child? He turned to look back. Not a child…

A creature, shorter than himself and with long green ears, glared at him from a distance of three feet. A goblin, in chain mail smeared with dirt-black grease.

The goblin hissed and lunged with a short sword dark as obsidian.

Jotharam stepped back, twirled, and ran. Something patted him on his shoulder, but no pain came. He kept running.

He realized he was screaming, repeating a single word over and over: "Help!"

He ceased shouting; he needed all his breath to sprint for his life! His borrowed armor banged painfully against his limbs.

Twenty feet, forty feet. . eighty. His breath seared his chest as he strained forward. Was the goblin right on his heels? He felt like collapsing, but instead he pushed harder.

He reached the blockhouse, despite anticipating a goblin blade in his back even in that very last moment. Without slowing, Jotharam dived headlong into the open trench in front of the blockhouse.

Soldiers milled within the trench. Sarshel infantry were scrambling for their helms, their shields, their swords, rekindling their readiness in the aftermath of the unexpected attack. Jotharam lay dazed at their feet.

"Goblins," he cried. They ignored him.

They already knew.

Jotharam pulled himself upright on the earthen wall of the trench and glanced back the way he'd come. No hint of his long-eared pursuer was visible.

But there was movement in the direction from which he'd just come yelling into the bunker.

High up along the western wall of the city stood a lone figure in silver robes. The figure rose off the wall and into the air as if pulled up on a great hook, one hand gripping an oaken staff, the other gesticulating with purposeful vigor.

It was one of the war wizards Imphras had installed in the city! Imphras had brought them with him when he'd ended the siege. Jotharam's heart lifted with the wizard's altitude.

Before the wizard could get off a spell, a curtain of arrows with heads blazing red fire rose from the ground, too many to count. The mass of arrows arced and passed through the air where the bearded man screamed desperate magic. The wizard was wiped out of the sky as if by a club swung by a mountain giant.

A soldier near Jotharam yelled, "By Imphras's left testicle, there must be thousands!"

A voice, distorted with distance, yelled from somewhere far away, ". . outer perimeter. . goblins everywhere, I tell you we. . overrun!"

A tall man exited the bunkhouse. He held a bow longer and thicker than any Jotharam had ever seen. He was clad in green and brown leathers. From his belt dangled a quiver inscribed with patterns of leaf and vine. Dozens of gold-fletched arrows nestled within, as well as four arrows each of a single color: one emerald, one scarlet, one silver, and one black.

The archer looked directly at Jotharam. He said, "Messenger! What news from inside the walls? Did Imphras send you?"

Jotharam looked dumbly down at his courier's satchel, then back up. "Uh, no. . these orders came before the attack."

"Damn." The archer glanced east down the trench, then northeast, to give an appraising look at the detached spire called Demora Tower, which rose up just beyond bowshot.

Opposite the bunkhouse, the trench complex wound eastward, shadowing Sarshel's north wall. However, Demora Tower had no visible connection to the bunker's protecting trenchwork. It stood alone.

For the last few years, Demora Tower had languished in the hands of the hobgoblins that besieged the city.

That changed when Imphras arrived. He'd retaken the tower before he broke the siege. From its vast height, arrows and spells could be directed down on advancing enemies. More important, it was the highest point around, perfect for spying out enemy encampments.

Several more soldiers hurried from the bunkhouse, still arranging weapons and armor. The one in the lead bore the insignia of a commissioned officer in Sarshel's army. The archer grabbed the newcomer by the arm and said, "What forces were deployed in yon tower, Commander?"

"L-lord Archer," stuttered the commander, "We have a complement of twenty within-"

"Had, not have," the tall man snapped. "Otherwise they would have warned us of the hobgoblin counterattack before it was launched."

The commander stared dumbly, confusion making his mouth slack, his eyes too large. "No, I received reports just this afternoon of a shift-change-"

"The complement in the tower was assassinated by the enemy, else we'd have had warning. Demora is held by the hobgoblins. They likely look down on us even now, watching in fiendish glee how we run about like startled fowl under their surprise attack,"

The archer's features, his striking clothes, and telltale armament finally registered in Jotharam's overstimulated brain. The man was indeed who the soldier named, Imphras's own companion, the renowned Lord Archer. Jotharam gaped. The man was a legend, said to be a human foundling raised by elves in the glades of the Yuirwood, whose arrows never missed their-

The lord archer stabbed a finger at Demora Tower and said, "I must gain entry and see the shape of the battle. Imphras must know the disposition of the forces drawn up against us."

He looked at the commander and said, "For that, I need a distraction. Throw a force west, toward that bluff." The archer waved his hand at a distant outcrop. "In the meantime, I will make a break for the tower."

The commander nodded, then began to bawl out orders. Nearby soldiers started to fall into line. The lord archer grabbed the closest soldier's arm and said, "Calmora, isn't it? You're with me."

The soldier, a sandy-haired, battle-hardened woman in her late twenties, yelled, "Yes, Lord!"

The two raced east down the wide furrow of the north bunker. As they ran, the lord archer drew an arrow from his quiver, and the soldier unsheathed her sword.

Jotharam glanced at the commander gathering soldiers, looked at Demora Tower, then followed the lord archer.

Beating drums, oaths to Tyr, and brutal roars thundered as the night's oncoming cloak smothered the day's last gleams. Here and there, that cloak was rent with flashes of red, yellow, and stranger hues. The shifting breeze brought odors of brimstone mingled with blood, but Jotharam ignored it all. He put his concentration into following the amazingly swift lord archer and warrior Calmora.

A sudden barrage of screams and brutish battle cries heralded the appearance of dozens of dark forms in black chain mail on the edge of the trench ahead. Soldiers in the dugout attempted to stop the breach with their bodies and half-drawn swords, while crossbowmen behind put a dozen bolts into the goblin foray.

The defending soldiers were too few to hold back the invaders. Ten hobgoblins, then a score more, breached the line and tumbled into the trench, weapons at the ready.

A melee broke out. Desperate torchbearers and crossbowmen alike were felled by the goblins' bloodthirsty swords.

The lord archer stopped forty paces from the fracas and began loosing arrows, audibly counting down his remaining bolts with each pull, "Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven.."

With each shot, a goblin crashed to the ground, an arrow transfixing its neck, eye, or mouth.

Calmora sped onward to the breach, her sword glimmering and the lord archer's arrows whining over her head. As she ran, a handful of other uncommitted soldiers in the trench gained heart by her example and ran after. Calmora and her fortuitous troop crashed together into the clump of goblin trespassers.

Calmora's sword was like a lightning storm over the sea of goblin heads. Jotharam marveled at the sandy-haired woman's martial skill.

The other soldiers who'd followed Calmora into the breach likewise cut and beat at the invaders, and all the while the lord archer calmly numbered newly dead goblins, "Ninety-one, ninety, eighty-nine…"

The remaining goblins recognized their intrusion was failing. A few attempted a fighting retreat, but most merely broke and ran, and were cut down as they tried to scramble up and out of the trench. A couple turned and fired crossbows of their own.

A stray bolt clipped Jotharam's helm. The clang and following reverberation made him stumble and curse aloud like a real soldier.

When his ears ceased ringing, no goblin remained moving in the breach.

The lord archer ceased firing and dashed ahead, trampling the downed goblins as if they were mere cobblestones. Calmora fell in again at his side, and Jotharam returned to his role of trying to follow, now with a ringing in his right ear that he fancied tolled doom.

Just as Jotharam's ability to keep the two in sight neared failure, the archer and soldier paused as they drew even with Demora Tower.

A trench once connected the bunker with the base of the tower, but the hobgoblin besiegers who'd held sway beyond Sarshel filled that in long ago. A partial effort to dig the furrow anew was evident; however, the space between the new trench's endpoint and the tower stretched several hundred yards.

The lord archer and his handpicked soldier were conferring as Jotharam huffed up.

The archer was saying, "… or even south. Whatever the truth, it is vital we get a true assessment of their disposition. First, we must deal with the creatures that haven taken Demora Tower if we are to gain entry. It may not be easy."

His eyes left the soldier and found Jotharam. One eyebrow rose in apparent surprise at seeing the messenger.

"I can help," Jotharam explained.

"Jotharam Feor, is that you?" interrupted the soldier. "Does your mother know you're out here?"

Jotharam started. Calmora knew who he was? Some vague recollection came to him, then, of an aunt in the militia named Calmora.

"Yes it's me; and what's it matter what she knows? I can help the lord archer!"

"How?"

"Well, uh. . before the siege my friends and I used to sneak into Demora Tower. It was just an old watchtower, and haunted, everyone thought, so only a few sentinels ever spent any time in it. Except for me and my friends. We used to play in it-" Jotharam saw by their eyes his audience was losing patience with his explanation, so he rushed to his conclusion-"and we found a secret way to the top!"

Sandy-haired Calmora shook her head, "There's only one way in: the gate at the bottom. A single stair connects the entrance level to the observation level, where Imphras's wizards put the Wardlight. There's no room inside for secret ways in or up."

"You're wrong," protested Jotharam. "The secret way is outside the tower, up the outer wall. You can only see it once you're up close, because it's hidden by a… a sort of overhang that blocks it from view."

The lord archer rubbed his chin, spearing Jotharam with a searching glance. The boy's cheeks warmed under the stern regard, but he held the archer's eye.

"Let us try this path the courier knows about," decided the tall man. "But first, I must clear a route to the tower's base."

Calmora squinted over the trench wall at the tower and said, "It's too dark to see anything."

"Almost," agreed the archer, loosing an arrow. The shaft was instantly absorbed by the night. A moment later came a muffled cry and a distant, clanging thud. "Eighty-two," said the archer as he drew another arrow and loosed in the same motion. Another pregnant moment passed, which was followed by a similar brief wail and sound of a limp, armored body crashing to the ground.

"Eighty-one," he intoned, then, "Two hobgoblins were stationed just inside the tower gate. I saw Sarshel's lights reflected in their eyes."

Calmora shook her head in mock disbelief. Jotharam began to ask another question, "How did-"

"Now," interrupted the lord archer. "Run!"

Calmora grabbed Jotharam under his shoulders, and with a grunt, lifted him out of the trench. "Show us the way," she hissed.

Jotharam hesitated at the trench's lip, until he saw Calmora and the lord archer begin to pull themselves up. Satisfied he wasn't being sent alone into the night, he lit off toward the tower.

Darkness made the tower a slender gray blur. It seemed to reach down from the sky like one of Shar's own fingers.

Vague shapes on each side of his tentative dash resolved alternately as shrubs, boulders, and stands of weeds. He breathed in relief each time he drew close enough to recognize an obscure shape as a mundane object. He feared one of them would be revealed as the sneaking, grease-camouflaged goblin who had waylaid him earlier.

In the dark, Jotharam misjudged the final few feet to the tower. He slammed into one of the granite blocks that made up its massive foundation. The shock of impact bruised his forehead, and he bit his tongue.

"Pox and rot!" he muttered. All the minor hurts he had so far suffered that night were adding up.

Two shapes materialized from the darkness: Calmora and the lord archer.

"Where is your secret passage, then?" whispered his aunt.

Jotharam began sidling along the tower's base, widdershins from the main gate. Even as he moved away from the opening, he heard sudden guttural cries of surprise from within-other hobgoblins in the tower must have come down from a higher level to find their companions slain by the lord archer's deadly bow.

Ornate carvings crusted the tower's exterior, though many had worn and weathered away in the centuries since they were placed. No one remembered what prompted the long-dead wizard Demora to build so tall a tower that was at the same time so narrow that hardly any space resided within its slender width to house chambers of any consequence. Some argued that perhaps it had been constructed as a monument, not a serviceable structure. Yet in the centuries since Demora's departure, the tower had proved useful to Sarshel as a watchtower.

Indeed, it was from the tower's uppermost level that, five years ago, sentinels had seen the first hobgoblin army marching on Sarshel. Where so many other cities of the Easting Reach had fallen under sudden attack, Sarshel was able to prepare for the assault, and thus successfully held off the horde during the bitter years of the siege.

When Jotharam saw the griffon carving, he knew they were close. Another five steps, and his own initials stared back at him, shaky with childhood naivete. Beyond that was the slender gap that seemed a natural shadowed declivity behind a relief portrait of a long-bearded dwarf.

Jotharam slipped into the narrow gap. He heard Calmora mutter, "By Tyr! Where'd the kid go?"

"In here," Jotharam whispered.

He stood in a space no more than three feet on a side; at least, so his memory told him; it was almost completely dark. He reached out and brushed the cold iron rungs his hands remembered.

"There's a ladder," Jotharam said to the archer, who was trying to fit his larger body through the narrow gap. Jotharam grasped the first rung and climbed several feet, "It goes all the way to the top!"

"Quite a climb, then," said the archer's silhouette below him.

"Yes, it is," replied Jotharam, recalling how he and his friends used to rest halfway up the vertical expanse by threading ropes through the rungs and their belts. They would tie off to hang without effort until their arms ceased aching and their breathing slowed.

He began the ascent in earnest, feeling for one cool iron rung, then the next in the stygian darkness. He was careful to find his footing each time before he pulled himself to the next rung. When he craned to look behind him, he could just make out Sarshel's lights through the narrow gap where the vertical cornice didn't quite pinch the space containing the ladder into its own perpendicular tunnel.

The quiet sounds of the lord archer and Calmora ascending floated up beneath him, ringing with the slightest echo despite their relative silence. The odor of rancid standing water also filled the crevice-rain must have found someplace to pool. He hoped he wouldn't accidentally shove his hand into a stag shy;nant, muck-filled fissure in the tower's face.

At five stories his breath was rasping, and his arms burned. No doubt he was stronger than the last time he'd climbed the rungs as a child, but on the other hand he weighed more now than at age ten. Nor had steel armor tried to drag him off the rungs at every step with its extra weight.

Jotharam paused and rested by hanging off his rung from his armpits. Not really that comfortable, but he had no rope.

A hand brushed his foot below. He whispered, "Hold on, I have to rest."

The lord archer's voice floated up, ''Time is not our ally."

The adolescent nodded, realized the archer couldn't see him, and said aloud, "Just a few moments. Otherwise I'll fall and take the lot of you with me."

"A moment, then," agreed the lord archer. Then, "Your discovery of this side route to the top could make all the difference. Tell me, son, what did Calmora say your name was?

"Jotharam. Jotharam Feor." In the face of the archer's sudden compliment, he recalled his courtly manners, and added, "I am honored to make your acquaintance, Lord."

The man chuckled, "I'm no lord when out in the field. I'm a soldier, same as you."

The archer, not realizing Jotharam's true status, unintentionally paid him an even greater compliment. Pride opened a new reservoir of strength he'd doubted heartbeats earlier.

"I feel better now. I'm ready to go all the way to the top.

"Very good," said the lord archer.

From farther below, he heard Calmora mutter, "I needed the rest, too, Joth. But upward and onward, aye?"

Jotharam said, "There's a space at the top where we can all rest again," and renewed the climb.

Pride or no, when he finally pulled himself over the lip at the ladder's apex, the nausea of exhaustion threatened to loose the contents of his stomach.

Memory told him the ladder emptied into a chamber some eight feet on a side, a minor sublevel immediately below the tower's main observation level above. A series of narrow steps along the inner side of the chamber led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. He and his friends had always been too afraid to try to open it, lest their truancy so far beyond Sarshel be discovered and punished.

"Jotharam?" came a bare whisper. "Can we risk a bit of light?"

"Yes," he huffed, hoping the sound of his panting couldn't be heard in the chamber above.

A tiny blue glow appeared like twilight's first star, then swelled to the luminosity of a candle. Jotharam had to shade his eyes from the glare. The light emanated from a silver piece held by the lord archer. A hole pierced the silver disc, and a leather thong ran through it. In his other hand, the archer held a small bag from which he had apparently pulled the ensorcelled coin.

The illumination revealed a space very similar to Jotharam's memory of it, though it was smaller than he'd recalled, and the narrow stone stairs along the inner wall of the chamber were steeper, and. . something wet dripped down from the trapdoor they led to.

"What-?"

"Blood, of your countrymen, no doubt," said the archer. "The goblins eradicated the sentinels. Let us go quietly, and pay back the goblin assassins in similar coin."

Calmora pulled her sword from the sheath at her belt as she ascended the narrow stair. Jotharam heaved himself off his hands and knees and pulled out his short sword, knowing that without training, he could contribute little.

The lord archer hung the glowing coin around his neck from its thong, then moved to stand next to Calmora. They looked up at the blood-stained trapdoor, only half a foot over their heads. The archer whispered to the soldier, "Precede me, and if you can, clear a bit of space so I can fire my bow. Tyr willing, we shall take them by surprise."

Calmora pulled back on the latch that held the panel in place, producing a slight squeal. Without waiting to see if the noise produced any reaction from above, she put both hands over her head and slammed the trapdoor open. Calmora pulled herself upward, and with a leg up from the lord archer, vaulted up and out into the observation level.

Even as the lord archer swarmed after Calmora, a guttural cry of alarm pealed from somewhere above. A shadow passed across the face of the open trapdoor, then came a metallic clang. Several more oafish voices shouted, and amid those cries, Jotharam could hear Calmora's voice, "For Imphras! For your deaths!"

Jotharam ran up the stairs and looked up. The lord archer stood right above, his booted toes overhanging the trap shy;door. His bow delivered a steady stream of fletched death to enemies Jotharam couldn't see. With each shaft fired, he uttered its number.

When the archer turned slightly to get a better lead on his next target, Jotharam jumped and managed to get his fingers over the trapdoor's lip.

He'd have to pull himself up without help. After the grueling climb, he wondered if he had the strength to gain the observation level without help. He grunted, contracting his arms, and with a sudden lunge, got an elbow over the edge. After that, he was able to swing up a leg and scramble up out of the hole.

A great device on iron legs squatted in the very center of the observation level. It seemed composed of crystal, glass, and iron, though many of its parts were ripped from their housings and scattered on the floor. Jotharam hoped it wasn't the Wardlight Calmora had mentioned earlier in the bunker dugout, though he supposed it had to be.

Besides the Wardlight, several crumpled and broken forms lay clumped about the open-walled chamber. A few wore the uniforms of Sarshel and must have been the sentinels the hobgoblins murdered.

All the rest were dead or dying hobgoblins and goblins, many with terrible slashes still welling blood, others with arrows jutting from their chests, necks, and heads.

Several figures struggled perilously close to the edge. One was Calmora. She simultaneously struggled with three ene shy;mies, two man-sized hobgoblins and a hairy-looking beast nearly the size of an ogre.

"Seventy-three, seventy-two," said the lord archer, then, "Calmora!"

Calmora looked up even as the near-ogre dashed forward, arms to each side, its legs pumping toward a lethal speed. She tried to leap away but stumbled on a dead goblin lying behind her. Calmora's attacker smashed into her without slowing.

Both went over the edge. Even as they vanished from view, the soldier raised her sword as if to attack.

"No!" croaked Jotharam, running forward a few steps before stumbling to a helpless stop.

All was silent in Demora Tower. The lord archer lowered his bow and said, "Come away from the edge."

Utter darkness filled the air beyond the tower, and foreboding stillness seemed to leech strength straight from Jotharam's limbs. His eyes were tacky with unwept tears. He'd known the soldier so briefly. …

If it was. true Calmora was a relative, then when he returned to Sarshel he would tell his mother the story of Calmora's bravery. She had the resources to commission a memorial for the brave warrior. A monument of black marble.

Jotharam wanted to wrench his mind away from the vision that played over and over, of Calmora's surprised look as she vanished off the edge, even as she hacked at the creature that pushed her off.

The boy turned from the dark expanse of sky and dark and asked, "Why isn't the Wardlight completely broken?"

The lord archer continued to tinker with the bits and pieces pulled from the strange device by the hobgoblin assassins, but he said, "Perhaps they didn't have time. Or they didn't want to create a suspicious racket by breaking the glass and shattering the crystal."

"Hmm. How does it work, then?"

The archer grunted, pulled a slender rod from a socket he'd just placed it in, turned it around, and replaced it. Then he replied, "Once each day, the Wardlight can summon a sunlike flash so potent all the surrounding land is revealed, even in darkest night. If I can get it to function, we will know the threat truly faced by Sarshel."

"I wonder how late it is?"

"Just past middark," answered the lord archer, a hint of impatience threading his tone. He picked up a glass sphere, which by some miracle hadn't rolled off the tower's open pagodalike zenith. The glowing coin hanging around his neck threw the archer's distorted, hunched shadow upon the upcurved ceiling.

"How is it coming?" Jotharam wondered.

"If you leave off interrupting me, I will likely succeed."

"Sorry," breathed the adolescent.

"Now then. ." muttered the archer, as he made some final adjustment.

There came a click, and a low hum. Then, "That is it. Pray to whatever deity you revere that it proves sufficient."

The lord archer placed his hand upon an engraved palm print etched into the Wardlight's side.

The enveloping night broke wide open by a shin shy;ing light that bloomed somewhere above Demora Tower. Radiance beat down from the arcane outburst to bathe the countryside. Jotharam saw all Sarshel revealed, like a toy city, in an instant. Beyond it was Lake Ashane to the east, and the battle-scarred wilderness all around, for miles in all directions. And on that plain, an army crawled forward from out of the west.

A small army to be sure, filled with black shapes mostly squat, though a few were trollish in their gangly, stoop-shouldered height. They advanced on Sarshel in a long, thin line, inching forward like the tide in a slow but unstoppable march.

A flight of burning arrows took to the sky, unleashed from the attacking line. A few fell short of Sarshel's west wall, but many scored the stone edifice, or plunged into the bunker to find the terrified flesh of defenders unlucky enough to have been standing in the trajectory of a lethal shaft.

The advancing hobgoblin line screamed and jeered. The trolls threw boulders, and goblins waved spears and torches, and sang a song of torture and woe.

Cruel horns sounded. The line surged forward, with black-gauntleted hobgoblins at the fore swinging glowing warhammers. The defenders on Sarshel's west wall answered with their own tempest of arrows, which plowed into the advancing line. Many hobgoblins fell, but many more retreated, screaming dire promises in their debased language.

The line surged forward yet again, gaining ground by increments.

However, even Jotharam's untrained eye could see the attacking army was too thin to hold the ground they gained against the still confused defense, should that defense finally firm up.

On the other hand, from the viewpoint of the defenders on the ground, the line must have seemed like the vanguard of an army of immense size. Only Demora's height revealed the line as a slender threat, scarcely wide enough to withstand even a single charge, should any dare it.

"Is that all there are?" wondered Jotharam.

"No, it is a diversionary force," said the lord archer. "Look!" He pointed east, where Lake Ashane kissed Sarshel's port district in a wide bay. Even as the Wardlight's radiance dimmed, Jotharam saw the true threat.

Hundreds of small boats, canoes, and crude rafts floated the still water of Lake Ashane, silently converging on the docks. As the commotion and clamor of the obvious attack pulled defenders to the west, the true threat to Sarshel prepared a massive onslaught from the east.

The Wardlight guttered and failed. Night returned.

"We must get word to Imphras straight away," came the lord archer's voice from behind Jotharam. The courier nodded but remained staring out into the darkness, his eyes still resting on the memory of what had just been revealed. The archer continued, "Once he knows their true strategy-oh!"

An awful hiss jerked Jotharam's gaze back into the tower cupola.

A short sword dark as obsidian protruded from the lord archer's stomach, just below his sternum. The lord archer collapsed to one knee, clutching vainly at the blood-soaked blade.

A creature with long green ears and wearing chain mail smeared with black grease stood just beyond the lord archer's reach, grinning with needle-sharp teeth.

Jotharam cried, "I know you!"

It sniggered and said in broken Common, "Good thing I follow you, little one. Very tricky, but your tricks done now. Imphras and Sarshel soon both dead."

Jotharam yelled unintelligibly and hurled himself at the foul assassin, his own sword somehow unsheathed and in his hand, stabbing, slicing, tearing …

The goblin evaded, dancing back. Jotharam bulled forward. His fury at seeing the lord archer so sorely wounded washed away his fear. Besides, the little cur was without its sword!

The courier landed a cut on its shoulder, but the goblin used the opportunity to slip inside Jotharam's guard. Like a performer delivering a kiss, it leaned forward and bit the boy's exposed neck.

Jotharam hooted with astonishment and dropped his sword. The goblin bit down harder. Jotharam heard it giggle through its clenched teeth. A warm spurt of blood ran down Jotharam's neck and flowed under his gambeson. Fear returned, but his rage was the stronger. A red haze fell before his eyes, and he roared.

He grabbed the clinging goblin with both hands. It would not relinquish its grip. Like a dog with its jaws around a succulent bone, the goblin clung to his neck. Jotharam's first instinct was to forcefully shove it away, but he had a sudden image of his neck being ripped out as he forced the creature off.

Instead, he started to squeeze. He clutched the creature around its throat and throttled it with all his fury-fueled strength.

The goblin maintained its grip only a few heartbeats more before its jaws loosened. It tried to gasp and squeal. Too late.

Jotharam did not relinquish his choke hold until the creature was as limp as a rag.

He threw the flaccid body to the floor, his own breath coming in great heaves. Then he remembered the goblin assassin's obsidian sword.

"Lord Archer!" Jotharam ran to the wounded man.

The archer half-reclined against the Wardlight. A still-enlarging pool of blood surrounded him. His eyes were open but glassy. He no longer clutched at his terrible wound. Instead, he struggled with his quiver.

"Lord Archer, let me help you!" Jotharam grabbed the quiver from the man's shaking hands. "Do you have a healing draught in your quiver? Is there another compartment?"

The man shook his head and said in an alarmingly breathy voice, "I have none. I left them in the bunkhouse. No- Jotharam, listen to me, now! I have something very important to tell you."

"Yes, what?"

"Reach into my quiver and pull out the black arrow."

"Yes, very well… I have it."

"Good, that's a good lad. Now, Jotharam, you must deliver that arrow to Imphras. He will know. . what it means. When he sees this shaft, he will know the message comes directly from his lord archer. We worked out the signal years ago, but never had call to use it, till now. Emerald is west, scarlet south, silver north, and black… means the foe attacks from the west."

"I can't just leave you-"

"You can, and you will!" interrupted the archer, his voice suddenly echoing with a portion of its original strength. "Are you a sworn soldier of Sarshel? Then obey your commanding officer, a prerogative I claim now. Climb down the secret way and bring that arrow to Imphras as quick as your legs can carry you."

Unable to speak for fear he would sob, Jotharam only nodded, then saluted. The lord archer returned his salute with a shaking hand.

Jotharam turned, scrubbing at his eyes with the palm of his free hand. In the other, he clutched the lord archer's message.

He held the arrow's smooth shaft in his teeth as he hung for a moment from the trapdoor opening, then dropped onto the narrow space below.

Before he put his hands to the rungs to begin the long descent, he transferred the arrow to his empty sheath-his sword remained behind on the floor next to the strangled goblin and the dying lord archer.

He shook his head and started down the ladder. He had a duty to perform. If he didn't get the message to Imphras, more than the tall man he left behind would die tonight.

His descent through the narrow, lightless shaft was easier than the ascent. He was used to the spacing, even if he couldn't see the rungs, and he moved in the direction his heavy armor wanted to drag him.

Jotharam's foot jarred a grunt from him when he reached the shaft's bottom sooner than he expected. In the darkness of the concealed niche, he carefully removed the arrow from his sheath and held it tightly.

He peered out through the crevice, and saw Sarshel's north wall, and the bunker that ran immediately in front of it. The span was farther than he remembered.

Dark shapes obscured the wall, moving between him and sanctuary. Low, squat, misshapen figures. Goblins and hobgoblins, apparently drawn toward the base of Demora Tower by the Wardlight's night-illuminating flash. They knew they had to stop anyone from emerging from the tower if their devious plan was to succeed. He saw only a few dozen, but that was a few dozen too many. Luckily, they were converging on the tower's main entrance-they still didn't know about the secret ladder.

The image of hundreds of tiny watercraft converging toward Sarshel from the east convinced him he needed to make a break for it. How much closer were the hobgoblins to launching their ambush in the time he'd taken to climb down?

Jotharam had no more time.

He dashed from the cleft, the black arrow raised high in his right hand. He ran into the night, toward the brutish silhouettes that paused as they saw him emerge from the tower's side.

Jotharam ran toward the sanctuary of the trench, toward Sarshel's glow. He ran toward the light, whose luster was the golden dawn of judgment, in which all things find their end.

When Imphras the Great ascended the throne over reunited Impiltur in 1097 DR, hundreds journeyed to Sarshel to see the Crown of Narfell placed upon the new king's brow. The ceremony was held in an open-air amphitheatre where all could see the king mount his throne.

During the ceremony, Imphras called the attention of all present to a great monument carved of black marble.

The plaque at the memorial's base read, "Never forget these who gave their lives to save our city."

The memorial depicted three people. In the background, a woman of gallant bearing wore the arms and armor of a Sarshel soldier. To her right a tall man in filigreed leather bent a mighty bow. A quiver filled with gold-fletched arrows hung at his belt.

In the foreground a young man stood in sculpted nobility. He also wore the arms and armor of the Sarshel militia. The medal on his chest identified him as a posthumous member of Imphras's personal elite guard.

The boy's right arm rose in a confident pose straight above his head. In his right hand, he clutched one black arrow.