The Illearth War Read online

  Fleshharrower began to laugh. Verement’s attack, multiplied by some of the Giant’s own power, caught on the Stone as if the green rock were its wick. There it grew hungrily until the column of emerald fire reached high into the air.

  Laughing the Raver shot this fire toward Verement. It splintered his staff, flash-burned the pieces to cinders, deluged him. But then the flame bent itself to his form, gripped him, clung and crawled all over him like a corona. His arms dropped, his head fell forward until his chin touched his chest, his eyes closed; he hung in the fire as if he had been nailed there.

  Triumphantly Fleshharrower cried, “Now, Verement Shetra-mate! Where is your defiance now?” For a moment, his derision scaled upward, echoed off the cliffs. Then he went on: “Defeated, I see. But harken to me, puppet. It may be that I will let you live. Of course, to gain life you must change your allegiance. Repeat these words—‘I worship Lord Foul the Despiser. He is the one word of truth.’ ”

  Lord Verement’s lips remained clamped shut. Within the paralyzing fire, his cheek muscles bulged as he set his jaws.

  “Speak it!” Fleshharrower roared. With a jerk of the Stone, he tightened the corona around Verement. A gasp of agony tore the Lord’s lips apart. He began to speak.

  “I—worship—”

  He went no further. Behind him, Thomin jumped up to carry out his last duty. With one kick, the Bloodguard broke Lord Verement’s back. Instantly the Lord fell dead.

  Thomin’s face was taut with murder as he sprang again at Fleshharrower’s throat.

  This time, the Bloodguard’s attack was so swift and ruthless that it broke past the Raver’s defenses. He caught Fleshharrower, dug his fingers into the Giant’s neck. For a moment, the Giant could not tear him away. He ground his fingers into that thick throat with such passion that Fleshharrower could not break his hold.

  But then the Raver brought the Stone to his aid. With one blast, he burned Thomin’s bones to ash within him. The Bloodguard collapsed in a heap of structureless flesh.

  Then for a time Fleshharrower seemed to go mad. Roaring like a cataclysm, he jumped and stamped on Thomin’s form until the Bloodguard’s bloody remains were crushed into the grass. And after that, he sent the vast hordes of his wolves howling into the gullet of Doom’s Retreat. Driven by his fury, they ran blindly down the canyon, and hurtled into the Word of Warning.

  The first wolf to touch the Word triggered it. In that instant, the piled rock within the walls seemed to blow apart. The power which Verement had placed there threw down the sloped sides of the defile. A deadly rain of boulders and shale fell into the canyon, crushing thousands of wolves so swiftly that the pack had time for only one yowl of terror.

  When the dust blew clear, Fleshharrower could see that the Retreat was now blocked, crowded with crumbled rock and scree. An army might spend days struggling through the rubble.

  The setback appeared to calm him. The hunger for vengeance did not leave his eyes, but his voice was steady as he shouted his commands. He called forward the griffins. Flying heavily with ur-viles on their backs, they went into the Retreat to fight Verement’s Word. And behind them Fleshharrower sent his rock-wise Cavewights to clear the way for the rest of the army.

  Compelled by his power, the creatures worked with headlong desperation. Many of the griffins were destroyed because they flew mindlessly against the Word. Scores of Cavewights killed each other in their frenzy to clear the debris from the canyon floor. But lore-wise ur-viles finally tore down the Word of Warning. And the Cavewights accomplished prodigious feats. Given sufficient time and numbers, they had the strength and skill to move mountains. Now they heaved and tore at the rubble. They worked through the night, and by dawn they had cleared a path ten yards wide down the center of the Retreat.

  Holding the Stone high, Fleshharrower led his army through the canyon. At the south end of the Retreat, he found the Warward gone. The last of his enemies—a small band of riders including two Lords—were galloping away out of reach. He howled imprecations after them, vowing that he would pursue them to the death.

  But then his farseeing Giantish eyes made out the Warward, seven or eight leagues beyond the riders. He marked the direction of their march—saw where they were headed. And he began to laugh again. Peals of sarcasm and triumph echoed off the blank cliffs of Doom’s Retreat.

  The Warward marched toward Garroting Deep.

  NINETEEN: The Ruins of the Southron Wastes

  By the time Warmark Troy rode away from Doom’s Retreat with the Lords Mhoram and Callindrill and a group of Bloodguard, he had put aside his enervation, his half-conscious yearning to hide his head. Gone, too, was the sense of horror which had paralyzed him when Lord Verement died. He had pushed these things down during the dark night, while Mhoram and Callindrill fought to maintain the Word of Warning. Now he felt strangely cauterized. He was the Warmark, and he had returned to his work. He was thinking—measuring distances, gauging relative speeds, forecasting the Warward’s attrition rate. He was in command.

  He could see his army’s need for leadership as clearly as if it were in some way atrocious. Ahead of him, the Warward had swung slightly south to avoid the immediate foothills of the mountains, and across this easier ground it moved at a pace which would cover no more than seven leagues a day. But still the conditions of the march were horrendous. His army was traveling into the dry half-desert of the Southron Wastes.

  No vestige or hint of autumn ameliorated the arid breeze which blew northward off the parched, lifeless Gray Desert. Most of the grass had already failed, and the few rills and rivulets which ran down out of the mountains evaporated before they reached five leagues into the Wastes. And even south of the foothills the terrain was difficult—eroded and rasped and cut by long ages of sterile wind into jagged hills, gullies, arroyos. The result was a stark, heat-pale land possessed by a weird and unfriendly beauty. The Warward had to march over packed ground that felt as hard and hostile as rock underfoot, and yet sent up thick dust as if the soil were nothing but powder.

  Within three leagues of the Retreat, Troy and his companions found the first dead warrior. The Woodhelvennin corpse lay contorted on the ground like a torture victim. Exhaustion blackened its lips and tongue, and its staring eyes were full of dust. Troy had a mad impulse to stop and bury the warrior. But he was sure of his calculations; in this acrid heat, the losses of the Warward would probably double every day. None of the living could afford the time or strength to care for the dead.

  By the time the Warmark caught up with his army, he had counted ten more fallen warriors. Numbers thronged in his brain: eleven dead the first day, twenty-two the second, forty-four the third—six hundred and ninety-three human beings killed by the cruel demands of the march before he reached his destination. And God alone knew how many more—He found himself wondering if he would ever be able to sleep again.

  But he forced himself to pay attention as Quaan and Amorine reported on their efforts to keep the warriors alive. Food was rationed; all water jugs were refilled at every stream, however small; every Haft and Warhaft moved on foot, so that their horses could carry the weakest men and women; Quaan’s remaining riders also walked, and their damaged mounts bore packs and collapsed warriors; all scouting and water gathering were done by the Bloodguard. And every warrior who could go no farther was supplied with food, and ordered to seek safety in the mountains.

  There was nothing else the commanders could do.

  All this filled Troy with pain. But then Quaan described to him how very few warriors chose to leave the march and hide in the hills. That news steadied Troy; he felt it was both terrible and wonderful that so many men and women were willing to follow him to the utter end of his ideas. He mustered his confidence to answer Quaan’s and Amorine’s inevitable questions.

  Quaan went bluntly to the immediate problem. “Does Fleshharrower pursue us?”

  “Yes,” Troy Replied. “Lord Verement gained us about a day. But that Giant is coming after us now—he
’s coming fast.”

  Quaan did not need to ask what had happened to Lord Verement. Instead he said, “Fleshharrower will move swiftly. When will he overtake us?”

  “Sometime tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow evening at the latest.”

  “Then we are lost,” said Amorine, and her voice shook. “We can march no faster. The warriors are too weary to turn and fight. Warmark,” she implored, “take this matter from me. Give the First Haft’s place to another. I cannot bear—I cannot give these commands.”

  He tried to comfort her with his confidence. “Don’t worry. We’re not beaten yet.” But to himself he sounded more hysterical than confident. He had a sudden desire to scream. “We won’t have to march any faster than this. We’re just going to turn south a fraction more, so that we’ll reach that old ruined city—‘Doriendor Corishev,’ Mhoram calls it. We should get there before noon tomorrow.”

  He felt that he was speaking too quickly. He forced himself to slow down while he explained his intentions. Then he was relieved to see dour approval in the faces of his officers. First Haft Amorine took a deep, shuddering breath as she caught hold of her courage again, and Quaan’s eyes glinted with bloody promises for the enemy. Shortly he asked, “Who will command the Eoward which must remain?”

  “Permit me,” Amorine said. “I am at the end of my strength for this marching. I wish to fight.”

  The Hiltmark opened his mouth to answer her, but Troy stopped them both with a gesture. For a moment, he juggled burdens mentally, seeking a point of balance. Then he said to Quaan, “The Lords and I will stay behind with First Haft Amorine. We’ll need eight Eoward of volunteers, and every horse that can still stand. The Bloodguard will probably stay with us. If we handle it right, most of us will survive.”

  Quaan frowned at the decision. But his acceptance was as candid as his dislike. To Amorine, he said, “We must find those who are willing, and prepare them today, so that tomorrow no time will be lost.”

  In answer, the First Haft saluted both Quaan and Troy, then rode away among the Warward. She carried herself straighter than she had for several days, and her alacrity demonstrated to Troy that he had made the correct choice. He nodded after her, sardonically congratulating himself for having done something right.

  But Quaan still had questions. Shortly he said, “I ask your pardon, Warmark—but we have been friends, and I must speak of this. Will you not explain to me why we march now? If Doom’s Retreat is not the battleground you desire, perhaps Doriendor Corishev will serve. Why must this terrible march continue?”

  “No, I’m not going to explain. Not yet.” Troy kept his final plan to himself as if by silence and secrecy he could contain its terrors. “And Doriendor Corishev won’t serve. We could fight there for a day or two. But after that, Fleshharrower would surround us and just squeeze. We’ve got to do better than that.”

  The Hiltmark nodded morosely. Troy’s refusal saddened him like an expression of distrust. But he managed a wry smile as he said, “Warmark, is there no end to your plans?”

  “Yes,” Troy sighed. “Yes, there is. And we’re going to get there. After that, Mhoram is going to have to save us. He promised—”

  Because he could not bear to face Quaan with his inadequacies, he turned away. Clapping Mehryl with his heels, he went in search of the Lords. He wanted to explain his intentions for Doriendor Corishev, and to find out what additional help Mhoram or Callindrill could give the Warward.

  During the rest of that day and the next morning, he received regular reports from the Bloodguard on Fleshharrower’s progress. The Giant-Raver’s army was large and unwieldy; it had covered only nine leagues during the day after it traversed Doom’s Retreat. But it did not halt during the dark night, and took only one short rest before dawn. Troy judged that the Giant would reach Doriendor Corishev by midafternoon.

  That knowledge made him ache to drive the Warward faster. But he could not. Too many warriors left the army or died that night and the next morning. To his dismay, the attrition tripled. A litany of numbers ran through his brain: eleven, thirty-three, ninety-nine—at that rate, the march itself would claim four thousand four victims by the end of six days. And lives would be lost in Doriendor Corishev. He needed complex equations to measure the plight of his army. He did not try to hurry it.

  As a result, the warriors were only a league ahead of Fleshharrower when they started up the long slope toward the ruins of Doriendor Corishev. The ancient city sat atop a high hill under the perpetual frown of the mountains, and the hill itself crested a south-running ridge. The ruins were elevated on a line that separated, hid from each other, the east and west sides of the Southron Wastes. In past ages, when the city lived and thrived, it had commanded perfectly the northern edge of that region, and now the low, massive remains of fortifications testified that the inhabitants of the city had known the value of their position. According to the legends which had been preserved in Kevin’s Lore, these people had been warlike; they had needed their strategic location. Lord Callindrill translated the name as “masterplace” or “desolation of enemies.”

  The legends said that for centuries Doriendor Corishev had been the capital of the nation which gave birth to Berek Halfhand.

  That was the age of the One Forest’s dominion in the Land. Then there were no Wastes south of the mountains; the region was green and populous. But in time it became too populous. Groups of people from this southern country slowly moved up into the Land, and began to attack the Forest. At first, they only wanted timber for the civilization of Doriendor Corishev. Then they wanted fields for crops. Then they wanted homes. With the unconscious aid of other immigrants from the north, they eventually accomplished the maiming of the One Forest.

  But that injury had many ramifications. On the one hand, the felling of the trees unbound the interdict which the Colossus of the Fall had held over the Lower Land. The Ravers were unleashed—a release which led with deft inevitability to the destruction of Doriendor Corishev’s monarchy in the great war of Berek Halfhand. And on the other hand, the loss of perhaps a hundred thousand square leagues of Forest altered the natural balances of the Earth. Every falling tree hammered home an ineluctable doom for the masterplace. As the trees died, the southern lands lost the watershed which had preserved them from the Gray Desert. Centuries after the ravage of the One Forest became irreversible, these lands turned to dry ruin.

  But the city had been deserted since the time of Berek, the first Lord. Now after millennia of wind and dust, nothing remained of the masterplace except the standing shards of its walls and buildings, a kind of ground map formed by the bloodless stumps of its grandeur. Warmark Troy could have hidden his whole army in its labyrinthine spaces and ways. Behind fragmentary walls that reached meaninglessly into the sky, the warriors could have fought guerrilla war for days against an army of comparable size.

  Troy trusted that Fleshharrower knew this. His plans relied heavily on his ability to convince the Giant that the Warward chose to make its last stand in Doriendor Corishev, rather than under the certain death of Garroting Deep. He marched his army straight up the long hillside, and into the toothless gate of the masterplace. Then he took the warriors through the city and out its western side, where they were hidden from Fleshharrower by the ridge on which the city stood.

  There he gave Quaan all the instructions and encouragement he could. Then he saluted the Hiltmark, and watched as the main body of the Warward marched away down the slope. When it was gone, he and his volunteers returned to the city with the two Lords, First Haft, Amorine, all the Bloodguard, and every horse still strong enough to bear a rider.

  Within the ruined walls, he addressed the eight Eoward that had offered to buy the Warward’s escape from Doriendor Corishev. He had a taut, dry feeling in his throat as he began, “You’re all volunteers, so I’m not going to apologize for what we’re doing. But I want to be sure you know why we’re doing it. I have two main reasons. First, we’re going to give the rest of the warriors a
chance to put some distance between them and Fleshharrower. Second, we’re going to help squeeze out a victory in this war. I’m preparing a little surprise for Foul’s army, and we’re going to help make it work. Parts of that army move faster than others—but if they get too spread out, they won’t all fall into my trap. So we’re going to pull them together here.”

  He paused to look over the warriors. They stood squarely before him with expressions colored by every hue of grimness and fatigue and determination, and their very bones seemed to radiate mortality. At the sight, he began to understand Mhoram’s statement that they deserved to know the truth; they were serving his commands with their souls. Roughly he went on, “But there’s one more thing. Fleshharrower may be planning a surprise or two for us. Many of you were with Hiltmark Quaan during that storm—you know what I’m talking about. That Giant has power, and he intends to use it. We’re going to give him a chance. We’re going to be a target, so that whatever he does will hit us instead of the rest of the Warward. I think we can survive it—if we do things right. But it’s not going to be easy.”

  Abruptly he turned to Amorine, and ordered her to deploy the Eoward in strategic positions throughout the east side of the masterplace. “Make sure of your lines of retreat. I don’t want people getting lost in this maze when it’s time for us to pull out.” Then he spoke to the Bloodguard, asked them to scout beyond the city along the ridge. “I’ve got to know right away if Fleshharrower tries to surround us.”

  Terrel nodded, and a few of the Bloodguard rode away.

  First Haft Amorine took her Eoward back across Doriendor Corishev. They left all their horses, including the Ranyhyn, at the west gate under the care of several Bloodguard.

  Accompanied by the rest of the Bloodguard, Troy and the two Lords made their way on foot to the east wall.