Dragonspell - Donita K. Paul [15]
Leetu made a boosting step with interlaced fingers. Kale put her foot into Leetu’s hands and felt herself thrust into the air. She grabbed the lowest branch and clambered up the tree. The grunts and coarse mutterings of the approaching grawligs inspired extra speed.
Once perched on a high branch, she could see dark forms advancing from all sides, completely encircling them.
“How many?” asked Leetu from below.
Kale scanned the area. “Twelve.”
“That shouldn’t delay us too long,” said Dar.
Branches in a tree next to Kale swayed. She made out the slender form of Leetu as she climbed to a branch thirty feet above the ground. Below, Dar stood in the center of the clearing with his ears perked, listening to the approach of the marauding mountain ogres. Kale wanted to shout, “Climb a tree!”
“He’ll be all right.” Leetu’s calm voice reassured her. “Just watch. He’ll throw up a magic shell and fight from beneath.”
At that moment four grawligs crashed through a line of brushwood and entered the clearing.
Dar hunched over, and a shimmering shell appeared over his body. It hovered above him like an inverted glass bowl. Kale could see the doneel’s movements within. Two daggers flashed in his hands.
The grawligs gave a roar and charged. They beat on the shell and tried to pry it up. Dar’s hands whipped out from the lower rim. His daggers slashed and poked at the grawligs’ toes as well as their fingers when they gripped the edge of his protective armor. The grawligs hopped around amid yips and howls but didn’t give up. As one fell back to suck on his injured fingers, another took his place.
“Now!” cried Leetu’s voice in Kale’s mind, startling her so that she almost lost her grip on the branch. More of the mountain ogres poured into the clearing. Their massive legs tore through the thick underbrush. They bellowed a war cry, and Kale clutched the tree trunk, thinking the horrendous shouting would shake her out of the tree.
Dar disappeared in the middle of a dozen raving grawligs. Arrows from the emerlindian’s bow rained down upon the ogres’ heads.
I can’t just sit here. I’m supposed to help.
Kale wiggled out of her tunic and wrapped it hastily around her right hand. She grabbed a pine cone and had to twist at the woody, seed-bearing orb to make it come loose. Even with her hand protected, she felt the pricks of the barbs. She hurled the rock-heavy cone down wildly and managed to hit one of the grawligs on his hairy back. The cone clung to the matted hair.
Over the next few minutes, her aim improved as did her ability to twist the cones in just the right way to pull them off the bushy, needle-laden branches. She climbed to different limbs several times in order to reach more clusters of the spiny weapons.
Kale began to see the advantage of Leetu’s strategy. While Dar, in the relative safety of his shell, inflicted grievous wounds on the ogres, Leetu peppered them from above with arrow after arrow.
The rock-hard pine cones Kale threw bruised the ogres but did not impede their attack. Nonetheless, the cones stuck, and Kale saw that was a good thing. Most of the hairy grawligs carried the extra weight of ten to twenty rock cones. She thought the beasts were incredibly stupid. Their focus remained riveted on the doneel they thought they had trapped on the ground.
Eventually, the assault from above bothered some of the grawligs enough that they stopped to gawk at the trees. Leetu took advantage of the upturned faces. Her skillful aim sent several grawligs howling into the woods, pulling at arrows embedded in their flesh.
Kale marveled over each direct hit on a grawlig’s ear. They reacted with shrieks of anger and pain. Often the wounded ogre left the foray with a massive hand covering the side of its head. All the grawligs were limping painfully from the wounds inflicted to their feet by the doneel.
She redoubled her efforts to make a bull