The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [129]
Risca gave them cover when they were close enough that cover mattered. He sent images of himself south below the Nunne to distract the winged hunters, and when the clouds masked moon and stars completely, the Dwarves went in. They crept swiftly across the last mile separating their strike force from the sleeping army, killed the sentries before they could sound an alarm, took the high ground north and east above the river, and attacked. Stretched out across the ridge of the high ground for half a mile in either direction, they used longbows and slings, and they raked the Trolls and Gnomes and monsters of darkness with volley after volley. The army came awake, men screaming and cursing, racing to put on their armor and to take up their weapons, falling wounded and dead in midstride. A cavalry assault was mounted in the midst of the confusion, a doomed counterattack that was cut to pieces as it charged up the incline from the maelstrom of the camp.
One of the Skull Bearers circled out of the dark and swept down on the Dwarves in retaliation, claws and teeth exposed, a silent stalker. But Risca was expecting this, his attention given over to preparing for it, and when the Skull Bearer appeared, he let it come almost to the earth before he struck at it with his Druid fire and flung it away, burned and shrieking.
The strike was swift and measured. The damage inflicted was largely superficial and of no lasting consequence to an army of this size, so the Dwarves did not linger. Their primary purpose was to cause disruption and to draw the enemy away from its intended line of march. In that, the Dwarves were successful. They fled back into the trees, taking the most direct route, then turned north again for the Pass of Jade. The enemy was quick to give pursuit. A large force was mounted and gave chase, the size of the Dwarf party having not yet been determined. By sunrise, the pursuers were closing on the Dwarves as they neared the mouth of the Pass of Jade.
Everything was going exactly as Risca had planned.
“There,” said Geften softly, pointing into the trees fronting the pass.
Below, the last of the Dwarf strike force was filing through the pass and dispersing into the rocks above, taking up positions next to the men already in place, four thousand strong. Behind them, less than a mile away, the first movements of their pursuers could be detected in the still, deep shadows of the predawn forest. Even as he watched, Risca could see the movement widen and spread, like a ripple from a stone thrown into the center of a still pond. It was a sizable force that had come after them, much too large for them to defeat in a direct engagement, even though a large part of the Dwarf army was assembled here.
“How long?” he asked Geften in response.
The Tracker shrugged, a small movement, spare like all his gestures, like the man himself, unobtrusive and restrained. Coarse, unruly gray hair topped an oddly elongated head. “An hour if they stop to debate the wisdom of coming into the pass without a plan.”
Risca nodded. “They’ll stop. They’ve been burned twice now.”
He smiled at the older man, a gnarled veteran of the Gnome border wars. “Keep an eye on them. I’ll tell the king.”
He abandoned his position and moved back into the rocks, climbing from where Geften monitored their pursuers’ progress.
Risca felt a wild excitement course through him, fueled by the knowledge that a second battle lay just ahead. The strike at the Northland camp had only whetted his appetite. He breathed the morning air and felt strong and ready. He had waited all his life for this, he supposed. All those years shut away at Paranor, practicing his warrior skills, his fighting tactics, his weapons mastery.
All