The First King of Shannara - Terry Brooks [214]
Then lightning struck an outcropping on the slope closest to where the battle was being fought, and fiery clots of earth and shards of broken rock exploded skyward and showered across the valley floor. Men covered their heads and cowered at the fury of the explosion, and for just an instant time froze. As the Northlanders hesitated, turned momentarily to statues, Jerle Shannara stood tall in his stirrups and thrust the Sword of Shannara skyward in defiance of everything. Battle cries rose from the throats of his men, and they charged into the enemy with such ferocity that they overran them completely. Those farthest away and yet able to escape retreated behind the shattered barricades, the fight gone out of them. For a moment they held their ground in the forest of jagged wooden bones and scorched earth. Then sullenly, wearily they withdrew to the Rhenn’s east pass.
Massed against the barricades, streaked by rain, dirt, sweat, and blood, Jerle Shannara and the Elves watched them go.
The victory for this day, at least, belonged to them.
Chapter Thirty-One
The sun broke through skies turned gloomy and gray from the night’s heavy rain, and the scorched and rutted floor of the Valley of Rhenn was blackened and steaming in the half-light. Drawn up in their ranks, weapons held ready, eyes peering expectantly through the gloom, the Elves stood waiting for the attack they knew would come. But no sound came from the heavy mist that cloaked the camp of the army of the Warlock Lord within the valley’s eastern pass, and nothing moved in the empty, blasted landscape before them. The light brightened with the sun’s rise, but the mist refused to thin and still there was no sign of an attack. That the massive army had withdrawn was unthinkable.
All that night it had scratched and worried at itself like a stricken animal, the sounds of pain and anguish rising up out of the mist and rain, transcending the fading thunder of the receding storm.
All that night the army had tended to its needs and regrouped its forces. It held the eastern pass entire, the floor and the heights alike. It brought forward all of its siege machines, supplies, and equipment, and settled them within the lines of its encampment across the broad mouth of the pass. Its progress might be slow and lumbering, but it remained an inexorable, unstoppable juggernaut.
“They’re out there,” muttered one-eyed Am Banda, standing just to Bremen’s left, his face twisted in a worrisome scowl.
Jerle Shannara nodded, his tall form fixed and unmoving. “But what are they up to?”
“Indeed.” Bremen pulled his dark robes closer to his lean body to ward off the dawn chill. They could not see the far end of the valley, their eyes unable to penetrate the gloom, but they could feel the enemy’s presence even so. The night had been filled with sound and fury as the Northlanders prepared anew for battle, and it was only in the last hour that they had gone ominously still. The attack this day would take a new form, the old man suspected. The Warlock Lord had been repulsed the previous day with heavy losses and would not be inclined to repeat the experience. Even his power had limits, and sooner or later his hold on those who fought for him would weaken if no gains were made. The Elves must be driven back or defeated soon or the ‘Northlanders would begin to question the Master’s invincibility. Once that house of cards began to topple, there would be no stopping it.
There was movement to his right, small and furtive. It was the boy, Allanon. He glanced over