The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks [193]
Somehow the camp seemed smaller from this viewpoint than it had from the heights of the Dragon’s Teeth. Flick could not get the same sense of depth from his present position, but he did not try to fool himself. Despite what it appeared to be from where he crouched, he knew that it stretched for over a mile in all directions. Once past the inner sentry line, he would have to pick his way through thousands of sleeping Gnomes and Trolls, past hundreds of fires bright enough to reveal his identity, and all the way avoid contact with the enemy soldiers who were still awake. The first miscalculation the Valeman made would give him away. Even if he managed to avoid discovery, he still had to locate the prisoners and the Sword. He shook his head in doubt and moved forward slowly.
The natural curiosity of the Valeman. prompted him to linger near the fringes of the firelight to study further the Gnomes and Trolls still awake, but he resisted the impulse, reminding himself that he didn’t have much time as it was. Though he had lived all his life on the same earth with these two foreign races, they were like species from another world to the little Southlander. During his journey to Paranor, he had fought the cunning, savage Gnomes several times, once hand to hand in the labyrinth passages of the Druids’ Keep. But he still knew little about them; they were simply an enemy who had tried to kill him. He had learned nothing of the giant Trolls, a habitually reclusive people dwelling principally in the northern mountains and their hidden valleys. In any event, Flick knew that the army was under the leadership of the Warlock Lord, and there was no question as to what his goals were!
He waited until the wind carried the smoke from the burning fires between the closest sentry and himself in a series of billowing gusts, then rose and strolled in a casual manner toward the encampment. He had carefully selected an entry point where the soldiers were all sleeping. The smoke and the night masked his bulky form as he moved out of the shadows and into the circle of fires nearest to him. A moment later he stood in the midst of the soundly sleeping forms. The sentry continued to stare blankly into the darkness behind him, unaware of the hurried passage.
Flick wrapped the cloak and head covering closely about his body, making certain that only his hands were immediately visible to anyone passing by. His face was a dim shadow beneath the hood. He glanced about quickly, but there was no movement by anyone close at hand; he had made it this far unnoticed. He breathed deeply of the cool night air to steady himself, then tried to gauge his position in relation to the center of the encampment. He chose a direction which he believed would take him directly toward the hub of the burning fires, glanced about once more to reassure himself, then moved forward with steady, measured steps. Now there could be no turning back.
What he saw, what he heard, what he experienced deep within his mind that night left an indelible print in his memory that would stay with him forever. It was like a strange, somehow elusive nightmare of sights and sounds, creatures and shapes from another time and place-things that never were in and could never belong to his own world, and yet had been cast onto it like so much driftwood from an endless sea. Perhaps it was the night and the wafting smoke from the hundreds of dying fires that clouded his normal senses and created this dreamlike experience. Perhaps, too, it was the aftereffect of a tired, frightened mind that had never conceived of the existence of such creatures, nor imagined their number could be so vast.
The night passed in slow minutes and endless hours as the little Valeman wound his way through the giant encampment, shielding his face from the light of the fires as he moved steadily forward, his eyes searching, studying and always looking further. Cautiously, he picked his tortured way over thousands of sleeping bodies huddled close to the flames,