Terry Brooks - First King of Shannara

She sat him down some yards away from where the other members of the company were sleeping, choosing a dry spot beneath an oak where the thickness of the grass offered some comfort. She removed the brace of long knives, the short sword, and the ash bow she carried, looking altogether too fragile and young to be bearing such weapons, and sat next to him.

“Can’t sleep, Tay?” she asked quietly, squeezing his arm.

He folded his long legs before him and shook his head. “Where have you been?”

“Here and there.” She brushed the rain from her face and smiled. “You didn’t see me, did you?”

He gave her a rueful look. “What do you think? Do you enjoy shortening people’s lives by scaring them so? If I wasn’t able to sleep before, how will I ever be able to sleep now?”

She suppressed a laugh. “I expect you will manage. You are a Druid after all, and Druids can manage anything. Take heart from Jerle. He sleeps like a baby all the time. He refuses to stay awake, even when I would have it otherwise.”

She blinked, realizing what she had implied, and looked quickly away. After a moment, she said, “Kipp has gone on ahead to the Sarandanon to make certain that the horses and supplies are ready. I came back to tell you about the Gnome Hunters.”

He looked sharply at her, waiting. “Two large parties,” she continued, “both north of us. There might be more. There are a lot of tracks. I don’t think they know about us. Yet. But we need to be careful.”

“Can you tell what they are doing here?”

She shook her head. “Hunting, I would guess. The pattern of their tracks suggests as much. They are keeping close to the Kensrowe, north of the grasslands. But they may not stay there, especially if they learn about us.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking it through. He could feel her waiting him out, studying his face in the gloom. Amid the sleepers, a snore turned into a cough, and a bundled form shifted.

Rain fell in a slow patter, a soft backdrop against the black.

“Did you see any of the Skull Bearers?” he asked finally.

She shook her head once more. “No.”

“Strange tracks of any kind?”

“No.”

He nodded, hoping that was indicative of something. Perhaps the Warlock Lord had left his monsters at home. Perhaps Gnome Hunters were all they faced.

She shifted beside him, rising to her knees. “Give Jerle my report, Tay. I have to go back out.”

“Now?”

“Now is better than later if you want to keep the wolf from the door.” She grinned. “Do you remember that saying? You used it all the time when you were talking about going to Paranor and becoming a Druid. It was your way of saying you would protect us, the poor, homebound friends you were leaving behind.”

“I remember.” He took her arm. “Are you hungry?”

“I’ve eaten already.”

“Why not stay until dawn?”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to give your report to Jerle yourself?”

She studied him a moment, reflecting on something. “What I want is for you to give it for me. Will you do that?”

The tone of her voice had changed. She was not open to a discussion on this. He nodded wordlessly and took his hand away.

She rose, strapped the knives and sword back in place, took up the bow, and gave him a quick smile. “You think about what you just asked of me, Tay,” she said.

She slipped back into the gloom, and a moment later she was gone. Tay sat where he was for a time, considering what she had said, then climbed to his feet to wake Jerle.

Rain fell all the following day, a steady downpour. The company continued on through the forest, keeping watch for Gnomes, staying alert to everything. The hours passed slowly, sunrise easing toward sunset, the whole of the day marked by graying half-light filtered through banks of clouds and water-laden boughs. Travel was slow and monotonous. They came upon no one in the woods. In the sodden gloom, nothing moved.

Night came and went, and neither Preia Starle nor Retten Kipp returned. By dawn of the third day, the company was nearing the Sarandanon. The rain had stopped and the skies had begun to clear. Sunlight peeked through gaps in the departing clouds, narrow shafts of light come out of the bright blue. The air wanned, and the earth began to steam and bake.

In a clearing bright with sunlight on spring wildflowers, they came upon Preia Starle’s ash bow, broken and muddied. There was no other sign of the Elf girl.

But the boot prints of Gnome Hunters were everywhere.

The daylight was fading and darkness edging out of the Anar as the last of the Warlock Lord’s vast army spilled from the Jannisson Pass onto the grasslands of the northern Rabb. It had taken all day for the army to come down out of the Streleheim, for the Jannisson was narrow and winding and the army encumbered by a train of pack animals, baggage, and wagons that stretched for nearly two miles when set end to end.

The fighting men moved at varying rates, the cavalry swift and eager astride their horses, the light infantry, bowmen, and slingers slower, and the heavily armored foot soldiers slower still. But none of the army’s various components was as plodding or trouble-plagued as the pack train, which lumbered through the pass with an agonizing lack of progress, stopped every few minutes by broken wheels and axles, by the constant need for an untangling of traces and the watering of animals, and by collisions, mix-ups, and traffic jams of all sorts.

It gave Risca, watching from the concealment of the Dragon’s Teeth half a mile to the south, a grim sense of satisfaction. Anything to slow the dark ones, he kept thinking. Anything to delay their hateful progress south toward his homeland.

Trolls made up the greater part of the army, stolid, thickskinned, and virtually featureless, looking more like beasts than like men. The largest and most fierce were the Rock Trolls, averaging well over six feet in height and weighing several hundred pounds. They formed the core of the army, and their disciplined, precision-executed march testified to their efficiency in battle.

Other Trolls were there mostly to fill the gaps. Gnomes dominated the cavalry and light infantry, the small, wiry fighters a tribal race like the Trolls though less skilled and more poorly trained. They served in the army of the Warlock Lord for two reasons. First and foremost, they were terrified of magic, and the Warlock Lord’s magic exceeded anything they had believed possible. Second and only slightly less compelling, they knew what had happened when the larger, fiercer, and better armed Trolls had tried to resist, and they had quickly decided to jump to the winning side before the decision was made for them.

Then there were the creatures that had no name, beings brought over from the netherworld, things come out of the black pits to which they had been consigned in centuries past, freed now through the Warlock Lord’s magic. In daylight, they stayed cloaked and hooded, indistinct shapes in the shifting, swirling dust of the march, outcasts by breeding and common consent. But as the twilight descended and the shadows lengthened, they began to shed their concealments and reveal themselves— terrible, misshapen monsters that all avoided. Among them were the Skull Bearers, the winged hunters that served as Brona’s right arm. Men themselves once, the Skull Bearers were Druids who had tested the magic too frequently and deeply and been subverted. These last took flight now, lifting off into the dying light to begin casting about for prey to feed their hunger.

And in the center of all, set squarely amid the hordes that swept it inexorably onward like a raft on storm-tossed waters, was the huge, black, silk-covered litter that bore the Warlock Lord himself. Thirty Trolls carried it forward through the army’s ranks, its coverings impenetrable in the brightest light, its iron stays studded with barbs and razors, its pennants emblazoned with white skulls.