Paul Kemp - Realms of War

Jotharam slipped into the narrow gap. He heard Calmora mutter, "By Tyr! Where'd the kid go?"

"In here," Jotharam whispered.

He stood in a space no more than three feet on a side; at least, so his memory told him; it was almost completely dark. He reached out and brushed the cold iron rungs his hands remembered.

"There's a ladder," Jotharam said to the archer, who was trying to fit his larger body through the narrow gap. Jotharam grasped the first rung and climbed several feet, "It goes all the way to the top!"

"Quite a climb, then," said the archer's silhouette below him.

"Yes, it is," replied Jotharam, recalling how he and his friends used to rest halfway up the vertical expanse by threading ropes through the rungs and their belts. They would tie off to hang without effort until their arms ceased aching and their breathing slowed.

He began the ascent in earnest, feeling for one cool iron rung, then the next in the stygian darkness. He was careful to find his footing each time before he pulled himself to the next rung. When he craned to look behind him, he could just make out Sarshel's lights through the narrow gap where the vertical cornice didn't quite pinch the space containing the ladder into its own perpendicular tunnel.

The quiet sounds of the lord archer and Calmora ascending floated up beneath him, ringing with the slightest echo despite their relative silence. The odor of rancid standing water also filled the crevice-rain must have found someplace to pool. He hoped he wouldn't accidentally shove his hand into a stag shy;nant, muck-filled fissure in the tower's face.

At five stories his breath was rasping, and his arms burned. No doubt he was stronger than the last time he'd climbed the rungs as a child, but on the other hand he weighed more now than at age ten. Nor had steel armor tried to drag him off the rungs at every step with its extra weight.

Jotharam paused and rested by hanging off his rung from his armpits. Not really that comfortable, but he had no rope.

A hand brushed his foot below. He whispered, "Hold on, I have to rest."

The lord archer's voice floated up, ''Time is not our ally."

The adolescent nodded, realized the archer couldn't see him, and said aloud, "Just a few moments. Otherwise I'll fall and take the lot of you with me."

"A moment, then," agreed the lord archer. Then, "Your discovery of this side route to the top could make all the difference. Tell me, son, what did Calmora say your name was?

"Jotharam. Jotharam Feor." In the face of the archer's sudden compliment, he recalled his courtly manners, and added, "I am honored to make your acquaintance, Lord."

The man chuckled, "I'm no lord when out in the field. I'm a soldier, same as you."

The archer, not realizing Jotharam's true status, unintentionally paid him an even greater compliment. Pride opened a new reservoir of strength he'd doubted heartbeats earlier.

"I feel better now. I'm ready to go all the way to the top.

"Very good," said the lord archer.

From farther below, he heard Calmora mutter, "I needed the rest, too, Joth. But upward and onward, aye?"

Jotharam said, "There's a space at the top where we can all rest again," and renewed the climb.

Pride or no, when he finally pulled himself over the lip at the ladder's apex, the nausea of exhaustion threatened to loose the contents of his stomach.

Memory told him the ladder emptied into a chamber some eight feet on a side, a minor sublevel immediately below the tower's main observation level above. A series of narrow steps along the inner side of the chamber led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. He and his friends had always been too afraid to try to open it, lest their truancy so far beyond Sarshel be discovered and punished.

"Jotharam?" came a bare whisper. "Can we risk a bit of light?"

"Yes," he huffed, hoping the sound of his panting couldn't be heard in the chamber above.

A tiny blue glow appeared like twilight's first star, then swelled to the luminosity of a candle. Jotharam had to shade his eyes from the glare. The light emanated from a silver piece held by the lord archer. A hole pierced the silver disc, and a leather thong ran through it. In his other hand, the archer held a small bag from which he had apparently pulled the ensorcelled coin.

The illumination revealed a space very similar to Jotharam's memory of it, though it was smaller than he'd recalled, and the narrow stone stairs along the inner wall of the chamber were steeper, and. . something wet dripped down from the trapdoor they led to.

"What-?"

"Blood, of your countrymen, no doubt," said the archer. "The goblins eradicated the sentinels. Let us go quietly, and pay back the goblin assassins in similar coin."

Calmora pulled her sword from the sheath at her belt as she ascended the narrow stair. Jotharam heaved himself off his hands and knees and pulled out his short sword, knowing that without training, he could contribute little.

The lord archer hung the glowing coin around his neck from its thong, then moved to stand next to Calmora. They looked up at the blood-stained trapdoor, only half a foot over their heads. The archer whispered to the soldier, "Precede me, and if you can, clear a bit of space so I can fire my bow. Tyr willing, we shall take them by surprise."

Calmora pulled back on the latch that held the panel in place, producing a slight squeal. Without waiting to see if the noise produced any reaction from above, she put both hands over her head and slammed the trapdoor open. Calmora pulled herself upward, and with a leg up from the lord archer, vaulted up and out into the observation level.

Even as the lord archer swarmed after Calmora, a guttural cry of alarm pealed from somewhere above. A shadow passed across the face of the open trapdoor, then came a metallic clang. Several more oafish voices shouted, and amid those cries, Jotharam could hear Calmora's voice, "For Imphras! For your deaths!"

Jotharam ran up the stairs and looked up. The lord archer stood right above, his booted toes overhanging the trap shy;door. His bow delivered a steady stream of fletched death to enemies Jotharam couldn't see. With each shaft fired, he uttered its number.

When the archer turned slightly to get a better lead on his next target, Jotharam jumped and managed to get his fingers over the trapdoor's lip.

He'd have to pull himself up without help. After the grueling climb, he wondered if he had the strength to gain the observation level without help. He grunted, contracting his arms, and with a sudden lunge, got an elbow over the edge. After that, he was able to swing up a leg and scramble up out of the hole.

A great device on iron legs squatted in the very center of the observation level. It seemed composed of crystal, glass, and iron, though many of its parts were ripped from their housings and scattered on the floor. Jotharam hoped it wasn't the Wardlight Calmora had mentioned earlier in the bunker dugout, though he supposed it had to be.

Besides the Wardlight, several crumpled and broken forms lay clumped about the open-walled chamber. A few wore the uniforms of Sarshel and must have been the sentinels the hobgoblins murdered.

All the rest were dead or dying hobgoblins and goblins, many with terrible slashes still welling blood, others with arrows jutting from their chests, necks, and heads.

Several figures struggled perilously close to the edge. One was Calmora. She simultaneously struggled with three ene shy;mies, two man-sized hobgoblins and a hairy-looking beast nearly the size of an ogre.

"Seventy-three, seventy-two," said the lord archer, then, "Calmora!"

Calmora looked up even as the near-ogre dashed forward, arms to each side, its legs pumping toward a lethal speed. She tried to leap away but stumbled on a dead goblin lying behind her. Calmora's attacker smashed into her without slowing.