Curse of the Spider King (14 page)

T
ravin led his warriors through the underground network of Berinfell's sewer tunnels. Scores of torches cast flickering shadows against the brick walls, and every sound echoed faintly. Even though they were only thirty to forty feet down, it felt like they were miles beneath the surface. The flet soldiers sloshed through the mire, stirring up a horrendous smell . . . the reeking by-products of every teeming city.

Finding the way north to the marketplace had not been difficult, as the largest pipelines followed the main avenues above. But going farther south, away from population centers, the tunnels narrowed. They had to stoop as they trod along, and of course, it was much more difficult to move with all the additional layers of clothing they now had on.

Despite the clothing, they were chilled to the bone, exhausted, and reeking of sewer filth. The men arrived at a large metal grate where the refuse continued on and fell over a ledge that plummeted into a crevice connected to the Gap in the east. Travin began searching the walls of the area, waving his torch around. “It's around here somewhere,” he muttered. He received a few odd looks from his team. “Not like I come down here every month or anything.” The soldiers who overheard him smiled, but dared not laugh out loud.

“There we go!” Travin sloshed toward a rusted iron ladder that followed the contour of the sewer wall, and climbed it to the metal grate above. Shoving his shoulder up into the bars, he loosened the cover from its seat. Making very little sound, he eased the grate to the side. Travin raised his head slowly above street level and looked for enemies. He doubted the Spider King's forces would be interested in anything this far south; all attention was clearly fixed on the east gate and Sentinel Garden.
That will have to change
, Travin thought as he clambered slowly up the ladder. And then . . . he froze.

An incredibly strong grip clutched the hair on the back of his head, and a cold blade pressed against his neck. “Felgost Gwarfrigen,” a harsh, deep voice from above growled, “Atten logas e' Feithrill! Feithrill na entracan Allyra, mara wy blakkir na vex clarisca met!”

14

Battle at the Tree Gate

W
hat?” Travin asked, in response to the ancient Elven words. His voice came out thin as the knife pressed against his throat, “I am no Wisp!” The pressure of the blade lessened. Travin swallowed, thinking he might know that gruff voice. “Vendar?” he asked. “Vendar Stonebreaker, is that you?”

“Sir?” came a tentative voice from the tunnels below. “Sir, what's wrong up there?”

Travin couldn't answer, for he was hauled by his shoulders up out of the sewer and set on his own two feet. And there, in front of him, was a longtime friend. “Beyond all hope . . . Vendar, you live!”

“Sir Travin!” The voices from below were more urgent.

“It's okay,” Travin said. “It's better than okay!” Travin clasped his friend in a crushing hug and then held him by the shoulders at arm's length. “I thought I saw you fall to a Warspider on the west wall!”

“I fell all right,” laughed Vendar. “I put my spear through the spider's torso, and the blasted creature let go of the walls. One hundred feet, we fell. I landed on its ghastly, bloated bag of a body. The thing burst beneath me like a bad wineskin. You may have noticed the uh . . . pungent aroma.”

“That I did!” Travin laughed deeply once more and hugged Vendar again. “I thought it was me from tramping around in the sewer. But I don't care—so glad am I that you live!”

Vendar was Berinfell's third flet marshall, superior to all in command except the Guardmaster and Flet Marshall Brynn. His skill at arms and aptitude for strategy had made him Berinfell's most renowned tactician. He stood with his sword in one hand and spear in the other, always preferring two weapons over the standard blade and a shield. Never defending, always attacking. His once immaculate green cloak, gilded on its fringes, was now stained and hung heavy against his jointed armor.

Travin shook his head, still in disbelief. Then his eyes narrowed and he smiled wryly. “‘Wisp, bondservant of Gwars,' you said?” Travin laughed. “‘Hear words of light. Light has come into the world, and the darkness has not overcome it'—that was very dramatic, don't you think, Vendar?”

“Using the words of Ellos, our mighty God, is the only way to inflict harm on a Wisp.”

“Still, you gave quite a speech!”

“Laugh if you want, Travin, but once you've dealt with a Wisp yourself, you won't be so smug.”

“Smug? Nay. I feared for my life! I think you nicked my neck.”

“Can't be too careful. Wisps are perilous.”

Travin's smile disappeared. Then he leaned down into the hole. “All clear,” he announced. “Those in standard battle dress, get up here now,” Travin ordered. “Those cloaked, stay put.”

A chorus of ayes rose from below.

“Cloaked?” asked Vendar. He watched as one soldier at a time poked up from the sewer hole and climbed into the street. Then the flet marshall knelt on the road and ducked his head into the hole to see for himself. His head popped up abruptly. “What in Allyra's stars—?”

“It is Grimwarden's idea,” interjected Travin. “And I could use your help.”

“I don't have to dress as a wom—”

“No, no! But yours will be the most vital task.” He took Vendar aside and explained the details.

The flet marshall's face grew ashen gray. He stepped back a pace and looked to the east. “We are that bad off, and so quickly?”

Travin nodded. “If we fail, the Elves of Allyra face extinction.”

Vendar clenched his jaw for a moment. “Then we will not fail.”

Cathar Indrook sat back in the saddle of his Warspider and smiled as he looked over the ruination of the Elves' Southern Gate. It was a shame that Overlord Varuin Khelgast had taken an Elven arrow in the eye. Of course, not such a shame. That made Cathar the new Gwar overlord, second in command only to—

“Cathar!” rasped Tyrith, the Drefid high commander. “Why do your forces linger?”

Cathar turned in his saddle. Tyrith removed his helmet. The moonlight gave the Drefid's long white hair and pale skin eerie luminescence, and his dark eyes fathomless depth. Cathar swallowed. “Sir . . . they are merely finishing off the Elven wounded. The Spider King said—”

“The Spider King said you are to pursue the enemy until every last Elf is dead. Did you miss the word
pursue
? Tell me, Cathar, what do your spies tell you about the remnant fleeing north?”

“North?” Cathar stifled a laugh. “The spies must be mistaken. We've secured the northern quarter of the city. The marketplace, the tenements, the ramparts are void of life. If any Elves survived our second wave, they would more than likely have traveled farther west, perhaps to the Forest Gate beyond the Great Hall.”

Tyrith turned his void eyes to Cathar and extended a hand, resting his long, knifelike extensions on the Gwar's shoulder. “Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Elves are at this very moment pouring up from the sewers north of the marketplace and racing for the tree gate. You did scour the sewers, didn't you, Cathar?”

Cathar felt chilling tendrils, like some icy growing thing ripple across his shoulders and down his spine.

Travin paced the cobblestoned street. He kept one eye on his warriors who filtered up from the sewer, traversed the road quickly, and vanished through the northern tree gate. Travin knew they'd march eighty yards into the trees before descending the spiral root stair and doubling back beneath the trees to the sewers.

He turned and looked impatiently to the empty streets that curved south toward the center of Berinfell. Vendar and his team had been gone too long. If they could not attract the enemy's forces . . . all would be lost.

“There they are,” Cathar muttered. He spurred his Warspider to greater speed as he watched an armed troop of Elves fleeing the desolate Berinfell marketplace. Cathar's armies: thousands of Gwar infantry, hundreds of Warspiders, and a
trivium
of Drefids had long ago forsaken stealth. Recklessly firing arrows and arc stones, they clambered across the rooftops, along the walls, and up the narrow road. Some of the Elves in the rear fell, pierced with black shafts. Others vanished in spectacular flashes of blue fire.

Cathar exulted, “Now, we'll have you!”

In an almost silent cadence, the Elves marched on the road north of the marketplace toward the tree gate.

Unexpectedly, blue flashes, punctuated by explosions, lit up the road barely a mile away. A desperate horn blew in the distance. Travin could hear screams, clashes, clangs, and thuds. Running toward the middle of the marketplace avenue, Travin saw in the firelight his kindred fleeing up the road. Following the retreating Elves, there poured an ominous, surging, indistinct black horde stretching across the horizon like the tidal waves on Allyra's tempestuous Red Coast.

Travin took an involuntary step backward. Even he was unprepared for the size of the Spider King's full invading force. Watching the oncoming threat confirmed what Travin already suspected: this battle would bring death for him and all those who dared to stand against it.

Well
,
Vendar has led them here,
he thought.
Now, will they take the bait?