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weapon. What truth could be powerful enough to destroy a being that could summon monsters from the
netherworld? What truth was sufficient to counter magic powerful enough to keep a creature alive for
hundreds of years? It seemed ludicrous to think that truth alone was sufficient for anything. Fire was
needed. Iron, sharp-edged and poison rioped. Strength that could split rocks asunder. Nothing less
would do he kept thinking even as he sought to embrace the magic Bremen offered. Nothing less.
Now, riding the battlefield with the Sword of Shannara strapped to his side, his Elven Hunters buoyed
by the euphoria of their victory, he wondered anew at the enormity of the responsibility he had been
given to fulfill. Sooner or later he would have to face the Warlock Lord. But that would not happen until
he forced a confrontation, and that in turn would not happen until the Northland army itself was
threatened. How could he hope to bring such a thing about? For while the Elves had held against one
assault, there was nothing to say that they would be able to hold against another, and another, and
another after that the Northland army coming on relentlessly. And if they did somehow manage to
hold, how could he turn the tide of battle so that the Elves could take the offensive? There were so many
of the enemy, he kept thinking. So many lives to expend and no thought being given to the waste of it. It
was not so for him and not so for the Elves who fought for him. This was a war of attrition, and that
was exactly the kind of war he could not hope to win.
Yet somehow he must. For that was all that was left to him.
That was the only choice he had been given.
He must, or the Elves would be destroyed.
The Northland army came again an hour before sunset, appearing out of the scorched, dusty,
smoke-shrouded grasslands like disembodied wraiths. Foot soldiers marched in behind massive shields
constructed of wood so green it would not burn. Cavalry rode their flanks to ward against attacks from
the cliffs north and south. They advanced slowly and steadily out of the haze, the grass fires having
burned themselves out earlier, though the air was still acrid and raw. They skirted the charred pits and
their crumpled dead, and once inside the valley they began to probe for new traps. Five thousand strong,
they were packed close behind their shields, and their weapons bristled at every turn. The drums beat in
steady cadence and they chanted as they marched, boots thudding, iron blades and wooden hafts
rapping in time. They brought up their siege towers and catapults and set them in place at the valley
entrance. A vast, dark mass, they rose up against the coming night until it seemed as if there were enough
of them to overrun the entire world.
Jerle Shannara had drawn his army deeper into the valley, bringing them back to a midway point
before setting their lines.
He had chosen a position where the valley began to rise toward the Rhenn s narrow western pass,
giving his Hunters the high ground on which to position themselves. His tactics necessarily changed now,
for the wind had shifted within the valley, blowing back against the defenders, and fire would,only aid the
enemy here. Nor had he ordered pits dug this deep within the valley; there would not be enough room to
maneuver his own army if he did, and besides, the enemy would be looking for them now.
Instead, he had ordered dozens of spiked barricades built, ties sharpened at both ends and lashed
crosswise to a central axle so that they resembled cylindrical pinwheels. Each was twenty feet in length
and light enough to haul forward and set in place so that the downward-pointing spikes were jammed
into the earth. These he had positioned at staggered intervals in a narrow ribbon all across the width of
the Rhenn just below his forward lines.
When the army of the Warlock Lord spilled into the valley and began its determined march forward,
the first resistance it encountered was the maze of spiked barricades. As the front ranks of the enemy
reached them, Jerle Shannara ordered his bowmen, set in lines of three behind cover along the slopes, to
loose their arrows.
The Northlanders, slowed by the barricades and unable to push them aside, could not escape. Caught
in a withering crossfire, they were killed by the dozens as they sought to crawl over, under, or past the
spikes. The cavalry tried to mount a sustained charge against the Elves positioned on the heights, but the
slopes were too steep for horses and the Northland riders were swept down again.
Screams rose from the dying, and the attack stalled. The Northlanders hid behind their shields, but
they could not advance their cover beyond the Elven barricades. Axes were brought up to hew through
the barricades, but those who rushed out to chop apart the spiked pinwheels lasted only moments.
Worse, to break past even one of the barricades required cutting it through in a dozen places.
The light failed, dusk descended, and the world turned shadowy and uncertain. The Northlanders
brought fire to the barricades and set some ablaze, but the Elves had purposely made them of green
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