Of course, the best thing would be to find Tasha and Tenerife, give his report, and get out of there. But he was astute enough to realize that it might not be simple to do that. Unless he was badly mistaken, the Orullians would be right in the thick of the fighting.

Donning his gear, shouldering the bow and arrows, and pulling the visor of his helmet down over his face to conceal his youthful features, he set out for the defensive wall. Mingling with a couple of other Elven Hunters, he went up behind them on one of the ladders and then followed them down the other side. No one said anything. He was tall enough to pass for one of them with the vest and helmet in place. He kept his head down and his feet moving, acting as if he had someplace to go and no time to stop and talk.

Luck was with him. He cleared the wall and the chaos he encountered just beyond and continued up the defile with a handful of others. The clash of weapons and the shouts and screams of combatants rose from somewhere ahead, beyond what he could see. Streams of Elven Hunters passed one another coming from and going toward the fighting, and the ferocity of the sounds made Xac Wen turn cold inside. He knew he was in over his head, that he had never fought in a real battle and had no training for doing so. He might have imagined what it would be like, but already he could tell that the reality would be something else entirely.

Just stay calm, he told himself. Don’t panic.

But when he was through all the twists and turns, facing toward the far end of the pass from atop a narrow ridge of high ground and listening to the sounds of the madness that lay beyond, all his resolve turned to water.

The Elves had built defenses across the mouth of the pass, elevated bulwarks and shields staggered at twenty-foot intervals to provide a broken, jagged wall that could not be scaled by a large attacking force without first breaking it up into smaller units. Defenders could stand at these walls and contain a much stronger force because there was no good way to physically muscle through without facing withering crossfire from bows and arrows and spears, darts and slings and javelins, with every step.

Beyond, on slopes that fell away from Aphalion’s narrow entrance to the plains and hills of the old world, the Elves were fighting to keep the Trolls from gaining even that much of a foothold, arranged in lines across the approaches, their numbers three and four deep, with spears at the forefront, bowmen and slingers behind, and swordsmen to back them up. They occupied all the best defensive positions, deeply entrenched in clusters of boulders and behind shallow ridgelines.