But Xac Wen, with no formal training or tactical experience in the art of war, could already tell that none of this was going to be enough to stop the Drouj.

To begin with, there were thousands of them, outnumbering the Elves defending Aphalion Pass, and they were armored and bearing huge axes and eight-foot spears. They had battering rams and covered wooden shelters that rolled along on wheels to protect against attacks from the Elven longbows. They were formed up in squares and wedges, shields linked together, their attack fronts bristling with steep tips and long oak shafts to keep their enemies at bay while they skewered them. The foremost of these formations were already heavily engaged with Elf skirmishers, and their relentless, steady advance was pushing back the Elves and trampling them underfoot. Bodies lay everywhere across the slopes, and even though the uphill march was a struggle requiring enormous strength and endurance, many more Elves lay dead than Trolls.

Xac Wen watched as bowmen sent fire arrows into the battering rams, but the fires were quickly quenched with buckets of water and heavy pieces of canvas. Ravines and tangled clumps of deadwood stopped some of the siege machines, and sustained volleys from the Elven longbows slowed others. But overall, the attack was pressing ahead and gaining ground.

Before much longer, it would reach the defenders in the pass. On their right flank, the attackers were nearly to the first of the shields that stretched across the Aphalion’s heavily defended mouth.

Pushing forward to the wall itself, the boy crowded in beside Elven Hunters already in place and scanned the lines of attacking Trolls and the Elves resisting them.

That was when he caught sight of the Orullian brothers.

Mounting a counterattack, Tasha and Tenerife were leading a heavily armed contingent of Elven swordsmen from a split in the rocks perhaps a hundred yards downslope from the pass into the teeth of the nearest square. Where they had come from was anybody’s guess, but the boy supposed they must have found their way there by scaling the cliff walls inside the mouth of the pass and then descending again somewhere outside. What mattered was that they had managed it and were making a desperate effort to block the Drouj advance.

Xac Wen almost went over the wall in response to the rush of excitement that momentarily pushed aside his fear and fed him with a sudden, impetuous courage. But the realization that he lacked any weapon for close-in fighting stopped him from what would have been a foolish decision, and instead he drew back and held his position.