“I didn’t know what to do when Prue disappeared, so I came here. I can go look for them some more, but I don’t know where to start. Tasha, it’s not my fault that this happened!”

Tasha nodded grimly. “No one said it was.” He looked at his brother. “I don’t think we can help them just now. And I don’t want to send this boy off on his own searching.”

“No, this will have to wait,” Tenerife agreed.

Shouts came from the defenses. The Trolls had broken through the last defenders stationed outside the mouth of the pass and were advancing in force.

Tasha glanced over his shoulder at the dark forms closing on their position. “Too many for us to stop. We have to draw back to the larger wall and hope that holds. Come, Tenerife. Let’s do what we can. Xac Wen, you get out of here right now. All the way out. Back behind the walls at the head of the pass. Now, you little guttersnipe!”

The boy took off at a run, not daring to challenge Tasha face-to-face. But as soon as he had gone a short distance, he stopped and looked back. The Elven Hunters at the defenses, Tasha and Tenerife among them, had formed up in a defensive line to stop the Drouj advance. Already, the boy could see the dark armored forms advancing on the pass, coming through the last of the outer defenses, scrambling over them and through the ravines and gullies, forming up their attack lines for a final surge. Already the boy could tell that when that surge came, it would sweep the Elven defenders away like dead leaves.

But the Elves had realized this as well and were prepared for it. Forming ranks three men deep, they notched arrows to their longbows, lined themselves across the width of the pass, and in sustained volleys fired into the Troll lines. The pull required to draw an Elven longbow was immense, and the velocity and force of the shaft once released massive. Xac Wen had seen Tasha put an arrow all the way through a tree trunk a foot in diameter. So when the arrows were released into the armored ranks of the Trolls, they went right through the protective metal to the flesh beneath. The Trolls died in clusters, impaled repeatedly. The Elves fell back, formed up, and fired into the enemy ranks again.

But the Trolls kept coming, using shields to absorb or deflect some of the arrows, keeping their ranks filled with new bodies as dead and wounded fell by the wayside. They had seen most of what there was in the way of defensive tactics in their time as soldiers, and they were not about to let the Elven bowmen stop them now.

On they came, and slowly but steadily, the Elves gave ground.