It had been a bitter running fight. Within a half hour of their fleeing the camp the first attack had swept up behind them and repeated assaults had hit throughout the day. There would be a break in the fighting, his men pulling back a few hundred more yards, weaving their way up the switchbacking trail, then another attack would come, there would be a pause, followed by a another pull back. Bovai's forces had paid a terrible price to press the fleeing humans. All of their human mercenaries were either dead or wounded, and the moredhel were now without any cavalry support.

Now that the switchbacks were behind them, all that was saving them was the fact that the path they were on was little more than a goat-track climbing straight up, reaching up past the tree-line. It was impossible for the enemy to flank or get ahead in such terrain as long as he slowly kept retreating: the trick was to disengage from the battle at the right moment and he could see that it was almost time to do it again.

He looked around. The mountain continued to soar upwards behind him for another half a thousand feet or more; the problem now was what he had feared for the last hour. The trail was giving out. It was all bare rock above – the thick tangle of stunted trees and bushes which had helped to secure their flanks had all but disappeared. With their backs to the top of the mountain the only tactic left was to deploy up into the boulders and make a final stand.

Looking around, he saw no sight of Tinuva or Gregory: it was as if they had simply vanished. He knew that Gregory had deliberately been keeping the elf away from the fight, pushing him forward to scout. It was strange, though, for them to have simply vanished at a time like this and it made him uneasy. He looked back down the trail and could see that the battle was again getting desperate: a column of goblins was forming up, shields forward and overhead, advancing from behind to charge past the beleaguered trolls and moredhel.

He slipped back down the trail, losing the hundred yards he had just so painfully climbed, dodging behind a boulder when several arrows came winging up from below, arcing up high and then plunging down.

The Tsurani were skilfully holding the path, deployed into squads of five-man units. Each unit would battle for several minutes, then they'd fall back, retiring to the rear and the next squad would engage. To either side of the trail, wherever it was possible to gain a foothold and a little concealment, Kingdom archers covered the approaches and acted as skirmishers to secure the flanks. Though he would never say it out loud, the two sides were working together seamlessly in this fight, both playing to their strengths, supporting each other, and several times he had seen a Kingdom or Tsurani soldier help pull someone from the other side out of a close scrape.

The one-eyed Tsurani had even carried in a Kingdom soldier knocked senseless by a troll's club.

Within the first hour the moredhel had learned their bitter lesson and were now holding back after losing at least a dozen to the human archers who had every advantage of higher ground and a wind at their backs. Throughout most of the morning they had taken to driving their human and goblin allies forward for the bloody frontal assaults on the Tsurani infantry.

Not that the fight had been all one-sided: seven Kingdom and twelve Tsurani were dead, and a dozen more were wounded. As Dennis continued his slide down the path he passed Corwin who was marshalling the effort to keep the wounded moving, and given the nature of the fight on such a narrow front Dennis had finally agreed to detail off fifteen men to lend him assistance.

Slipping up behind Asayaga, who was in the second rank, Dennis grabbed him by the shoulder. 'You can't see it from here but around the corner of the trail a goblin column's getting set to charge,' he gasped. 'Get ready to pull everyone back.'

Asayaga grunted an acknowledgment.

His forward line was waiting with shields lowered. No one had approached through the switchback below them for several minutes.

Asayaga barked a command.

No one moved.

Dennis, turned and started back up the path. The Tsurani knew what they were doing and Dennis realized it was best to get out of the way.

He heard a grunting moan, one of the guttural battle-chants of the goblins. The head of their column came around the bend in the trail, shields up.

Asayaga called out another command. Some of the men around him started to back up. Asayaga said a single word and more, began to back up. The goblins nervously edged forward.

Suddenly the front rank of Tsurani broke completely, turned and bolted, a few of the men casting aside goblin shields they had picked up earlier in the fight. Soon the entire Tsurani unit was churning up the pathway, men shouting in alarm and panic.

The forward line of goblins cautiously lowered their shields, a few barked out taunts and began to come forward, and within seconds the entire goblin column was in hot pursuit, all semblance of order broken.

Dennis, legs trembling so that he felt he might collapse, pressed on up the path, the fleetest of the Tsurani already sprinting past him. He felt a hand grab him by the elbow as if to help pull him along and he shrugged it off. He caught glimpses of his own men falling back along either side of the narrow trail, more than one of them looking nervously at Dennis.

Straight ahead the trail all but gave out and Dennis reached the spot where he had stood only minutes before. This time he was down on his knees, gasping for air. His men had made this climb only once, but he had been up and down every step of the way, moving back and forth as the running battle ebbed and flowed. In spite of Asayaga's offer for him to sleep first, he had not laid his head down the entire night, but instead had stood watch, agreeing with Tinuva to the elf's plan to go forward as a scout and as a first warning, and then he had waited tensely for hours for the horn call that would be the alarm for them to move.

The world seemed to be out of focus. It was difficult to see, for fleeing Tsurani troops were all around him. Through a gap in their ranks he saw the swarm of goblins coming up the trail less than twenty yards away.

Asayaga shouted out a command and miraculously every Tsurani soldier fell into place, assuming his proper place in line and file. In an instant the Tsurani were charging and in spite of Dennis's orders several of his men slammed arrows into the disorganized goblin ranks, while his light skirmishers swarmed to either side of the trail.

The Tsurani hit the goblins like a battering ram, bowling over the forward ranks, sending their dying bodies crashing backwards, while Kingdom troops swarmed in on the flanks.

The slaughter was horrifying: within seconds a score of goblins were dead, or gasping out their last breaths and the rest were running in panic back down the hill.

Asayaga emerged from the ranks, a grin lighting his features as he staggered up the last few steps of the trail to stand before Dennis.

'Stupid creatures, you would think the same trick would not work twice.'

Dennis nodded in agreement.

Asayaga looked past him and his features dropped. 'The trail. What now?'

'We go up into the rocks.'

'I thought there was a pass?'

Dennis did not reply.

From further down the mountain it did indeed look as if there was a pass, but that had only led them though the first layer of the mountain range; this higher second barrier had been concealed beyond. It was territory he had never ventured into and even Gregory had seemed a bit off-balance at first when they had glimpsed the higher range beyond. Only Tinuva had pushed onward without comment.

'Where are the elf and the Natalese?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know? So what are we to do?'