“No,” she said, her attention focused toward the sounds. “Northeast, from deeper in the valley. The other two signals are from the sentries on either side of Camthantas.”
She pointed at two of her commanders, indicating they and their troops would accompany her. Glanthon would remain to defend the camp. The warriors scattered to their duties.
He jumped to his feet, face ashen in the low light. “What? I’m no warrior! And I can’t ride that beast of yours!”
“You don’t have to. I’ll go by horse.” Eagle Eye was asleep, tethered inside an angle of stone wall. He’d spent many hours in the air today and had earned a good rest.
The Lioness took Favaronas’s arm and pulled him along. “I’m sorry, but I may need your knowledge of the valley.” When be continued to babble frightened protests she whipped around and shouted into his face, “Favaronas! I need you! And I will protect you!”
In minutes forty elves, led by the Lioness, with her reluctant companion riding pillion, were cantering up the road toward Camthantas’s position. The Vale of Silence was lit only by the stars, brilliant as a thousand diamonds on a bed of ebony silk. Off to Kerian’s right, another alarm horn sounded, then another. In succession, the signals showed the source of the alarm was moving away from her and her small troop. She pressed ahead. When she reached Camthantas’s assigned position she knew something was very wrong. His horse was dead, its stomach slashed open.
“Draw swords!” Forty blades rose into the cool darkness. “First troop, deploy left; second, right! No one is to lose sight of his neighbor. At the walk, advance!”
She felt Favaronas trembling violently behind her, his hands lightly holding her waist. She was not without compassion. He was indeed no warrior. Despite this, and the deaths of his assistants, he’d not slowed them down on their difficult trek. Now he followed her into battle-perhaps not willingly, but without whining. Gruffly, she told him to stop worrying about protocol and hold on tight. His shaking hands clenched her waist.
They moved forward slowly. Her command to keep in sight of each other soon proved impossible to obey; the warriors were forced to ride around sections of walls or monoliths.
Something darted between two towering sarsens, and Favaronas let out a cry. He’d seen only a silhouette, but it was big-bigger than a horse. As he stuttered this warning, realization flooded through Kerian.
Wrenching her horse’s head around, she shouted, “The sand beast! Retreat! Retreat!”
Her words were punctuated by a nearby chorus of shouts, followed by a veritable fanfare of horns. She kicked her horse into a gallop. Favaronas yelped as he was flung backward, but his grip never loosened.
“Rally to me, by the road! Rally to me!”
The forty elves converged on their general. Several confirmed her fears. They’d seen the reptilian monster. Arrows were nocked. The horses shied and snorted. They could smell the sand beast.
And then it was upon them, zigzagging through the ancient stones with unbelievable agility and speed. Bows creaked, strings sang, and arrows sped at the monster. Every one glanced off.
The Lioness drew a bead on the monster’s eye, but it moved so fast her arrow flashed through empty air. The sand beast charged among the elves, throwing its horned head this way and that. The horses’ mad panic made it hard for their riders to avoid the beast’s rush. Horses and elves tumbled to the ground. It leaped upon one struggling pair, savaging them. All the while arrows bounced off its armored hide.
“How can we kill this thing?” Kerian shouted desperately.
One horse, braver than its fellows, lashed out at the bloodthirsty beast. With iron-shod hooves coming directly at its eyes, the monster backed up, bumping against a standing stone. The eighteen-foot monolith shifted.
Favaronas, clinging to Kerian’s back, saw this, and it gave him an idea. “General, look!” he shouted, pounding her shoulder with the side of one hand. “The stone is loose! If we topple it—!”
She began issuing orders before he’d even finished. While most of the troop fought to keep the monster where it was, fourteen elves, dismounted, gathered on the other side of the stone to push.
The attackers charged, launching arrows at the sand beast’s head. The creature was forced to blink every time an arrow flew at its eyes. Hips against the monolith, it shook its head from side to side and screeched with frustrated fury.
“Now!” Kerian cried.
Fourteen elves threw themselves on the tottering spire. it gave a little, and the sand beast obligingly stepped forward when it felt the cold stone nudge its back. The attackers pressed in, harder, and the sand beast fell back, rocking the stone backward and loosening it further.
“Again!”
