Elven Queen by Bernhard Hennen

Author:Bernhard Hennen [Hennen, Bernhard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542094054
Published: 2019-06-10T22:00:00+00:00

OF FORGOTTEN HEROES

Built to last centuries, lost in days.” Many today speak thus of Phylangan. But those who do are mainly proud young warriors who were not there in the days when the city fell. They have no idea of the lonely courage of those who fought with all their might against the inevitable.

Ollowain, the keeper of the Shalyn Falah, is remembered. He was always to be found where the blades sang their lethal chorus. His calm humor gave strength to those whose sentry duty seemed endless.

But there were so many others whose names today resound on nobody’s lips.

There was Gondoran, the holde, and the master of waters from far-off Vahan Calyd, a friend of Prince Orimedes, who fought a solitary battle in the darkness and yet remained unknown though he gave the stone garden its final victory.

Forgotten, too, is that human of honorable blood and rude tongue who, with his men, demolished tunnels and filled passageways with stones to deny the trolls a way to reach the Sky Harbor. And though they were so exhausted they could hardly raise their picks, not one of the humans shied from the fray when the superior enemy broke through yet again. No one will ever know where they found their courage, for the only recompense they could expect were the scars they carried on their mortal bodies.

There were four large gold gates in the wide tunnel that led beyond the Skyhall to the remaining harbor. The tunnel had been built so that even the largest of our ice gliders, with its masts lowered, could pass through the mountain from one harbor to the other. Today, the final battles fought in Phylangan are named after those gates. They were the Gate of the Garden, which opened to the Skyhall; the Lily Gate at the necropolis, where those who had failed to find their way into the moonlight rested, enclosed in ice; the Old Gate, close to Landoran’s royal palace; and the Sky Gate, the last stronghold before the remaining harbor.

Each of the gates cost the trolls a day to destroy with battering rams and axes. And when they had broken through a gate, each step of the path ahead had to be paid for with blood.

The defenders fought from behind hastily built barricades or slipped away through narrow tunnels only to reappear through concealed drop-gates and surprise the attackers on their flanks. They drove the burning hulls of ice gliders down the sloping tunnel toward the trolls, and sent flames and smoke at them with enormous bellows brought from the forges in the blacksmiths’ halls.

For twenty-two days they fought, those warriors. They had been given a week at best. Then the trolls at last destroyed the Sky Gate.

A counterattack by riders, led by Orimedes and his centaurs, pushed the surprised enemy back a final time. But we all knew that the time had come to abandon the stone garden. The survivors drew lots to decide who would stay behind to buy a few precious hours for the rest to get away.

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