Stronghold by Melanie Rawn

Author:Melanie Rawn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780886774820
Publisher: DAW
Published: 1991-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

This was Rohan’s view, as well—though for different reasons. Rialt met his Sunrunner at an inn the next afternoon, and once the woman had finished conversing with Hollis on the sunlight, it was all decided. He and Mevita and Polev would stay at Swalekeep and observe Chiana. News of Aurar’s journey to recover her father’s body had intrigued the High Prince greatly. Rialt suspected he was right, and some sort of bargain had been struck. He would wait, watch, foul Chiana’s plans in small ways if possible, and report everything to Rohan and Pol through his Sunrunner.

When he returned to the castle Rialt apologized to his wife for not having credited what she had known instinctively: that Chiana saw a chance to gain Princemarch, and didn’t mind bedding down with the barbarian enemy to do it.

\Jn the fifty-eighth day of Autumn—twenty-six since Graypearl, Gilad Seahold, and Faolain Riverport had been attacked, twenty-three since the fall of Radzyn—they found out what the wooden contraptions were for.

A score of them snaked across the Long Sand on huge, spoked wooden wheels, drawn by Radzyn horses broken through Goddess only knew what cruelty to the unfamiliar work. Heavy bits dragged at their mouths, secured by wide straps across forehead and nose; thick leather harness bound them breast and rib; reins threaded through brass guide rings to the men driving the horses.

“Do they actually plan to fight that way?” Walvis marveled as the bizarre frameworks pulled into what they assumed was a planned formation on the flat plain where battle would be fought. “Are those barriers?”

“How should I know?” Maarken rubbed his sore right wrist absently, scowling into the distance. “I don’t like this at all.”

Chay leaned his elbows on the low wall between crenella-tions, hands clasped before him and shoulders Page 209

hunkered down. “I suppose they might be obstructions of some sort, to stop our mounted soldiers...”

“Or for their troops to hide behind during our charge,” Pol contributed. A moment later he shook his head in frustration. “What in all Hells are those things? And why are so many of their men racing around gathering up the rocks they can find?”

Because we’re meant to be frightened,” Rohan mused. cast extremely nervous.” - working.” Walvis spoke dryly, but his eyes were shadowed with worry. “How do we plan a battle against something we don’t understand?”

As high, thin clouds burned away above them, they watched the unwieldy frames become something terribly logical. Wheels were blocked with large boulders while ropes were attached in various places.

From the middle of each rose an armlike pole ending in a broad hollow like a cupped palm. Ropes leading from these bowls were wound laboriously into a section of the frame, much as chains were wound to lift a drawbridge.

A tall, massively muscled warrior whose beard seemed made entirely of gold beads stood a few paces in front of the array, one arm upraised/When he swept his hand down, there was a mighty rush of air and a simultaneous thwanng from all twenty machines as the ropes’ tension was released and the empty hands flew upward.

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