The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,95

wizard lifted fatigue-blackened eyes.

"Could you get us to the center of the Nest from here?"

The old man wiped at the blood that trickled into his beard, his sleeve leaving a smear of charred slime on his cheek. "I could," he said quietly. "But not out again. The tunnels get fewer as they descend. I can take us out of here-I think- from where we are now. Deeper in, it would take very little to trap the entire army."

Alwir appeared to be considering.

Rudy added. "And it wouldn't do any good, anyway, I tell you! The Dark Ones can make the air explode!"

"Don't be stupid," Alwir snapped irritably.

"He ain't being stupid," Tirkenson put in unexpectedly. "That's just what it looked like happened. The flame throwers went off, and it looked as if all the air in the cavern caught fire. I lost my eyebrows; if I'd been two steps closer, I'd have lost my life."

The Chancellor's mouth hardened. Before he could speak, however, another explosion shook the ground, a hollow roaring followed by the rending crack of stone and a ground wave that jerked Rudy's feet from under him and threw him, staggering, into the Gettlesand troops in the cavern below. Wet dust and fumes rolled from the tunnel's darkness, and from the warriors in the cavern came another cry as the Dark Ones streamed down upon them again.

The retreat from the Nest was a nightmare. Dazzled by the blinding alternation of light and darkness, his smarting sword arm aching and weak where it had been wrenched, Rudy clung to the little knot of Guards that surrounded the fallen King's makeshift litter as it crawled through that chattering storm of malice, acid, and death. He recalled what Ingold had said once back at the Keep-that he had no hope of defeating the Dark, but would go and hazard his own life once again within the Nest in order that as many survivors as possible might be saved. It was only now that Rudy understood fully what this meant.

It was Ingold who held the blazing barriers of light against the pressing darkness, Ingold who, when the light was swamped, stood foremost in the line of defenders, his sword a chill splinter of brightness in the smothering murk. He left them twice, taking squads of men back into the deeper tunnels to reunite pockets of warriors who had been cut off from the main column, and it seemed to Rudy that their forward progress slowed to a crawl until he returned.

In the tunnels, the going was worse, and the ground was choked with the bodies of the slain. The battle had spread, as rockslides and explosions had cut the column; out of winding, crossing shafts in the blackness, Rudy could hear the din of voices and see the white magelight flaring, reflected in the unspeakable muck of the floors and against the dripping walls. In some places the way was blocked by fires, as pockets of the brown moss burned with a searing, yellow glare; in other places Rudy could see the evidence of the gas traps-shattered, twisted corpses and weapons melted in the heat. Once Ingold vanished, to come back up the tunnel at the head of a column of black-skinned warriors from the deepest jungles of Alketch, their eyes glaring whitely through the charred blood that covered their faces.

And always there were the Dark, tearing at the edges of the column when it passed through open spaces or streaming down from the fissures in the roof to swamp the light of the wizards in the close-pressed confines of the tunnels. Rudy wondered dully why he didn't simply hide himself in a cloaking-spell. The mere effort to maintain even a grayish light exhausted him and slowed his reflexes, so that he could barely lift the sword. Yet somehow he never gave in to the temptation.

He saw Gil go down when the Dark Ones blew the roof of the tunnel almost over their heads and saw the other Guards pick her up, with blood streaming from her snarled black hair. In another seared-out gas trap, he recognized the body of the Raider shaman Shadow of the Moon, but only by the bones tangled in the crisped remains of her braids. He wondered how many other mages had perished.

Exhaustion blinded him and confused him; how Ingold kept his sense of direction in the black mazes of the tunnels, Rudy could not imagine. Rockslides and cave-ins turned them aside. They scrambled over broken boulders still hot