From her perch at the top of the draw she studied the strange cloud that rose up from the coast as if a god of the sea reached forth to wipe away the interlopers. The first crack of thunder fell lightly and rolled over the land like the clatter of a stone bouncing down the white mountain's face. Behind her faraway thunderheads crowded and silvered the sun. It glared between them as if jealous of their power. In an hour it would set and rush toward dawn to see what they'd wrought.

A familiar voice said, "Aimin te set there all night?"

"If I have te."

"There's an evil lookin storm whippin up aways west."

"Aye I know it."

"Everythin it drops is goin te run straight through the bottom of this draw like an avalanche. Ye thought about that?"

"Aye."

"Alright then."

She watched the stormfront's shadow creep toward the orcs' position and listened to its first winds reconnoiter routes for those following and smelled the wet they carried. Her [longarm] rested on the edge of her perch with her powder flask of nak ivory beside it and each waxed and wrapped cartridge of black powder and lead shot carefully lined up about a foot back from the edge as if part of some arcane ritual of the desert.

"There's room for ye down here," she said. "Watch yer step and make sure they don't sky ye comin over the top."

Khaz crept down beside her and he looked at her things arranged out before her. He unscrewed the lid of his canteen and offered it to her. She drank it dry.

"When's the last time ye slept?" he said.

She gestured at the forest's edge with the canteen's mouth. "He was there. Right there."

"Aye I'm sure he was."

"He'll be back. Ye can't see much of his friends now, but they're there too."

"I'm sure they are. What're they doin?"

"Buildin somethin. They were millin timber earlier. Dryin the hides of some sort of deer too. I could eat several deer tied together."

He unwrapped the smoked sausage and handed it to her. "Is that all of em?"

She bit into the meat and spoke as she chewed. "Not by my count. Should be near twenty five hundred. Between here and those buried back at the landin there can't be more than a couple hundred."

"Couple thousand still out here somewhere."

"Aye."

"No line on em?"

"Nope."

"Maybe they're off in the trees."

"Maybe."

"Why don't ye get some sleep and let me watch awhile."

She looked at him then past him. "Where's Daraway?"

"With the girl."

"You left them?"

"That woman doesn't need me. Not sayin ye do, but seein as I'm here now why don't ye get some sleep."

She nodded. The sausage was gone. Her eyes were already drooping. "Alright. Watch for one taller than the rest. Gray backed with da's shard slung over him."

She sat back from the edge and crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes. He settled in to her place and he felt the warmth of her body on the stones there.

"Any sniff of him and ye wake me straightaway," she said.

She slept and as she slept she dreamt of her da. In her dream he worked his [alpenstock] across a slab of stone in a darkened and emptied delving. She saw his eyes by the light of the forge as it quieted and dimmed and finally died. Cold flowed out of the wynds and cleared the air of grit and froze the flume solid, as if by stillness the world hoped to stay its inevitable and ultimate alteration to dust. Her father's eyes glinted in the dark as they sought some secret revealed by it, some hopeful secret that might restore movement to the places that'd lost it. Then all was dark and there was only the sound of his breathing.

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***

She woke to the sky spitting on her face. She opened her mouth to it then her eyes. The sun had set but there was still some light left deep inside the stormclouds' overstory. Khaz laid on his belly at the edge of the perch watching below. He had laid a length of oilcloth across her [longarm] and powder horn and cartridges. Drops of rain beaded on it and slid off. She looked at him and wondered if there was a difference between duty and love.

"It's gettin too dark te keep watch on em," she said.

"Ye up already?"

"We need te get closer."

"Don't know about that. Daraway was sayin orcs got eyes for the dark."

"When did ye start heedin her?"

"She's smarter than she looks."

"Aye and she may be right about their eyes, but dwarves were made tunnelin the black heart of the world while they were grown here on the sun and two moons and all the stars for seein."

He started to say, "Aye but the rain," but he stopped and hissed and pointed. Mym crawled on her elbows beside him. From somewhere across the open desert an orc sentry ran its ugly lopsided gait to the edge of the forest. Little ribbons tied around his arms flapped in the wind he made. Even from such a distance she could've shot him twice and reloaded twice and shot him again before he made the forest. Only when he passed closest to her did she see the [javelin] coming out of his flank and the trail of black blood sliding off of it.

"Won't be long," said Khaz.

She watched the horizon south. The land was dark and the sky was one shade above dark. Figures moved against it.

"Look."

Out of the wastes the dragoons rode in a column of mounted pairs. At their [captain]'s signal the pairs split left and right to form a long broad line. Their horses stock still in the thickening rain, their javelins loose in their scabbards, their short and curved blades sheathed atop the quilting over their breasts. Their eyes were invisible under their helms but their chins jutted and dripped rainwater onto gloved hands folded over reins. Behind them Daraway walked up under her hooded cloak. Cousins was half hidden inside, but it was plainly her pale round face blinking against the rain..

"Shit," said Khaz.

"I see em."

"The hell she bring the girl for?"

"Doesn't matter now."

A handful of orcs appeared at the forest's edge bearing the axes and spikes and workblades of mariners, and the one who'd been javelined leaned among them with the [javelin] now held in his claw. They looked at the humans who'd already once stolen their lives and now came to end them. They seemed small standing beside and between the massive trees. Small and sad and grave. As if they'd already lost.

She knew better.

"Ye see yer orc?" said Khaz.

"Not yet." She looked back to where Daraway stood. The rain fell harder.

The dragoon [captain] trumpeted and his line rode right. Hooves clopped on the wet sandstone and some of the riders stretched shoulders and necks as if preparing to run a footrace. Another blast and the line started to curve forward into a wide circle of evenly spaced horsemen that rotated like one of her da's zoetropes. As the first [dragoon] arced closest to the forest he hurled a [javelin] at the gathered orcs. Before it struck the next [dragoon] hurled another and as the first pierced an unarmored chest the next [dragoon] hurled a third and the orcs surged from the trunks with weapons slapping at missiles streaking past their heads and crying in their rage and bending to grab and hurl spent javelins at their harriers. Floodwater rushed over their feet and ran up their ankles as they came and the holes made in the flow by their splashing feet shot away over the sandstone as fast as the javelins that cut through them.

"Get a bead on," said Khaz.

"No shot from here unless you're shootin horse."

"See yer friend?"

"Not yet."

"Not much left for seein."

The storm threw all its rain all at once and it roared where it struck the stone and struck the water rushing over. Lightning lit snapshots of violence like flashes from a rifle and thunder cracked instantly as if the ground under them split open to swallow those trespassing upon it. In a flash she saw a dragoon's arm curled to throw. Eyes white and nostrils wide. Orcs mid stride and mid leap and mid death in waters so high and rapid they slid the bodies across the ground. All motionless yet in motion as if in a marble frieze that recounted some other fight in some other time. The whole scene vanished to dark yet it stood in her vision so she was able to examine each form in turn. None of them were the tall orc.

Now water ran down onto their perch in a constant flow. Khaz threw his oilcloth and canteen in his pack. "We can't stay here."

"Let's get down there."

"We go down there and we'll be swimmin. Better te get up top of the ridge."

"But Daraway's down there."

"We can't stay here."

Lightning flashed again and she saw again. Riders disjointed in the rising flood. An orc amid them claws on bridle and throat with several javelins standing straight out from his back like the spines of some beast. A horse swept away with head and neck above turbid water roiling in curved and twisted runnels bigger around than the trunks of the trees. Orcs in the flow. Flying above it. Below it. Daraway turning and looking up at their rise for higher ground.

Mym waved and called her name but could barely hear herself over the roar of water and the vortices made by its falling and the constant cracking and rolling thunder. "We need te get to her."

"What?"

She thumped Khaz twice on the pack so he'd look at her face as she shouted, "Follow me!"

Above them lightning cracked staccatissimo within the clouds as if they hid a company of dwarves firing into the battle. By its pulsing she saw the dragoons' [captain] pitch a [javelin] into an orc's open mouth then raise his trumpet to his lips. All at once the hair on her neck and arms rose and she saw a solitary pillar of blinding blue light lance through the [captain] to the sky and she saw the orcs and horses and riders around him collapse writhing to the ground. Finally she saw out of the east an orc donned in a dwarven helm bearing a goblin on his shoulders leading a horde numbering thousands. She looked for Daraway and the girl but all went dark and somehow the rain came even harder.