The Wizard and the Sylph - Page 455/573

THE WIZARD AND THE SYLPH

Chapter Twenty-two

Captain Niles Makes A Discovery

It was only a matter of hours after Gart the dwarf and Damond of Brand had entered the House of Wilkin to discuss the city's defences, when Niles of Astargoth led his own force through the city of Alin.

Niles saw it in their faces that most of the townspeople were simple farmers who could do nothing except look helplessly on while others prepared to fight a hopeless and impossible battle, using their city as a battleground.

The citizens of Alin understood that there was an Enemy, for they were witness to as much by virtue of their having lived in this one and only city on the Narrow Plain. Yet they seemed unable to understand the greater picture, that their city was right in the path of the enemy hordes that would soon come sweeping from the northeast.

As they did during the passage of every other army, the citizens of Alin came out into the streets to watch, this time as Niles and his men of Astargoth passed through. Niles had experienced this grim gauntlet often enough to have expected it, and endured the gaunt, empty stares of the bystanders with soldierly stoicism.

`"Why?", their eyes ask,' Niles thought to himself. `"Why this war? Why the coming death and carnage? Why you occupiers, who promise protection and deliver only more woe and despair when your decimated few return along the same road, maimed and broken and dying? What is it for? Why do you do it?"' The sight of them wrung Nile's heart with pity, for nothing but impossible victory could save them.