“Scale them any way you can,” he ordered. “Rope and grapnels, a human ladder-whatever you can devise!”

One group dashed off to the closest turtle. Bracing themselves against the nearly vertical slope of the beast’s shell, they laced their arms together. More of their comrades clambered up their backs to their shoulders and repeated the pose. Tol’s band used shields to create footholds for the next wave to scale the great creature’s side. All this occurred under a constant hail of arrows. Fortunately for the Ergothians, the safest place to be was up close to the crawling giants. There the turtle’s bulk shielded them from the Tarsan archers.

Tol, Frez, and a dozen soldiers climbed the staircase of shields to the top and threw themselves onto the turtle’s back.

The shell was steeply curved here, but the Ergothians were able to crawl up the smooth shell. Tarsans on neighboring animals shouted and pointed at the encroaching enemy. More arrows whistled in and several of the climbing Ergothians tumbled to the ground, their bodies studded with white -fletched Tarsan missiles.

Tal reached a more level area and drew himself into a crouch. Survivors of his band gathered behind him. All drew sabers.

With a shout, Tol vaulted over the low wooden hoarding and planted a booted foot on the chest of a wide-eyed Tarsan archer. His men swarmed in behind him, howling for blood. Some of the archers had star-headed maces for close combat, but these were no match for Tol’s swordsmen. The Ergothians cleaved through the enemy in short order, shoving dead and wounded foes over the side to clear the small structure. Soon only the turtle-driver remained.

The driver, a Silvanesti hired when the turtles were purchased, sat on the forward slope of the shell. Bare-chested, wearing loose white trousers that ended above his knees, the elf was screened on each side by a low wooden wall. His bare feet rested in niches carved into the forward face of the shell.