She drove them to their death.
Elenai had been proud that she’d mastered the hearthstone to such an extent that she’d been able to bring N’lahr’s plan to fruition. But she hadn’t given serious thought that she led these strong and vital creatures to their destruction until it began to happen.
No part of it had been easy, from the manipulation of the eshlack matriarch to the shepherding of the vast herd through the Shifting Lands—the Gods be praised that there had been no storms—to the endless push toward the distant city and the Naor army. The last three days were a blur of short sleep and infrequent meals and cravings for things she had never known, like the taste of succulent grass and the sun’s warmth on a broad furred back. They had traveled past hills and canyons and smoking villages that told of the Naor’s passage and pillage for supplies.
She’d barely noticed when Kyrkenall helped her down from Lyria, his loyal mount. Vaguely, she was aware that she stood beside N’lahr near the height of a bluff where Gyldara had slain two Naor watchmen. Almost the whole of her consciousness lay like a web across the senses of the herd, seeing what they saw and smelling the deep rich vegetation that they craved. Twice during the journey she had allowed the herd to stop to eat and rest a little, but she could spare them nothing more, and drove them on, through their leaders, and through the occasional sharp blasts of fear she sent wavelike through their ranks.
Already she knew that dozens were dead or dying, and they had yet to meet the Naor horde. A few had broken legs or necks in careless falls. Mothers left mewling calves in the wake of the rushing herd, and aged or injured eshlack that might have lived long months under different circumstances fell behind to fend off predators alone. The insistent push she gave to the minds of their leaders brooked no delay, and the mass of the herd moved as if fleeing death rather than chasing it down.
This, she thought, is what it’s like to lead an army, to send forth troops to die. These might not be people, but they were her soldiers, and the casualties mounted because of her choices. Many more were to come, and it troubled her that these particular soldiers had not asked to join the fight, would not benefit from it, and that she sent them anyway.
N’lahr’s voice was close in her ear. “Time to direct them into the Naor.”
Diverting her attention for a brief moment to look through her own eyes, she perceived the campfires of a vast army that lay outside the plateau where her walled home city stood less than three miles away, and she breathed a nervous sigh of relief. They’d made it in time. Vedessus was still intact. She could see the latticework of its famed windmills rising above the walls, their blades turning in the ever-present wind. Above them the heavens were festooned with waving emerald and magenta auroras. Though strange to any who had not grown up beneath them, to her they were a reminder of times past, and early days when she had lain on the roof beside her young mother, who’d told stories about the ghostly banners left in the skies by the warring Gods.
Yet her mind boggled at the size of the enemy horde before them. How many were they? Could her herd, immense though it was, truly wreak the damage N’lahr predicted?
Still tenuously linked to the moving matriarch, Elenai scanned her surroundings more critically. The Naor had posted their now-dead sentinels on this bluff because of the fine view across the wide old river valley to the distant city. Its northern face was a sheer drop of more than thirty feet, and its western and eastern sides were nearly as steep. Apparently N’lahr had led her up the gentle southern slope, at the base of which she noted their horses picketed, puffing hard, and cropping at low grasses just beyond a thin line of scrubby trees. Kyrkenall and N’lahr were at each elbow. Gyldara studied the distance from the edge. Lasren, more pained and exhausted than he’d admit, had removed the boot from his bandaged leg and sat massaging it on the ground nearby.
“There’s something you’ve probably been looking for,” Kyrkenall said quietly to N’lahr, pointing. Elenai was too busy fighting for control of the eshlack to study where her companions looked, for the animals struggled to run anywhere but toward the Naor camp.
Through the matriarch’s eyes she saw canyon walls fall behind on either side, felt mighty legs driving her into the open, saw the signs of the two-legs and their vast dwellings where the sharp and hurting things were kept. She battled the eshlack’s wish to keep well clear of their gathering.
Run, she told the matriarch, knowing as she did that she drove the animal to certain death. Awash with disgust for her betrayal, Elenai nonetheless pushed the message forward. Death pursues you. Run. Straight into the two-legs. Guide the herd. With all her will she bore down, and the great beast charged forward to stamp the two-legs.
Elenai brushed the minds of the nearest eshlack with that same anger just as an alarm bugle sounded in the camp ahead. The closest would follow, but those behind might start to veer. She lay her commands upon individuals in the hordes behind, and then the masses beyond them. Kill, she ordered, kill the two-legs before they kill you! Bring them pain before they cause it!
She ordered and they obeyed, rank upon rank, sweeping the Naor tents and dragging them after and stamping the men that fled to mush. Here and there a few soldiers swung up spears and formed in lines but the eshlack drove on and in, crushing through the Naor and running on even though mortally wounded.
Kyrkenall let out a whoop and struck the air with his fist before grabbing her shoulder and squeezing. “I like how you drove that one group straight for Mazakan’s tents.” Kyrkenall laughed.
“Mazakan’s here?” she asked.
“I thought you knew.”
She shook her head.
“There was no missing it,” Kyrkenall protested. “The seven triangular flags flying over the big tent?”
She shook her head.
“Whether you aimed for it or not,” N’lahr said, “it worked. Nicely done.”
“Thank you.”
They watched the chaos unfold for long minutes. By the light of the aurora, dissipating clouds of dust raised by the eshlack stampede were tinged blue and green. Any of the animals still running fled west, following the river. Tents were smashed and broken all along the valley floor, and everywhere were dark lumps. If she hadn’t been looking with the inner world imposed over her sight, she wouldn’t have understood them for dead Naor and horses. Larger mounds were fallen eshlack.
Vedessus was safe, but she felt a little sick.
Enemy horsemen had turned their backs to the city. Some were in full gallop, scattered wildly, but a larger mass departed in orderly ranks. All seemed on course toward their bluff, or maybe the canyon beside it, which would lead them out of the river valley.
As Elenai tried to guess at their numbers, a presence brushed against her and brightened greedily at the proximity of an active hearthstone. It had to be a Naor weaver. Tendrils of interest from that distant mage feathered about her. She shuddered as the probing presence brushed her, and she sent a blast of pain at him before she turned off her stone. That encouraged a speedy withdrawal. Only when she looked away from the inner world did she discover N’lahr waiting intently beside her.
“They know we’re here, don’t they,” he said.
She nodded. “One of them just tried to use my hearthstone.”
“They probably detected it once the attack began. We’re lucky the enemy was too busy waking up and dodging eshlack to make a concerted counterattack against you.”
“That wasn’t luck,” Kyrkenall declared. “They were outplanned. I figure we have ten minutes before they draw close. They might just ride past.”
“They might,” N’lahr conceded. He didn’t sound optimistic.
“Our horses are too flagged to get us out of here in any case.”
N’lahr agreed with a head bob. “We need to change the odds again, Elenai. If you’ve any energy left for sorcery, steepen the approach to the south side of our bluff.”
He called out other orders as Elenai touched her hearthstone. The moment she did, though, she felt that mage grasping for it again. Whoever it was had both power and ambition. She didn’t have the time to wrestle for its control. She drew in as much energy as she dared and shut it down. If nothing else, her actions had at least lessened her own fatigue.
She looked out upon the galloping Naor. Among that larger contingent one carried a banner topped by a narrow fanged skull—a ko’aye skull, she knew from tapestries. And the seven triangular flags beneath identified it as Mazakan’s standard. He was coming.
Elenai turned to N’lahr and found him bent along the top of the slope, utilizing what she recognized as Denaven’s blade to pry up a skull-sized boulder. He’d suggested that they all pack extra swords, and she now understood that he’d foreseen this moment. He sent the rock rolling, then moved onto another before it came to a stop halfway down the slope.
“The Naor in that big group are carrying Mazakan’s standard,” she reported. “He must still be alive.”
“Yes,” N’lahr replied as he worked up a slightly larger rock. “I’m not surprised.”
“I wasn’t able to change the terrain.” She was reluctant to admit she wasn’t entirely certain how to do that on real ground, in any case. “Their mage is waiting to fight me for control the moment I activate the hearthstone.”
“We’ll make do.” N’lahr sounded remarkably calm. She’d expected he might be disappointed. “Help me with this, will you? Any spots to spoil the footing of the Naor or their mounts might save our lives.”
She understood on the instant—he was working to roughen the terrain. The others began imitating N’lahr in choosing medium-sized rocks to pry up. Their removal would create holes and loosen the soil on the sloped surface, slowing enemy ascent.
As she labored, oddly grateful to stretch aching muscles, Elenai imagined how the Naor might assault their position.
Their bluff looked down upon the rest of the plain from a height of thirty or thirty-five feet. Composed mostly of crumbly sandstone ornamented with only the occasional clump of grass, it was level from its edge to about twenty feet back in a rough rectangle sloping gently down to the canyon floor south. Similar rougher or taller bluffs on either hand marked the edge of Vedessus’ valley, but N’lahr had chosen their ground well. The sheer drops along the north, east, and west of their escarpment made assaults from those sides unlikely, so the Naor would come up from only one side, the easier south.
Just beyond the sparse screen of trees and bushes near the bottom of the slope, Kyrkenall was hurriedly cutting the horses free of their pickets; at a slap on her rump, Lyria led the others at a tired trot into the easterly darkness. If the Naor assaulted the hill they’d probably dismount first, owing both to the difficulty of getting through the copse and of maneuvering mounts on the narrow height. The space was restricted enough it would limit the number of enemies that could come forward at once. A smart commander would send them up with spears, probably fifteen at a time.
“Do you think that they’ll have archers with them?” she asked N’lahr. The Naor used archers, but owing to their general preference for larger, less refined bows, few carried them on horseback.
N’lahr continued to work at prying a larger boulder. “If they do, they’ll be in small numbers. They’ll station them to either side of the bluff and try to shoot up at us, although they’ll be hard-pressed to see us, so they may try volleys.”
Naturally he’d already thought it out.
He was unusually loquacious, for he went on: “They may attempt javelin volleys, but given the height of our post that’s even less likely to help them. Before long they’ll want to close with us.” He succeeded at last and sat down Denaven’s sword to turn over the rock, which partly rolled and partly slid a few feet down the hill. It left a large, saddle-shaped depression. N’lahr clapped dirt from his hands. “I’ll manage the rest of this. See if you can aid Lasren. He’ll need to be in better shape for the fight.”
Elenai wasn’t sure what she could manage, especially not if the Naor mage was watching for them, but she obediently looked through the inner world, and immediately she noted the relative levels of strength of their glowing energy matrices. N’lahr, still working the terrain, appeared in the best shape, though his lines were thin. Lasren’s energies were tapped and graying, and Gyldara and Kyrkenall, both working farther downslope, were only a little better. Well, she could restore herself somewhat by drawing from the hearthstone. Why not try it with the others? To imagine was to do. When she activated the hearthstone this time there was no sign of her watcher, so she quickly sent threads of strength toward all four of her comrades and their weakened energy matrices glowed, shifting toward golden.
Kyrkenall straightened shoulders, then grinned up at her. “Was that you?”
She smiled.
“Hah! Nicely done.”
“It’s the best I can manage. I’m no healer.”
“I’ll take it.”
Lasren and Gyldara waved and called their own thanks.
She nodded, then closed down the stone and surveyed the opposition. Small groups of Naor riders slid past their position into the canyon below. They, at least, weren’t going to attack. Others were only a few hundred yards behind, and after them were the hundreds in good order led by Mazakan’s bannerman. Maybe they’d just follow the others into escape. She could hope.
“I’m afraid I don’t have quite enough arrows,” Kyrkenall said dryly. “But I’m tempted to start picking some of them off.”
“Wait,” N’lahr replied. “If they have archers, take them out when they start to range themselves. If possible, save some arrows for their charge up the hill.”
“Right.” Kyrkenall studied the slope. “I’d like to arrange a nice grouping of bodies they’ll have to climb over.”
N’lahr nodded. “Of course.”
Elenai was struck by their astonishing matter-of-factness.
Lasren limped up, sword sheathed. “I wish I had a good spear,” he opined. “I’m not nearly as agile as I’d like to be for a sword fight.”
“Use Decrin’s shield,” N’lahr suggested. “Gyldara brought it up.”
“Yes, sir.”
She glanced over to Kyrkenall planting arrows, then looked back to N’lahr and saw his jaw tense as dozens of horsemen around the bannerman stopped near the gentle south approach to their bluff. Dozens grew into hundreds. Elenai saw that some, riding double, were dropping from saddles and, at shouted command, arranging themselves in lines encircling their bluff.
A score to the east were readying longbows, and someone was shouting to let fly on his command.
“Pick your targets fast,” N’lahr told Kyrkenall, and motioned everyone else back from the edge.
The archer nocked an arrow to Arzhun. “You know, this thin volley’s going to be easy to see coming. I bet we can duck it in this light and encourage another.”
“Why risk it?” N’lahr asked.
“So I can use their arrows.”
N’lahr nodded appreciatively. “Stand ready, everyone. Over here,” N’lahr indicated. “Farther from the edge. And look to the skies.”
Kyrkenall was the last to quit the verge, and a moment later a harsh Naor voice shouted to fire.
Elenai tensed, blade before her, ready to try slicing arrows from the air. She actually heard them whizzing as they arced up and over the side of the bluff, though it was more challenging to spot them against the unevenly lit sky than she would have liked. She knew a stab of fear and swirled her sword directly overhead, worried that one would come in at a slant and strike her neck.
But the Naor were challenged by their inability to see their targets. Most of the arrows passed over the Altenerai and struck the soil behind. Gyldara was the only one of them who had to step out of the way. Three landed near their feet, and two clanged off Decrin’s shield. “I wasn’t even trying to block them,” Lasren asserted.
Kyrkenall stepped to the edge and made a rude gesture.
“Fire!” the Naor voice cried a second time.
N’lahr motioned to everyone. “Back farther now.”
Elenai almost stepped on a perfectly fine arrowshaft from the first attack in her haste to comply.
The instincts of the seasoned Altenerai had been right. This time the arrows fell a little closer to the edge. The Naor were “walking” their attack forward from where they’d shot the first time. Four of the missiles came in blazing redly, trailing smoke. One of those aflame soared close to Elenai and she managed to slice it aside. The others fell harmlessly, except for one Kyrkenall snatched from the air.
It was still smoking as he pressed it up to his bow and dashed to the edge. There was only a brief delay before he fired, and from below came a garbled scream even as Kyrkenall launched a slew of his own arrows, from the line he’d set in the dirt. More outcry followed. Only a few shafts streamed up in response. Apparently most of the archers were too busy running or dying to launch new attacks of their own.
Kyrkenall drew back with a grim smile. “That’s most of them.” He looked to Lasren. “They’ll try javelins next. Try to give them a target and catch them on your shield.”
Lasren nodded once and accepted the assignment without flinching, limping boldly to the edge so he was in clear sight. All the Altenerai had been taught how to endure javelin or spear fire. When given time to ready, all but the most incompetent could avoid them, lest they came out of the sun or utter darkness.
“What are you waiting for?” Kyrkenall asked the rest of them. “Help me gather the Naor arrows.”
Though it seemed at first they had almost three dozen, only twenty or so proved fully serviceable. Kyrkenall set quickly to repairing the fletching on three more, using his supplies, while the javelin fire began. He screamed once, as if in pain, to encourage the Naor to launch more.
Lasren caught five on his shield during three separate volleys, and Gyldara gathered another seven that fell nearby, returning a few with deadly effect.
After that the Naor ceased their distance attacks. The sound of riders fleeing into the canyon to the west grew louder. During the brief lull, N’lahr’s attention shifted, like Kyrkenall’s, to the line of scrub at the bottom of the slope. Elenai could hear the clop of horse hooves and the rustle of twigs as the Naor pushed through.
“Looks like they’re going to try a horse charge,” Kyrkenall said.
“Doesn’t seem very wise,” Gyldara offered.
“Well, they’re Naor.” Kyrkenall nocked one of the light feathered arrows preferred by their enemies. “This will make clogging the slope a little easier.”
“Any moment now,” N’lahr said. “Lasren, keep an eye on the rear in case they try more javelins, or some madman tries to climb.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Gyldara, hold your axes until the real assault starts.”
“The real assault, sir?”
Elenai understood her confusion.
N’lahr patiently explained. “They won’t send their best troops first. Kyrkenall will be able to take most of these.”
“Yes, sir.”
At her acknowledgment, the first horsemen appeared on the slope and kicked their mounts forward. Eight in all, they wore dark helms topped with horsehair. They tried to hold their line steady, but the ground was too uneven and soon they were advancing with little gaps.
Kyrkenall was merciless. He winged arrows into the oncoming mass, starting with the riders on either end. He fired again, and again, sometimes pausing deliberately until he had his targets just where he wished before he dropped a horse through the eye or sent it screaming to careen into a neighbor with a knee shot. All the carnage bunched the rest of them toward the middle as they struggled to escape his attacks, but that was right where Kyrkenall wanted them, dead center of the slope, in a line ending a few feet shy of the summit.
Those few Kyrkenall didn’t slay N’lahr moved out to finish off with astonishing economy of motion before performing a few mercy killings of the animals. He retreated just as a line of ground troops emerged from the brush and ran screaming up.
“A nice grouping,” N’lahr said to Kyrkenall as he regained the height.
“Thanks.”
“How are you on ammunition?”
“Enough for a little more mayhem.” Kyrkenall let fly with the first arrow as a line of fifteen Naor ran at their position. More poured up behind the first, and Elenai struggled for calm. Kyrkenall and N’lahr seemed nonchalant, but soon the archer was going to run out of arrows, and there were a lot of Naor out there.
Their bluff shook as more hoofbeats slammed the earth to the west. Another group was bypassing them to escape the battlefield.
Finally Kyrkenall announced he was done, and N’lahr and Gyldara capped his attack with a few well cast javelins. One moment there was a group of charging warriors. The next there was a mass of dead and dying bearded men. The rank smell of death was borne up the wind toward them even as Kyrkenall laughed unexpectedly. He slid his bow home into its holder between his shoulders, then drew Lothrun in a flash of blue steel.
The bodies were strewn thickly upon the hillside. More Naor footmen advanced with spears, a dozen in front with four well-ordered lines behind.
Less than twelve paces out they had to divide around the bodies.
Kyrkenall looked at N’lahr and grinned. He glanced to Elenai, a mad gleam in his eye. “Come! If this be our numbered day, let us send these numbers before us to their end!”
N’lahr nodded grimly.
Five Altenerai against almost fifty Naor. And providing they survived, more would surely follow. But there was no time to worry about the future. Elenai could only focus upon getting through the present.
The helmed warriors at the forefront hurled javelins as they charged. N’lahr sidestepped, graceful as a dancer, and cut one inbound toward Gyldara from the air with his magnificent sword. Kyrkenall simply ignored them all and none came close. Luck, Elenai wondered, or would he have moved if one had?
Those who came after parted before the knots of corpses Kyrkenall had arranged so well, struggling up through the bodies in two groups. Elenai and Gyldara waited to one side, Kyrkenall and N’lahr the other. Lasren, shield on his arm, Naor javelin in hand, guarded their rear.
All then was madness as the enemy warriors rushed, some stumbling over the uneven ground. There were the screams of the dying and the scent of entrails, the war cries of Naor, the laughter of Kyrkenall and, from time to time, his macabre poetry, spoken as if in a trance. It was eerie and strange and seemed unconscious, like the way Gyldara exhaled audibly with every blow or block.
So fast did everything move that Elenai had but fleeting impressions. N’lahr, impossibly deadly with that sword that sliced equally well through flesh, bone, or steel. It seemed only necessary to touch someone to send them plunging with a torrent of blood. He swung clear of countless axe blows and spear shafts, always silent, always sure, and soon the bodies around were an impediment to reach him. She’d thought Kyrkenall the most amazing swordsman she’d ever seen, but N’lahr, with Irion, was almost deific.
Not that the swift archer was less deadly than usual. He was more active than N’lahr, taunting the Naor and shouting at them to taste his steel. Lothrun’s gleam was hidden by gore, and Kyrkenall himself was a blur of motion.
Gyldara fought with a mix of Kyrkenall’s eagerness and N’lahr’s pinpoint precision, preferring straight thrusts to Kyrkenall’s wide slashes. She dealt death with either hand, driving in now with her sword, then with a deft, deadly blow to head or neck with her offhand light axe.
Elenai herself was one with her blade, and one with the moment of possibilities. Blocking, thrusting at a leering face, once dashing forward to parry when Gyldara exposed her back, once cutting down a spear thrown at Kyrkenall.
Lasren was mostly out of Elenai’s visual range, but he ran forward to shield his comrades when three daring Naor strove to flank them, and he bought space later with well-timed spear jabs. His teeth were gritted in a mask of pain and determination.
Quite suddenly the attacks halted, and Elenai marveled, her sword low, her breathing heavy. The dead were mounded before them. It actually looked like more than fifty.
“By the gods,” Lasren panted beside her, “we’re doing it.”
Kyrkenall raised his bloodied blade to the dark: “Five they were who stood as one against the Naor tide, a blood-red wave of vicious men who came and bled and died.”
“Nicely done. Relax a moment. Conserve your strength.” N’lahr unlimbered his waterskin, sipped, then passed it over to Gyldara.
“What are they waiting for?” Elenai asked. She glanced overside to their left where more than a hundred Naor still sat saddle. Lasren had retreated to watch them again.
“Now’s when they send their best,” N’lahr answered. He wiped his sword. Despite his advice, he didn’t look particularly relaxed.
Gyldara passed the water to Elenai, who drank eagerly despite the acrid flavor, conscious not to drain it dry. Kyrkenall handed his nearly empty wineskin off to Lasren, who toasted him with it before taking a deep drink. The archer had been nursing that sweet liquid for weeks.
“Good stuff,” Lasren said. The big man didn’t sound the least bit sarcastic.
“He’s got taste,” Kyrkenall remarked to N’lahr, who broke into a smile. Lasren looked uncertain until Kyrkenall stretched up to clap him on the shoulder.
The respite ended the moment additional Naor emerged from the screen of trees, led by the bannerman. These were the largest warriors yet, bearing well-made swords and matching shields, armored in heavy shivering chain and leather. Three feathers stood out from each of their helms. Behind them were a line of seven men in resplendent and varied armor, but they remained just this side of the copse of trees; they parted deferentially for a single mounted figure who rode up past the bannerman and the nearer warriors on the largest, blackest horse Elenai had ever seen.
He was a tall, broad figure in a flat helm topped with a jawless, silvered skull inset with large faceted rubies. They shone faintly under the shifting aurora.
“Here he is,” Kyrkenall said. “Mazakan’s lost too much honor now. He’ll have to prove himself to his underlings.”
This, then, was Mazakan? Elenai stared. It was difficult to imagine that a person actually existed behind the legend.
The newcomer dropped heavily from his horse and strode forward. He stood a head higher even than the honor guard around him, a veritable giant among Naor, who were never small. Part of his chest and shoulder armor was fashioned from blue khalats. At least two Altenerai, Elenai recalled, had personally fallen to him, among them Temahr, one of the finest swordsmen of the previous generation.
She had no good view of Mazakan’s face until he stopped among the dead, only three spear lengths out. He had a square, thick head with a dense beard shot with gray, two bright eyes glittering with malice, and a scarred nose that had been broken multiple times and twisted leftward.
As Mazakan’s honor guard ranged neatly to either side, she spotted another figure just behind, armored but narrow-shouldered and round, picking his own way through the dead behind Mazakan. And she knew, with certainty, that this was a sorcerer. Not just owing to his carriage, but by a palpable aura about him. She tensed. “They’ve a weaver,” she whispered to her companions.
The Naor halted their advance and Mazakan showed blocky teeth in something that might have been a grin, if there’d been any humor in it. He was clearly taller even than N’lahr.
“It is N’lahr.” Mazakan’s voice was surprisingly warm and vital. “I don’t believe in ghosts. So I know that you’ve been cowering somewhere. Was this eshlack trick your doing?”
“It was our doing,” N’lahr answered. For some reason, his ring lit.
Mazakan’s voice rose and he indicated the surrounding territory with a sweeping gesture. “This is but a brief setback. You fey are weak, and divided. Ready to fall before a greater power. Even as we speak, another of your cities is being plundered. More will follow.”
“You must think your men are pretty stupid if you’re going to sell this as a ‘setback,’” Kyrkenall cut in. “Your army is smashed, Mazakan. And N’lahr’s going to take your head.”
The Naor king grinned at him. “Brave noises won’t save you, nagging wasp. The truth here is plain to see. N’lahr, the coward who hid from me for seven years, has nothing left but you, a cripple”—at this he indicated Lasren with a negligent wave—“and,” he said spitefully, “two women.”
The honor guard laughed roughly, as if this were high theater.
N’lahr’s answer was cool. “We are Altenerai. We strike as one.” The others set their sapphires aglow and Elenai hurried to do the same.
Mazakan answered after a brief pause. “Soon you’ll strike at none. Come, N’lahr. Let us put an end to talk of this prophecy.” So saying, he unlimbered a massive sword and turned to the man on his right. “Have the others!”
At those words, a rain of javelins arced up from the warriors. Lasren deflected two with a deft sweep of Decrin’s shield. Kyrkenall simply stepped aside. Gyldara and Elenai cut at those near them, managing to avert most of the force that impacted their armored coats. None had been aimed for N’lahr, who waited for Mazakan.
The king bellowed and rushed him. His honor guard came after.
As N’lahr leapt back from a savage swipe from a sword nearly as tall as himself, the king laughed and advanced against him. Kyrkenall rolled clear of a deadly slash from one of the guardsmen.
Elenai latched once more into the complex web of probabilities and found her way among the shining strands. She just missed getting her head crushed by a two-handed overhead axe blow. In moments she’d driven her sword through a Naor shoulder and then backed away as Lasren stepped in to shield a thrust from a growling attacker. An axe sailed over him and embedded itself in a warrior’s forehead, then Gyldara was in the thick of the action, fighting two warriors at once as Lasren limped to one side, struggling to fend off his own assailant. Elenai was stepping up to join him when the weaver struck at last.
She’d faced sleep and panic and pain and even seen Denaven warping the environment, but she’d never before felt the urge to bow in submission. Her ring shining, she tore the impulse apart with her own threads as his attack slipped away. She would have retaliated except that she saw Lasren too hard beset to assist Gyldara, retreating before two stout warriors. These men were good.
Elenai flanked one, kicked his knee from the side, then smashed his face with her pommel. She sent a tendril of panic winging at the mage and felt his surprise in the brief moment they touched consciousness.
Thereafter was madness and blood and momentum. Dark shapes leapt at her, and she blocked or ducked, or drove her sword into quivering meat. Some of it was armored. For every Naor that fell another was there to take his place. Three and four times she herself was struck, in shoulder, chest, thigh, and arm, and the fourth blow might have finished her, for it dropped her to her knees, but Lasren was suddenly over her, his shield ringing as he blocked a savage blade swipe. He moaned in dismay as another blow struck his spear into splintered pieces.
Elenai stabbed viciously at her opponent’s thighs and then she was up and swinging at faces, her throat dry, her muscles aching, her breath a ragged gasp in her throat. It seemed impossible years ago that she’d been hesitant to kill.
The mage’s spell hit her again, and if it weren’t for her ring the authority in his blast would have reduced her to shaking. He insisted upon worshipful obedience, and even with the sapphire to shield her, his call was compelling. He turned his effect upon Lasren, who dropped to one knee, and just managed to lift the shield against an oncoming blow. Elenai gritted her teeth, dug for magical energy of her own, and found she had nothing left to give. Nothing more to send. She was suddenly conscious of her ribs and their frailty as her heart slammed them. If the mage cared to press his advantage, she was done.
But he didn’t. Magically, as though clouds had parted, the attack ceased. A snarling Gyldara drove her sword into a final Naor and sent him to the ground in a welter of blood. The last of the honor guard was down.
Elenai discovered Kyrkenall tensely observing N’lahr dueling Mazakan. Lasren sat on his knees, head bowed as if in prayer, absolutely drenched in blood that probably wasn’t his. Gyldara leaned heavily beside him.
The nearest Naor was the bannerman, some twelve feet back, still clutching his skull-topped pole with its fluttering triangular flags. The sorcerer waited nearby, dark eyes and broad nose surrounded by reddish facial hair. The more distant line of chieftains stood impassively beneath their feathered helms. Watching.
N’lahr and Mazakan both were weary. The swordsman favored his right arm and appeared to be limping. And Mazakan weaved, bleeding from a dozen cuts to arms and legs as he drunkenly planted feet.
“They can take us,” Gyldara said to no one in particular. “Why don’t they call up the other warriors and lead an attack?”
Kyrkenall answered softly without taking his eyes from the battle. “Mazakan led them to the city, and lost. Mazakan sent men to our bluff, and they died.” He paused as N’lahr narrowly dodged a strike that would have caved in his chest. He then nodded to the distant clansmen. “Mazakan now has to win this himself. And you can bet some of those back there don’t want him to do that.”
So that was why the mage wasn’t pressing and none of those waiting men would rush forward. Elenai searched the figures at the slope’s end for some clue to identity among the bearded faces. So busy was she that she never saw the opening N’lahr had exploited, only the jet of blood as Irion whipped past Mazakan’s weapon and plunged through the cloth and metal that warded the king’s collarbone.
Mazakan stepped back, lifted his huge length of steel as if he meant to bring it sweeping in from the right, then toppled to the side.
His impact upon the earth was substantial; Elenai felt it through her boots.
Kyrkenall looked over to the chiefs, who shifted uneasily, but N’lahr stood staring down at the unmoving man. He planted a foot on the body and pointed his sword at the remaining Naor. Somehow his arm still was steady.
Kyrkenall whooped approvingly and called to the watchers. “Now even the skies wear our colors, fools! Come forth, introduce yourself to our blades!” As if on cue, the aurora flared blue the moment he spoke.
He’s going to get us all killed, Elenai thought. Another attack and they were through. Especially one backed by that mage. She smiled grimly. Kyrkenall was making it clear they’d take more Naor with them when they fell. Everything depended upon their reaction to this theater.
As the chieftains stared, the mage looked over his shoulder at them, as if for orders.
A piercing horn call climbed through the night air, high and clear, and Elenai could hardly believe she hadn’t imagined it.
But of course. It was the Vedessi horse guard. The mounted troops of Vedessus had left the city.
She had heard that horn call on and off the whole of her life, especially during the war. And why should she not hear it? If they’d attacked before, the Vedessi cavalry would have been devoured by the numbers of Naor, but now the Naor were in flight, and easy game.
The horn blared again.
“Is that getting closer?” Gyldara asked.
“It is.” So dry was her throat that her voice cracked as she answered.
“Kanesh?” Gyldara said hopefully.
“Vedessus.” Nothing so grand as the famed riders of Kanesh, but fine enough. That horn call had decided things. The bannerman and the mage were hurrying away and the Naor noblemen were already turning in retreat.
“Quitters!” Kyrkenall shouted. “Come back here and die with your king!”
But now they were all leaving, as fast as they could go, and the horsemen waiting to the east of the bluff were skirting its edge at full gallop to reach the canyon.
Elenai sagged, one hand steadying herself against someone she realized was Gyldara. With help she managed to stagger up with the others to watch a tight mass of cavalry armed with lances slam into the retreating Naor flanks.
It was a bloody mess punctuated by the terrified screams of men and horses. Elenai was partly glad for the valley shadows, which obscured what was more slaughter than battle.
Lasren let out a choked gasp. Elenai turned, thinking he was more wounded than she’d first supposed. He struggled to stand on his good leg, backing as if in fright, and she saw his shaking hand point toward the mass of Naor dead upon the slope. He at last managed to speak as Elenai saw what had unsettled him.
“The blood’s rising into a monster!”
Tendrils of blood swirled up from the pile of corpses on their slope to feed into the growing figure not of some monstrous being, but a man. He was a moving sculpture of liquid blood, so that as he opened his mouth to show teeth in a smile, they were red. His eyes, fashioned all of the same material, seemed as pupilless as Kyrkenall’s.
The Altenerai formed a half circle around him, hands to weapons. The chest of the image took on more and more detail until it was clear he wore leather armor, and that beneath it lay a sleeved tunic. His hair was shorn short, apart from a curling braid stretched back across the top of his head.
Elenai debated the activation of the hearthstone. Exhausted as she was, if she had to manage any spell work, the hearthstone was her only hope. Yet she held off, thinking that whoever wrought this spell might draw from the hearthstone’s energy, possibly more easily than her.
The man had formed fully at last, a living being of dripping blood. “I congratulate you, N’lahr.” His words were clear, no matter the Naor accent and a disquieting further distortion, for he sounded as though he spoke while his mouth was half full with liquid. “You have defeated my grandfather. I thank you for that. He’d become an impediment.”
“Who are you?” N’lahr asked.
“I am Chargan, conqueror of Alantris.”
Elenai struggled to show no reaction to this news. Surely the man was lying about Alantris, wasn’t he?
Chargan’s mouth curled. “You fey vermin have had your last victory. Your days of stealing our children and harassing our people are finished.”
Elenai’s brows lowered in puzzlement. She wasn’t aware that the realms had ever “harassed Naor,” much less stolen children. Unless the former was some twisted version of their adoption of Naor children stranded when their armies fled.
He spoke on with profound bitterness. “Your cheap tricks can’t hold us back, and you can’t hide behind your walls. We’re stronger than you. We’re fiercer than you. We’re better than you. We’re going to root you out and consign your soulless corpses to the unending fire.”
Kyrkenall countered with a savage grin. “Bold words from someone whose army was just obliterated.”
“You destroyed my grandfather’s army, not mine. Alantris and its lands belong to me. Darassus is next.”
“You boast well,” N’lahr said.
Chargan replied with profound self-confidence, and conviction that was strangely alarming. “Not boasts, but truth. I’ve nothing to fear from you, N’lahr. Or your sword. You fulfilled your prophecy. It’s my time, now. If you’re wise, you’ll make peace, and I’ll let you slink off to the useless wilds of Ekhem. We won’t need it for a few more years.”
N’lahr answered with stern surety. “There will be no peace so long as the Naor occupy our land.”
“Our lands.” Chargan’s lips twisted in barely restrained anger. “You’ve hoarded our stolen homelands for too long, leaving my people to the scraps, like dogs. Now you’ll feel our bite. Prepare for extermination.”
These had never been Naor lands. What was the man raving about?
The horrible blackish crimson simulacrum raised his right fist and then the blood released its hold upon his image and sank once more across the bodies and into the thirsty earth beneath them. Elenai wiped a single drop from her lip, sputtering a little that it should touch her. She strove to ignore the sick pull of dread. Surely the mage exaggerated his prowess. And surely the Naor could be no match for the Altenerai, could they?
“Have you heard of him before?” N’lahr asked Kyrkenall.
As he shook his head in the negative, the commander looked in turn to the rest of them. Like Gyldara and Lasren, the man’s name was unknown to Elenai.
“Do you really think he conquered Alantris?” she asked.
“I know that he’ll be trouble in the future. And I know we’ve won a great victory this night. Right now, that’s all we need.”
“That was blood sorcery,” Elenai said, her lip involuntarily curling in disgust. The dark practice was not only difficult to control, it was incredibly inefficient. She recoiled from the thought of just how much blood the Naor must have spilt to power Chargan’s spell to reach them here. And whose blood it must have been.
“I wonder if they still sell those fried cakes in the Vedessan square—the ones with the flowers on top,” Kyrkenall said, ignoring her as Vedessi cavalrymen picked their way up the slope through Naor dead.
“What are we going to do about the queen?” Elenai asked. “And whatever she’s planning?”
Kyrkenall grinned thinly from the patch of ground he now reclined upon. “After we stop the Naor, we’ll stop the exalts, dethrone the queen, and find Kalandra.”
“That sounds simple.” Elenai joined him on the rocky dirt.
“It won’t be,” N’lahr said. “But those are battles for another day. We have to care for ourselves, first. Just as you must wipe your sword of blood and polish its edge between battles.”
“And drink wine,” Kyrkenall added. “That spoils your analogy, I know, but I want some wine. And some cakes. And a really long hot soak. None of that would help my sword much.”
As the sober Vedessi cavalry leader dismounted and removed his helm, N’lahr stepped forward, and the man addressed him in reverent tones.
She would have listened in, but Gyldara came over and clapped her shoulder with a tired smile. “Your first battle as Altenerai. You did well.” She sat down at her side.
“We all did.”
“The ring doesn’t feel quite like you expected, does it?” Gyldara asked.
She looked down at the ring and wiped a smear of blood from it.
Gyldara continued. “I felt like I had to grow into mine. But I’d say yours already fits you.” She hesitated briefly before saying: “I never thanked you.”
For a moment, Elenai wondered what the other woman meant, for all through the battle they’d each saved the other more times than she could recall. But she must be referring to Elenai interceding in Gyldara’s fight with Kyrkenall. “You would have done the same for me.”
“Would I? I judged before I had the facts. At some level I knew Denaven was wrong and ignored my instinct. You really did look with both mind and heart and acted with wisdom. You gave greater meaning to those words than I understood, and I mean to remember that.”
She met the woman’s eyes and realized that their shared experience had forged a powerful bond. She’d heard combat could do that among soldiers, and she’d thought she understood it until experiencing the real thing. She now realized how shallow her comprehension had truly been. Throughout the harrowing ordeal, their trust and reliance upon one another had been absolute. Each of them had risked their lives for one another, moving like connected pieces of a greater whole. And because they had worked so effectively together, they had endured. This woman had guarded her back, and she knew with certainty she would do so going forward. Almost surely this same faith lay behind the deep connection between Kyrkenall and N’lahr.
Perhaps it was impossible to state the complexity of her feelings in any succinct way, or perhaps exhaustion had rendered her too weary for sophisticated expression. Instead, she simply offered her arm. Unhesitatingly, Gyldara took it, and they clasped one another below the elbow, acknowledging one another with a firm nod.
“If you two are done,” Lasren said. “Can you help me up? It looks like they brought some extra horses. And I’m eager to get to the city and have my wounds looked at. Or maybe just fall asleep on something with a mattress and pillows.”
“Stop complaining,” Gyldara grumbled good-naturedly, and stood, then bent to assist the heavier alten. He was on his feet a moment later, and leaned against Gyldara’s shoulder as she maneuvered him toward the horses.
Elenai rose and turned to stare at the city under the flickering heavens. She looked forward to seeing her family and idly wondered what they’d think to see her as a full-fledged alten. Somehow, though, that wasn’t as important to her as she would once have expected.
She thought instead about the glory of being clean, and having cooked food, and lying in soft sheets, and maybe another long sleep. And she wondered, too, how they were going to stop the Naor and the queen and the Mage Auxiliary.…
Later, she promised herself. Later.
She stared down at her ring, then, on a whim, willed it to sapphire radiance.