"A mile away, no more. We have to face them here. The alternative is to fall back into the fortress, and I"m not ready to concede the plains."
"You"ve chosen a good field, it seems." Kencathedrus nodded at the stands of trees around them. The area consisted of many of these thick groves, separated by wide, gra.s.sy fields. "How many stand against us?"
"Just a third of the entire Ergoth armythat"s the good news. The other two wings have bogged down, more than a hundred miles away right now. But this one is the most dangerous. The commander is bold and adventurous. I had to march all night to get in front of him, and now my troops are exhausted as he prepares his attack."
"You forget," Kencathedrus chided Kith, almost harshly. "You stand with elves against a force of mere humans."
Kith-Kanan looked at the old warrior fondly, but he shook his head at the same time.
"These "mere" humans wiped out a hundred of my Wildrunners in one ambush. They"ve covered four hundred miles in three weeks." Now the leader"s voice took on a tone of authority. "Do not underestimate them."
Kencathedrus studied Kith-Kanan before nodding his agreement. "Why don"t you show me the lines," he suggested. "I presume you want us ready at first light."
As it happened, General Giarna gave Kith"s force one more day to rest and prepare.
The human army shifted and marched and expanded, all behind the screen of several groves of trees. Kith sent a dozen Kagonesti Wildrunners to spy, counting on the natural vegetation that they used so well to cover them.
Only one returned, and he to report that the human sentries were too thick for even the skilled elves to pa.s.s without detection.
The elven force took advantage of the extra day, however. They constructed trenches along much of their front, and in other places, they laid long, sharp stakes in the earth to form a wall thrusting outward. These stakes would protect much of the front from the enemy hors.e.m.e.n Kith knew to number in the thousands.
Parnigar supervised the excavation, racing from site to site, shouting and cursing. He insulted the depth of one trench, the width of another. He cast aspersions on the lineage of the elves who had done the work. The Wildrunners leaped to obey out of respect, not fear. All along the line they dug in, proving that they used the pick and the spade as well as the longsword and pike.
Midafternoon slowly crept toward dusk. Kith restlessly worked his way back and forth along the line. Eventually he came to the reserve, where the men of Silvanost recovered from their long march under the shrewd tutelage of Kencathedrus. That captain stepped up to Kith-Kanan as the general dismounted from Kijo.
"Odd how they work for him," noted the older elf, indicating Parnigar. "My elves wouldn"t even look at an officer who talked to them like that."
Kith-Kanan looked at him curiously, realizing that he spoke the truth. "The Wildrunners here on the plains are a different kind of force than you know from the city,"
he pointed out.
He looked at the reserve force, consisting of the five thousand elves who had marched with Kencathedrus. Even at ease, they lounged in the sun in neat ranks across the gra.s.sy meadows. A formation of Wildrunners, Kith reflected, would have collected in the areas of shade.
The teacher nodded, still skeptical. He looked across the front, toward the trees that screened the enemy army. "Do you know their deployments?" asked Kencathedrus.
"No." Kith admitted. "We"ve been shut off all day. I"d fall back if I could. They"ve had too much time to prepare an attack, and I"d love to set those preparations to waste.
Your old lesson comes to mind: "Don"t let the enemy have the luxury of following his plan"."
Kencathedrus nodded, and Kith nearly growled in frustration as he continued. "But I can"t move back. These trees are the last cover between here and Sithelbec. There"s not so much as a ditch to hide behind if I abandon this position."
All he could do was to deploy a company of skirmishers well to each flank of his position and hope they could provide him with warning of any sudden flanking thrust.
It was a night of restlessness throughout the camp, despite the exhaustion of the weary troops. Few of them slept for more than a few hours, and many campfires remained lit well past midnight as elves gathered around them and talked of past centuries, of their familiesof anything but the terrible destiny that seemed to await them on the morrow.
Dew crept across the land in the darkest hours of night, becoming a heavy mist that flowed thickly through the meadows and twisted around the trunks in the groves. With it came a chill that woke every elf, and thus they spent the last hours of darkness.
They heard the drums before dawn, a far-off rattle that began with shocking precision from a thousand places at once. Darkness shrouded the woods, and the mists of the humid night drifted like spirits among the nervous elves, further obscuring visibility.
Gradually the dark mist turned to pale blue. As the sky lightened overhead, the cadence of a great army"s advance swelled around the elves. The Wildrunners held to their pikes, or steadied their prancing horses. They checked their bowstrings and their
quivers, and made certain that the bucklings on their armor held secure. Inevitably the blue light gave way to a dawn of vague, indistinct shapes, still clouded by the haze of fog.
The beat of the drums grew louder. The mist drifted across the fields, leaving even nearby clumps of trees nothing more than gray shadows. Louder still grew the precise tapping, yet nothing could be seen of the approaching force.
"Therecoming through the pines!"
"I see themover that way."
"Here they comefrom the ravine!"
Elves shouted, pointing to spots all along their front where shapes began to take form in the mist. Now they could see great, rippling lines of movement, as if waves rolled through the earth itself. The large, prancing figures of hors.e.m.e.n became apparent, several waves of them flexing among the ranks of infantry.
Abruptly, as suddenly as it had started, the drumming ceased. The formations of the human army appeared as darker shapes against the yellow gra.s.s and the gray sky. For a moment, time on the field, and perhaps across all the plains, across all of Ansalon, stood still. The warriors of the two armies regarded each other across a quarter-mile of ground.
Even the wind died, and the mist settled low to the earth.
Then a shout arose from one of the humans and was echoed by fifty thousand voices.
Swords bashed against shields, while trumpets blared and horses whinnied in excitement and terror.
In the next instant, the human wave surged forward, the roaring sound wave of the attack preceding it with terrifying force.
Now bra.s.sy notes rang from elven trumpets. Pikes rattled as their wielders set their weapons. The five hundred horses of the Wildrunner cavalry nickered and kicked nervously.
Kith-Kanan steadied Kijo. From his position in the center of the line, he had a good view of the advancing human tide. His bodyguards, increased to twelve riders today, stood in a semicircle behind him. He had insisted that they not obstruct his view of the field.
For a moment, he had a terrifying vision of the elven line"s collapse, the human horde sweeping across the plains and forests beyond like a swarm of insects. He shuddered in the grip of the fear, but then the swirl of events grabbed and held his attention.
The first shock of the charge came in the form of two thousand swordsmen, brandishing shields and howling madly. Dressed in thick leather jerkins, they raced ahead of their metal-armored comrades, toward the block of elven pikes standing firm in the center of Kith"s line.
The clash of swordsmen with the tips of those pikes was a horrible scene. The steel-edged blades of the pikes pierced the leather with ease as scores of humans impaled themselves from the force of the charge. A cheer went up from the Wildrunners as the
surviving swordsmen turned to flee, leaving perhaps a quarter of their number writhing and groaning on the ground, at the very feet of the elves who had wounded them.
Now the focus shifted to the left, where human longbowmen advanced against an exposed portion of the Wildrunner line. Kith"s own archers fired back, sending a deadly shower against the press of men. But the human arrows, too, found marks among the tightly packed ranks, and elven blood soon flowed thick in the trampled gra.s.s.
Kith nudged Kijo toward the archers, watching volleys of arrows arc and cross through the air. The humans rushed forward and the elves stood firm. The elven commander urged his steed faster, sensing the imminent clash.
Then the human advance wavered and slowed. Kith saw Parnigar, standing beside the archers.
"Now!" cried the sergeant-major, gesturing toward a platoon of elves standing beside him. A few dozen in number, these elves wore swords at their sides but had no weapons in their hands. It was their bare hands that they raised, fingers extended toward the rushing humans.
A bright flash of light made Kith blink. Magic missiles, crackling blasts of sorcerous power, exploded from Parnigar"s platoon. A whole line of men dropped, slain so suddenly that members of the rear ranks tripped and tumbled over the bodies. Again the light flashed, and another volley of magic ripped into the humans.
Some of those struck screamed aloud, crying for their G.o.ds or for their mothers.
Others stumbled back, panicked by the sorcerous attack. A whole company, following the decimated formation, stopped in its tracks and then turned to flee. In another moment, the ma.s.s of human bowmen streamed away, pursued by another volley of the keen elven arrows.
Yet even as this attack failed, Kith sensed a crisis on his left. A line of human cavalry, three thousand snorting horses bearing armored lancers, thundered through the rapidly thinning mist. The charge swept forward with a momentum that made the previous attacks look like parade-ground drills.
Before the hors.e.m.e.n waited a line of elves with swords and shields, soft prey for the thundering riders. To the right and left of them, the sharp stakes jutted forward, proof against the cavalry attack. But the gaps in the line had to be held by troops, and now these elves faced approaching doom.
"Archersgive cover," Kith shouted as Kijo raced across the lines. Companies of elven longbow wheeled and released their missiles, scoring hits among the hors.e.m.e.n. But still the charge pounded forward.
"Fall back! Take cover in the trees!" he shouted to the captains of the longsword companies, for there was no other choice.
Kith cursed himself in frustration, realizing that the human commander had forced him to commit his pikes against the initial charge. Now came the horses, and his companies of pikes, the only true defense against a wave of cavalry, were terribly out of position.
Then he stared in astonishment. As more arrows fell among the riders, suddenly the hors.e.m.e.n wheeled about, racing away from the elven position before the defenders could follow Kith"s orders to withdraw. The astonished elven swordsmen watched the horses and the riders flee, pursued by a desultory shower of arrows. The elven defenders could only wonder at the fortuitous turn of events.
In the back of Kith"s mind, something whispered a warning. This had to be a trick, he told himself. Certainly the arrows hadn"t been thick and deadly enough to halt that awe-inspiring charge. Less than fifty riders, and no more than two dozen horses, lay in the field before them. His scouts had given him a good count of the human cavalry.
Though he had not been able to study these, he suspected he had seen only about half the force.
"Our men fall back as you ordered," reported Suzine, her eyes locked upon the violent images in her mirror. The gla.s.s rested on a table, and she sat before ittable, woman, and mirror, all encased in a narrow shroud of canvas, to keep the daylight from
the crucial seeing device. She never lost view of the elven commander who sat straight and proud in his saddle, every inch the warrior of House Royal.
Behind her, pacing in taut excitement, General Giarna looked over her shoulder.
"Excellentl And the elveswhat do you see of them?"
"They stand firm, my lord."
"What?" General Giarna"s voice barked violently against her, filling the small canvas shelter where they observed the battle. "You"re wrong! They must attack!"
Suzine flinched. The image in the mirrora picture of long ranks of elven warriors, holding their positions, failing to pursue the bait of the human retreatwavered slightly, She felt the general"s rage explode, and then the image faded. Suzine saw only her own reflection and the hideous face of the man behind her.
"My lord! Let us. .h.i.t them now, while they fall back in confusion!" Kith turned to see Kencathedrus beside him. His old teacher rode a prancing mare, and the weariness of the march from Silvanost was totally gone from his face. Instead, the warrior"s eyes burned, and his gauntleted fist clung tightly to the hilt of his sword.
"It has to be a trick," Kith countered. "We didn"t drive them away that easily."
"For the G.o.ds" sakes, Kith-Kananthese are humans! The cowardly sc.u.m will run from a loud noise! Let"s follow up and destroy them!"
"No!" Kith"s voice was harsh, full of command, and Kencathedrus"s face whitened with frustration.
"We do not face an ordinary general," Kith-Kanan continued, feeling that he owed further explanation to the one who had girded his first sword upon him. "He hasn"t failed to surprise me yet, and I know we have seen but a fraction of his force."
"But if they fly they will escape! We must pursue!" Kencathedrus couldn"t help himself.
"The answer is no. If they are escaping, so be it. If they attempt to pull us out of our position to trap us, they shall not."
Another roar thundered across the fields before them, and more humans came into view, running toward the elves with all manner of weaponry. Great companies of longbowmen readied their missiles, while bearded axemen raised their heavy blades over their heads. Spearmen charged with gleaming points extended toward the enemy, while swordsmen banged their swords against their shields, advancing at a steady march.
Kencathedrus, shocked by the fresh display of human might and vigor, looked at the general with respect. "You knew," he said wonderingly.
Kith-Kanan shrugged and shook his head. "NoI simply suspected. Perhaps because I had a good teacher."
The older elf growled, appreciating the remark but annoyed with himself. Indeed, they both realized that, had the elves advanced when Kencathedrus had desired, they would have been swiftly overrun, vulnerable in the open field.
Kencathedrus rejoined his reserve company, and Kith-Kanan immersed himself in the fight. Thousands of humans and elves clashed along the line, and hundreds died.
Weapons shattered against shields, and bones shattered beneath blades. The long morning gave way to afternoon, but the pa.s.sing of time meant nothing to the desperate combatants, for whom each moment could be their last.
The tide of battle surged back and forth. Companies of humans turned and fled, many of them before their charging ranks even reached the determined elves. Others hacked and slew their way into the defenders, and occasionally a company of elves gave way. Then the humans poured through the gap like the surging surf, but always Kith-- Kanan was there, slashing with his b.l.o.o.d.y sword, urging his elven lancers into the breach.
Wave after wave of humans surged madly across the trampled field, hurling themselves into the elves as if to shatter them with the sheer momentum of their charges.
As soon as one company broke, one regiment fell back depleted and demoralized, another block of steel-tipped humanity lunged forward to take its place.
The Wildrunners fought until total exhaustion gripped each and every warrior, and then they fought some more. Their small, mobile companies banded together to form solid lines, shifted to deflect each new charge, and flowed sideways to fill gaps caused by their fallen or routed comrades. Always those plunging horses backed them up, and each time, as the line faltered, the elven cavalry thundered against the breakthrough, driving it back in disorder.
Those five hundred riders managed to seal every breach. By the time the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, Kith noticed a slackening in the human attacks. One company of swordsmen stumbled away, and for once there was no fresh formation to take their place in the attack. The din of combat seemed to fade somewhat, and then he saw another formationa group of axementurn and lumber away from the fight. More and more of the humans broke off their attacks, and soon the great regiments of Ergoth streamed across the field, back toward their own lines.
Kith slumped wearily in his saddle, staring in suspicion at the fleeing backs of the soldiers. Could it be over? Had the Wildrunners won? He looked at the sunabout four good hours of daylight remained. The humans wouldn"t risk an encounter at night, he knew. Elven nightvision was one of the great proofs of the elder race"s superiority over its shorter-lived counterparts. Yet certainly the hour was not the reason for the humans"
retreat, not when they had been pressing so forcefully all along the line.