A weary Parnigar approached on foot. Kith had seen the scout"s horse cut down beneath him during the height of the battle. The general recognized his captain"s lanky walk, though Parnigar"s face and clothes were caked in mud and the blood of his slain enemies.
"We"ve held them, sir," he reported, his face creasing into a disbelieving smile.
Immediately, however, he frowned and shook his head. "Some three or four hundred dead, though. The day was not without its cost."
Kith looked at the exhausted yet steady ranks of his Wildrunners. The pikemen held their weapons high, the archers carried bows at the ready, while those with swords honed their blades in the moments of silence and respite. The formations still arrayed in full ranks, as if fresh and unblooded, but their ranks were shorter now. Organized in neat rows behind each company, covered with blankets, lay a quiet grouping of motionless forms.
At least the dead can rest, he thought, feeling his own weariness. He looked again to the humans, seeing that they still fled in disorder. Many of them had reached the tree line and were disappearing into the sheltering forest.
"My lord! My lord! Now is the time. You must see that."
Kith turned to see Kencathedrus galloping up to him. The elven veteran reined in beside the general and gestured at the fleeing humans.
"You may be right." Kith-Kanan had to agree. He saw the five thousand elves of Silvanost gathered in trim ranks, ready to advance the moment he gave the word. This was the chance to deliver a coup de grace that could send the enemy reeling all the way back to Caergoth.
"Quickly, my lordthey"re getting away." Impatiently, his gray brows bristling, Kencathedrus indicated the ragged humans running in small clumps, like sheep, toward the sheltering woods in the distance.
"Very welladvance and pursue! But have a care for your flanks!"
"They must come after us now." General Giarna"s horse twisted and pitched among the ranks of retreating humans, many of whom were bleeding or limping, supported by the shoulders of their st.u.r.dier comrades. Indeed, the Army of Ergoth had paid a hideous price for the daylong attacks, all of which were mere preliminaries to his real plan of battle.
The general paid no attention to the human suffering around him. Instead, his dark eyes fixed with a malevolent stare on the elven positions across the mud-spattered landscape.
No movement yetbut they must advance. He felt this with a certainty that filled his dark heart with a bloodthirsty antic.i.p.ation.
For a moment, he cast a sharp glance to the rear, toward the tiny tent that sheltered Suzine and her mirror. The G.o.ds should d.a.m.n that b.i.t.c.h! How, in the heat of the fight, could her powers fail her? Why nowtoday?
His brow narrowed in suspicion, but he had no time now to wonder about the unreliability of his mistress. She had been a valuable tool, and it would be regrettable if that tool were no longer at his disposal.
Perhaps, as she had claimed, the tension of the great conflict had proven too distracting, too overpowering for her to concentrate. Or maybe the general"s looming presence had frightened her. In fact, General Giarna wanted to frighten her, just as he wanted to frighten everyone under his command. However, if that fear was enough to disrupt her powers of concentration, than Suzine"s usefulness might be seriously limited.
No matterat least for now. The battle could still be won by force of arms. The key was to make the elves believe that the humans were beaten.
General Giarna"s pulse quickened then as he saw a line of movement across the field.
"Elves of Silvanost, advance!" The captain had already turned away from his commander. The reserve companies started forward at a brisk march, through the gaps in the spiked fence of the elven line. The companies of the Wildrunners, battered and weary, cleared the way for the attackers, whose gleaming spear points and shining armor stood
out in stark contrast to the muddy, b.l.o.o.d.y mess around them. Nevertheless, the Wildrunners raised a hearty cheer as Kencathedrus led his troops into the attack.
"On the doublecharge!" His horse prancing eagerly beneath him, Kencathedrus brandished his sword and urged his complement forward. The troops needed no prodding.
All day they had seen their fellow countrymen die at the hands of these rapacious savages, and now they had the chance to take vengeance.
The panicked humans cast down weapons, shields, helmetsanything loose and c.u.mbersomein their desperate flight. They scattered away from the charging elves, racing for the shelter of any clump of trees or thick brush they could find.
The warriors of Silvanost, disciplined even at their steady advance, remained in close-meshed lines. They parted at the obstacles, while several who were armed with shortswords pressed into the grove, quickly dispatching the hapless humans who sought refuge there.
But even so, it was clear that the great bulk of the routed troops would escape, so rapid was their flight. The close ranks of the elves could not keep pace. Finally Kencathedrus slowed his company to a brisk walk, allowing the elves to catch their breath as they approached the first large expanse of forest.
"Archers, stand forward to the flanks!" Kith-Kanan didn"t know why he gave the order, but suddenly he saw how vulnerable were the five thousand elves, in the event that he had been tricked. Kencathedrus and his regiment had already advanced nearly half a
mile ahead of the main army, while the fleeing humans seemed to melt away before them.
Two blocks of elveshis keenest longbows, some thousand strong eachtrotted ahead.
"Pikesin the middle, quickly." One more unit Kith-Kanan sent forward, this one consisting of his fiercest veterans, armed with their deadly, fifteen-foot weapons with razor-sharp steel tips. They advanced at a trot, filling some of the gap between the two blocks of longbows.
"Hors.e.m.e.n! To me!" A third command brought the proud elven cavalry thundering to their commander. It seemed to Kith-Kanan that Kencathedrus and his company were now in terrible danger. He had to catch up and give them support.
Flanked by his mounted bodyguards, the commander led his hors.e.m.e.n through the lines, in a wide sweep toward the right of Kencathedrus"s company. The elven archers carried their weapons ready. Pikes rattled behind them. Had he done everything that he could to protect the advance?
Kith sensed something in the air as the late afternoon seemed to grow sinister around him. He listened carefully; his eyes studied the opposite tree line, scanned to the right and left to the limits of his vision.
Nothing.
Yet now some of his elves sensed the same thing, the indefinable inkling of something terrible and awesome and mighty. Warriors nervously fingered their weapons.
The Wildrunners" horses moved restlessly, shaking off the weariness of many hours"
battle.
Then a rumble of deep thunder permeated the air. It began as a faint drumming, but in Kith-Kanan"s mind, it grew to a deafening explosion within a few seconds.
"Sound the withdrawal!" He shouted at the trumpeters as he looked left, then rightwhere, by all the G.o.ds?
He saw them appear, like a wave of brown gra.s.s on the horizon, to both sidescountless thousands of humans mounted on thundering horses, sweeping around the patches of woods, across the open prairie, pounding closer, with all the speed of the wind.
The horns blared, and Kith saw that Kencathedrus had already sensed the trap. Now the elves of Silvanost retired toward the Wildrunners" lines at a quick pace. But all who looked on could see that they would be too late.
The archers and pikemen advanced, desperate to aid their countrymen. They showered the human cavalry with arrows, while the long pikes bristled before the archers, protecting them from the charge.
But the elves of Silvanost had no such protection. The human cavalry slammed into them, and rank after rank of the elven infantry fell beneath the cruel hooves and keen, unfeeling steel.
The pikemen and archers fell back slowly, carefully, still shredding the cavalry with deadly arrows, felling the hors.e.m.e.n by the hundred with each volley. Yet thousands upon thousands of the humans trampled across the plain, slaughtering the stranded regiment.
Kith-Kanan led his riders into the flank of the human charge, little caring that there were ten or twenty humans for every one of his elves. With his own sword, he cut a leering, bearded human from the saddle. Horses screamed and bucked around them, and in moments, the two companies of cavalry mingled, each man or elf fighting the foe he found close at hand.
More blood flowed into the already soaked ground. Kith saw a human lancer drive a bloodstained lance toward his heart. One of his loyal bodyguards flung himself from his saddle and took the weapon through his own throat, deflecting the blow that would have surely been fatal. With a surge of hatred, Kith spurred Kijo forward, chopping savagely through the neck and striking the lancer"s head from his shoulders. Spouting blood like an obscene geyser, the corpse toppled from the saddle, lost in the chaos of the melee before it struck the ground.
Kith saw another of his faithful guards fall, this time to a human swordsman whose horse skipped nimbly away. The fight swirled madly, flashing images of blood, screaming horses, dying men and elves. If he had paused to think, he would have regretted the charge that brought his riders out here to aid Kencathedrus. Now, it seemed, both units faced annihilation.
Desperately Kith-Kanan looked for a sign of the elves of Silvanost. He saw them through the melee. Led by a grim-faced Kencathedrus, the elven reserve force struggled to break free of the deadly trap. Finally they tore from their neat ranks in a headlong dash through the sea of human hors.e.m.e.n toward the safety of the Wildrunner lines.
Miraculously, many of them made it. They scrambled between the thick wall of stakes, into the welcoming arms of their comrades, while the stampeding cavalry surged and bucked just beyond. By the dozens and scores and hundreds, they limped and dodged and tumbled to safety, until more than two thousand of them, including Kencathedrus, had emerged. The captain tried to turn and limp back into the fray in a foredoomed effort to bring forth more of his men, but he was restrained in the grasp of two sergeantsmajor.
The archers, too, fell back, and then it was only the riders caught on the field.
Isolated pockets of elven cavalry twisted away from the sea of human hors.e.m.e.n, breaking for the shelter of their lines. Kith-Kanan himself, however, after having led the charge, was now caught in the middle of the enemy forces.
His arm grew leaden with fatigue. Blood from a cut on his forehead streamed into his eyes. His helmet was gone, knocked from his head by a human"s bashing shield. His loyal guardsthe few who still livedfought around him, but now the outlook was grim.
The humans fell back, just far enough to avoid the slashing elven blades. Kith-Kanan and a group of perhaps two dozen elven riders gasped for breath, surrounded by a ring of deathmore than a thousand human lancers, swordsmen, and archers.
With a groan of despair, he cast his sword to the ground. The rest of the survivors immediately followed his example.
As darkness finally closed about them, the humans turned back from the elven line.
Kencathedrus and Parnigar knew that it was only nightfall that had prevented the complete collapse of their position. They knew, too, that the exhausted army would have to retreat now, even before the darkness was complete.
They would have to take shelter in Sithelbec early the following day, before the deadly human cavalry could catch them in the open. The entire force of the Wildrunners could suffer the fate of the unblooded elves of Silvanost.
It seemed to the elven leaders that the day couldn"t have been any more disastrous.
Despair settled around them like a bleak cloud as they considered the worst news of all: Kith-Kanan, their commander and the driving force behind the Wildrunners, was lostpossibly captured, but more likely killed.
The army marched, heads down and shambling, toward the securityand the confinementof Sithelbec.
Sometime after midnight, it started to rain, and it continued to pour throughout the night and even past the gray, featureless dawn. The miserable army finally reached Sithelbec, closing the gates behind the last of the Wildrunners, sometime around noon of the following gray, drizzling day.
5.
After the Battle.
Suzine awakened to a summons from the general, delivered by a bronze-helmed lieutenant of crossbows. The woman felt vague relief that General Giarna hadn"t come to her in person. Indeed, she hadn"t seen him since before the battle"s climax, when his trap had snared so much of the elven army.
Her relief had grown from the previous night, when she had feared that he would desire her. General Giarna frightened her often, but there was something deeper and more abiding about the terror he inspired after he had led his troops in battle.
The darkness that seemed always to linger in his eyes became, in those moments, like a bottomless well of despair and hopelessness, as if his hunger for killing could never be sated. The more the blood flowed around him, the greater his appet.i.te became.
He would take her then, using her like he was some kind of parasite, unaware and uncaring of her feelings. He would hurt her and, when he was finished, cast her roughly aside, his own fundamental needs still raging.
But after this battle, his greatest victory to date, he had stayed away from her. She had retired early the night before, dying to look into her mirror, to ascertain Kith-Kanan"s whereabouts. She felt a terrible fear for his safety, but she hadn"t dared to use her gla.s.s for fear of the general. He mustn"t suspect her growing fascination with Kith-Kanan.
Now she dressed quickly and fetched her mirror, safe in a felt-lined wooden case, and then allowed the officer to lead her along the column of tents to General Giarna"s shelter of black silk. The lieutenant held the door while she entered, blinking for a moment as she adjusted to the dim light.
And then it seemed that her world exploded.
The file of muddy elven prisoners, many of them bruised, stood at resentful attention. There were perhaps a score of them, each with a watchful swordsman right behind him, but Suzine"s eyes flashed immediately to him.
She recognized Kith-Kanan in the instant that she saw him, and she had to forcibly resist an urge to run to him. She wanted to look at him, to touch him in all the ways she could not through her mirror. She fought an urge to knock the sword-wielding guard aside.
Then she remembered General Giarna. Her face flushed, she felt perspiration gather on her brow. He was watching her closely. Forcing an expression of cool detachment, she turned to him.
"You summoned me, General?"
The commander seemed to look through her, with a gaze that threatened to wither her soul. His eyes yawned before her like black chasms, menacing pits that made her want to hurriedly step back from the edge.
"The interrogation continues. I want you to witness their testimony and gauge the truth of their replies." His voice was like a cold gust of air.
For the first time, Suzine noticed an additional elven form. This one stretched facedown on the carpeted floor of the tent, a tiny hole at the base of his neck showing where he had been stabbed.
Numbly she looked back. Kith-Kanan stood second from the end of the line, near where the killing had occurred. He paid no attention to her. The elf between him and the dead one looked in grimly concealed fear at the human general.
"Your strength!" demanded General Giarna. "How many troops garrison your fortress? Catapults? Ballistae? You will tell us about them all."
The final sentence was a demand, not a question.
"The fortress is garrisoned by twenty thousand warriors, with more on the way!"
blurted the prisoner beside the corpse. "Wizards and clerics, too"
Suzine didn"t need the mirror to see that he lied; neither, apparently, did General Giarna. He chopped his hand once, and the swordsman behind the terrified speaker stabbed at the doomed elf. His blade severed the elf"s spinal cord and then plunged through his neck, emerging under the unfortunate warrior"s chin in a gurgling fountain of blood.