by David Rice
Holok realized that all he had left to offer his people was hope. It was only the vision of unborn children that granted him the strength to push away dread.
***
Nerrod and his party had traversed endless leagues of sparsely treed wilderness when they reached the fringes of Longwood. It must have been their exhaustion that allowed them to stumble into the picket line of the Crystal Marsh lifebane. If it had been Ulimbor’s warriors, they would have been dead before even registering surprise.
Nerrod called out to his Swift Current companions, “Hold your fire. These are allies.”
Many tense moments passed before a recognizable face appeared, bringing food for both the wardens and their mounts.
“You have succeeded in warning your people?” Rybaki asked.
Nerrod slid heavily from his horse and gratefully accepted a mug of warm spiced mead. “The Swift Current Clan is willing to speak with a representative of your people if they are willing to ride with us.”
Rybaki frowned. “Ulimbor’s army is almost to Longwood. They are between us and their Heartwood. Every person is needed here.”
“What plan do you have?” Nerrod asked between sips. “If none can join us then perhaps a written message can be returned. But my people face Ulimbor’s forces as well. I must fight with them.”
Rybaki shook her heard. “What good is talk if we do not fight together against the real threat?”
Nerrod looked away, absorbed in thought. When he spoke, it was low and as determined as the flow of a river. “Although it is hard to accept, Elder Holok said much about our common ancestry. You spared me, and this kindness might have helped spare more of my people.” Rybaki nodded. “Our only enemy is death,” she said.
“I have no other family to fight beside. If you have a plan to fight, I will fight alongside you.”
“My father’s choice is to remain undetected along Ulimbor’s flank. Once he begins the battle against Longwood’s defenders, we will mislead and confuse his troops, hopefully drawing small numbers away to be destroyed.”
Nerrod’s darkness almost allowed a smirk. “You have wisely chosen a horsewarden tactic.”
Rybaki’s own darkness crept into her voice. “We have had a lifetime to witness and suffer its results.”
Nerrod took a deep breath. “I cannot speak for the Swift Current horsewardens. They cannot be expected to fight anywhere but in defense of their kin. So if a message can be prepared, they will return with it once rested.”
Another figure rode slowly into the middle of the group atop an impressive black stallion. His dark leathers and darker eyes commanded attention before he had to speak a word.
As the Swift Current wardens looked up, their speech drifted away and they stood frozen and wide-eyed.
“Are our people safe?” the dark clad elf asked as he circled them slowly. They noticed that he was harnessed to his saddle and that his one foot was wooden.
Then the horse wardens erupted with sudden vigor. “Yes—of course, First!”
“Good,” Ballok barked. “Bugger the talk of missing a fight. There’s an army of lifebane waiting to be killed and these Crystal Marsh tribesmen want to kill’em, too.”
The Swift Current horsewardens shook off puzzled looks to embrace a more savage comfort.
“Then who will fight with me here?” Ballok yelled.
“To the last!” every horsewarden answered.
***
Holok listened with growing concern as Yermak and one other surviving warden related their story.
“Five thousand or more,” Yermak panted. “Shaman using the weave to detect our every trick and trap. We have failed, Elder Holok.”
Looking down upon the steppes, Holok could already see the dark tendrils of Ulimbor’s forces snaking their way towards them. “No, Yermak,” he said calmly. “There is no failure in a true heart. And you have much yet to do.”
Yermak wiped sweat from his face. “What is required?”
Holok turned his horse. “Gather all at the doors of the three holdfasts. Prepare a defense where the approach bottlenecks. I will gather the elders and attempt to open one of their gates.”
“You seek escape in the darkness of a dwarven hole?’ Yermak exclaimed.
Holok sighed. “The darkness of a holdfast is a far warmer place for our children than the darkness of a grave.”
Without waiting for a response, Holok urged his mount to motion and raced to join his kin. Yermak and his companion drained the last of their canteens and followed.
***
The procession that had been following Eko’s Calling came to an abrupt halt when Orweh appeared winded and pale before Galen and Dorak.
“I flew here as fast as I could,” Orweh gasped. “I beg forgiveness for only managing a sparrow’s form.”
“Speak your news,” Galen encouraged.
Dorak patted Orweh on the shoulder and let the weave channel renewing energy into her body.
“There is no sign of Eko, Dria, Tyrin, or Siandros,” she blurted, “but there is sign of a struggle, and discarded gnome-designed animal traps,” she added with a twist of disgust.
Galen stepped back and looked at Dorak. His voice quivered with anger. “Captured by trophy hunters? And during a Calling?”
Orweh nodded. “I think that’s what happened to Eko and Dria.”
“What about Siandros and Tyrin?”
Orweh sighed. “I flew to the coast and listened in on the conversations of the cretins who live there. They were fleeing the town fearing an attack from us or a drake, and they mentioned seeing an elf riding a gryphon.”
Dorak’s eyebrows shot upward. “A gryphon?”
“That must be your student, Tyrin,” Galen said. “And the rider, Siandros?”
Orweh nodded. “The humans kept saying that they were flying south.”
“Attempting a rescue,” Dorak offered. “Siandros would certainly be that impulsive, especially if it was to save his promised mate.”
“They have both travelled in the human realm before,” Galen added. “And it must be of some urgency for Tyrin and Siandros to work closely together.” He paused to collect his thoughts. “If this is as you say, Orweh, all we can do is hope for the best. There’s nothing we can do to help them.”
Orweh frowned. “Are you sure? With a bit of rest, I could follow—”
“No,” Galen answered evenly. “You have done much and the greater threat is posed by the drakes. Recover your energy and then fly to Cinn and Jiror. Tell them that we are returning to Longwood immediately.”
Orweh nodded solemnly. “Yes, Elders. I will do as you ask.”
Galen regarded Dorak with fondness. “My friend, I hope that you are ready to take on the mantle of Third Warden.”
Dorak laughed. “Only when you ride as carelessly as Ballok.”
The elders patted one another on the shoulders as their smiles faded and their backs stiffened with resolve.
“Woodmother Ghenna? Woodmother Vendete?” Galen called across the clearing, “Please inform the entire procession that were must return to Longwood immediately.”
***
Holok watched helplessly as Ulimbor’s forces climbed the foothills like relentless dogs driving their prey towards a killing ground. Holok kept his people retreating, triggering avalanches to block paths, and setting spike traps in pits when time allowed. Still, the horsewardens gave ground, moving steadily towards where they would make their final stand in the plateau before three massive dwarven gates.
Holok placed his warriors along the trailing edges of higher ground, mounts shielded by small hills, and bows concentrated on flanks to deliver a crossfire to their front. The children and women were armed and kept back as a reserve. Holok made sure their horses were nearby, too, if only because he knew horsewardens always fought best that way.
If only they had been able to open the gates, Holok shivered, or had found the slightest crack through which to squeeze. They had not.
T
he horsewardens called out to their ranks to steady when the lifebane first came into view. Horsewarden archers had the longer range and picked off each advancing scout to much cheering. But the mass of lifebane that followed darkened the mountain pass and defied his eyes to count the number.
Holok reluctantly accepted the truth. They could end this with a single charge, and yet they did not. Instead, the lifebane shaman stood at the front of their line, just out of range, stabbed their staves into the earth, and with a manic cackling chant began to twist the weave to their ends.
Holok’s neck prickled but he had no inkling of what they might be planning. He waved a group of his best archers forward to take their best shots and disrupt the chant. The horsewarden line hushed as the arrows flew, their white shafts soaring towards lifebane heads and hearts. Then the arrows vanished with a sizzle only a pebble’s throw above the group of
shaman. What would be next, Holok wondered. Were they attempting to provoke a charge?
Cries from the rear made Holok spin around. From deep in the earth he could feel, and then hear, a fearsome deep beating rhythm. Something he had not heard since his youth.
War Drums. Orc, goblin, and kobold war drums. The lifebane were calling upon their own dark spawn, the progeny of broken experiments in the distant past that they had once enslaved and now commanded like livestock or chattel.
“They mean to surround us!” Holok called out. His archers split their ranks and half faced towards the gates. The women and children of his reserve called out an order to form line facing this new threat.
The gate of the central holdfast puffed dust down its middle and began to crack. The lifebane shaman ended their chant and ran back to their troops who were starting to change shape and, form—squares? If they were going to open the gate, Holok realized. And if the orcs mindlessly charged—
Holok mounted his horse and galloped from group to group barking new orders. “Be ready to ride. Every one of you. Ride wherever I lead you and don’t turn back.”
“What is your plan?” the question was shouted to him repeatedly.
“Survive!” came Holok’s determined command.
When the gates swung open , an eruption of squirming darkened bodies poured forth, their ravenous shrieks filling the valley, and their momentum twisting and tumbling upon itself.
“Ride now! Follow me!” Holok cried out, and every horsewarden swung onto their mounts, the horses they had raised and grown beside. They tucked their heads and sprung across the plateau, their speed like a rushing river, their will unbreakable. They followed Holok into the very teeth of the lifebane horde, and through the gaps between their squares like lightning released. Behind them, screaming with bloodlust, came the orcs and goblins.
The smiles upon the lifebane shaman disappeared when the horsewardens flashed by nearly untouched, and their untamed host, in a flurry of crunching bone and skewered flesh, slammed into their ranks instead.
Some of the horsewardens were caught from behind, and dragged into the pell-mell butchery. Some were felled by spears or arrows from the trailing squares. But most were able to circle away from the savage bloodletting and reassemble facing the gates once more.
“Shouldn’t we ride for the steppes?” several horsewardens pleaded.
Holok gripped a bloody smear upon his side and pointed west. Below them in the distance, thousands of the lifebane were encamped on the steppes expecting a swift victory. “No!” he yelled. “Wait for the orcs to do their worst and then, when I ride again, we charge through the gaps, over the dead, and don’t stop until we are past the gate.”
Some voices were raised in opposition but quickly beaten down. Above them in the narrowing pass, the lifebane and their warped offspring were rendering themselves down to heaps of thrashing crimson manic murder.
Shadows passed above them all. First one bat-winged shape. Then another. And a third.
“Look! Above!” The cries echoed throughout the horsewardens and then all of their voices fell to a hush. Horses bucked and whinnied. Children started to scream.
Ice shivered down Holok’s spine. The lifebane’s indiscriminate use of the weave had attracted the drakes. And now there was but one option. Holok patted the sweaty neck of his horse and urged him forward once more. “Now! We ride, my people—” he cried out, “— through the dark to find the dawn!”
The horsewardens bolted forward, and rode for their lives.
Behind, the drakes fought with one another, and their flame engulfed the mountainside.
IX
With a shiver of ecstasy, Ulimbor raised his staff and pointed south. The trees shook with the sound of ten thousand war cries, and the leaves fell like rain. His drake launched skyward and circled, opened his maw, and spewed rolling balls of purple fire across a dozen fir trees. They swelled with flames until their branches cracked and exploded. As they leapt from tree to tree, the flames began to growl and the wind began to whip choking smoke and blinding debris southward towards the Heartwood a dozen leagies away. Longwood’s oldest trees were consumed like candles.
Ulimbor had dreamt of this moment for thousands of cycles. As his warriors fanned out to the flanks, he had no concern for their safety. He only needed the drake to destroy Longwood and its pompous defenders. Ulimbor laughed. Alone, the drake would end all resistance. By the next day, he would ascend, unchallenged, to a new throne of bitter ash. And he would finally be free of the chains of The One.
***
Jiror flinched when the horizon exploded in purple flames. He called out to his second, Krelan, to join him. “Fall back before the flames,” he instructed. “Do not let the fires encircle your wardens.”
Krelan nodded.
“And if a drake attacks, draw them away from the Heartwood.”
“Yes, First Warden.”
“I will send a messenger to Cinn, although he can probably see what we see.”
“He will soon see the smoke,” Krelan added. “Everyone will.”
Jiror’s face tightened. “We needed the forestwards here to slow the flames. Curse Eko and his Calling. Any other enemy we could fight, easily, but not the drakes. Not by ourselves.”
“We will fight,” Krelan responded. “We will outlast this threat.”
Jiror tilted his head and his mouth ran dry. “Do you hear that,” he hissed.
Krelan concentrated. There was a faint cadence in the earth, and a drifting dark song in the wind. “What is it?”
Jiror’s expression darkened. “Lifebane,” he spat.
***
In her sparrow form, Orweh landed beside Cinn and the moment she transformed she tumbled to her knees, exhausted,
Cinn’s eyes widened but he caught her as she fell. “You are safe,” he said. “Catch your breath, and then tell me the reason for your haste.”
Orweh stubbornly pulled herself up and in forced bursts of speech between gulps of air she exclaimed, “Drake to the north, and—countless lifebane. They’ve started fires. Everything—is burning.”
Cinn froze to consider his options. “Galen?” he prompted. “The others?”
“On the way back,” Orweh gasped, “but they do not know—of the fires—or the lifebane.”
Cinn scowled. “They must be told. They cannot charge blindly towards such foes.”
Orweh nodded, placed a palm against the tall fir tree beside her, and drew renewing strength from its roots. “I will tell them—to hurry.”
“Tell them to make for the Heartwood with the forestwards leading,” Cinn began to create a battle plan. “If the trees are strengthened and the forest turned against the lifebane—”
Orweh let go of the tree, took a deep breath, and launched herself into the air once more.
As Cinn watched her depart, his mind burned with new concerns. Drakefire is difficult to extinguish, the lifebane will outnumber us, and they have no other goals save our destruction. He called to his messenger. And the worst part, his mind singed with inescapable truth, they will have shaman of th
eir own, too.
Gekker, a young warden, came running to Cinn’s side.
“Travel our entire line,” Cinn instructed tersely. “Start on our western edge and do not stop until you have reached Jiror in the east. Tell them to watch their flanks and fall back before allowing any encirclement. We will make our stand at the northern edge of the Heartwood.”
Yes, Second Warden!” the young elf blurted, and raced away.
Cinn took a deep breath and counted the shafts in his quiver. Mark, fire, and move, he told himself, mark, fire, and move. Renew the shadowspark. Watch your feet. Watch your flanks. He ran towards the position of his central pickets to remind them, too. Then a final thought pierced his calm. Both sides would be calling upon the weave today. And they had been warned. There were many drakes in this world. And the use of the spark with such wild abandon could only result in one outcome. There could be far more than one drake to battle before the day was through.