Everyone else was down or busy battling the other elves. As the vise tightened, cutting off her air, she knew she couldn’t escape.
16
The massive wall of water crashed through the valley, tearing up trees and dislodging boulders that had rested on that land forever.
As Jev clambered to the top of the slope, water splashed him in the back and doused his hair. He slowed his sprint to make sure Cutter stayed close to him. His friend had shorter legs and didn’t run as quickly.
While they raced to high ground together, Jev kept glancing back down the slope in search of Lornysh, but his friend had disappeared. The boulder he’d crouched behind was now submerged.
A soldier caught in the flow sailed downriver, yelling and flailing ineffectively. Jev cursed himself for bringing Krox’s people out here. Why had he believed that mundane soldiers would have a chance against elven mages? All he’d been thinking about was keeping his family safe.
“There’s Lornysh.” Cutter pointed.
Their friend crouched high in the branches of a tree, not on their side of the valley but on the far side.
How had he gotten over there? And why? Had he hoped to reach the elves during the distraction caused by the water? Jev didn’t think that would work since the wardens had created that water.
“That tree’s shaking and doesn’t look stable,” Cutter added.
No, it did not. It had a wide trunk, but who knew if its roots would hold under the torrential flow?
Worse, Jev spotted an elf high up on the opposite bank with his bow drawn. He only looked to have a couple of arrows left in his quiver, but he was nocking one and staring straight at Lornysh.
Cutter drew his hammer.
“That’s not going to help.” Jev yanked out his pistol and fired. No, he tried to fire. But the powder in the bullet had gotten wet.
“You sure? It’s waterproof.” Cutter pulled back his arm and hurled his hammer, the tool imbued with magic by Master Grindmor.
Jev couldn’t believe his friend would risk losing it for such a crazy throw. He looked for the nearest soldier with a rifle.
“Shoot that elf,” he barked, though he feared it was too late.
The elf loosed his arrow toward Lornysh as Cutter’s hammer spun through the air across the flooded valley.
But Lornysh had seen the shot or sensed it coming. He hung from the tree branch with one hand and whipped his sword up with the other. He swatted the arrow out of the air with a faint clang that traveled across the roaring water.
The elf who’d loosed the arrow shouted angrily at Lornysh and waved his bow. He didn’t see the hammer coming.
It slammed into his forehead with impossible accuracy, and Jev gaped. The elf pitched backward, his bow falling from his hands. He didn’t get up again.
Cutter dusted off his hands. “That’s how you do it.”
“I wish you had more of those,” Jev said.
“I’ll have to retrieve that one. Good thing the water’s going down.”
Lornysh sprang from his perch. He didn’t quite make it to dry ground, but he swam with powerful strokes and reached the far side. Two elves appeared on the top of the valley wall and looked down at him. Vornzylar and the elf with the green-glowing sword that sprouted vines.
“They’ll kill him,” Jev breathed.
A soldier ran up to Jev. “The lieutenant is missing, sir,” he blurted. “What do we do?”
Jev snatched the rifle from the man’s hands and shot at Vornzylar.
This time, the bullets weren’t wet, and the weapon fired with a satisfying crack. His aim was as perfect as Cutter’s had been, but the bullet bounced off some magical shield before reaching the elf.
Jev groaned. The elves didn’t even glance in his direction. They strode resolutely to the spot where Lornysh was climbing out of the water, his sword in hand.
Lornysh hadn’t been able to defeat Vornzylar alone. He would be mincemeat in the face of two foes of that caliber.
“My hammer would break that barrier they’ve got up,” Cutter said. “It’s just as magical as they are.”
“Then we’re getting it.” Jev thrust the rifle back at the soldier, spotted an axe on his belt, and grabbed it. “I’ll bring this back to you later. Keep firing at any elves you see over there if you get a chance.”
“You swimming?” Cutter asked.
Jev ran down the muddy slope with the axe in hand and launched himself into the water.
As Cutter had observed, the flow had lessened, and the water would disappear altogether soon, but a strong current still threatened to carry him down the newly flooded valley and out to sea. He jammed the axe through his belt so he could use both arms, and he kicked and paddled harder than he’d ever swum in his life. Meanwhile, he prayed to the Air Dragon that none of the elves were paying attention to him. In the water, he would be an easy target.
But maybe the elves were out of arrows. He made it to the far side without being shot at. He scrambled up the slope, glancing around to get his bearings. He’d traveled farther downriver than he wanted, and he had to sprint around torn-up brush and over downed logs, hoping the elves were still in the same spot. Hoping Lornysh was still alive.
Jev glimpsed Cutter and a couple of the soldiers also risking the swim, but he couldn’t stop to wait for them. The roar of the water had died down, and he heard the clashing of swords up ahead. The elves had moved from the crest of the valley wall and disappeared into a thick stand of shrubs. Jev let the sound of the fight lead him to them.
From the rapid-fire clangs, it seemed that a dozen men must be battling, but Jev knew it couldn’t be more than three, Lornysh and those two elves. The third elf was unconscious from Cutter’s hammer strike, and Jev had shot the fourth in the hand earlier. He hoped that would make it impossible for him to swing a sword or draw a bow.
As Jev crept toward the stand, the leaves shuddered and shook. He spotted the hammer on the ground near the unconscious elf and snatched it up, remembering Cutter’s promise that it would thwart a magical barrier.
With the axe in one hand and the hammer in the other, Jev slipped into the bushes. He spotted Vornzylar and Lornysh as Lornysh darted back from a barrage of thrusts and slashes, almost tripping over a root in his haste to get out of the way. He blocked Vornzylar’s attacks, but he winced as their blades met again and again, as if his old injury—or some new one—was hampering him.
Jev circled, hoping to get to Vornzylar’s back, but movement stirred at the corner of his eye. Instinctively, he ducked.
An arrow buzzed over his head and embedded itself in a tree trunk. Jev jumped up, spinning as the second elf, the one with the thorny sword, sprang over the brush toward him.
The glowing green blade slashed toward his face, grasping vines writhing like tiny snakes. Jev whipped Cutter’s hammer up, praying for accuracy with the unfamiliar weapon, a weapon that wasn’t as long as he was accustomed to for fighting.
The elven blade clanged against the hammer’s handle. A jolt ran up Jev’s arm, jarring his elbow painfully, but the hammer deflected the sword without breaking. The elf’s eyebrows flew up. He must have expected the tool to break.
Hoping to take advantage of his opponent’s brief surprise, Jev leapt in, swinging the axe at his chest.
His enemy sprang back, leaping a head-high bush as if it were a flower, but he landed awkwardly. Jev lunged around the bush and swung both weapons at the same time, aiming for different targets. The elf gyrated and twisted, evading the swipes and launching a thrust of his own, but the attack wasn’t as fast as Jev expected, and he had no trouble blocking it.
Blood smeared the side of the elf’s head—he looked to have been gouged by a bullet. Despite his mighty leaps, he also seemed to be favoring one ankle. Normally, Jev wouldn’t find it honorable to battle a wounded opponent, but the elf was attacking him on his land. And all those injuries would do was even the odds.
“We’re coming, Jev,” came a bellow from downstream. C
utter.
The elf glanced in that direction and barked, “Reinforcements,” in elven to his comrade as he parried another attack from Jev.
“Finish him!” Vornzylar snarled back, not glancing over. He battered Lornysh with blows like storm clouds pouring down boulder-sized pieces of hail.
Lornysh parried each blow, but his leg buckled, and he went down to one knee.
Jev roared and lunged at his own foe, knowing he had to get him out of the way before he could help Lornysh. Knowing, too, that the elf had been ordered to kill him.
He attacked faster than he ever had, chopping with the axe and smashing with the hammer. The elf had only one blade, and though it whipped about so quickly it blurred, he struggled against Jev’s angry onslaught. He backed away as he parried, and his shoulder clipped a trunk. The elf came down on his injured ankle, and it twisted, giving way.
Jev sprang, using the hammer to knock the elven blade out of his foe’s hand. The sword’s glow and magical vines disappeared as it flew through the bushes. The elf tried to roll away, but he was hemmed in by trees and brush too stout to push aside.
Jev lunged, pressing the axe against the side of his foe’s throat. “Yield,” he ordered, though he was tempted to simply crack the elf over the head, caring little if he lived or died, not when Lornysh was still battling his nemesis ten feet away.
The elf curled his lip. “To a human?” he asked in his own tongue. “Never! You are a plague upon the earth, and I will not let you sully my death by bowing to you.”
Before Jev could reply, the elf whipped a dagger out of a belt sheath.
Jev stepped back, readying his weapons to block an attack. But the elf sneered defiantly and swept the blade across his own throat from ear to ear.
Stunned, Jev gawked as his enemy slumped to the ground, his life’s blood spurting from his arteries.
The clash of blades drew him from his shock. He sprinted through the brush to find Lornysh and Vornzylar facing each other in a tiny clearing. Drawing upon some deep reserve, Lornysh had found his feet again and kept parrying, but his movements were slower than Jev had ever seen. Blood streamed from a cut lip, and he barely got his blade up to deflect a swing that would have cleaved his skull in half.
Jev advanced from behind, choosing the hammer for his weapon. He raised it, his eyes locking on the back of Vornzylar’s head.
The elf must have heard or sensed him, for he started to turn, but Lornysh sprang at him, thrusting with his blade. Vornzylar was forced to whip back around to parry the fiery sword. Jev leaped in and slammed the hammer at the elf’s head.
Vornzylar almost jerked away in time to avoid it, but the hammer struck the side of his head hard enough to stun him for an instant. Jev swung again, cracking him like the gong in the Air Order Temple. The hammer flared with silver light as it crunched through the elf’s skull. That surprised Jev, and he jerked the weapon away, grimacing as the hammer’s head caught on bone. He’d swung hard, but he hadn’t thought a blow with a blunt weapon would penetrate the elf’s skull.
Vornzylar’s sword dropped from his limp hand, and his knees buckled. As he fell, he continued to glare at Lornysh, not even glancing back at Jev.
“You die dishonored,” he snarled. “Traitor.”
He reached up to touch his head, seemed surprised when his hand came back bloody, then crumpled to the ground.
“It is you who die, old friend,” Lornysh said, his shoulders slumped.
Vornzylar’s eyes closed, and he did not answer.
Feeling queasy, Jev looked down at the bloody hammer. He hadn’t meant to kill the elf, but maybe it was for the best. Lornysh hadn’t been able to do it, and if they’d let Vornzylar live, he might not have left Lornysh alone until he’d managed to kill him.
“I’ve always wanted to believe elves were wiser than humans,” Lornysh said, kneeling as he caught his breath, “but I fear that’s not true, that longevity and time don’t impart as much wisdom as one would hope.”
“It’s disappointing that wisdom is in such short supply among all the intelligent races in the world,” Jev said.
Foliage rattled as Cutter pushed his way into the clearing. He frowned at the dead elves and then at the weapons in Jev’s hands.
“If you wanted to use my hammer, you should have asked.”
“Sorry.” Jev wiped off the blood and offered it to him. “I found it lying on the ground and assumed you didn’t need it anymore.”
“Well, I don’t since it looks like you finished off all the elves.” He glared grumpily at them as he accepted the tool—the weapon—and thrust it through his belt.
“One remains living somewhere. The one who was shot earlier. He may flee now that Vornzylar is dead.” Lornysh stood and stepped forward, gripping his side, then bent to pick up Vornzylar’s fallen blade. As with the other magical sword, its glow had disappeared once it fell from its owner’s hand.
“Is it dangerous if someone finds one of those swords and picks it up?” Jev imagined children from the villages coming up here to treasure hunt after the flood receded, leaving debris from wherever in the mountains the elves had sourced that water. “Someone who’s not an elf?”
“Not now that the owner is dead, no,” Lornysh said. “By elven custom, the blades belong to whoever killed the wielders, though their magic will remain buried in the sword and inaccessible to someone who isn’t elven. Still, they are fine weapons.” He flipped it to hold the blade and offer the hilt to Jev. “Do you want it?”
Jev shook his head. “You’re the one who battled him. I just snuck up and cracked him in the head.”
“I already have a kisyula sword.” Lornysh shifted his hand, offering it to Cutter.
“Don’t look at me. That thing’s taller than I am.”
Twigs snapped as the soldiers approached.
“I can ship it back to his family.” Lornysh lowered the blade.
Jev walked into the brush to retrieve the other sword, the vine-spurting one. He touched it, half-expecting some magical power to zap him. But its owner was definitely dead, and the blade lay quiescent. He picked it up and rejoined his friends.
After facing off against that elf—and that sword—twice, Jev wouldn’t mind claiming it for himself. Less as a war trophy and more as a useful tool. He’d found a surprising number of reasons lately to set his pistol and rifle aside and use a blade.
Cutter looked at the sword. “Maybe Master Grindmor can make the magic inside it activate to your touch.”
Lornysh appeared skeptical, and Jev decided not to pin his hopes on that.
“Would I have to prove my adequacy to her before she would try?” Jev asked.
“Likely.”
Lornysh’s eyebrows twitched. “Wouldn’t Zenia object to that?”
“She—” Fear slammed Jev in the gut as he remembered the unknown trouble at the castle. “We have to check on her. On my family. Everyone.”
Not waiting for a response, he sprinted for home.
Zenia couldn’t breathe. She grasped at the air around her throat, as if there were hands she could physically pull free, but there was nothing she could grab. On her knees in front of the elf warden crushing her with his magic, she couldn’t do a thing.
Heber’s men threw themselves at the other two elves, but nobody disturbed her assailant. Nearby, Rhi was knocked against the wall and dropped to the walkway. Unconscious? Dead?
Her dragon tear offered to help again, offered to knock away her attacker. Zenia was tempted, just for a moment, so she could draw in a single breath of air. But she implored the gem to keep funneling all its energy into the glowing structure.
Another elf leaped through the portal, and she feared many more were on the way. If she did nothing else, she had to blow it up.
Energy rolled through the air like heat waves, flowing from her dragon tear to the portal. The rim glowed such a fierce red that it had to be close to exploding. Unfortunately, Zenia’s head felt like it would explode too. Her lungs spasm
ed, trying to suck in air, but her throat was entirely constricted.
The female elf cried something in her own tongue. Zenia’s attacker glanced aside, and for a heartbeat, the power constricting her throat lessened. She managed to get in a half gasp of air, but he turned immediately back to her. His gaze locked onto her dragon tear, and she realized the elves had figured out what she was doing. What it was doing.
Behind them, the portal quaked. The earth trembled under their feet. Zenia knew her dragon tear was close to destroying the thing, but the elf lunged for her, fingers reaching not for her neck but for the gem. She could see in his eyes that he meant to tear it off and hurl it into the pool.
A shot rang out.
Her attacker stiffened, his head jerking up. His hand never reached her chest. For long seconds, he stood frozen, eyes full of shock. Then he pitched over backward, collapsing in front of Zenia.
Heber knelt behind the elf, a thin trail of smoke wafting from his pistol.
“The heart, woman,” he growled at her. “If you’re going to shoot an elf, you shoot him in the heart.”
“I’ll try to remember,” Zenia rasped, her throat raw.
Her entire body ached. She didn’t know if it was from the elf’s attack or from the energy the dragon tear was sapping from her. As she looked around the chamber, she sagged, feeling defeated even though her life wasn’t in immediate danger. Rhi was down. Only two of the castle guards remained up, battling a male elf in front of the portal. The rest of the defenders were crumpled and unconscious—or dead—on the walkway. Some floated in the water.
The female elf stared over at Zenia and Heber, and her eyes locked on the dragon tear. She lifted her sword and sprang toward it.
As Zenia started to roll away, knowing she couldn’t possibly escape, a final burst of energy poured forth from the dragon tear.
Light flashed and a thunderous boom echoed from the walls. Shards of something—metal—flew in a hundred directions, pelting the stone ceiling and walls. A piece gouged into Zenia’s cheek.
Agents of the Crown- The Complete Series Page 106