Alliances ee-2

by Paul B. Thompson

  Swords were lifted high. The line of horsemen lurched forward.

  Hamaramis formed his warriors into a double line to protect the Speaker’s position. Desperate, the general pleaded with his sovereign to withdraw. Gilthas tore his fascinated gaze from the onrushing horde and retreated a few yards into the shelter of the juniper trees but would go no farther.

  “Not another step in retreat,” he said. “Here we win, or we die.”

  With weary familiarity, the elves aligned themselves to receive a charge of horsemen. The closely growing trees made a natural barrier that would break the force of any headlong attack. The gaps in the trees quickly sprouted spears, staves, and farm tools as the elves got into position.

  While nomads charged from the front, the several hundred who had been shadowing the elves’ left flank also attacked the column south of the juniper grove. The straggling line of elves thinned and broke as they once more hurried to form defensive squares.

  The shouting Khurs smashed through the column, cutting it in two. The larger portion, thousands of confused and terrified civilians, backed away from the nomad assault, seeking more defensible ground.

  Where Gilthas stood, in the juniper grove, all that could, be heard was the thunder of hooves, the deep-voiced shouts of the nomads, and the answering cries from the elves. A few arrows flicked out of the grove but not many. The Khurs pressed on and slammed full-tilt into the junipers, losing many to the hedge of sharp points and many more to collisions with twisted, sturdy trees. There were so many nomads that, for a long, blood-drenched moment, it seemed the impact would carry them through the grove, obliterating the elves within. Yet Gilthas held true to his defiant vow. He did not retreat a step. A horse and rider were upended in front of him and crashed at his feet. Wapah ducked, but the Speaker of the Sun and Stars held firm.

  When it became clear their initial attack was not going to destroy the elves, the nomads withdrew. Along the edge of the juniper grove lay the bodies of Khurs and elves. Intermingled among them were dead and dying horses.

  At seventy yards the nomads turned around and came roaring back. More penetrated the grove, galloping among the startled elves, sabering all within reach. Hamaramis’s warriors moved from point to point, applying their skill and weight to each crisis until the encroaching Khurs were dead or evicted.

  “Next time they back off, we counter-charge!” Hamaramis said.

  But the nomads didn’t withdraw. They kept fighting. Knocked from their horses, or with their horses killed beneath them, they rose and continued the fight on foot. Their vigor and unusual tenacity began to tell on the trail-weary elves. The Khurs penetrated farther and farther into the trees.

  Behind the grove, the main body of elves was in dire straits, but fresh plumes of dust rising in the southwest heralded the arrival of Taranath. The elf warriors had had to ride completely around the lengthy wadi to rejoin their comrades. Horses blown, the cavalry nonetheless fell on the several hundred nomads harassing the column. They were routed in short order. Taranath immediately rode to the aid of those in the juniper grove, but by then the wings of the nomad force had lapped around the grove. Taranath tried to fight his way forward, but the Khurs stubbornly refused to yield.

  Fighting closed around Gilthas. Sweat poured down his face. He was cold but perspiring at the same time. It was only a matter of time before the nomads overwhelmed his exhausted people. His bodyguard was engaged. Hamaramis had taken a place in line. Even the Speaker’s councilors were fighting. When Wapah drew his weapon, Gilthas asked, “Will you fight your own people?”

  “There are no roads in the desert,” the Leaping Spider sage replied. “Any way that gets you where you’re going is the right way.” He shouldered in behind Hamaramis, trading cuts with a mounted Tondoon warrior.

  Gilthas dodged a slash aimed at his head. He felt the nomad’s blade snag the loose fabric of his geb. The sword ripped free, and the Khur was knocked flat by Hamaramis and Wapah.

  More and more nomads streamed out of position to join the battle for the juniper grove. More and more fell, slain or wounded too badly to continue fighting. Adala watched impassively. “No respite,” she told the warmasters gathered around her. “Keep on them until they break.”

  “And if they don’t?” asked Yalmuk.

  She rubbed the broken lapis cabochon, the one that had saved her from the laddad arrow, as if to extract every bit of power from it. She’d tied her sash on the outside of her black widow’s geb so the broken cabochon would be visible and could act as a sign of her maita.

  “They will break. I know it.”

  Fighting raged all day. The sun was low in the west when Hamaramis received a stunning blow to the side of his helmet. His sword spun away, and the old general sagged to his knees. Two nomads spurred their horses at him. Gilthas was unarmed, but couldn’t stand by and see his old comrade killed. He snatched up two hefty stones. He hurled one, hitting the nearer nomad’s horse. It bucked, throwing its rider. Before he could throw the second, something slammed into his back, knocking him flat.

  The nomads have killed me, he thought, struggling desperately to draw breath. “Kerian,” he managed to say, although no one could hear him.

  As the Speaker went down, dark shapes appeared overhead, emerging from the low clouds shrouding the setting sun. No one engaged in the battle spared a glance at the sky, but the rear ranks of nomads, trotting forward to join the fray, found their horses suddenly seized by a strange madness. The animals balked, planting all four feet at once and refusing to go ahead. No amount of spur, riding stick, or cursing would induce them to move. The madness spread to the horses in the next wave. They reared and snorted, bared their yellow teeth, and bit each other and nearby riders. Hundreds of men who’d learned to ride before they could walk were cast to the ground and trampled.

  The source of the madness was revealed when a high, ear- shredding screech split the air. Griffons were a rarity in Khur, but the nomads recognized the winged creatures swooping down upon them. Mounted on the flying beasts were laddad warriors brandishing lances and bows.

  Kerian and Alhana led twenty-two griffons down from the heights. Two of their number had been lost crossing the mountains when the griffons flew into cloudbanks and never emerged, and five were swallowed up by a storm over the New Sea. Wind-burned and saddle-sore, the remaining riders had completed their grueling, amazing flight.

  They skimmed low across the line of nomads, relying on the horses’ innate fear to disrupt the charge. It worked. The desert ponies panicked. With the wave disrupted, Kerian told Alhana to unsung her bow.

  “I’ll steer for the trees!” Kerian added. The juniper grove was where the main battle was raging.

  Hytanthas, Samar and Porthios, and the rest of the sky- riders fell in behind Chisa. Alhana leaned far to the side, drew back her bowstring, and loosed. A Khur wearing the brown- and-blue striped geb of a Mikku threw up his hands and fell from his horse.

  Following Alhana’s example, the griffon riders rained arrows on the nomads. They could hardly miss. The mass of humans below was so dense, their horses so uncontrollable, the elves barely had to aim.

  Soon enough, the remaining nomads quit the juniper grove and galloped back up the slight rise to Adala and the warmasters.

  The panicked horses didn’t stop there, but stampeded past, all but knocking Little Thorn over. Adala shouted at the men, but they couldn’t control their animals. The last of twenty thousand thundered by, leaving her enveloped in clouds of choking dust, colored red by the fast-dying sun.

  The air stirred violently, and the dust was driven away by the downdraft of beating wings. Seeming to materialize from the blood-red air, the agents of the nomads’ catastrophic reverse alighted in front of Adala. She glanced back and saw her warmasters and chiefs returning to her. They’d given up trying to urge their beasts hack and were hurrying forward on foot. Curiously, Little Thorn seemed unaffected by the griffons. He dropped his head and cropped a tuft of saltbush, A single f
igure swung down from one of the lead griffons and approached her on foot.

  The griffon rider appeared unarmed. Below a metal skullcap, the figure’s face was covered by a dust cloth. When the dust cloth was pulled down, Adala recoiled in shock.

  “By what magic do you appear to me alive?” she exclaimed.

  “A god’s magic, it seems,” the Lioness replied.

  Adala glanced over her shoulder again. The main body of her host had recovered control of their horses and were drawn up several hundred yards away.

  “You came back in time to perish!” she said.

  “I’ve come back to take my people into Inath-Wakenti.” Kerian gestured to the griffon riders behind her. Two more dismounted and came to stand by her. She introduced them.

  “This is Alhana Starbreeze, once queen of Silvanesti. And this is Orexas, leader of the elf army of the West.”

  Adala’s expression settled into hard lines. “It doesn’t matter who you bring against us, laddad. We will not yield. If it costs every life we have, we will not yield!”

  “You see?” the Lioness said to Porthios. “What can you do with such a fanatic? Reason doesn’t work. Nor fear. The sword is all she understands.”

  “Must we wade through blood to find peace?” asked Alhana.

  “Yes!” Adala said. Her chiefs and warmasters had struggled through the churned-up sand to stand on either side of Little Thorn, their swords drawn. Adala added, “The battle will resume. Flying beasts or no flying beasts, you will not pass!”

  “I think we will.”

  Porthios stepped forward and addressed Adala. “I was once like you, proud, defiant, certain of the rightness of my cause. I faced enemies far more powerful than you without hope of victory because I knew I was destined to win in the end.”

  “Every foolish warrior in the world thinks that,” Adala said, dismissive. “I am not a warrior. I am a woman, mother of my people, and Those on High have granted me the gift of maita. How can the destiny of a single laddad compare to the fate promised me by the gods?”

  She had asked a similar question of all her opponents. The humans had joined her or been struck down by her divine maita. The laddad had been delivered by it into her hands.

  Porthios was silent for a moment, making a decision, then he said, “Maita means ‘fate ordained by the gods,’ I believe. Perhaps you do have your gods’ favor.” His hands dropped to his waist, and he untied his ragged sash. “Or maybe you’ve just been lucky.” He loosened the gray cloth winding around his neck.

  Kerian realized what he meant to do. It was brilliant and terrible, matchlessly brave and utterly selfish. For the first time during their endless, arduous trek, she admired him.

  His hoarse voice went on, unstoppable, impossible to ignore. “Let me tell you about fate, you insolent barbarian. I once ruled the greatest, most civilized nation in the world. I was married to a queen who was as good, honest, and brave as she was beautiful-and she was very, very beautiful.” A tiny sob escaped Alhana’s lips, but Porthios went on, remorseless. “We had a child, a son to rule our combined nations. He was handsome, intelligent, and courageous as only a prince of elves could be.”

  He dragged the scarf away from his neck. The flesh was mottled red and scarred like the skin of a lizard. The Khurish chiefs muttered. Adala blinked a few times, but held firm.

  “All this greatness I lost. My son threw away his life on a false love and an evil cause. My wife never forgave herself, or me, for his death.” He pushed back his hood.

  “Oh, my love, don’t,” Alhana whispered brokenly.

  His gloved hands halted for an instant, and he glanced at her. “I must, beloved. It’s maita.”

  He spoke to Adala again. “No mortal being should have survived what I survived. You speak of your divine fate. You know nothing! I am divine fate. It is all that keeps me alive, and I will not be denied.”

  In one motion Porthios drew off the cloth mask. Nomad and elf shrank back in horror. Kerian had seen this once before. Although she looked away, she saw it still. The image was burned into her memory. Only Alhana did not recoil or avert her eyes. She looked full upon the ruin of her husband’s face, and she did not waver from his side.

  The dragon’s fire had burned Porthios’s flesh down to the last layer of skin. Flame-red, it covered a head devoid of ears, nose, and lips, the eyelids retracted to nearly nothing. Almost as if to mock what was gone, a fringe of long hair remained on the lower half of his skull, but the hair was dull, dead gray. His face was a skull, covered by crimson muscle and slashed by harsh, white scar tissue.

  He turned his head stiffly toward the shocked warmasters and several dropped to their knees. “We will enter this valley, and you will do nothing more to stop us. Go!”

  The apparition before them was horrid enough; to hear it speak was the final straw. The chiefs and warmasters fled. Even Adala’s fortitude wasn’t proof against the sight. She did not flee, but she lifted her dust veil over her eyes.

  “Abomination,” she gasped. “You should not be!”

  The lipless mouth moved in an awful parody of a smile. “I agree. But here I am. Do you really want to match your fate to mine?”

  He stepped forward and slapped the donkey’s flank. Faced with the wall of elves and griffons ahead, the donkey snorted and jogged back toward the men and horses he knew. Adala clutched reins and wiry mane to avoid being pitched off. She did not try to halt his going.

  Porthios could not move. He had bared his shame to the world, and he could not turn to see the horror in the eyes of those behind him, especially one pair of violet eyes. A hand, clutching his mask, appeared at his side. He turned to find Alhana standing close by. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but there was no revulsion on her face, nor even pity, only love. He replaced the mask, raised his hood, and began to wind the long cloth around his neck again.

  “Get the people moving,” he said. “If the humans think too long, they may try to fight again.”

  Kerian climbed onto Chisa. She expected Alhana to follow, but the former queen stayed by her husband. Porthios told Samar to go without him.

  “You’re staying here?” Kerian asked.

  “What are a few thousand humans when you’ve bathed in the breath of a dragon?”

  The Lioness saluted. It was not a gesture she performed often. She had a Wilder elf’s inbred distrust of authority, but at this time and place, a salute seemed proper.

  Porthios returned the gesture, then Alhana linked her arm in his.

  * * * * *

  Gilthas awoke. Only one eye would open. He lifted a hand and felt a thick bandage crisscrossing his forehead.

  He was lying in a litter, being carried. Night had come and around him were the voices and footfalls of his people.

  He must have spoken his confused thoughts aloud, because the elf holding the rear poles of the litter said, “No, sire. You’re definitely not dead.”

  “Hytanthas! When did you-?”

  “I carried out your orders, Great Speaker,” said the young captain. He nodded to the elf carrying the front of the litter. Gilthas strained to see with his good eye.

  “You look like the dog’s dinner,” Kerianseray told him. Her voice broke, betraying her true feelings despite the crude human expression. “Why were you in the middle of a raging battle without arms or armor?”

  He could not credit the evidence of his eyes. Her presence was a miracle such as the gods might have bestowed on a long- ago hero. He remembered having fallen during the battle, but in his muddled mind something else seemed of greater import.

  “Your hair!”

  She shrugged. “It’s a long tale.”

  They told him all of it, from Kerian’s plunge into Nalis Aren and the participation in the rebellion, to Hytanthas’s arrival in Qualinesti and the capture of Golden griffons. Gilthas found it impossible to fathom. Yet the griffons wheeling overhead, keeping watch over the mass of refugees beneath them, were undeniably real.

  “Where are we?”
he asked.

  “Inath-Wakenti. Where else?”

  He pushed himself painfully up on one elbow. It was true. They were enclosed in the tree-shrouded embrace of the mountains. Gilthas inhaled deeply, filling his ravaged lungs with balmy air. They had done it. They were here.

  He lay down again. “I am glad you came back.”

  She thought how best to answer him. “I’m glad too,” she finally said. “We’ll be at the creek soon. It marks the boundary of the valley proper, and the strange things that go on inside it.”

  He asked no more questions. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars had slipped, aching but contented, into slumber.

  * * * * *

  Robien sniffed the wind. “They come,” he said. “May the gods help us all,” Favaronas murmured.

  * * * * *

  At the mouth of Alya-Alash, Adala sat on Little Thorn. She’d sent her faithful followers away and was alone at the doorstep of the sacred land, pondering the meaning of fate.

  A horse and rider appeared, shimmering in the morning mirage. The laddad had all passed through the night before. Who was coming back?

  The rider finally resolved into her cousin, Wapah. A ferocious frown twisted Adala’s face.

  “Traitor! You betrayed your people.”

  He pulled his horse to a halt by Little Thorn. “I betrayed you, cousin. You are not Khur.”

  With that he rode away, into the sacred valley. Adala listened until his horse’s hoofbeats were lost in the sighing wind. She stared at the ground, trying to understand what Those on High wanted of her. The foreign killers were in the valley. What was she to do next?

  A few feet from Little Thorn’s left front hoof lay an unusually shaped stone. It was of common composition, but rectangular, with sharp corners, as if worked by a mason’s band. Adala slid off her donkey, an idea taking shape in her mind.