Kheled uttered a slightly more heated curse.
“What’s wrong?” Raimie hissed urgently.
Kheled dropped from the branch into a crouch.
“Those aren’t Kiraak,” he pronounced, pointing at the soldiers gaining on the beach. “They’re ordinary men and women who’ve sworn service to Doldimar out of fear or greed or plain blood lust.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Raimie asked, puzzled. “It’ll make killing them easier at least.”
“It would, except Teron has the Kiraak half of his army waiting beyond the ridge. He knows we’ll expect his strongest units first, so he’s sent the weakest instead. They’re to assess what we’ve developed to counter the Kiraak, and our current strategy won’t work if he’s holding them in reserve. It’ll be useless to flank one half if we end up getting flanked ourselves by the other.”
Raimie pinched the bridge of his nose.
“It was too much to pray that we wouldn’t encounter any hitches, but I’d hoped it would be after the battle was joined at least.”
“What do you want to do?”
Raimie thought for a moment, and when he’d come to a conclusion, his face dropped into sorrow.
“I need orders delivered to the volunteers, and it needs to be done in a way that avoids alerting the enemy to our presence in the forest. I’d do it myself, but-”
“What’re the orders?” Kheled asked without hesitation.
“The volunteers aren’t to retreat. New orders are to hold the line in whatever way they can. Kill as many of the bastards as they can.”
The unspoken ‘before they fall’ hung in the air between them.
“Understood,” Kheled replied.
“I’ll come for you as soon as I can, Khel, and if you find a way out, take it. I don’t even expect you to stick around after you’ve delivered the order.”
“I’ll never abandon someone to die again, Raimie.”
“That’s about what I thought you’d say.”
Raimie squeezed his eyes shut, his breaths coming rapidly, but when those brilliant blue orbs opened once more, Kheled didn’t see his friend anymore. He saw a king.
“You’re to hold the line until the Kiraak enter the fray after which you’re to retreat immediately. Do not waste your lives needlessly. Fall back along the coast and lose yourselves in the woods. We’ll regroup once the enemy has been eliminated.”
There was no more time to waste. The enemy had made it halfway to the abandoned camp despite the best efforts of the archers.
Kheled enveloped his body in a bubble of Ele while pulling extra energy to his feet.
“Thank you, my friend,” Raimie told the empty air.
The healer easily outpaced the enemy line and flew to the allied volunteers, his feet only occasionally touching the ground.
They’d formed up and promptly disobeyed their orders to appear disorganized and frightened. Their grouping was efficient with shield bearers in front and archers and soldiers wielding spears interspersed behind. At the rear, a small collection of the average soldier carrying swords and small circular shields tensely waited.
Kheled dropped his bubble to the rear of the sword wielders. The soldier directly in front of him whirled, swinging his weapon at the source of the noise, and the healer caught the strike on his dagger.
“Whoa! I’m happy you learned from my lessons, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use what I taught you on me.”
The sword lifted and returned to its owner’s side.
“Kheled, sir, I- I’m-”
“I’m not your superior. You don’t have to sir me. I’ve new orders. May I pass through?”
The soldier promptly drew to the side as did the woman in front of him. Kheled navigated through the rest of the line until he pushed in front of the shield bearers.
Even knowing what he’d encounter when he broke through, Kheled quailed at the sight of an army bent on his destruction bearing down on him. He drove the emotional curiosity aside and finished modifying his lungs, vocal chords, and mouth.
“Can everyone hear me?” he asked, voice reverberating powerfully.
It should be loud enough for these people to hear and understand and soft enough that the enemy would only catch brief clips of the message. The men and women he addressed stiffened, shifted, and in general seemed uncomfortable by his unnaturally loud voice, but everyone that he could see reacted in some way, so he continued on.
“I’ve new orders from the king. Instead of an immediate retreat as you’d originally been instructed, he requires that we stand firm and fight.
“I’d love to explain his reasons for the change to you all,” he said gravely, “but there’s simply not enough time for that. I need everyone who can’t obey this order to leave right now. Retreat along the originally planned path. Everyone else, we’ll be taking a slightly different position, and we’ll have to run for it if we’re to have enough time to form up before the initial clash.
“Make your decisions quickly, and if you plan to fight, come with me.”
He ran for the cliffs. By putting the wall of stone to their backs, they’d easily become trapped, but the enemy couldn’t surround them. It would be one less front to worry about.
“You’d better hope some of those soldiers follow you because otherwise, I’m making you retreat,” Creation warned Kheled from where he waited ahead. “You can do many amazing, impossible things, but fighting four thousand people on your own isn’t one of them. I’ll not have you risk the exposure.”
“I’m already pretty well exposed, don’t you think?” Kheled murmured under his breath.
“You know what I mean.”
He halted under the shadow of the cliff and turned to assess what he was left with. A good tenth of the volunteers had abandoned the fight leaving him with about eighteen hundred soldiers.
“Form up in a semi-circle against the wall, quick as you can,” he yelled as they ran past.
Teron’s army had committed to a full charge, the soldiers running at a controlled pace. They were still around a mile out, so Kheled took the time to deliver further instructions and warnings.
“Your job now is to survive. If you can’t avoid death, I expect you to take at least one of them with you. Fight dirty. Use everything at your disposal, and forget about honor. In this way, you serve your king for the longer we fight here and the more of them we take down, the more we defang the trap he and our comrades in the forest will eventually have to step into.”
He took a deep breath and plunged forward.
“I’ll do my best to keep them distracted. ‘How does he plan on doing that?’ you ask. Valid question. Let me ask you one. Do you know what this is?”
He allowed Ele to shine from his raised hands. The reaction to this oddity was even more severe than to that of his shape changed voice. Several of the men nearby even recoiled.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about primeancers, and each of you probably has a different opinion about us. What you need to keep in mind right now, however, is that I’m on your side and that I’ll do my utmost to keep you alive.
“That’s our plan. My role is distraction, and your role’s dispatch of those who get past as well as clean up. We last as long as possible. At some point, we’ll need to retreat, and when that happens, you follow me. I’ll make us a hole.”
He faced the descending army, half expecting someone from his own side to spear him before the battle began. They must have decided to listen to reason over fear because no steel parted his flesh.
When the enemy had advanced close enough that he’d be visible, Kheled strode forward until he was several yards in front and to the right of Raimie’s volunteers. He opened his source wide enough that he could draw energy through it without thought. Raising his left hand, he shot a continuous stream of Ele into the air for thirty seconds. The enemy’s front line shifted trajectory to the left and headed straight for him.
He drew his saber and long dagger, reme
mbering his lost throwing knife bandoliers with melancholy.
“I should still make you run,” Creation said beside him. “You and your fool plans will be the death of me.”
“But you won’t. You actually plan on helping me for once,” Kheled murmured, swinging his blades in tiny circles to loosen his wrists and arms. “Besides, is death even possible for you without Lighteater around?”
“You know what I mean.”
Kheled chuckled.
“Yes. I’m simply surprised by the idioms and the sarcasm when they come out. You’re normally so dry.”
The screaming mob of soldiers was within range of his Ele. Beside him, Creation settled into a fighting stance.
“Here we go again.”
Kheled sprayed Ele directly into the front line’s eyes and charged into their midst like a demon.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I awoke surrounded by white, although awoke wasn’t exactly the correct term for what happened. One moment I sat beside the body of my friend turned enemy, and the next I lay here. My scream cut off when I realized I wasn’t burning alive, and I sat up cautiously, not sure what to expect.
“Hello, Erianger. We didn’t have much time to speak last time, but at the rate Ele is reasserting control, I should be able to answer some of your questions now.”
I whipped my head around in search for the speaker, and my stomach bottomed out when I saw him.
“It was real?!” I asked incredulously. “That meeting so many years ago?”
“Of course,” Alouin seemed bewildered by my response. “What did you think it was? A dream?”
“Frankly… yes.”
The god raised his eyes to the white sky.
“Heaven help the man of science! Always dismissing the fantastic because it doesn’t conform to his definition of what’s possible.”
His gaze drifted to my feet where a sheet of white crept over them.
“I know I said we had plenty of time, but we SHOULD hurry. I’ll start by apologizing that the backlash took you before you’d finished your letter.”
“Don’t apologize,” I told him, a little rattled to have a being my people worshiped as god asking my forgiveness. “I’d hoped to find some answers there, but I know how unlikely that was.”
“Would you like to hear the rest of it?”
“Of course I would, but it’s impossible. The letter burned with me…”
I trailed off at Alouin’s strange behavior. His eyes had glazed over, and his fingers tapped the air, one twirling in a tight circle.
“You weren’t to blame for any of the terrible events that led to our current conflict…”
The god recited the entire letter for me. By the end, I could hardly make him out through the film of tears coating my eyes.
“When?” I demanded. “When did he lose the fight?”
“Arivor gave in to the pressure of Daevetch after living in the human kingdoms for about four months.”
“He wasn’t responsible for my family’s deaths…”
A howl of keening grief and disbelief cut me off. I shot to my feet, scanning the horizon, and quickly found what I’d been looking for.
Not far from where I stood, a strip of gray separated the white I was surrounded by from a never-ending void of black. Arivor huddled in that darkness in front of a second Alouin who awkwardly patted his head.
“He didn’t know,” I stated numbly. “You had to tell him what he did.”
“He’s free of Daevetch’s control in this space, and when he returned to his right mind, the first person he asked after was you.”
I almost made it into the gray before Alouin appeared in front of me.
“You can’t go to him. In fact, you can’t leave the sphere of Ele’s influence.”
“And why is that?” I asked, attempting to sidle past. “What do the two primal forces of reality have to do with me and him?”
Alouin blocked me but couldn’t stop his surprised expression.
“I didn’t entirely discount our first meeting,” I snarled, my fear of the god replaced by anger. “I can research and read, you know.”
Alouin clearly wished to retort, but a glance down revealed the white coating the entirety of my legs. I tried very hard to ignore its passage upward.
“You’re bound to the force of light and life, Champion of Ele, just as Arivor is to Daevetch!”
That got me to stop probing his defenses.
“What?” I asked blankly.
“When you experimented with samples of my physical body-loved the invasion of privacy by the way-you created a tear in your reality. Those aren’t uncommon, as I’m sure you know, but this one didn’t open to the other worlds. It tore past the physical world itself and landed both of you into the layer of reality where Ele and Daevetch exist.
“You were lucky, Erianger. You arrived in the tiny neutral zone in the middle of their war that I’ve cultivated and maintained for millennia. Unfortunately, Arivor did not, and Daevetch eagerly latched onto an unexpected link to the physical world.”
“And you forced the same on me,” I concluded, “because if solely Daevetch has a physical avatar, the world would descend into chaos.”
“Not just yours,” Alouin corrected. “It throws the balance off for all of them.”
“Great. You got what you wanted,” I snapped. “Both of us are dead, so your threat is neutralized. Now, I don’t know what kind of afterlife this is, but I’d like to use it to reconcile with my friend. Please move aside.”
Alouin blocked me again. It was beginning to wear on my nerves.
“You’re not dead.”
I burst out laughing.
“I think the flames that transformed my body to ash would like to disagree with you.”
“Another body will be provided.”
I gave up trying to reach Arivor, crossed my arms, and raised an eyebrow.
“You think losing a body will stop Ele and Daevetch from using you? No, they have their claws embedded into the both of you. You’ll go back to the physical world once they reassert control, Arivor will go mad, and you’ll play out your roles as their Champions once more.”
In the beat of silence, the sheet of white slipped over my shoulders.
“For how long?” I asked tensely.
“As long as their war lasts,” Alouin answered sadly, “which if I have any say, will be eternity.”
“Erianger!” Arivor’s voice somehow reached me across the gulf. “I-I’m sorry! I can never hope to ask your forgiveness, and I know I’ve no right to ask favors, but I can’t be responsible for such wonton destruction and horror again. I beg of you, my friend, find me quickly and end me before I do something unforgivable once more.”
I glared at Alouin. I had no rational reason to hate him. I’d come up with the experiment that had created this mess after all, not him. That didn’t stop my loathing.
“I’ll figure a way out for us, Arivor!” I shouted back. “I promise!”
The battle progressed quite well considering the odds against. Given, Raimie couldn’t see much from his vantage point straddling the limb of a tree halfway up the rise of the slope, but what he could see gave him hope that those brave men who’d followed his friend to the cliff’s wall could hold out long enough to draw in the rest of Teron’s army.
A solid wall of shields protected archers and spearmen who used their weapons’ longer reach to cull off the enemy whenever possible. Occasionally, a shield bearer fell, and the line would shift to fill the gap, but eventually, it would thin enough that it buckled. At that point, it fell to the average soldiers waiting in the center to hold the line.
They’d received help in the form of the unit of archers that had been posted atop the cliffs. Those men and women rained arrows down on the enemy in volleys that promptly eliminated those too slow to raise their shields overhead.
But the main reason his small volunteer unit held was Kheled. The enemy’s disciplined formation had fallen apart at the h
ealer’s brazen display of magic. They’d descended on him like ravenous beasts, and he had, amazingly, fended them off.
After the initial clash, a small scraggly bubble of the volunteers broke off from the main body and enveloped the Eselan, giving him much needed space to deal with the large bulk of enemy soldiers howling for his head. They died quickly without the support of their allies, but more rotated out to take the fallens’ spots. It seemed the volunteers were unwilling to allow the healer to take all of the risk by himself.
From the miniature, blurred view Raimie had, Kheled fought like a beast. Most of the time the enemy combatants blocked his line of sight, and he was forced to rely on flashes of light to know his friend lived. At one point, those bursts stopped for a good two minutes, and he forgot to breathe. When they resumed again, he was so relieved he could taste it.
“Are you aware of what tends to happen to primeancers once they reveal themselves?” Oswin asked at the tree’s base.
“I’ve heard the stories.”
Raimie checked for the third time in the last minute that Teron sat on his horse at the top of the rise. It had been a quarter of an hour, and no Kiraak had crested that hill.
“I hope you’re not planning on doing something as equally stupid and noble as your friend, sir.”
“I plan to if it will save my people,” Raimie murmured, “and it will. Did you relay the new orders to the cannoneers?”
“Yes, sir, and if I may, you’re making my job very difficult, Your Majesty,” Oswin answered with great strain.
Footsteps crashing through the forest made Raimie check anxiously for enemy scouts, but it was only Gistrick and Marcuset. He wondered briefly if his father and Eledis had made it to the rendezvous point yet.
“Did you know?” Gistrick demanded.
“Know what?”
Raimie turned his attention back to the battle. It physically hurt him to wait here when he could easily give the order that would save the men and women dying less than a mile away. What was taking Teron so long? Send the mop up crew already!
The Undying Champions (The Eternal War Book 1) Page 67