King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three

by Jenna Rhodes

  They followed her quietly to their slaughter, finely carved heads held up, ears pricked forward, eyes bright, necks arched, their bodies moving as willingly as they could despite their wounds and injuries, flesh numbed by her to their agony.

  Not so Lara. Hot, wet drops stung her cheeks and sank into pools of dampness in the arch of her throat. The tashyas surrounded her, flashes of color and heat, muzzles lipping at her hair, her hands, her shoulders, faces rubbing at her back. It reminded her of her very early days when her grandfather used to take her out to the pastures, when the yearlings would circle her, nip and buck to show their cleverness, and the brood mares would press close to her to see if she had apples or other treats to eat. She had never wanted to leave.

  Now she picked up her pace into a slow jog, the horses moving to keep up, some of them stumbling as their injuries impeded them although they no longer felt the pain. She drew her sword slowly as the ever-present hissing sound of the Raymy rose in a high-pitched whine. They saw the horses moving. Perhaps she could even be seen within the group that now muffled and protected her. She hoped the Raymy watched in curiosity, drawn to a standstill.

  She chirped to Yarthan who obediently trotted up close to her, his lean body buffeting his way to her side. Wrapping her left hand in his mane to hold him next to her, she raised her blade and began to humanely bring down the horses closest to her.

  Hot, coppery blood fountained. Huge, warm bodies buckled and thudded to the earth, the light going out of soft brown eyes as she targeted the jugular in their throats, moving from one to another as quickly as she could, leaping over them even as they fell, Yarthan nickering in fear, pulling himself free. Lara moved in a frenzy like some great predator jumping among them and striking before most even knew what befell them. They died as painlessly as she could manage and at the last, called for Yarthan again who rolled white-ringed eyes at her, both of them covered in blood, and he untrusting and panicked. She seized his mind. He plunged to a halt, hooves planted to the meadow, fetlocks sticky with pooling blood, and she vaulted onto his bare back even as the Raymy cried out and stampeded toward her and the bounty of horsemeat she’d created.

  Their reptilian, diseased stink overrode that of smoke and burned flesh, but the copper smell of newly spilled blood sickened her even more. Lara bent low over Yarthan’s neck, coaxing him for what speed he could bring, lamed gait making him wobbly, but he tried for her, neck and head lowered, and ears pitched back to catch her sounds of encouragement. She cast a look over her shoulder. The Raymy swarmed at the slaughter point, horse bodies being torn apart with such vigor that it appeared they reared in the air, legs and hooves flailing, but she knew she had left no living tashyas behind her. She could see a knot of horsemen angling her way, Gandathar and Chastain in front, coming to join her. Because their mounts were sound and hers not, they began to catch up surely. She held her sword up and cried, “The Andredia!”

  They reached her, Chastain riding up on her flank, as they entered the far edge of the thinning grove between her and the river. They slowed, as branches whipped at them and then, as Lariel saw the trees give way to brush and grass slopes that would dip to the river, she slowed her horse in triumph. Nearly there. Once at the Andredia, she could put her back to the sacred river and know that it would protect her.

  The silence of the forest gave way to croaks and hisses of challenge as row after row of Raymy rose up to greet her, blocking the way.

  She put her heel into Yarthan’s flank, forcing him about, only to face her own men.

  “We’re trapped.”

  “Only until we get to the river,” Gandathar told her. He signaled to one of the bowmen who shouldered his bow to unclip a horn from his belt. “Sound the rally to the queen.”

  “Sir. You bring them to their death.”

  “We vowed to do this.”

  Lara watched as the young man brought the horn to his lips. His first attempt failed; he lowered the instrument to wet his lips and cough. Then he inhaled deeply and brought the horn up.

  It winded over the noise of the Raymy advancing through the marsh grasses and underbrush. It sounded over the nervous tramping of their mounts. It trumpeted over the beleaguered meadows and groves, carrying gloriously across that breadth of Larandaril and the Andredia and into the verdant hills that surrounded them. The mighty blast sounded for what seemed forever.

  Her heartbeat slowed and steadied as the last moments of panic settled into resolution. “Well and then,” she said to Gandathar. “Let’s make this as expensive to them as we can.”

  Before her words faded, an echo came down off the ridge.

  They turned in shock, and Gandathar tilted his head to listen. “That’s no echo. That’s a response! We have troops incoming! Reinforcements!”

  Lara’s throat tightened. They had done it. They had held until reinforcements could reach them. She thanked her dead, her living, in silent prayer.

  And as they looked to the faraway ridge, movement filled their sight. Horsemen, several hundred, began pouring down into the valley. The wards of Larandaril, thrown open did not alert her as they should have, and Lara watched with sudden, icy apprehension.

  She knew why the moment she spotted their colors—the black and silver of Fort ild Fallyn.

  SEVRYN DID NOT REACT as the young woman riding with Abayan Diort and who had named him Guardian handed off her reins to him, leaned close, and whispered. He knew nothing of her, but felt a flare of her Talent wash over him as her breath grazed his ear.

  He had not reacted, uncertain of what she meant or wanted, giving only a near imperceptible nod that he’d heard when he put his foot into the stirrup. Her words shivered into his ear and stayed coiled there like a menacing serpent that he could neither disregard nor evict.

  “When the time comes, leave him behind. Your own destiny quickens and beats as the heart does, while his is slow and steady. You cannot wait!”

  And that, he thought to himself a day later, is why oracles gather such success (and failure) to their names with vague tellings that brooked interpretation in any direction and often could not be understood at all until the event had passed. As he rode behind Diort and Bregan, he had no more idea of her meaning now than he’d had when she’d first spoken to him. Unlike the Galdarkan leader, he put no faith in a Vaelinar prophet, but she left him debating his options nonetheless. On this earliest of dawns, he itched with uneasiness. He longed for Rivergrace even as the geas laid upon him burned. He had a date with the king of assassins.

  That’s when he heard them: the horns on the wind. The sounding reached all of them. Diort threw his hand up, halting the march, and asked of his nearest commander. “Is that a rallying call?”

  “It is, and an answer. But they are far apart.”

  Galdarkan signaled his herald. “Bring your horn out when we are close, but no sooner. We march too far away to make assurances. Order a double-march, but we cannot move quicker. I won’t separate my forces.”

  And that was when Sevryn understood the oracle’s warning. Diort would march his army as one, foot soldiers with the cavalry, but he—he could not afford to stay behind. Without a word, he whipped his horse out of line and sent him pelting down the canyon and into Larandaril. Hard ground gave way to lusher grasses and flowers blooming only to be crushed under horse hooves as they pounded their way into the Warrior Queen’s kingdom. Shouts behind him thinned and fell into silence as he sent his horse as fast as he dared into the heart of Lariel’s vision of her death.

  The Galdarkan horse splashed into the edge of a brook, spraying them both with water, and he felt Rivergrace in its touch. In shock at the sudden awareness, he hauled on one rein, turning his horse about sharply. Mud and water splattered them both as his horse danced about, tossing his head up and down at the abrupt command from Sevryn. As the droplets ran down his body, he could feel Grace’s presence caress him from head to toe. She lived!
She was near. She touched water as he did. He wanted to shout to bring her nearer. Sevryn shifted his weight about, looking back into the hills and high mountains that crowned this end of the valley; stony precipices where the font from which the Andredia sprang lay hidden. He soaked in her essence like a starving man. She lived—she feared, she worried—but she lived. Everything else he could deal with, they could solve together, but he wasn’t prepared to face death again just yet, and definitely not without her. She sensed him as his horse pawed the brook, sending up white feathers of water, as they connected again and he felt the thrill of recognition and then a jolt of—abhorrence? Fear. Guilt. She wore a cocoon of emotion about her, dark and tangled, and he felt her reject him. She shoved him away so abruptly that he nearly lost his stirrups and seat on his horse, as if physically shoved.

  Sevryn threw his leg over the rump of his horse, landing in the brook up to his knees. He bent and washed his face in the frothing water and as he did, he felt her slip away from him, but he would not let her go. Not without sending his love and trust to her.

  She lingered for a moment then, an almost palpable image, a longing and he knew he had not lost her, although she had thought to push him away. Narskap’s Undead touch played over the last of Rivergrace before their connection broke, and that left Sevryn leading his horse out of the river and onto the farther bank, giving up a bit of precious time to wonder what had transpired. Did Narskap hold her? And if so, faithful hound that he was, where was Quendius?

  His heart beat heavily. The thud of it in his chest reminded him of his other needs. He turned the horse about, swung up, and shook the reins, aiming the Galdarkan steed toward the sound of horns, not so faint and far away as they had been.

  Lather clung to his mount and the horse breathed gustily as they finally headed to the Andredia and Sevryn could see the colors of House Vantane thundering down the hill toward him from the border on the horizon. He angled his horse to join them, his right hand thrust in the air with his palm open in surrender and the ranks opened to let him catch up with Bistane at the fore. Their horses kept pace with one another, the two of them riding in a brace.

  “What in the name of dead Gods are you doing here?” he yelled to Bistane.

  “Aptly put, as a ghost drove me here. We’re riding on ild Fallyn heels. Lara is surrounded at Larandaril’s heart.” He considered Sevryn, his garb, his horse. “It appears you have a history. Are you still a traitor?”

  “Never. There were circumstances—” Sevryn cut the air with his hand. “Tressandre brings her troops here?”

  “And Raymy, coming back in tides. In for a fight?”

  “I thought I was going to be in one alone.”

  Bistane threw him another sidelong glance, looking him over. “I should probably skewer you on sight.”

  “Then you won’t know what I’ve been up to.”

  He waved a gloved hand up and down. “Seems rather obvious.”

  “Never have the Kobrir or Vaelinar been obvious.”

  Bistane laughed, a hearty sound easily heard over the pounding hooves of their horses. “Too true. Stay close. My men are spoiling for a fight, and I’d hate for one of them to mistake you for a target.”

  “What ghost?”

  Bistane looked to him. “My father sent me here.”

  “Does he do well?”

  “Who can say how a spirit does? I gather he doesn’t wish Lariel to join their ancestors, however.”

  In answer, Sevryn kneed his horse closer and the two ran their horses as one.

  So it was, that when they caught up to the battle, the ild Fallyn had Lara circled.

  Cavalry and archers in black and silver grumbled as those in Vantane colors fought their way to their side, braiding their numbers together against the Raymy. Lara turned her pale face toward them and Sevryn felt that telltale heartbeat of his skip as he saw her covered in blood and thought he’d not come in time. Yet as she swung her shield arm up and her sword out, he could see weariness in her frame though her hands held steady. They’d both been there before, he thought, and her eyes sought his face, framed by Kobrir wrappings and she froze in motion.

  War dogs leaped among the Raymy, belling and barking as they wove through the encircling ranks. Vantane armsmen cleaved their way behind him and set a perimeter. Sevryn kneed his tired mount close, closer, into position. The only one not yet drawn to the fray was his own heart and soul, but he feared to look away from Lariel to find her. Wherever Rivergrace was, he knew it was close. Perhaps as close as the waters of the Andredia itself.

  A prophet and a ghost had driven two contingents here to meet. The ild Fallyn had come on their own, intending, no doubt, to cut off Lara on her way to the fields of Ashenbrook where all had thought the Raymy would fall. She was not meant to make it to rejoin the bulk of her troops. If all had gone as the ild Fallyn planned, there would be none who lived to tell the real tale.

  He saw Alton trade a look with his sister. Tressandre bent over her mount, her face set in lines of fury, her hair of dark and wild honey billowing back from her face and half-helm, and her hand gesturing wildly.

  A Raymy leaped up beside him. His horse shied out of swinging range, unseating Sevryn who managed to land with knees bent and body centered. The Raymy jabbed upward brutally, but he was not there, twisting away, with a kick to the back of the thing’s knee, sending it down with a whistling screech and a sword jab to the back of its head. It stayed down. Sevryn turned to regain his horse, but the poor creature had bolted and not far, being cut down by Raymy at the edge of the fighting, on its haunches and thrashing. He did not watch longer.

  He spoke to the shadows of the trees and saplings and stabbing branches of the shrub bushes, and even of the men and beasts that grappled in life-and-death struggles and used them to reach Lara’s side. He moved unseen on foot, his Voice gaining allies to hide his movement in stealth. Her horse stamped and blew foam on him as he drew near, and he realized Lariel rode bareback without even so much as a headstall to keep her balance or telegraph her wishes. He remembered otherwise. He blinked. Things not so set in stone as she and he had thought? How mutable could Fate be? Clouds roared across the sun-dappled sky as an unknown storm wind drove them in furiously, an unnatural storm that made Sevryn look up.

  Lariel did the same. “Watch your backs,” she called, unaware of his nearness, her voice louder and stronger than it deserved to be, a leader’s voice to her troops. “Close to the Andredia if you can! Raymy will fall again!”

  Chastain rallied, fighting to be at her side. So also did troops wearing the black and silver. Sevryn wiped his hand on his trousers, first one and then the other, to dry them, as the pawns of Lariel’s prophetic vision fell into place.

  He worked his way closer toward her, determined to put himself between her and Tressandre, when he saw his love on the river.

  Rivergrace strode out of the Andredia, river water running off her form as if it were a cloak she wore. Rafts bumped to shore behind her, things that might once have been men shambling off rough wooden planks lashed together crudely, and he could see thin lines of light and substance connecting her to them. Behind her, Narskap scrambled onto the riverbank as well, his ragged clothes hanging from his skeleton-thin body and behind him—Sevryn felt his own lips peel back in a feral grimace—strode Quendius. As clouds lowered, the weaponmaster threw his head up and laughed, a throat-rattling sound that brought anger boiling up in Sevryn.

  Sevryn moved instinctively toward the Andredia, out of the shadows, out of position, drawn by Rivergrace even as he forgot Lariel, propelled by hatred of Quendius. He could see by all the hells of all the Gods the invisible shackles that tied his love to his enemy, and to the Undead that gathered on the riverbanks. A cage of thread enveloped her, of black and gold, of smut and light, of substances he didn’t understand but could see woven about her. The Undead mercenaries stood motionless, looking to their m
aster for their orders.

  The waters boiled against the small but potent army. Sevryn realized that Quendius had not come to wage war but to reap the harvest of dead. Dead that the river would carry to them as the battle carried to it.

  Lara made a strangled sound deep in her throat. “Not my Andredia!” she cried and thrust her sword up. She would have charged Quendius as he would have had not the skies opened up yet again and the Raymy fell.

  They came down, rolled to their feet, and moved into battle stance as they rose, with none of the dazed attitudes that had cloaked their earlier numbers. The sheer number of them cut the hills beyond from sight.

  Lara shook herself. She stretched her body, threw back her head and bellowed “Archers! Archers! To the fore! Set and fire!” She wheeled her horse about. “Draw them in!” Lara ordered. “Set and shield.” The thin forest at the river’s edge gave her some cover, but not enough.

  He could hear Alton ild Fallyn bellow, “To the Queen!”

  Where was Bistane? Sevryn cast around wildly, but could not find him on horseback or on foot.

  And then there was no more time as the inner circle and advancing Raymy clashed.