by Logan Jacobs
While I searched for the best spot to position myself when the battle started, I spoke a few words of encouragement to the men every few dozen paces. They seemed glad for the reassurance, but they seemed just as glad to see and speak to their king in person. These soldiers were the best of the best, and they would follow me anywhere I asked and do anything I ordered.
I had a feeling that most of the elves didn’t feel quite that loyal to their empire or even to their commanders.
I didn’t have to check the position of the enemy on the map again. Instead, shortly after I found a good viewpoint through the pike-men’s poles, and after I saw that Clodia had found a good position of her own, I heard the drumming of horse hooves along the ground just before I saw the elven cavalry come into view over the hill that led up to the forest.
“Everybody, ready,” I hissed, and my order was repeated down the line of pike-men.
I glanced behind me to make sure that the Elite and regular human ground troops were all scattered in strategic formations throughout the rest of the woods, and then I caught Clodia’s eye a few dozen paces away. The night elf just smiled at me and drummed her finger tips together, as if she couldn’t wait to conjure up more blue fire to send against my enemies.
Ava and the Elite archers were nowhere to be seen, of course, but that was exactly how it was supposed to be. They were well-hidden in the treetops at the edge of the woods, and as soon as the elven cavalry rode into the pikes, they would open fire and bring down as many elves on horseback and on foot as possible.
The pike-men in front of me all had their poles tilted up at an angle parallel to the tree trunks, and they wouldn’t drop them until the last second, just to make sure that the elves didn’t accidentally see a glint of sunlight off of any of the weapons. We just had to hold steady until they were almost in the shadows of the trees, and then we would strike.
Then, with a little bit of luck, the elves would fall.
The elven cavalry advanced in front of the infantry, and they urged their horses into a trot as they bore down on the forest. The soldiers all wore leather armor except for a few of the commanders in metal, and it looked like they were a mix of day and night elves.
I felt my stomach tighten as I watched the horses trample across the ground toward us, and as I watched them snarl and toss their heads, I wondered how many humans these beasts had eaten in their lifetimes. I could feel the nervousness of all the troops around me, so I didn’t for a second let on that I was anxious about the outcome of today’s battle.
All they saw was a king who was absolutely confident that we would win the day, just like we had won every battle before now.
When the horses were a few dozen paces away, their riders had them slow down, so they didn’t enter the woods at a full gallop. They still moved fast as hell, but my pike-men at least stood a chance against them at their pace now. Still, I didn’t give them the signal to lower their weapons just yet, and instead, I just touched the sword at my side for reassurance before I flexed my fingers and prepared to use as much magic as I could summon.
When the elven cavalry were close enough to the woods that I could see the coldness in their eyes, I gave Dryson the signal. The elven soldiers were only a few stride-lengths away from the trees, so when the pike-men all dropped their poles, the horses were too close now to turn back.
Instead, they barreled right into the ends of the pikes.
The moment the first elves and horses started to scream as they found their insides suddenly outside their bodies, Ava and the Elite archers unleashed a volley of arrows so thick that the sky turned dark before the arrows all found homes in the elves outside the forest. While the archers continued to fire arrow after arrow into the elven horde, the first wave of elven cavalry completely panicked.
Every time the riders tried to twist their horses away and out of reach of the pike-men, they only managed to embed the spiked ends deeper inside themselves. and even when one horse and rider after another plunged to the ground at the edge of the tree-line, another pike-man was there to skewer the next elven rider in exactly the same way.
But while my men did an outstanding job against the elven cavalry, there were so many elves on horseback that some of them started to make it past their ranks. They trampled over the men, or my troops were forced to duck to the side at the last minute to avoid the horses’ hooves.
I froze every rider that I could, just to give my troops a second to get out of the way, but the elves started to break through the trees faster than I could freeze them, especially since they only came through one at a time instead of as one great wall of riders.
While I continued to freeze them every chance I got, I saw Clodia use her blue fire to light up the afternoon shadows inside the forest. Blue flames hissed through the trees left and right, and when no magic fire appeared to counter her from the elven forces, I knew that my prediction had been right.
We might still be up against elven cavalry, but at least we didn’t have to deal with elven magic casters at the same time.
Still, even though a hell of a lot of riders and ground troops had started to fall thanks to Ava’s archers and Dryson’s pike-men, it was easy to see that we would be overwhelmed before too long if I didn’t do more. The pike-men were about to be so overrun that they would be useless in a close-quartered fight inside the trees, so before I tackled the elves head-on, I knew that I needed to get the pike-men into a better position.
“Pike-men, to their flanks!” I shouted.
Dryson echoed my order, and in just a matter of seconds, the pike-men split into two units, one of either side. As they marched in formation that were several ranks deep, they kept their poles extended out in front of them like porcupines, and before too long, the pike-men had outflanked both the left and right sides of the elven forces.
Now the elves could only retreat to the fort or try to plow ahead into our center.
I pulled out my sword and let a burst of white-hot flames consume it, so that it shone like a bonfire as I threw myself into the fight. The elven cavalry tried to avoid me as they barreled their horses forward through the trees, but white flames flew off the tip of my sword in every direction as I whirled and sliced my way through each elf or its horse that came a little too close to me.
And whenever one slipped past me, my ground troops were there right behind me, and they stabbed and slashed at any target they could hit, until Clodia or I brought them down with our fire, so then my soldiers could finish them off on the ground.
My troops worked in small teams to bring down each horse and rider, so one would attack and distract the elf, while another one snuck up on the rider from the back, and a second one snuck forward from the other side, to serve as a backup to the first sneak attacker.
We were making a lot of progress against the elven cavalry, so now I just needed to know what the situation outside the trees looked like. I kept carving my way through the elven forces as I moved toward the edge of the forest to check on things there, and whenever my sword itself didn’t bring down my enemy, a burst of white fire exploded from the tip of my blade right into their faces, and even when that didn’t work, I was able to freeze them for half a second, so I could regain the advantage and bring them down before they could strike against me.
When I finally reached the edge of the forest, I glanced up but still couldn’t see Ava or the Elite archers. Arrows still continued to rain down from the trees onto the elven forces outside of the woods, but even though the elven archers tried to fire their own arrows back into the trees, they couldn’t see their targets, so they didn’t have much fucking luck.
I almost called out to Ava to give me a report on the situation outside the forest, but I didn’t want her to give away her position to the enemy. Instead, I decided to do the next best thing and take a look for myself, so when another elven soldier on horseback plowed into the woods like he was about to trample anything and everything in his path to the Capital, I made my move.
I stepped out from
my hiding spot behind a tree and instantly swung my sword toward the rider’s leg. The blade carved through his thigh straight down to the bone, but I was careful not to let it go any deeper. I wanted his horse alive and intact, so I had to make sure that I only injured the rider and not the mount.
The elf shrieked, and the sound made the horse rear back onto its hind legs, so then I just forced both horse and rider to freeze in place. I reached up and grabbed the elf by the back of his leather armor, pulled him off, let him drop to the ground, and then jumped onto the back of his horse in his place right before the horse unfroze again.
The horse never knew the difference.
As soon as his front hooves crashed back down to the earth, I wheeled the beast around, trampled right over its former rider, and then spurred it out of the woods and into the open plain. Every time I came close enough to an elf to strike, I swung my sword and carved their limbs or their heads clean off their bodies, until my elven mount was covered in blue blood. And as I continued to gallop forward past the cavalry and into the main elven ground force, I shot off one blast of white fire after another, until half the battlefield was consumed with the magic flames. I would periodically freeze everyone around myself to ensure that I couldn’t be attacked unaware or surrounded by an elven unit.
I glanced around as I rode to try to get a feel for how we were doing, but as far as I could tell, my troops were fucking winning. The field was so full of arrows buried into their targets that it almost looked like a second, shorter forest of thin black trees all around me, and on every side of me, horses, elven riders, and ground troops all laid dead or badly wounded.
In the forest behind me, I could still see Clodia’s blue fire as it hurtled in every direction inside the tree line, and I heard the screams of our enemies as my foot soldiers brought down all the elves who managed to escape from the guildmaster.
But if Ava and the rest of my archers were going to keep doing so well against the elves still outside the trees, then they were going to need some more arrows. They had already used so many that I couldn’t imagine they had very many left, so I did the only thing that I could think to help them from so far away.
The next time I swung my flaming sword through an elven footsoldier, I immediately let the flames die down so that only blue blood remained on the end of the blade, and it made me think of Belis and his horses. Then as I continued to ride forward, I raised the tip of the sword to my horse’s nose, let him sniff the blood, and then let him go crazy.
It turned out that elven battle horses weren’t actually all that particular about whose blood they spilled, just as long as they spilled someone’s.
As its mouth began to foam, the horse charged forward with its teeth bared, and between his hooves and my sword, we laid total waste to the elven foot soldiers all around us. I let him trample as many panicked elves as I needed him to, until there was finally a large open patch around me without any enemy soldiers. Then I pulled him to a sudden stop, raised my shield to block any enemy arrows that might be directed toward me, and aimed my sword at all the corpses on the field.
I knew that I could freeze things and then change the motion of objects, just like I knew that I could now summon magic fire whenever I wanted it, but I had a feeling that wasn’t all I could do. After all, I was the long-awaited king, so I’d be damned if I was about to let my archers run out of arrows.
With my sword aimed at the field, I concentrated on every single arrow that had buried itself into an elf, and then slowly, I watched as every single arrow moved up out of their targets and started to rise up overhead. As the elven foot soldiers started to glance around and then saw the arrows suspended mid-air, they stopped pushing forward toward the woods, and they sure as hell didn’t push toward me anymore. Instead, they just kind of stood there and stared, and even their commanders didn’t call out any orders.
As I continued to float the arrows up higher into the air, I heard Dryson call out orders to the pike-men. From the corner of my eye, I saw the soldiers advance further along either side of the elven force, until they had them completely surrounded on all sides, and the only way out was through the forest of death up ahead.
When the arrows were high enough to form what looked like a black cloud overhead, I pushed them all back toward the treetops, but I moved them slowly enough that the archers should be able to snatch them right out of the air. Almost half of the arrows had disappeared into the trees, when all at once, every elven foot soldier that was still alive threw down their weapons and dropped to their knees in surrender.
Their commanders instantly followed their example.
I grinned as the pike-men all pushed forward to make sure that this wasn’t some kind of trick, and then I spurred my horse back toward the tree line. But by the time I rode into the trees again, I saw that Clodia and my foot soldiers had outdone themselves. There were only a handful of elven cavalry still alive, and once they realized that the rest of their forces had surrendered, they raised their hands and slid off their horses’ backs to do the same thing. The elven horses, now riderless, began to lap up blood that had pooled around the battlefield where the fighting had been thickest.
I rode back out into the field and waited for the main commander of the elven forces to officially surrender, but he already had his commander’s cloak ready to hand over as a token of his goodwill.
“We are your prisoners,” the elven commander declared. “I have never seen that kind of magic from anyone before, certainly not from an elf, and so I surrender myself and my forces to you, with the hope that you will show us mercy.”
“I will, and I accept your surrender,” I replied. “Your soldiers will live because of you, and there will be a place for all of you in the new kingdom.”
Dryson immediately moved his troops forward to start taking prisoners. While the human guards grabbed the elves’ weapons and bound their hands, I rode back toward the trees again and glanced up when I reached the edge of the woods.
“Ava, where are you?” I shouted.
“Right here,” the blonde assassin said as she swung down from a nearby tree.
I hopped off my horse and handed the reins to Clodia when she came over to join us. I felt another surge of adrenaline flood through my body when I looked at my two warrior women and reassured myself that they were both safe, and I took a deep breath to calm down my quick pulse.
It had been one hell of a fight, but we had fucking won.
Suddenly, before I could really even catch my breath, I felt a familiar warm tug like the Rainbow Keys usually gave me, but since I had just used the last of them in the Blood City temple, I knew that something else must want my attention, and that it had to be the magic map. After I set my shield down beside me, I fished out the huge rolled-up parchment, opened it, and scanned it to try to figure out what the map wanted to tell me.
It didn’t take me long to figure it out.
Almost immediately, the map shimmered and re-formed itself into a close-up of one section of the map. It was a close view of the fort outside the city where Skam was stationed, and I knew right away what the map needed to say.
The elven troops from that fort were on the move, led by Tevian’s little speck of a figure on the map, and they were headed toward the fort that was closest to Riverhome.
“Shit,” I growled. “Tevian’s on the fucking move again.”
Chapter 17
I studied the map again to make sure I was absolutely right, and then I looked back up at Ava and Clodia.
“We’re gonna have to take this show on the road again,” I said. “I hoped that we could give the troops the night off, but…”
“We might still be able to,” Ava said as she looked at the map. “They’re not moving quickly, and there’s a lot of territory to cover between the fort outside of Skam’s city and the fort outside of Riverhome. They won’t make it there tonight or tomorrow.”
“Even if they’re all on horseback, they wouldn’t be able to travel too fast
,” Clodia added. “There are definitely foot soldiers with them, and the cavalry won’t leave the foot soldiers too far behind them.”
“How long do you think we have?” I asked.
“I’d say at least four full days before Tevian’s forces reach the Riverhome fort,” Ava said.
“Then that gives us less than four days to destroy the army at the Riverhome fort,” I said. “I want to explode the army into thin fucking air, to make sure that Tevian can see the fireworks from far away and then turn around to try a different fort instead.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Ava said.
“Quick question,” Clodia said with a smirk. “Do you think that Tevian stopped by the secret stronghold with all the magic casters? Because I really would have loved to see the look on his face when he figured out that the special, secret elven troops had all been massacred.”
“Oh, I’m sure he stopped by to check in there,” I replied, “and I’m sure that I can imagine exactly the kind of look that was on his face when he figured out what had happened.”
“So how do we play Riverhome?” Ava asked as she pushed a stray blonde hair back into her braid. “Do we march out to the fort and try to destroy it before Tevian gets there?”
“We could do that,” I said, “but based on the map, it doesn’t look like there’s any landscape to hide behind between Riverhome and the fort, so we’d basically just be marching across the plains to knock on their doors.”
“And if they see us coming, then they’ll be more than ready for us,” Ava said. “That makes sense, but what’s the alternative?”
I pressed my lips together as I tried to think about a possible timeline. If we had four days between now and Tevian’s arrival at the fort, then I estimated that we would need to destroy the Riverhome fort’s army two to three days from now. Then we should have just enough time to set the fort on fire, so Tevian would see it from far enough away that he would turn around and head in a different direction.
It was a little bit of a gamble, but then again, so were most things when it came to war.