by Logan Jacobs
Then from somewhere in the middle of the elven cavalry that was blocked by our wall of fire, I saw a huge ball of blue fire appear and then hurl itself forward onto our retreating forces. I froze it just before it reached the pike-men in the rear, and then I sent it right back to where it came from.
“Wade!” Tevian bellowed so loudly that I heard him even above the chaotic sounds of battle.
I just grinned and sent a final burst of energy into the wall of flame, just as the last of my troops had almost reached the crest of the hill. If Tevian wanted to come and face me one-on-one, then that was his problem. I didn’t feel the need to prove anything against him personally, partly because I knew that I already had, every single other time that we’d met.
But it was also because I had a much greater responsibility now than our personal feud. I had a kingdom to defend, and that meant I had an entire army of soldiers that I was responsible for and that I would do my damnedest to make sure that they all made it home to their families at the end of today’s battle.
As the elven cavalry and foot soldiers continued to struggle up the hill toward my army, I looked up and saw that the pike-men had planted their poles into the earth again. But the pikes weren’t the only poles in the ground anymore, because just then, Skam and the other dwarven soldiers raised up the other surprise that I had in store for the elves.
They had assembled a wooden fence made of thick spikes, and they had concealed it in the tall grass at the top of the hill. As they raised it up at the back of the half-circle of pike-men, they began to plant it firmly into the ground until it stood taller than any of the elven horses. It would serve as one more obstacle between the elves and my soldiers, so now the elves were up against the steep terrain, my pike-men, and a high fence at the back of my forces.
From their spot at the top of the hill, the foot soldiers got into position to defend against the oncoming elves, the archers continued to rain destruction down upon the enemy, and the few riders that we had left streamed up toward the crest to rejoin our forces there.
It was high time that Ava, Clodia, and I rejoined them, too.
After all, the wooden fence was a good barrier, but it would only last until Tevian was able to destroy it with his magic fire, and if we didn’t destroy the rest of the elven cavalry before then, then our foot soldiers would be in for a world of hurt. They could stand on their own against the elven ground troops, at least for a while, but no one on the ground stood a chance against mounted elves.
“Move out!” I shouted to Clodia and hoped that she could hear me.
The moment I dropped my half of the wall of fire, I saw Clodia drop hers a second later, just before she wheeled her horse toward the hill and began to retreat. As Ava cut down an elf behind me, I looked around and realized that the banner Ashlin had made for me was nowhere to be seen. All the pikes had been picked up and moved up the hill with the rest of my forces, but I thought that the banner itself must have been trampled in all the chaos.
Then I saw it flying in the wind halfway up the hill, carried by none other than Golierian as he raced his horse up toward the crest to rejoin the fight.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said with a grin.
Then I spurred my horse up toward the crest of the hill after him, followed closely by Ava. Behind us, Tevian hurled one ball of blue flame after another, but I threw up my shield every time the fire started to get too close, and whenever I saw a streak aimed at Ava or Clodia, I froze it and then let it explode harmlessly against the ground.
We had almost reached our forces at the top of the hill, but we had to carve our way through the cavalry that had caught up and now pressed themselves forward all against the pikes. It looked like we had destroyed over half of the elven cavalry, maybe even two-thirds of it, and we had also killed a number of foot soldiers who had gotten caught in all the crossfire, but the elves still kept coming, and I didn’t know how long our defenses could continue to hold.
We were really going to need a miracle.
I knew exactly where to guide my horse to avoid the traps in the ground, so Ava and I rode swiftly up toward the crest of the hill, even as the elves struggled all around us. Some of them followed our example, of course, but I tried to freeze as many of them as I could, and I shot steady blasts of white fire at the ones that I couldn’t freeze.
When we finally reached the pike-men at the crest of the hill, I wheeled my horse back around to look down at the advancing elven troops. There were still hundreds of elven horses that struggled up the hill toward us, and there were thousands upon thousands of foot soldiers that marched up right alongside them. Tevian charged front and center up the hill on his mount, and I noticed right away that he had started to aim his blasts of blue fire at the makeshift wooden fence behind my forces.
If he could burn through the spiked fence that we had just planted into the ground, that would leave the rear of my forces unprotected, and then the elves would be able to spill around and attack before my pike-men had a chance to move in and cover our flanks. But we simply didn’t have enough pike-men to ring our whole force in a circle, and I thought for a moment that we might need to retreat all the way back to the Blood City, after all.
But at the end of the day, that option was just too dangerous. If we retreated back against the blood-red walls, then we would be pinned in, and it would make it that much easier for the elves to mow us down like fucking cattle in a slaughter-pen. But if we called for a retreat to the city, there was a pretty big possibility the pikemen could panic and as a result the elves would be able to break our ranks and flood into the Blood City at the same time, so that option was definitely out.
No, it was a much better option to face the elves like men on the battlefield today, but even so, we still looked like we might be overwhelmed just from the sheer number of elves that we faced.
“What are your orders, my king?” Ava shouted as she wheeled her horse alongside mine.
“Watch my back!” I called back. “The Elite need more arrows!”
As I pulled my horse to a temporary standstill, I was aware that the blonde assassin moved all around me both with her long dagger and her throwing knives that she sometimes hurled and sometimes just used to slash and cut at every elf who got a little too close to me. While she made sure that no one touched me, I focused on the battlefield at the base of the hill below us, and I slowly began to raise up every arrow that I could from the corpses that they had buried themselves into.
When I finally raised them all high into the air, I sped them back over the tops of my soldiers’ poles and let them fall gently down toward the archers inside the ring of pike-men. But even though the morning sky had turned dark with the shadow of so many arrows, these elves didn’t seem to give a shit about that. Instead, they only paused long enough to glance up, make sure the arrows weren’t headed straight for their hearts, and then threw themselves back into the fight.
This was bad.
These elves were as bloodthirsty as their fucking horses, and it didn’t seem like any amount of magic or firepower would slow them down. Of course, I did notice that when the arrows flew backward overhead, Tevian had paused longer than the rest of the wilderness elves, but he had finally forced his gaze back down, so he could focus on trying to destroy the wooden barrier at the back of my troops.
I froze the next blast of fire that he sent in mid-air, just before it collided into Golierian’s back on its way to the wooden barrier. As soon as Golierian felt the heat against his back, he spurred his horse away and continued to fight somewhere on the other side of my ring of pike-men. Clodia’s blue fire was visible in the distance, too, but there wasn’t time to look for anyone else in the middle of the heavy fighting.
Since I had just resupplied the Elite archers with arrows, I pushed my horse forward again to try to wipe out as many of the elven cavalry as I could. I deflected Tevian’s fire from my forces every chance that I saw, but when two dozen elven cavalry all suddenly reached the crest of t
he hill at the same time, they surrounded Ava and me, and both Tevian and my forces were completely blocked from my view.
Ava and I fought as close to back-to-back as we could get on our horses, but the number of elven riders around us was just too great. Every time I froze the assholes immediately around us, the elves behind them just pressed forward instead, and whenever my white flames consumed one of them, two more seemed to take his place. They were too close to me, and they were way too fucking close to my woman, but I couldn’t see outside the ring of elves to tell what else was going on in the rest of the battle.
Just as Ava cut down another elven rider with her long dagger, I heard a sound like thunder and then a chorus of shouts from the direction of my army, but at the same time, the blonde assassin’s horse stumbled and nearly threw her. I forgot about everything else as I sheathed my sword, reached over to grab her, and then pulled Ava back onto my own horse in front of me.
I raised my shield to cover us both from the next rain of blows, but just as I reached for my sword again, I heard another sound from the direction of my army, only this time, I would have known that noise anywhere.
I had never heard Dar shout so loudly before.
With Ava still secure in front of me, I leaned back and drew my sword to carve a perfect arc through the closest elven rider’s neck. As he plunged to the ground, his horse reared back, and then for just a moment, the cavalry parted just enough for me to see that our wooden fence had been torn down, and some of my own troops had spilled out of it to head toward me.
And right there in the lead was Dar.
My halfling friend was at the head of a column of Elite foot soldiers and dwarves, and as he ran forward with a bloody shout, his expression was filled with more fury than I had ever seen before. On his right was Melia with a battle-club in her hands, and on his left was Skam with his double-headed axe that he rammed into every elf that they ran into on their way to reach me.
That crazy little fucker had torn down our own barrier to come to my defense.
Half the elven cavalry around my horse turned to face Dar and my reinforcements, while the other half continued to press closer against Ava and me, since each of them wanted to be the bastard that cut down the upstart human king. I swung my sword even faster than before, and now I didn’t try to kill every elf that I hit. I just wanted to carve a path to Dar and Skam to keep them from getting themselves killed.
Look up, the Rainbow Keys suddenly hissed, even though they were no longer inside my pocket.
Instantly, I looked to the sky. Far to the east, just above the morning sun, there was a faint shadow against the pale blue, and I knew without a second’s hesitation exactly what it was.
Penny was about to get here just in fucking time.
Now the only problem was how the fuck I was going to reach her.
As Ava threw more of her hidden daggers at the enemies all around us, I continued to freeze and slash every elf that I could. At the same time, I watched as the dwarven soldiers under Skam’s direction slammed into one elf after another as if they were each a mini battering ram. They didn’t seem to give a shit if the elf was on foot or on horseback, and instead, they just barreled forward until they had thrown one of their opponents so off balance that they were able to beat them to a bloody blue pulp with their hammers or chop them into bits with their battle-axes.
And while Skam and the other dwarves pushed forward on one side, Dar and Melia led the Elite troops forward like the most goddamn beautiful wave that I’d ever seen. They sliced and diced every elven foot soldier that tried to block them, and they slashed and chopped every elven horse that thought they might make an easy meal. The whole time, they all worked as a team to bring down one elf after another until it was hard to tell where one soldier ended and another began because they all moved like a single unit.
Finally, just as I looked up and saw that the shadow overhead was now a little bit closer, my reinforcements and I had destroyed enough of the elven forces to reach each other.
“You fucking bastard!” I shouted to Dar with a grin. “Get your asses back where you’ll be protected!”
“Not without you, my king!” Dar bellowed.
“I’ve gotta catch a ride!” I called back. “Get the troops back and out of the way!”
For half a second, Dar looked at me like I had just grown a second head, and then he seemed to realize exactly what I meant.
“We hear, and we follow!” the halfling shouted, and instantly, the Elite took up the cry and all started to head back to the rest of my army.
I waited just long enough to make sure that Dar and Skam had both started to head back toward the rest of my troops, and then I tightened my grip around Ava, turned my horse, and spurred him forward as fast as he could possibly go. We blew right past Tevian, but I froze his confused expression in place for a few seconds so that we could gallop right by him, and shortly after that, there was nothing between us and Penny except for the wide, rolling hills.
I could hear the shouts of victory and panic behind me, as one half of the battlefield thought that they had just won the day, while the other half thought their king had just abandoned them to the mercy of the elves. But there was no time to explain because just as I galloped down the next hill and out of sight from both armies, the shadow overhead dropped back down to skim just above the ground toward me.
As soon as I reached the bottom of the hill, I pulled my warhorse to a stop as Penny appeared with Azure at the crest of the hill in front of me. The redheaded pixie slowed down the dragon as she dipped him down to meet us, and while they slowly coasted to a stop, I squeezed Ava’s arm, slid off my horse’s back, and raced forward to meet them.
Azure was a fucking giant.
I’d thought that my blue dragon was already pretty big, but when I looked at him now, I realized that I had never seen anything like him before. The blue dragon towered high above me, and his wings were damn near broad enough to block out the sun. The moment that Penny pulled him to a stop, our pet dragon extended his back claws and churned up two deep trenches in the earth to help himself stop in time.
Once he was still, Penny slid down his front arm and landed gracefully on her feet, while Ava calmed the nervous warhorse behind me. I ran forward, wrapped my arms around Penny, and kissed her fiercely, but then as much as I wanted to just hold her forever now that I knew she was safe, I immediately forced myself to let her go again.
After all, we still had a war to win.
“You’re okay?” I demanded as I squeezed Penny’s hand.
“I’m fine,” the redheaded pixie panted. “I’m so sorry, Wade! We ran into a bunch of fucking orcs on our way, and Azure destroyed them all, but it took us longer to get here than I thought.”
“You’re here now, and that’s all that matters,” I told her. “Take my shield, and use it to cover you and Ava when you ride back to the battlefield together, alright?”
“Got it,” Penny said as she took my huge round shield from me.
“Be safe,” I told my women after I helped Penny up in front of Ava on the elven warhorse. “And stay out of Azure’s way.”
“As you command, my king,” Ava growled, and then the blonde assassin wheeled the horse around to head right back toward the fight with Penny.
I turned toward Azure, but my blue-scaled dragon had already lowered himself as far down on the ground as he could go, so I was able to climb right onto his back. Once I was seated on his broad back, I realized that Penny had tied a strap around his shoulders, so that my hands would have something to grip when we went up into the air, and she had tied a second strap around his middle, with make-shift stirrups for me to place my feet in and to help direct the dragon wherever I needed him to go.
By the Ancients, Penny was good.
As soon as my hands and feet were in place, so I felt secure on top of the giant dragon, I leaned forward and scratched the blue scales of his neck.
“Are you ready to kill some elves, boy?”
I whispered.
Azure snorted and bucked his head in answer, so I just grinned.
“Then let’s go light them up,” I growled.
My blue dragon had to get a running start to take off, but then as soon as we were in the air, he dipped and soared as gracefully as a goddamn swan. We soared over Ava and Penny far below, and in only a matter of seconds, we were right on top of the battlefield again.
As Azure spread his wings wide to block out the sunlight, every soldier on both sides looked up at the sudden darkness. They all looked equally terrified, but then I saw Golierian raise my battle standard high, so my troops instantly realized that their king was the rider on the back of the dragon.
I nudged Azure slightly to the right, swooped down a little lower, and then tapped his shoulder as our signal.
The moment my dragon felt the tap, he opened his mouth wide and unleashed a torrent of fire so long and so wide that it looked like a river of flames as it poured down toward the battlefield. It collided into an entire unit of elven cavalry, knocked both horses and riders to the ground, and then died down only once every member of that cavalry unit was a crispy pile of remains on the hillside.
At first, the elves were too stunned to panic, so I just guided Azure slightly to the left, lowered him down a little lower again, and let him unleash another river of fire onto the elven foot soldiers now. The fire erupted through the ground troops this time, so hundreds of elves all suddenly flailed about with blood-choked screams, until the fire burned straight through their throats and left them without a voice just before they died.
I wheeled Azure sharply to the side, so I could circle him around and then dive back into the fight, but already, I could see the effects of my badass dragon. The elves below all shouted and trampled over each other to try to take cover, and at the same time, my own troops spilled out of the back of their formation. They raced toward the panicked elves to take them down now that my soldiers had the advantage, so while they attacked the elves closest to the pike-men, I directed Azure toward all the rest of the elven troops.