by Dragon Lance
The elves on the ground and their dwarven allies raced across the field, encouraging the total rout of the human army. More and more of the humans held up their hands in surrender as they concluded that escape was impossible.
Many of the horses were stampeded, riderless, away from the field, lost to the army for the foreseeable future. A great, streaming column of refugees – once a proud army but now a mass of panicked, terrified, and defeated men – choked the few roads and scarred new trails across the prairie grasslands.
When the Windriders finally came to earth before the gates of Sithelbec, they landed only because there were no more enemies left to fight. Huge columns of human prisoners, guarded by the watchful eyes of elven archers and dwarven axemen, stood listlessly along the walls of the fortress. Amidst the smoke and chaos of the camps, detachments of the Wildrunners poked and searched, uncovering more prisoners and marking stockpiles of supplies.
“General, come quickly!” Kith-Kanan looked up at the cry, seeing a young captain approaching. The elf’s face was pale, and he gestured toward a place on the field.
“What is it?” Sensing the urgency in the young soldier’s request, Kith hurried behind him. In moments, he knew the reason for the officer’s demeanor.
He found Kencathedrus lying among the bodies of a dozen humans. The old elf’s body bled from numerous ugly wounds.
“We beat them today,” gasped Kith-Kanan’s former teacher and weaponmaster, managing a weak smile.
“Didn’t we, though?” The general took his friend’s head in his hands, looking toward the nearby officer. “Get the cleric!” he hissed.
“He’s been here,” objected Kencathedrus. Kith-Kanan could read the result in the wounded elf’s eyes: There was nothing that even a cleric could do.
“I’ve lived to see this day. It makes my life as a warrior complete. The war is all but won. You must pursue them now. Don’t let them escape!”
Kencathedrus gripped Kith’s arm with surprising strength, nearly raising himself up from the ground. “Promise me,” he gasped. “You will not let them escape!”
“I promise!” whispered the general. He cradled Kencathedrus’s head for several minutes, even though he knew that he was dead.
A messenger – a Kagonesti scout in full face paint – trotted up to Kith-Kanan to make a report. “General, we have reports of enemy activity in the north camp.”
That part of the huge circular human camp had seen the least fighting. Kith nodded at the scout and gently laid Kencathedrus’s body on the ground. He rose and called to a nearby sergeant-major.
“Take three companies and sweep through the north camp,” he ordered. He remembered, too, that General Giarna and his horsemen had escaped in that direction. He gestured to several of his Windriders. “Follow me.”
Chapter 25
AFTERNOON,
BATTLE OF SITHELBEC
Suzine watched the battle in her glass. Here in her tent in the northern camp, she did not feel the brunt of battle so heavily. Though the men here had raced to the fight and suffered the same fate as the rest of the army, the camp itself had not yet experienced the wholesale destruction that marked the south and west camps of the humans.
She had seen the Windriders soaring from the east, had watched their inexorable and unsuspected approach against her general’s army, and she had smiled. Her face and her body still burned from Giarna’s assaults, and her loathing for him had crystallized into hatred.
Thus when the elf commander had led the attack that sundered the army around her, she had felt a sense of joy, not dismay, as if Kith-Kanan had flown with no other purpose than to effect her own personal rescue. Calmly she had watched the battle rage, following the elven general in her mirror.
When he led the charge against Giarna’s remnant of the great cavalry brigades, she had held her breath, part of her hoping he might come upon the human general and strike him dead, another part wishing that Giarna would simply flee and leave the rewards of victory to the elven forces. Even when her elven guards fled from their posts, she had taken no note.
Now she heard marching outside her tent as the elves of the sortie force moved through the north camp looking for human survivors. Suzine heard some men surrender, pleading for their lives; she heard others attack with taunts and curses, and finally screams and moans as they fell.
The battle coursed around her, washing the tent city in smoke and flame and pain and blood. But still Suzine remained within her tent, her eyes fixed upon the golden-haired figure in her mirror. She watched Kith-Kanan, mounted upon the leaping, clawing figure of his great beast, slash and cut his way through the humans who tried to challenge him. She saw that the elven attack moved steadily closer to her. Now the Wildrunners fought a mere thousand yards to the south of her tent.
“Come to me, my warrior!” she breathed.
She willed him to come to her with all of her heart, watching in her glass as Kith-Kanan hacked the head from a burly human axeman.
“I am here!” Suzine desperately wanted Kith-Kanan to sense her presence, her desire, her – did she dare believe it – love.
The opening of her tent flap interrupted her reverie. It was him! It must be! Her heart afire, she whirled, and only when she saw Giarna standing there did brutal reality shatter her illusion. As for Giarna, he looked past her violently, at the image of the elven commander in the mirror.
The human general stepped toward her, his face a mask of fury, more like a beast’s than a man’s. It sent an icy blade of fear into the pit of Suzine’s stomach.
When Giarna reached her and seized her arms, each in one bone-crushing hand, that blade of fear twisted and slashed within her. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think; she could only stare into those wide, maddened eyes, the lips flecked with spittle, stretched taut to reveal teeth that seemed to hunger for her soul.
“You betrayed me!” he snarled, throwing her roughly to the ground. “Where did these flying beasts come from? How long have they been waiting, ready to strike?” He knelt and punched her roughly, splitting her lip.
He glanced at the mirror on the table. Now, her concentration broken, the image of Kith-Kanan had faded, but the truth of her obsession had been revealed.
The general’s black-gauntleted hand pulled a dagger from his belt, and he pressed it between her breasts, the point puncturing her gown and then brushing the skin beneath it.
“No,” he said, at the very moment when she expected to die. “That would be too merciful, too cheap a price for your treachery.”
He stood and glared down at her. Every instinct of her body told her to scramble to her feet, to fight him or to run! But his black eyes seemed to hypnotize her to the ground, and she couldn’t bring herself to move.
“Up, slut!” he growled, kicking her sharply in the ribs and then reaching down to seize her long red hair. He pulled her to her knees, and she winced, closing her eyes, expecting another blow to her face.
Then she sensed a change within the small confines of the tent, a sudden wash of air against her face … the increase in the sounds of battle beyond...
Giarna cast her aside, and she looked at the door to the tent.
There he was!
Kith-Kanan stood in the opened tent flap. Beyond him lay bodies on the ground, and she caught a glimpse of men and elves hacking against each other with swords and axes. The tents in her line of view smoked and smoldered, some spewing orange flame.
The golden-haired elf stepped boldly into the darkened tent, his steel longsword extended before him. He spoke harshly, his blade and his words directed at the human general.
“Surrender, human, or die!” Kith-Kanan, obviously not recognizing the commander of the great human army in the semidarkness of the tent, took another step toward Giarna.
The human general, his dagger still in his hand and his body trembling with rage, stared soundlessly at the elf for a moment. Kith-Kanan squinted and crouched slightly, ready for close-quarter fighting. As he studied hi
s opponent, recognition dawned, memories of that day of captivity a year before, when the battle had gone against the elves.
“It’s you,” the elf whispered.
“And it is fitting that you come to me now,” replied the human general, his voice a strangled, triumphant snarl. “You will not live to enjoy the fruits of your victory!”
In a flash of motion, the man’s hand whipped upward. In the same instant, he reversed his grip on the dagger, flipping its hilt from his hand and catching the tip of the foot-long blade in his fingertips.
“Look out!” Suzine screamed, suddenly finding her voice.
Giarna’s hand lashed out, flinging the knife toward Kith’s throat. Like a silver streak, the blade flashed through the air, true toward its mark.
Kith-Kanan couldn’t evade the throw, but he could parry it. His wrist twitched, a barely perceptible movement that swung the tip of his sword through an arc of perhaps six inches. That was enough; the longsword hit the knife with a sharp clink of metal, and the smaller blade flipped over the elf’s shoulder to strike the tent wall and fall harmlessly to the ground.
Suzine scrambled away from Giarna as the man drew his sword and rushed toward the elf. Kith-Kanan, eight inches shorter and perhaps a hundred pounds lighter than the human general, met the charge squarely. The two blades clashed with a force that rang like cymbals in the confines of the tent. The elf took one step back to absorb the momentum of the attack, but Giarna was stopped in his tracks.
The two combatants circled, each totally focused on the other, looking for the slightest hint, the twitch of an eye or a minute shifting of a shoulder, that would warn the other of an intended lunge.
They slashed at each other, then darted out of the way and just as quickly slashed again. Neither bore a shield. Consummate swordsmen both, they worked their way around the spacious tent. Kith-Kanan tipped a dressing screen in front of the human. The man leaped over it. Giarna drove the elf backward, hoping to trip him on Suzine’s cot. Kith sensed the threat and sprang to the rear, clearing the obstacle and then darting to the side, driving against the human’s flank.
Again the man parried, and the two warriors continued to circle, each conserving his strength, neither showing the weariness of the long day’s battle.
Where Giarna’s face was a mask of twisted hatred, however, the elf’s remained an image of cool, studied detachment. The man struck with power that the elf could not hope to match, so Kith-Kanan had to rely on skill and control for each parry, each lightning thrust of his own.
The woman glanced back and forth, her eyes wide with horror alternating with hope.
They were too equal in skill, she saw, and given this fact, Giarna’s size and strength inevitably would vanquish the elf. An increasing sense of desperation marked Kith’s parries and attacks. Once he stumbled and Suzine screamed.
Only Giarna’s heavy boot, as it caught in a fold of her rug, prevented his blade from tearing through the elf’s heart.
Nevertheless, he managed to cut a slash in Kith’s side, and the elf grunted in pain as he regained his balance. Suzine saw a tightness in his expression that hadn’t been there before. It could be called the beginnings of fear. Once he glanced toward the door, as if he hoped for assistance from that quarter.
Only when he did that did Suzine notice the sudden quiet that seemed to have descended across the camp. The fight outside had moved beyond them.
Kith-Kanan had been left behind.
She saw Giarna drive Kith backward with a series of ringing blows, and she knew she had to do something! Kith sprang forward, desperation apparent in each of his swinging slashes. Giarna ducked away from each blow, giving ground as he searched for the fatal opening.
There! The elf overreached himself, leaning too far forward in an attempt to draw blood from his elusive target.
Giarna’s sword came up, its tip glistening from Kith’s moist blood, held for just a moment as the elf followed through with his reckless swing.
Kith tried to twist away, raising his left arm so that he would take the wound in his shoulder, but Giarna simply raised that deadly spike and drove it toward the elf’s neck.
The sound of shattering glass was the next thing that Suzine knew. She didn’t understand how she came to hold the frame of her mirror in her hands, didn’t comprehend the shards of glass scattered across the rug. More glass, she saw, glinted upon Giarna’s shoulders. Blood spurted from long slashes in his scalp.
The human leader staggered, reeling from the blow to his head, as Kith-Kanan twisted away. He looked at the woman, gratitude shining in his eyes – or was that something deeper, more profound, more lasting, that she wished to see there?
The elf’s blade came up, poised to strike, as Giarna shook his head and cursed, wiping the blood from his eyes. His back to the door, he stared at the elf and the woman, his face once again distorted by his monstrous hatred.
Kith-Kanan stepped to Suzine’s side, sensing the man’s hatred and protecting her from any sudden attack.
But there would be no attack. Groggy, bleeding, surrounded by enemies, Giarna made a more pragmatic decision. With one last burning look at the pair, he turned and darted through the tent flap.
Kith-Kanan started forward but stopped when he felt Suzine’s hand on his arm.
“Wait’” she said softly. She touched the bloodstained tunic at his side, where Giarna’s sword had cut him.
“You’re hurt. Here, let me tend your wound.”
The weariness of the great battle finally arose within Kith-Kanan as he lay upon the bed. For the first time in more months than he cared to remember, he felt a gentle sensation of peace.
*
The war almost ceased to exist for Kith-Kanan. It became distant and unreal. His wound wasn’t serious, and the woman who tended him was not only beautiful but also had been haunting his dreams for weeks.
As the Army of Ergoth scattered, Parnigar took command of the pursuit, skillfully massing the Wildrunners to attack concentrations of the enemy wherever they could be found. Kith-Kanan was left to recuperate and paid little attention to his lieutenant’s reports of progress.
They all knew the humans were beaten. It would be a matter of weeks, perhaps months now, before they were driven back across the border of their own empire. Windriders sailed over the plains, dwarves and elves marched, and elven cavalry galloped at will.
And back at the nearly abandoned fortress, the commander of this great army was falling in love.
Chapter 26
LATE SUMMER,
YEAR OF THE BEAR
Already the cool winds presaging autumn swirled northward from the Courrain Ocean, causing the trees of the great forestlands to discard their leaves and prepare for the long dormancy of winter. The elves of Silvanesti felt the winds, too, throughout the towns and estates and even in the great capital of Silvanost.
The city was alive with the great jubilation of victory. Word from the front told of the rout of the human army. Kith-Kanan’s army was on the offensive.
The elven general had sent columns of Wildrunners marching swiftly across the plains, fighting the pockets of human resistance.
The dwarven league did its part against the humans, while the Windriders swept down from the skies, shattering the once-proud Ergothian regiments, capturing or killing hundreds of humans, and scattering the rest to the four winds. Most bands of desperate survivors sought nothing more than flight back to the borders of Ergoth.
Great camps of human prisoners – tens of thousands – now littered the plains.
Many of these Kith-Kanan sent to the east upon the orders of his brother, where the human prisoners were condemned to spend their lives in the Clan Oakleaf mines. Others were assigned to rebuild and strengthen the fortress of Sithelbec and repair the damage to settlements and villages ravaged by two years of war.
These should be the greatest days of my life, Sithas brooded over the reports from his great emerald throne. He was reluctant to leave the Hall of Aud
ience for the brightness of the garden or the city despite the beautiful late afternoon sky.
An hour ago he had ordered his courtiers and nobles to leave him alone. He was disconsolate, despite the most recent missive from Kith-Kanan – borne by a Windrider courier, the news less than a week old – which had continued favorable reports of victory.
Perhaps he would have been relieved to talk to Lord Quimant – no one else seemed to understand the pressures of his office – but that nobleman had left the city more than a week earlier to assist in the administration of the new prisoner slaves at his family’s mines in the north. He had no clear idea when he would return.
Sithas’s mind ran over his brother’s latest communication. Kith reported that the central wing of the Army of Ergoth, which had tried to march home by the shortest and most direct route, had since ceased to exist. The entire force had been eradicated when the Wildrunners gathered and attacked the central wing, causing massive casualties.
There was no longer much of a southern wing, either. Its soldiers had suffered the highest toll in the initial counterattack. And the smaller northern wing, with its thousands of light horsemen and fast-moving infantry under the shrewd General Giarna, had been scattered into fragments that desperately sought refuge among the clumps of forest and rough country that fringed the plains.
Why, then, could Sithas not share in the exultation of the Silvanost citizenry?
Perhaps because reports had been confirmed of Theiwar dwarves joining with the fleeing remnants of Giarna’s force, even though their cousins, the Hylar, fought on the side of the elves. Sithas had no doubt that the Theiwar were led by the treacherous general and ambassador Than-Kar. Such internecine dwarven politics served to further confuse the purposes of this war.
Neither was there any doubt now that large numbers of renegade elves fought on the side of Ergoth. Elves and dwarves and humans fighting against elves and dwarves!
Quimant continued to advocate the hiring of human mercenaries to further reinforce Kith-Kanan’s armies. This was a step that Sithas was not prepared to take. And yet …