‘Jaqrui!’ called Grafyrre again. ‘Away!’
An order rang out across the human lines. Swordsmen dropped to their knees. Many threw themselves flat, knowing what was coming in front and behind. Mages raised their heads, ready. Jaqruis whispered into their lines. Blades chopped into hands, heads and chests. Mages screamed. Castings bloomed dark as mages lost control at the critical moment. Ice and fire fell on the human lines.
Ten yards and closing. Other mages, calmer mages, steadied and cast.
‘Evade and strike!’
Clouds of ice washed out towards the TaiGethen on a dread frozen wind. Tongues of flame leapt from the hands of mages even as jaqruis struck them down. Takaar saw the castings rush towards them and felt a moment’s peace mingle with his nausea, lessened since the touch of Ystormun’s hands. The din subsided and the energies about him caressed rather than sickened him. He recognised the state. Last time he had felt it was in combat with the Garonin. He breathed it in.
Takaar could see the individual shards of ice in the mass that came towards him. He saw the twinkling yellow reflection of torchlight. Saw them turning end over end or spinning around their horizontal axis. Beautiful. Beguiling. Takaar leapt, pushing off with his left foot and arrowing into the air, his arms straight in front of him. He angled his body horizontal and pushed his arms to the sides.
The ice gouged beneath him. He felt flechettes snip at his jacket and the toes of his boots. The cold air behind the ice shocked his lungs. He was past the cloud in a heartbeat. The enemy were below him. None had even registered what was coming at them. Bloodied bodies, jaqrui victims, writhed on the ground amidst those caught in the hell of their own castings.
Takaar brought his legs under him. He came down in a crouch, straddling a moving body. He jabbed out his hand, straight-fingered, crushing the man’s windpipe. Takaar straightened. Enemies were everywhere. TaiGethen who’d rolled under the castings came to their feet. Others who had chosen to leap landed all around him.
‘Strike forward, guard your backs!’ called Merrat. ‘Tais, we strike.’
The mage in front of Takaar raised his head. Takaar saw him mouth what was most probably a curse. Takaar swept a blade from his back and chopped it hard down the mage’s face. The man fell silently. The TaiGethen surged forward, still singing the mourning dirge. Keller wasn’t lead mage for nothing. He’d seen what was going to happen and cast wings on his back rather than ice for his fingers. He shot straight up into the air past the diving and rolling forms of the TaiGethen and breathed a huge sigh of relief that he was not on the ground.
Garan had ordered seventeen hundred men up the Path of Yniss from the barracks and staging areas the moment the confirmation of the attack on the temple had been confirmed. Everything had been foreseen by Ystormun, but he had not understood the tenacity of the TaiGethen. Maybe he had assumed the temple would be reached but this, he could not have foreseen this.
A few TaiGethen had been trapped in the piazza. They could not get out to the sides or the rear. Sitting targets for spells and then blades to mop up the survivors. That they would attack was against all reason. But up here, where it was safe and the screams of the dying filtered up through the din of barked orders, the low elven chanting and the steady disintegration of order, Keller could see something more.
They weren’t just attacking. They were trying to break through. Unbelievable. Keller flew back towards Garan. He could see the big general amidst his men, too far back to see what was happening further forward.
‘Garan!’ Garan looked up. ‘You have to break your force. They’re in amongst you. No room to fight.’
‘We’ll take them as we are.’
‘You don’t understand. They aren’t fighting head on. They’re trying to get through us. Order daggers drawn at least. Be ready.’
Garan glared at him. ‘That is not the way to face this enemy. They’re too quick. We need heavy defence.’
‘Clear a break. Make room for spells, then.’
‘Now that I might do.’
Keller nodded and rose again. ‘Sooner rather than later.’
He flew back towards the fighting. In the gloom, he could barely follow it. More so because the elves were so damned fast. Three leapt above the men they were approaching, rolled in the air and came down striking out. Three men died. Mages behind them made to cast. Woefully slow. Blades licked out. Mages fell.
In the centre of the street a knot of soldiers had formed, facing in all directions and bristling with weapons. The elves ran at them, leapt over them, continued on down the street while the men scattered. Elves came from nowhere. Hands and feet struck out. Men were spun on their heels. Heads snapped back. Blades caught the torchlight. Blood misted into the night sky.
‘Dear gods around us,’ whispered Keller. ‘It’s a massacre.’ In the centre of their force, the humans were packed too tight to fight. They couldn’t free their swords. They pushed for space. Angry shouts rattled across their lines. Panic was beginning to grow. Men were dying. Elves were not. Mages dare not cast in the confined space. More and more took the route of the coward and flew straight up, abandoning their comrades to the cold, disciplined fury of the TaiGethen.
‘Forward!’ called Grafyrre. ‘Keep moving forward.’
Blood slicked the cobbles. Bodies of men choked the gutters and the central drains. Auum spun and kicked high, his foot smacking into the side of an enemy’s head. The man fell sideways. Auum moved into the space. A sword came at him, hurried through waist high. Auum ducked it. The soldier couldn’t control the sweep. The blade sank into the gut of one of his own.
Takaar ensured the man went down hard. He moved up. Marack blocked aside a downward cut. Takaar slid a blade through the man’s ribs. Space. Auum moved up. Takaar paced forward and leapt. He twisted in the air, landed and hacked down. Blood surged from his target’s shoulder.
Auum dropped, slid the feet from a mage. Marack hacked into his chest and moved into the space. The press was getting thicker. The pressure increasing from behind too. Auum felt his movements hampered for the first time. Ahead, men were slowly getting themselves together, holding their swords straight out and using them for stabbing. Overhead, mages were flying down the Path of Yniss. Not in confusion, with purpose. Auum saw them and knew in his heart that time was short for the doomed threads.
‘Follow me!’ yelled Takaar.
‘Where?’
Auum diverted a blade coming for his gut and thumped the heel of his palm into his enemy’s chest. The man fell back against the rank behind. Takaar pointed to the sky.
‘Up.’
Auum smiled. ‘Graf! Heads up and run.’
Grafyrre relayed the idea as an order and the TaiGethen reacted as one. The man Auum had just knocked down had been caught by those behind. Auum ran up the front of his body and launched himself from the man’s face. He jumped high above the human army. He cycled his arms and legs, reaching out as far as he could, searching for the ideal landing point. He saw it catch the light of torches from either side of the Path of Yniss.
A helmet.
Auum glanced left and right. His clear view across the street afforded him the sight of TaiGethen elves soaring above their enemies. Faces were turning up, but those who had seen them were already too late to stop them, much less follow them. Marack was turning a somersault next to him, Takaar another of his horizontal flights, fierce and graceful. Grafyrre and Merrat were hand in hand, coming down on their left feet and pushing off in perfect balance.
Auum landed. The helmet’s occupant grunted and ducked at the brief weight on the top of his head but Auum was already gone. Like running the sucking mud of the Mouth of Orra at the outflow of the River Ix, or the quicksands out at Palynt Reach. Quick steps, minimum weight down and the whole body canted forward at a steep angle. Always pushing away, never levering forward. Olmaat used to describe it as nothing more than a controlled fall.
A wave of incredulous fury followed in their wake. By the time soldier
or mage had reacted, the elves were past him. Swords waved ineffectually and belatedly overhead. Fists punched empty space. Fingers grabbed at nothing.
Auum bounced left and right as he ran. His eyes searched four moves ahead, his mind trusting his feet to land without error. The TaiGethen passed across the heads of their enemies like the last mist blown from the surface of the ocean. Felt and gone.
‘Cover on landing. Left turn. Orsan’s Yard for muster,’ said Grafyrre, his voice carrying across the soaring line of elven warriors.
Auum saw the back of the human lines. It was loose there and they could see what was coming at them. Auum growled a warning, his panther voice focusing the eye of every TaiGethen. He selected his landing point, straightened his body and slammed down hard with both feet on the head of his last mark.
The mage collapsed beneath him. Auum dropped, rolled and rose in one movement. The TaiGethen moved forward, a single unit. Auum drew his second blade. He jammed his left into the gut of a hapless soldier and spun past his falling body. He whipped his right blade into the neck of the man next to him, dragged his left clear and buried it to the hilt in the chest of the man behind. Takaar hurdled a body, Marack in his heel prints, and took the next man two-footed on the point of the jaw. Marack ran past him and tore the throat from a fifth with the ends of her fingers. Auum came to her left, blocked a wild slash and chopped into the hamstrings of a sixth.
Clear space but the mages would be turning and clear of the bulk of the army.
‘Go, go,’ said Auum, pressing a hand into Takaar’s back.
They headed for the left turn to take them into Keeper’s Row. Grafyrre and Merrat were ahead of them, the bulk of the TaiGethen around them. Ten yards to the turn, the first way off the Path of Yniss from the mouth of the temple piazza.
‘Casters ready!’ called a voice. ‘Move!’
Takaar pulled Auum and Marack along, practically threw them around the corner. A freezing wind howled past the opening. Auum felt his hair crisp with frost. His blade gleamed with ice. The TaiGethen were already pounding away to the south, heading into the warren of the Grans.
Auum and Marack followed in Takaar’s wake just in front of the rear cells. Abruptly, Takaar stumbled. He reached out a hand, which Auum was able to grasp.
‘Takaar?’ he asked.
Takaar carried on running but he’d slowed dramatically.
‘Something’s growing,’ said Takaar. ‘Something ugly and evil. Like Gyal building to a storm of wrath but beneath my feet. In the energy lines. In the magic. I don’t think we have much time.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If Ystormun really wants to commit genocide on the lesser threads of elves he isn’t going to do it with the sword,’ said Takaar.
Auum remembered the mages flying fast overhead. He shuddered.
They ran into Orsan’s Yard and faced fifty and more blades and axes. The two groups faced each other for a moment before Merrat broke and ran forward, dragging Pelyn into a fierce embrace.
‘Yniss bless you and the axes of the Apposans. We need you now.’
‘Couldn’t quite bring myself to follow Katyett’s last order,’ said Pelyn. She frowned. ‘Where is she?’
No one needed to speak the words. The first line of a lament to the fallen was whispered by every TaiGethen. Pelyn closed her eyes and tears escaped down her cheeks. Takaar, the nausea rising within him as the magic built in intensity, walked forward still using Auum for support.
‘There will be time for grief, Pelyn,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you had planned to do here. Quickly. Time is short.’
Pelyn’s stare was quick and angry but she could see there was no arrogance in his face. Only the pain of what was growing underfoot.
‘There are more Apposans here. Others that will want to get out. We came to help them.’
Takaar nodded and there was smiling among the TaiGethen.
‘You have chosen a path more vital than you know. And your Apposan axes will be the difference between life and death for hundreds, maybe thousands.’ Takaar paused and breathed deeply. ‘There will be fire and there will be panic. I will explain, but we must use these to our advantage. Grafyrre, we need to split to reach all the most vulnerable threads at once.’
Grafyrre’s nod was curt and his eyes held the passion of the wronged. He turned to the elves and began to talk. Garan knelt beside the body of the elf and turned her burned, wrecked face to the rain. He rubbed at his stubble and sucked in his bottom lip.
‘We got one then,’ said Keller, landing behind him and dismissing the spell at his back.
‘No,’ said Garan. ‘We barely even nicked one of them. This one they brought with them. It’s got Ystormun’s sick signature all over it. She must have been important.’
Garan stood and turned back. Soldiers were filling the space around him.
‘No one touches this elf,’ he said. ‘No one moves her; no one pisses on her body; no one takes anything from her. Do I make myself clear? Good. Pass the word. I will be checking back.’
‘What’s that all about?’ asked Keller.
‘Just a hunch,’ said Garan. ‘Tell you later.’
Keller shrugged. ‘Whatever you say. Do you think they can do it? What Ystormun says they want to do?’
‘I think that if the TaiGethen really put their minds to it, they could do pretty much anything they want. Their problem is there aren’t enough of them.’
Garan turned to head to Shorth. The blackened walls and the smoking ruins of temples surrounding them saddened him. The elves had destroyed enough of it themselves. They hardly needed the help of men.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Keller. ‘Action’s this way.’
Garan didn’t bother turning to look at Keller. ‘I don’t think so. I’m a soldier. I’m not a murderer of unarmed civilians. I will have no part in the massacre. Why would I want to watch the helpless be slaughtered?’
‘It didn’t seem to worry you in the Park of Tual.’
‘They were agitators, problems to be dealt with. What we have left now are those desiring only peace. Why would I want them dead?’
‘Because they’re only elves and this is the moment when we assure victory and compliance.’
Now Garan turned and he was surprised at the contempt that he felt for Keller. Mixed with pity that his sight was so short.
‘I thought more of you. But you’re just a lackey to the mage lords. You know what should be worrying you is where this power of his comes from and why it’s so different from yours. One day you’ll need to be sure you’re standing on the right side of the conflict.’
‘What conflict?’
Garan chuckled. ‘Don’t take the piss. You’re not that naive. You know the tension in Triverne. You know there’s a struggle coming. The six are on one side. Every other mage in the circle is on the other. Has it really never occurred to you why Ystormun wants control here so quickly? Look at the resources. Look at the power they represent. One day, and it may not be for a hundred years, Balaian will fight Balaian for this place.’
‘And what will you do in the meantime?’ Keller’s face dripped his scepticism. ‘Keep your head down or resign your commission?’
‘I doubt Ystormun accepts resignations with any grace, do you? No, Keller, I expect when I detail my men to shovel the ashes of the innocents away from the carcasses of their homes, I’ll be thinking of heading into the forest and taking my chances with the TaiGethen. What about you?’
The earth rumbled underfoot. Flames spat hundreds of feet into the sky. There was a concerted groan and a thundering crash of timbers. Detonations echoed away into the clearing sky.
‘It begins,’ said Keller.
‘It certainly does.’
Chapter 41
The TaiGethen need no shield behind which to cower, only the blessing of Yniss. The TaiGethen ran. Apposans were with each of the three groups Grafyrre had detailed to seek and release, if they could, Gyalan, Ixii and Cefan pri
soners. They did not know how they could achieve what Takaar desired but they did know they had to try. It was what the TaiGethen existed to do.
Auum ran with the cells closing on the museum. Pelyn had made a promise to Methian that she would try and help the Gyalans. And that was despite what had happened to a young Al-Arynaar at their hands just a few days before. This was not the time, Grafyrre had said, to be bothered by thread animosity. Elf could kill elf later, that was their right. It was not the right of humans.
They headed for the lights that bordered the quarter of the city where the Gyalans had made their homes for centuries. They were weavers, potters, artisans of all types. Famed for the verve of their creations and the flair of their construction. And now within moments of being dealt a potentially fatal blow. They were not an overtly fertile thread. They could not afford to lose such numbers from their stock.
Auum and Marack flanked a pale and shaking Takaar. Every pace brought a grunt of exertion. Every breath was pained and deliberate. He was not going to be of great use in a fight. Through the dark streets of Old Millers they came. Pelyn ran with them. Grafyrre and Merrat too. Thrynn and Corsaar guarded the Apposans. Ulysan brought up the rear. They were forty-five in all. Auum expected them all to die.
‘Remember it’ll be chaos,’ managed Takaar. ‘Use it. These soldiers need order. Take it from them.’
The museum of Hausolis itself was the centrepiece of the quarter. Houses bordered it on all sides of a square that saw celebrations every year on the anniversary of the closing of the gateway. Other days, markets and itinerant performers used the space as their own. Other streets ran away to Old Millers, down to Mural and Glade and towards the spice market.
They rounded a corner into a street lined with torches. Swordsmen were patrolling and there were mages in groups along its length. The street let out into the museum square at the other end. Here it was houses and shops on both sides. A place where normal people lived. Every house was barred shut. Every shutter was closed and secured from the outside.
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