The Battle Sylph

by L. J. McDonald

  “Yanda is crazy,” Boradel said.

  “Aren’t all battlers?”

  The generals all laughed again.

  A short way distant, Jasar sniffed and pulled his cloak closer around him. The other three had left their battlers farther down the main deck, but Shield crouched at his feet, panting. He knew the other men thought he was a coward, but he didn’t care. Battlers or not, he had more power and money than any of them. He looked away, trying not to think how fast they were traveling across the Shale Plains. In another hour, they’d be able to see the cliff where he’d been deserted by his first battler, and where Leon had made his terrible promise. Jasar shuddered and looked down at his new battler. Shield was much better than Mace. He knew his place—as a dog.

  It would be over soon, Jasar promised himself. The pirates would be destroyed, the girl killed, Leon would be tortured to death, and he could go back to Eferem and use his new victory to help parlay his way into a marriage with the king’s eldest daughter. He only had one thing he needed to be sure of: that none of these men saw Mace and realized he wasn’t dead. If they did, it would be simple enough to wait until their three battlers defeated the traitor and then turn Shield loose on them. He’d look very good indeed if he was the only survivor of such a battle. He’d just have to exaggerate what happened a bit. Smirking, he reached down to pat Shield’s head, ignoring the creature’s heightened loathing.

  Suddenly, the battlers roared a warning, and Jasar’s eyes widened in panic as he backed toward the stairs leading down into the bowels of the ship. The three generals simultaneously moved forward, searching for the enemy in the growing darkness, and a group of air sylphs raced past, arcing up toward nothing that Jasar could see.

  To his shame and disgust, the others saw his fear and laughed again. “Don’t worry, my lord. It looks like we have a spy,” one of them chuckled.

  “Not for long,” Flav promised. “Poison!” The massive spider moved forward, passing within feet of Jasar, who flinched, and Flav ordered, “When they drive it above the ship, destroy it.”

  His heart pounding, Jasar turned and headed downward, no longer interested in what the generals thought of him. His status was higher than theirs anyway, and he’d been given the honor of two battlers. Only, none of theirs had needed a replacement, a treacherous voice whispered inside him. Jasar ignored it and returned to his quarters.

  Airi raced across the sky, riding the winds as fast as she could and so terrified that she could barely think. She could feel her master and the hive behind her, but she could distantly feel the hatred of the coming battlers as well. They were far closer than anyone expected.

  They must have left the city shortly after Ril and traveled almost as fast. Faintly, Airi could feel the sylph who bore the ship. It was Tempest, one of the oldest of the sylphs here and older than any Airi had known in her original hive. That age gave her power, and the weight of her burden was nothing to her, even as Airi pushed herself to intercept.

  She didn’t get close. Too close, and the battlers on board would destroy her. She did get close enough to sense the number of people aboard, though, and to search for one very important thing—the one piece of information Leon had asked her to get—along with determining just how close the enemy really was.

  It was hard to discern. The ship flew toward her, trailing clouds as it hurtled through the sky. There were dozens of men on board, crew and soldiers both, and the battlers, always the battlers. She felt elemental sylphs as well, among them the air sylphs who kept Tempest’s winds from scouring the deck and the earth sylphs who would break into the hive. Before they could detect her, she raced under the ship far closer than she would have preferred, searching even harder.

  There were six—no, more than six. She hoped, prayed, and moved ever nearer, desperate to find what she must and get back to the hive to warn them that their leeway was nearly gone. As it was, she didn’t know if she could outrun Tempest, even with nothing to carry.

  Suddenly she felt it, just as she skimmed below Tempest’s winds, and she wanted to cry out in success. There was one on board! But at the same time a roar of hatred sounded, men yelling above her on the ship. Immediately Airi dove, for other air sylphs were racing after her. They were smaller than Tempest, but many were stronger than Airi, and they outnumbered her anyway. They swarmed her, buffeting her with their winds and forcing her up above the ship. They wouldn’t kill her—none of them could be ordered to do something like that—but she knew they would bring her up to where the battlers could.

  Airi wailed in terror, fighting. She had to get her information back to the others, and she didn’t want to die. She screamed as loud as she could, echoing it along the hive line, but none of these sylphs were from her original hive—and even if they had been, they wouldn’t be able to help her. They had no choice but to obey their orders, just as she had no choice but to obey hers—though Devon had given her the option of not going.

  Desperate, she slammed into the weakest sylph as hard as she could, gaining enough room to twist and dive back beneath the ship before she could be targeted by a battler. Immediately the sylphs dove after her, circling her again and buffeting her upward. They were stronger; there were too many. Airi screamed again and flipped over, tossed upward helplessly toward her death.

  Just as she reached the level below the edge of the sails, something arced up through them and caught her, knocking the surrounding air sylphs in every direction and bearing Airi away. Stunned, she felt herself carried down toward the plains and away, incredibly fast. Behind her, the air sylphs reeled, crying out into the sky their pain.

  Hold on, Heyou said, his shape condensed to barely bigger than hers, and translucent as well. Clasping her close, he fled back to the hive.

  What? she gasped, shocked. She hadn’t expected any of the battlers to risk leaving the hive to save her.

  I heard you screaming. I had to come. Mace said not to let the men see me.

  But the battlers will know you’re here!

  They knew I was here anyway. Devon would be upset if you died. Then the queen would be upset. Then everyone would be upset. So I came to get you.

  He sounded as though he was laughing at her. Always baffled by the minds of battlers, Airi clung to him and let him carry her, not reliant on wind currents but just rocketing through them.

  I got the information they wanted, she told him.

  Great. You better tell them fast.

  Behind them, the king’s air vessel raced in pursuit, Tempest putting on even more speed at her master’s command.

  Flav leaned over the railing, looking down as the ship approached the bluff, its air sylph finally slowing her mad pace. The location was just as Jasar described: a solitary hill over two hundred feet high that had been cleaved down the middle and across the top to leave a sheetlike front. It was lit by moonlight shining off the snow, showing the top bare, save for three figures standing near the edge, staring upward. Pulling out a spyglass, he focused on them.

  “Are those people?” Boradel asked.

  “Yes. Two men and a boy. They must want to try and negotiate.”

  Anderam snorted. “As though they have anything we want.”

  “It might be a trap,” Flav said thoughtfully, lowering the glass. The men just stood quietly—they weren’t even armed. The boy was grinning, waving.

  “Well,” Boradel replied. “They’ll find we set a trap of our own.”

  After that sylph escaped earlier, they’d taken some extra precautions—something Leon shouldn’t expect, given how badly the generals already outnumbered him. Four sylphs against two? A group of ignorant pirates against seventy armed soldiers? They’d all laughed at the odds. And yet none of them were stupid men, and they knew Leon was a tactical genius.

  Flav collapsed the spyglass and put it into a belt pouch, never taking his eyes off the three figures below, none of whom he recognized. There was no sign of Leon, which bothered him.

  “Poison!” Hissing, the spider
stepped up beside him, glaring at his master. Flav looked at his own reflection mirrored a hundred times in the creature’s eyes, and pointed. “Kill them.”

  Immediately the spider climbed over the railing, clinging to the wood of the ship with his dozen legs as he halflowered himself over the side facing the three men. He roared, his hatred echoing through the plains, and focused. A wave of shimmering energy blasted out of him, enough to wipe out everything atop that bluff and vaporize the stone itself at least a foot deep.

  That didn’t happen. Halfway down, the blast wave hit another rising upward and exploded, rocking the ship and setting Tempest to screaming in outrage. Flav grabbed the rail before he could fall over it, gaping down in shock as the two adult men changed form, becoming things he’d only seen on the day he bound Poison. Then their hatred hit him, and he reeled at the impossibility.

  “Kill them!” he shrieked at his battler. “Kill them now!”

  Behind him, he heard Boradel and Anderam ordering their own battlers to attack, and Poison leaped off the ship, his dozen legs spread as he howled in fury, plummeting toward the oncoming enemy. Claw and Yanda followed a moment later, vanishing over the side.

  “Pull the ship back!” Anderam shouted to Tempest’s master, and the vessel started to withdraw, pulling them away before they could end up caught in the melee.

  “They changed,” Boradel gasped, his normally florid face white. “Oh, gods, they changed.”

  There were no controls on those monsters, nothing to stop them. Flav gripped the railing until his knuckles whitened, staring over the side at the fighting. The moon was bright enough for him to make out what was happening, to see the two smoky shapes take on Poison, Yanda, and Claw.

  Unbound or not, the pair defending the bluff were still outnumbered, and he began to hope Poison and the others could be victorious after all. He smirked with the same pride he always felt watching his sylph fight. Poison was the finest killer in the kingdom, ruthless and intelligent despite his hate. But a moment later, he saw the last thing he would ever have expected.

  “No!” he shouted. Turning, he stared at the other two generals, neither of whom seemed to recognize what had just happened. “We need more battlers!” he shouted, to their surprise. Neither of them had seen. “Where’s Jasar?”

  The dandy was nowhere in sight. This was unfortunate in a way Flav didn’t realize. Jasar, after all, was the only one who had seen before what had just happened, or could have warned them about what it meant.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  If they’d had any doubts left, the arrival and escape of Airi convinced the generals that Leon was indeed a traitor, and that he was now leading the pirates’ defense. Knowing how good he was at strategy, they had decided to make sure the odds stayed with them, and had thus dispatched their soldiers early. Several miles away, air sylphs carried Alcor’s warriors and a team of earth sylphs around to the sloping back of the bluff, where it met the mountains.

  As they approached, they’d been able to see the windows cut into the cliff front. The soldier who led the detachment wasn’t surprised. In this environment, it really only made sense that the pirates move into the mountain itself. Of course, he and his detachment would drill a few new holes and kill everyone inside while Leon was still expecting a traditional battler fight.

  Heyou didn’t sense them moving in at the base of the slope so far behind him. He was instead watching Ril and Mace rocket upward to fight the three battlers dropping toward them. He ached to join them, but his orders were clear. He had to defend the hive from the inside. It was frustrating. Regardless, he turned his back on the battle and shifted form, racing as smoke and lightning toward the stairwell.

  Cal’s earth sylph Stria waited at the top and, once Heyou was past, put a hand on the stone to close it off overhead. Immediately the sounds of explosions and battle were deadened, and Heyou streaked down the steps and along the passageways to the eating area, where everyone was packed except the men and sylphs Leon had set as guards.

  He soared over two, both men ducking with yelps of fright, and flitted into the eating area itself, arcing up over the crowd. They shrieked or cheered in response. Heyou ignored all of them, except for giving a quick loop that sent Bevan diving under his seat, then shifted back to human form, landing in a crouch atop the table where Solie sat, his face only inches from hers.

  “Are you trying to be dramatic?” she asked.

  He leaned in and kissed her roughly. “They’re here. Ril and Mace are fighting three battlers. It’s wonderful!”

  He thought it was fantastic, but there were frightened murmurs all around the mess hall. Heyou could feel the fear, and he looked around in surprise. “What? You think we’ll lose?”

  Leon leaned over the the table and whispered, “What can you tell me? Which battlers did they bring?”

  “Uh, ugly ones?”

  Leon clapped a hand over his eyes while the blonde girl standing at his side giggled. Heyou looked desperately at Solie. “Can I go? I really want to kill somebody.”

  “No.” She glared. “You stay here.”

  “But nobody’s gonna get in here!”

  As if to prove him wrong, a fire sylph shot into the mess hall, screaming.

  “Oh.” Heyou launched himself off the table and changed, racing after the hysterical fire sylph. She led him down another staircase to the lowest level of the hive, to the great stables they’d dug there for livestock. As he neared, he started to feel the emotions of all the humans there, including a set he should have felt far sooner, had he not been distracted by excitement.

  A half-dozen men fought a losing battle against more than a score in red and black who were pouring through a massive opening at the back melted away by an earth sylph. The invaders were shoving their way past the panicked livestock or even cutting them down. Galway was one of the defenders, his emotions under strict control even as he shouted for the defenders to pull back—and as one of them was run through beside him.

  Heyou swooped down over his master and roared, letting loose his hatred. This struck the intruders a second before his force wave blew them apart, vaporizing them into a bloody spray. A second blast took the earth sylph who’d let them in, even before she had a chance to scream. Heyou paused at the ragged entrance for a moment, hovering above the snow, but he felt no life outside. Not anymore.

  Close the hole, he sent to Galway, who nodded and gestured to one of the masters of an earth sylph. Heyou left them to seal the gap and raced back up the stairs, returning to the mess hall and his position on top of Solie’s table. “I think I get now why you wanted me to stay inside,” he said to Leon.

  Another sylph appeared, screaming a warning, and he was off again, this time in another direction. They were coming from every side but the front, he realized, and hoped he would be fast enough to stop them all.

  Solie eyed Leon fearfully, and then Morgal. Leon’s wife was screaming at her husband for bringing them here, and Morgal was sobbing, but Leon’s oldest daughter met Solie’s gaze with eyes that were frightened but clear. Solie swallowed heavily and nodded. “It’ll be all right,” she promised.

  “I know,” Lizzy answered. But as the hive shook, Solie honestly wasn’t sure of that at all.

  Ril and Mace flew upward, wings spread and lightning-filled mouths gaping. The three hostile battlers dropped toward them, led by that aberration of a giant spider, but Mace could feel a fourth—one still on the ship, being held in reserve. Three was enough, though, maybe more than enough.

  Mace flashed into the lead. Three hundred feet above the bluff he slammed into Poison, and the spider drove his clawed feet down, trying to impale him as he also flashed a force wave that Mace blocked with his own. Mace used that same wave to stop the claws before they could rend his mantle, and they both tumbled end over end, locked together.

  Ril took the next one, the golden-haired lion, and flinched while blocking repeated blasts from the huge cat. He was still exhausted from his mad flight ba
ck to the hive; Mace had dragged him out of sleep when Airi and Heyou returned. But it didn’t matter. He would fight with everything he had left for as long as he could.

  Darting to one side, able to fly where the lion couldn’t, he shifted, part of his mantle forming a bladed whip that lashed out at Yanda. It slammed against the cat’s wave shield, knocking him back, and Ril dove after him.

  Claw came last, falling directly toward Mace and Poison. His mouth gaped wide, his eyes glowing, and the cloak he wore flapped around him as he landed atop the other two. Overburdened, with only one of them able to fly, they all fell.

  Ril flew after the tumbling lion, dodging blasts of power that would have obliterated him if they’d hit directly. He didn’t return those attacks, not yet having regained enough strength. He’d have to fight close up to win this. They might have sent Heyou and put him in the hive instead, he considered distantly, but Heyou would have had no way to win. Power meant so much less compared to experience, and this battler was old. Ril was a lot younger than Yanda, but he still had a better chance than Heyou. He had to believe that.

  Quickly he shifted again, adopting the hawk form in which he’d spent so many years. He was used to the shape, and it was both smaller and harder to hit. He folded his wings and dove, raking his talons across Yanda’s back before sweeping in a different direction.

  Yanda’s claws ripped a quarter of the feathers out of his tail. It hurt terribly—they were very much a part of his essence. Ril spun out of control for a second before dropping intentionally to avoid another blast. The cat depended on them too much, arching and shrieking as he fell, throwing energy so indiscriminately that holes were blown in the ground and even the left sail of the air ship was destroyed. Ril heard the air sylph holding it up shriek in anger, but he was whirling end over end himself in evasion.

  Yanda twisted and landed on the ground, gathered himself, and leaped in the very same motion. Snarling, Ril barrel-rolled, dodging while he created a wall of energy he couldn’t really afford that was weak but enough to drive Yanda back a pace and save his life. But without all his tail feathers to help him steer, he cut his next turn too tight, and his trailing wing caught the ground. A moment later he rolled, bouncing up into the air and shifting hard, trying to change shape into something that could fight on the ground.