FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Good men of Sherna!” he bellowed. “Before you stands a host of beasts bent on destroying all that you hold dear! All that you live, breathe, and die for!” He strode towards the Draggard band, lips curled in a snarl, sword held high. The Draggard gnashed at the air, hissed and growled, but they did not advance.

  “Shall we lie down and die from our wounds?”

  “No!” the crowd answered in unison.

  “Shall we leave our women and children as playthings for these wretched monsters?”

  “No!” the crowd answered again, and Abram found himself to be one of those many voices. He beamed at the sight of Whill.

  “Shall we let these damned creatures take what is ours without a fight?”

  “NO!”

  “I say then, man to man, shall we make these foul Draggard wish they had never set foot on our beaches?”

  “Yes!” the men responded, weapons held high.

  “Then come with me now, brothers of Eldalon, and let them know the rage of man!”

  “YES!” they cried, and joined the charge taken up by Whill and a certain crazed dwarf.

  Before the Draggard could begin to counter, the men pressed in, charging full tilt, death be damned, hearts bent on victory. Whill led the charge with Roakore, Abram, and Rhunis at his heels. He met the front line with devastating effect, taking down three Draggard in one mighty swipe. On he and the men charged into certain death or into victory, it did not matter. The men were focused on one thing and one thing only: the destruction of every last beast upon their beaches.

  As the men began to effectively rout the Draggard, the Draquon took to the sky and again began their attack from above. Down they dove into the ranks of men, and up they came, holding their victims in their wicked claws. One such victim, one such man, though he bled from the gut profusely, managed to bring his blade to bear upon his captor. With a great heave Rhunis impaled the Draquon through the neck, and together they fell twenty feet to the sand below.

  Roakore brought his axe around in a great swoop, into the torso of one unlucky beast as Abram chopped wildly at another. Before them Whill steadily cut through the Draggard ranks. Suddenly, to Abram’s horror, Whill left the ground, nabbed by a descending Draquon. The beast had Whill firmly by the shoulders, claws sinking deep, wings lifting them high into the air. With one great slash of Sinomara, Whill severed the arms of the flying beast and fell to the ground.

  Abram blocked a spear and pushed aside his opponent as he tried to watch Whill’s descent. To his shock and amazement he saw Whill fall twenty feet only to fall upon a Draggard, driving his father’s sword straight through the monster’s head and body and into the sand.

  Roakore hadn’t been bothered with any of the surrounding fights, for he was fully enthralled in his own. As he swung he saw the great walls of his homeland, the many chambers of his great mountain. Rage beyond reason drove the stout dwarf as he cut through the beasts before him. His great axe claimed the lives of many unfortunate beasts that day, and as they died, one after another, the last thing they heard was the battle song of the dwarves.

  In the midst of the battle, in the light of certain death, few saw the arrows hit the many Draquon, few saw them fall from the sky, and few saw as the elf warrior made her way into the heart of battle.

  Abram was hit hard, and to the ground he went. The Draggard came over with its spear, meaning to impale him. Abram rolled to his side as the spear tip hit the ground where he had just been. Taking no time to consider his luck, he thrust his sword up and into the groin of the monster, which had retracted its spear and drove it down hard into Abram’s hip.

  Roakore planted his axe firmly into one Draggard’s head. Then he tugged hard, freeing his weapon as he spun on another beast. The axe cut halfway through the monster, but at the same time the Draggard thrust its tail at him. Through his thick clothing and chainmail the tail sunk, embedding many inches into Roakore’s side. The hardy dwarf only roared as he freed his axe and cut down another monster.

  Whill knew no pain, he knew no fear. His only emotion made itself clear in the long line of dead Draggard he left in his wake. He spun and twirled, dodged and countered, and no beast could stand for more than an instant before him. All around him men were dying, but so too were the Draggard. Men were falling fast around him, and still a score of monsters remained. He did what he could, all he could do—he fought on. Then suddenly he noticed that the monsters’ attention had shifted from the thinning line of the human resistance to the beach to the south. There, upon a steed of black, sat a lone warrior, firing arrow after arrow into the sky and into the Draquon. Those that were not hit by the skilled and deadly bowman flew high and flew far, wanting nothing to do with the deadly creature.

  Chapter XVII

  The Maiden of Elladrindellia

  THE DRAGGARD WERE HUNTED DOWN and killed within the surrounding woods of Sherna, mostly with the help of the two elven warriors. The Draggard ship was quickly destroyed by the catapult crew of the Eldalonian ship Thunder. As the doors to the town hall were opened, the many frightened women, children, and elderly looked upon their ruined town.

  Whill pushed through the crowd as he ran up the steps to the town hall.

  “Tarren! Tarren!” He searched the crowd frantically. For a moment he thought he saw him, but when he grabbed the boy by the shoulder and turned him around, it was not Tarren. Through the crowd he searched, yelling his name. Whill felt sick; hope began to wither as he searched but still saw no sign of him, or the healers he had been entrusted to. He reached the back of the building and turned in despair. His head spun as he grabbed child after child, asking, “Tarren! Have you seen Tarren?”

  “Whill!”

  The voice rose over the crowd and reached his ears like sweet music. Tarren came running, arms wide. Whill caught him in a tight embrace and then held him at arm’s length.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said with a sigh of relief.

  “So did I!” said Tarren, wide eyed.

  Rhunis lay broken. He had been slashed viciously in the gut and dropped some twenty feet. Abram nursed a nasty spear injury to his hip. Roakore bled from his side, though he insisted it was nothing more than a flesh wound. Whill also showed signs of the great battle, with half a dozen deep cuts on his body, including several claw gashes upon his shoulders. But they had won the day—they had defeated the Draggard army and, to each of them, that was all that mattered.

  Abram limped over to Whill, who was busy tending to Rhunis. “How is he?”

  Whill replaced the blood-stained cloth upon Rhunis’s gut with a grimace, and spoke under his breath. “Not good, Abram. His body is broken. He has lost too much blood.”

  Abram nodded, but his face showed no sign of sorrow. “It will all be over soon.” He stepped aside and bowed slightly as the elf maiden stepped past and looked upon Rhunis.

  Whill moved back as the elf bent over the broken man and unsheathed her sword. Thinking she was about to put an end to his misery, he stepped forward and began to object, but Abram grabbed him. “Wait!”

  She raised her sword slightly and put her other hand upon Rhunis’s chest and began to chant. Whill’s eyes widened as tendrils of blue light emanated from her extended hand and encircled Rhunis. She focused her attention upon the dying man’s stomach, and the wound began to heal before Whill’s eyes. Then she ran her hand over the entirety of his body, chanting all the while, as the blue light encircled him. She remained that way for nearly twenty minutes before finally slumping down tired.

  With a flash the light was gone, and the elf maiden stood with a sweat-covered brow. She gave Whill an encouraging smile said and in Elvish, “He will be alright.”

  It was the same melodic voice he remembered from his dreams. Abram bowed slightly and said, “Whill, I give to you the elf princess, the daughter of Verelas and Araveal, the lady Avriel.”

  Whill could not find his voice. A part of him knew he should make some profound statement, some lasting impression. But
all that came to his mind—the only word that found his lips—was “Hi.”

  Avriel nodded with an amused smile and glanced at Rhunis, who had sat up and was gazing around with a quizzical expression.

  Avriel laid a gentle hand upon Abram’s shoulder and said, “Once I tend to those near death, I will help with your hip, Abram,” Her gaze found Whill once more as she turned to walk away.

  “That was her, Abram, the woman from my dreams!”

  Abram patted him on the shoulder. “I know, Whill. I know.” He gestured to the confused-looking Rhunis. “Good thing she and her brother Zerafin found us when they did.”

  Rhunis looked utterly confused. “What happened? I remember falling and then…” His face twisted as he tried to recall the events that had led to his current state.

  Whill helped the man to his feet. “You have just been revived from mortal wounds by the elf lady Avriel. We have won. The Draggard have been destroyed.”

  Rhunis gave Whill an odd smile. “The gods be damned! That’s the second time an elf has brought me back from death. Looks like I owe them twice over!”

  The three men shared a much-needed laugh—but it was cut short by a gruff voice.

  “Bah! Elves and their magic. All he really needs be some good dwarf mead an’ a big-breasted dwarf women to look after ’im,” said Roakore before passing out.

  Whill and Abram rushed to his side. Rolling the dazed and mumbling dwarf over, they noticed a very deep wound on his side. His shirt was soaked with blood, and it still bled freely.

  “Abram, call Lady Avriel, quickly!” said Whill.

  Roakore mumbled something about “Elves and their damned magics.”

  Some hours later, night fell on the ruined town. Whill walked among the many wounded within the town hall. Those with mortal wounds had been healed by the two elves, but dozens more lay on makeshift cots, bruised and bloody. Whill had been working without rest for hours, tending to the many wounded, and it frustrated him that the elves would not lend their powers of healing to these men. He had not seen Avriel or her brother in hours and assumed they must need a rest as badly as he did. They had, after all, healed more than a dozen dying men.

  He exited the stuffy hall and stepped out into the cool night air. Most of the fires had burned out, but dozens of torches cut through the black night. One fire burned brighter than all the rest; it was to the east and a few hundred feet from the town. Hundreds of Draggard corpses were thrown unceremoniously into the great pyre; wagon after wagon carried the bloody beasts to be destroyed.

  Abram and Roakore had been helping gather the human dead, but now the work was all but done. Whill walked over and took a seat on the grass next to Roakore.

  The dwarf nodded at the hall. “How they be?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  Abram looked tired, and older than his fifty years. His clothes were blood-stained and his hands dirty, but he regarded Whill with the same optimism he had always shown.

  “Why is it that the elves do not heal the wounded men within the town hall? Surely it is within their abilities,” Whill said.

  Abram glanced to his left. “I don’t know, Whill. Why don’t you ask them?”

  He followed Abram’s gaze and saw Avriel sitting alone under the shadow of the tree line. “I will,” he said with a determined nod.

  He walked at first with purpose, his steps sure, his facade stern, however, the closer he got to the seated elf, the more his determination wavered. Soon he was standing before her, silently staring. She sat cross-legged with her eyes closed and her sword in both hands, the center of the blade resting upon her brow. Whill was once again struck by her beauty. He meant to speak but could not find his voice.

  Avriel’s right eye opened slowly and she peered at him with a raised brow. The two stared at each other for many moments. Finally she spoke in Elvish, letting her blade fall to the side.

  “Will you join me?”

  He took up the spot next to her without a word, sitting cross-legged as she did. Her eyes traveled from his sheathed sword to his eyes. She smirked. “The way you first stormed over here, I assumed you had pressing business.”

  Whill was taken aback. “Um, well, yes, but...what were you doing just now?”

  She eyed Whill for a moment, and the scrutiny made him slightly uncomfortable.

  “I was just resting, a form of what you would call sleep. We elves have different ways of recuperating.”

  “Were you using the energy within your sword?”

  She seemed to ponder this. “Not in the way you would imagine. You see, I am not injured, and so I did not call upon the stored energy of my blade. Rather I was sensing how much energy I had used in the fight and the healing that followed.”

  Whill frowned. “You can tell how much is left?”

  She sheathed her sword and turned slightly to regard him. “There is much you do not know, and you have many questions, no doubt. But for now I need to ask you a few things, if you don’t mind.”

  He shrugged, wondering what in the world an elf such as Avriel would need to ask someone like himself. “Go ahead.”

  She took a much more serious demeanor. “Do you know what you were doing when you fought the Draggard today?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You did not fight as a mere man—pardon the expression—but rather, you were using a technique of…certain elves?”

  Whill was at a loss. He remembered the fighting vividly, but he did not know what she meant.

  Avriel looked frustrated. “You are a mortal man endowed with the powers of elves. You should not have been able to use those powers until you were rightly taught. But you healed the boy on the ship, you saved the infant child from death, and you healed yourself within the dwarf mountain with your father’s sword.” She held him firm in her gaze. “Whill, did you not notice that your blade felled the Draggard a bit too easily? I watched you from afar, as did my brother. You cut through their scales as if they were cloth, does that not seem strange to you?”

  Whill let his gaze fall to the ground as he contemplated her question. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he had killed the Draggard with comparative ease.

  “Did I used the energy within my father’s blade, as the elves do?”

  She shook her head. “No. What you did is forbidden by the Elves of the Sun. What you did today is a practice of the Dark elves.”

  He regarded Avriel with disbelief. “I couldn’t have, I—”

  “With your first kill you stole the life energy of the slain beast, and then so with each after; each came easier; each of your enemies’ deaths gave you more strength—or rather, gave your father’s blade more strength. You did not let that power lie idle, but used it to devastating effect. You killed well over twenty Draggard today, and still your father’s blade holds their life force within.”

  Whill was at a loss. “I didn’t mean to.”

  Avriel eyed him for a moment and finally smiled. “I understand, but please remember: it is the way of the Elves of the Sun to only use our own energy, or that which is rightly given. To take from another in such a way is not our practice. It is a path that can only lead to evil.”

  Chapter XVIII

  Unlikely Companions

  THE COLLECTION OF THE DEAD continued throughout the night and into the morning. No one slept, even those who could have. For demons newly born see dreams as a playground, and with sleep comes the remembrance of screams, blood, death.

  The morning sun shed light upon a village in ruin. Nearly every building had been burned to the ground, save the town hall. The ground was so red with blood in some places it looked as though the earth itself were bleeding. The bodies of men, women, and a few unlucky children littered the village, all covered with shrouds and awaiting the pyre.

  So with the rising and settling of the sun upon its midday perch came the burning of the deceased. Hagus the barkeep was among them, along with more than a hundred Eldalonian soldiers, and hundre
ds of villagers. The survivors—hundreds of widows and children, and a few lucky men—made a wide circle around the great pyre. Some hung their heads, while others looked to the heavens proudly—but all wept. A woman took up the Eldalonian funeral song as the flames were lit, and soon the others joined in. The voices grew stronger as their words rose to the heavens.

  Rest now, my love, till we meet again

  Under the tree of the gods, I’ll see, my old friend

  Rest now, my friend, your work here is through

  When my song is sung, I shall be with you

  Wait for me, love, and watch over me

  Help me to remember what kind of person to be

  Life may bring pain, like a cold winter rain

  This sorrow will be mine, till we meet again

  The song went on and was taken up by not only Whill and his friends, but also by the two elves as well. After it went for the customary seven verses, and ended with the throwing of many flowers into the great Pyre, Rhunis stepped forward and spoke for the dead.

  “Today we say farewell to many good people who died defending those they loved. We say farewell to true heroes. In a time when that word is spoken too freely, we see firsthand its intended meaning all too clearly. The spirits that rise from the ashes this day are heroes by right and by deed. For none cowered before the nightmare that befell your village this day’s eve. None failed in their duty to kin and country; none ran to save themselves. No! They fought on—against all odds, and against the most terrible foe imaginable.”

  He walked in a circle around the pyre as he spoke, looking every man, woman, and child in the eye.

  “So when someone asks you of the one you lost, tell them they fought and died valiantly in the Battle of Sherna, and speak those words with your head held high. For they lived life as we all do, but they died heroically—which is as much as any man can ask. We all, every one of us, will die; that is inescapable. But we will not all be remembered—we will not all find immortality through deed and song. No, all of us will not. But what of these spirits that fly free this day? Will they be remembered?”