by T. O. Munro
Tordil shook his head and gave a broad sweep of his hand towards the assembled elves. “You will find Maelgrum shatters this realm far more deeply than any words of mine.”
Marvenna scoffed and in so doing drew a finger wagging admonition from Tordil. “You think he will not come here, you think he cannot come here? Believe me Marvenna, believe me all of you.” He turned to address his warning to the crowd. “When Maelgrum is done with men and with dwarves, when they are trampled into destruction beneath his heel because you would not come to their aid, then he will come for you. And when you ask in that fearful time why no-one comes to your aid, it will be because your cowardly idleness has ensured you make that last stand entirely on your own.”
“Maelgrum will not come here, because he cannot come here. The wards of Andril are strong enough to defy any invader. Prudence is not cowardice.”
Marvenna glanced round at the gathered elves. She knew them all by name, well all save a few of the refugees from Hershwood. They were proud of their nation, proud of their heritage. Tordil’s talk of cowardice and idleness had done more to rally them in support of their steward than any words of hers could have done. “Silver elves,” she called. “My brothers and sisters, I imprisoned Tordil aye, but to protect him and you, not to punish him. You hear the madness of which he speaks, will you take heed of that and set aside everything that Lord Andril ever taught and believed? I had hoped some sense might come to him in time, in that I was mistaken and for that error and that error alone I accept the blame and beg your forgiveness.”
“My friends, my many new friends,” Elyas’s voice broke over the wave of sympathetic muttering. “You have heard my songs and tales, you know of the world beyond the Silverwood and how your elven bretheren from the Hershwood have fought long and hard against the evil that is Maelgrum. Does Talorin not tell you, as the Goddess also says, that the strong should protect the weak, that the wise should instruct the ignorant, that those who have should give to those who have not. I have seen the gleam in your eyes when you have heard of the glory and the grace that my brothers and sisters have earned in the service of others. Would you deny yourselves the same chance to make a difference in the world beyond this small forest?”
“There can be no question as to the courage of Feyril’s people,” Marvenna hastily admitted eager to seize back both the crowd’s attention and the momentum of a swelling argument. “But the wisdom of their actions is less certain.” She caught movement in the crowd as the small groups of Hershwood elves drifted together into a larger nucleus within the mass of silver elves. “A mere five hundred came to us from your shattered realm and did we not give to you who had not, freely sharing our land our riches and our wisdom.”
“But not our freedom,” Elyas interrupted. “You gave none of us leave to cross your borders. You confined us all here, in luxury aye, but confined nonetheless. A gilded cage is still a cage.”
There was a rumble of discontent, loudest in the core of Hershwood elves, as a simple but longstanding grievance bubbled to the fore.
Marvenna glanced around wide eyed. What would Andril have done? She smiled as she recognised the moment for a grand gesture, the time to make a gift of something before it was taken from her anyway. She spread her arms. “You may leave, Lieutenant Elyas, and Captain Tordil and any of the Hershwood elves who would forsake my realm. Return to your own forest if you will, though from Elyas’s songs, I gather it is as like as not the home of orcs now.” She suppressed a smile at the shock that thought sent around the gathered silver elves. “Aye, no orc has set foot within the Silverwood, but if you would take yourselves from that security I will not raise a finger to stop you.”
“You will let us go?” Tordil was nonplussed. “You will let my people go?”
Marvenna nodded. “Aye you may go, you may all go, though if that is your choice it will be a final one. The Silverwood is not an inn to be visited whenever a weary traveller seeks rest, it is a blessed home that is offered but once in a lifetime, even to elves.”
“I’ll live with that loss,” Tordil said.
Elyas was sharper in his observation. “What if there are silver elves that would make the same choice, Steward Marvenna, elves of your people eager to sample life beyond your borders and to throw their force of arms into the great struggle that confronts us.” He had spoken loudly for the crowd’s benefit and Marvenna saw a few quick nods from her amongst her own people before Elyas launched his final question. “Will you let them go too?”
Marvenna flicked her tongue across her lips, scanning the crowd, gauging their mood. There were always restless fools amongst the younger elves, would-be warriors who had already delighted in Elyas’s songs and would like as not spring at this opportunity to carve a place for themselves in some future ballad. But the question was how many, and would her realm be much the poorer for their loss. She had a second or so to answer the Hershwood lieutenant, a second to identify the best response and just for once she did not ask what Andril would do, she did what Marvenna would do.
With a slow nod she said, ”aye, if there are those who would follow your banner, Elyas, then I will not stand in their way.” She scanned the crowd. The incredulous faces of the older elves, the hopeful expressions on the younger ones, too many of the younger ones. “However, I lay on them the same stricture I lay on you and your companions, Elyas. This is a choice each elf may make but once, and in so doing you forsake this home in the Silverwood for ever. If Elyas’s songs are strong enough to sunder families, to draw sons from mothers, to separate sweethearts, then so be it. There is a magic in your words I cannot rival. But I will not stand in your way, or theirs.” She saw the ambition die in many of those expressions of youthful hope, and nodded grimly. “So those who would leave with Captain Tordil and Lieutenant Elyas, then raise your hands now.”
The four elves beside her had raised their hands before she had even finished speaking. The five hundred strong contingent from Hershwood reached upwards as one a second later. Then, over a long stretched moment a few isolated hands were raised amongst the multitude of the silver elves. At most another two hundred from the thousands gathered there and some of those hands were hastily lowered again as the wiser counsel of immediate peers prevailed against the impetuosity of youth.
Marvenna allowed herself a smile of grim satisfaction. The host of Hershwood gone and a couple of hundred hotheads with them. It was a price she could easily afford for the end of this disturbance to her realm’s equilibrium. Indeed it was a price she would happily have paid earlier if only she had realised it.
“Go then,” she said. “I wish you good luck and good bye.”
***
Jay was used to hard riding. In a past existence he had ridden out with his father and his brother, delighting in the power of their thoroughbred mounts. They had leapt hedgerows and churned up the muddy lanes laughing at how wonderful life was, with little idea what a cloud was about to obscure their sun.
This ride was something different. He rode as fast, but desperation and fatigue took the place of joy and energy. He clung to the neck of his horse as it followed the diminished company up the winding slope to the eastern gate of the fortress of Mattucairn at the top of Colnhill.
Torsden had stopped his horse on one of the narrow hairpin bends, counting the cavalry as they went past, calling out words of encouragement. Jay was the last of them, the last of the survivors.
“Come on lad,” the Northern Lord called to him. “Come on, get that nag of yours up here.”
“I can’t” Jay could feel the weariness settling thickly upon his limbs. “I’m done in.”
“Sure you’re not.” Torsden leant down to seize the reins to Jay’s horse. “Come on the pair of you. I’ve seen you boy, I’ve seen you cleave one of those creature’s skulls from crown to chin. There’s not much you can’t do.”
“The fucking thing just sealed right up,” Jay retched at the memory. “Those two fucking eyes just blinked at me from either side of
the hatchet and when I pulled the blade out it just pushed its split head back together and the fucking thing sealed right up.”
“I know lad,” Torsden urged them up the final slope.
“It’s not fucking possible.”
Torsden sucked in a breath as the gate loomed ahead. “Well there we both know you’re wrong, boy seeing as how we’ve both seen different.”
The portcullis clattered down behind them and Johanssen was there weaving his way through the crowd of exhausted and dismounting horsemen. “Lord Torsden,” he called as he espied the giant figure slipping from his mountainous saddle. “Lord Torsden, your report! And where is the rest of your command?”
Torsden nodded towards the six hundred shattered cavalrymen, most sitting on the ground heads in their hands while others came in mute silence to lead the steeds away. “That’s it, Johanssen. That’s all of it.”
“You took two thousand with you!”
“And I was lucky to bring this many back. If it wasn’t for Olsen’s suicidal charge, there’d like as not be none of us left to tell the tale.”
“I had thought you could out ride any force you could not out fight,” Johanssen said icily.
Torsden’s shoulders heaved in a great sigh. “Well clearly I was wrong, Johanssen. If we both survive the next twenty four hours I will happily let you remind me of my error for the rest of our Goddess-sworn lives, but for the moment we both have more pressing matters than a childish game of ‘I told you so’.”
“What did this to you?” Johanssen demanded.
“Trolls,” Jay mumbled as he slipped from his own saddle. He stumbled and would have fallen if Torsden had not caught him by the arm. “They called themselves trolls. Big leathery monsters that won’t fucking die.”
“Trolls?”
Torsden nodded. “They don’t have much need for weapons, tend to prefer pulling people’s arms and legs off, much like I used to do with the flies I caught as a lad.”
“How many?”
Torsden shrugged. “Well, we ran into about a thousand of the beggars, but when the bastards just won’t die, it doesn’t really matter how many. They are basically infinite, and they’re coming this way.”
“We have high walls atop a steep hill, they won’t get in.”
Jay shook his head in abject denial. Torsden gave a slighter sideways twitch of his chin, more gently disabusing of the constable’s hopeful confidence. “I’ve seen them leap, Johanssen, forty foot sideways from a standing start, twenty feet straight up. These bastards won’t need scaling ladders.”
“You’re saying we can’t defend this place.”
Torsden looked around the broad bailey. Everywhere little groups of people were gathering, soldiers or civilians, all looking towards the shattered company in the shadow of the gatehouse. They would all recognise that an epic disaster had occurred, one that would affect them all in ways they had not yet been told of. For the time being they gathered waiting and trying to second guess at the darkness of their own futures.
“It was always difficult to defend, Johanssen,” Torsden said. “Long straight walls take too many men to guard and it is not just these damnable trolls that we face. They were set upon us only to try and prevent us bringing back reports of the enemy’s numbers and movements.”
“There is more,” Johanssen grew pale.
“At least sixty thousand, maybe seventy. Mostly orcs and those lurching undead, but others too. They are coming this way.”
“Sixty thousand?”
“The undead do not move fast, but we cannot stay here. We will be encircled and trapped and then they will let the trolls have us.” Torsden gave a sad frown and clapped Johanssen on the shoulder. The constable scanned the fortress confines, his lips moving in mute calculations. “We could withstand a long siege, I grant you. With enough men we could hold off most assaults, but I have seen those trolls in action. There is no defence.”
“Then we must withdraw?”
Torsden nodded. “We must begin immediately, with the civilians. They can take nothing more than they can carry at a jog. I and my troops will cover the retreat.”
Johanssen shook his head. “No Torsden. We will not evade battle for ever and when it comes we will have need of whatever cavalry you can muster.”
“I insist,” Torsden drew himself up to his full height. “I have led my men to disaster, let me reclaim some honour as a rearguard.”
Johanssen smiled up at him. “You have brought us news, Lord Torsden, at a great price maybe, but news we needed if we are to have any chance to evade this peril. I would count your honour well acquitted by your actions here thus far. Now if you will forgive me, please see to your men. This is my command still, and I have a rearguard to form.”
“What of the queen?” Jay dragged from his memory other intelligence that he had been privy to as Johanssen’s aide. “She is marching to join us, do we retreat on her position.”
Torsden shook his head. “The arms of the enemy are stretching out to envelop us to north and south. The safest road lies straight due east to Medyrsalve, not north-east to Nordsalve.”
“Then who will warn the queen,” Jay said. “She will stumble unawares onto their advance guard?”
Johanssen and Torsden exchanged a glance before the constable reached over to ruffle the boy’s hair. Jay shook off the affection. “You will tell her, Jay,” Johanssen said. “Go find a priest, tell them I sent you and that you need a spell of refreshment and invigoration.”
“I will find you the fastest horse we have,” Torsden added. “Make sure you tell the queen to turn back, to take shelter behind the Derrach.”
Jay looked from one to the other. Some secret unspoken thought was shared between the northern lords. “You’re sending me away?” he said. “You’re sending me away, because you don’t expect to survive, you don’t expect anyone to survive.”
Torsden rested both his mighty hands on the boy’s shoulders. “You’re a good lad Jay, now just go find yourself a priest, like the constable says.”
***
“They are sure it is him, not some fool flying his standard?” Quintala’s eyes were wide, her face gripped with an excitement bordering on elation.
Willem nodded. “Some of the gutshredders managed to swim the width of the Saeth. There can be no doubt, he led the charge into their encampment himself bareheaded and flinging bolts of lightning that fried five orcs at a time.”
Quintala’s mouth curled into a smile. “I have him now Willem, I have him now. Summon the wolf riders and the cavalry, we ride out in an hour.”
The outlander was shaking his head. “He must have come down the valley of the Torrockburn in the night where our patrols were weakest and then swung south to carve out a path along the eastern bank of the Saeth. He aims to destroy all our eastern pickets. Even now we will be too late to save near on two thousand orcs.”
The half-elf looked up sharply. “You have an observation to make Willem? Then make it!”
“I said we should not leave the screen so thin, I said that holding the bulk of our eastern detatchment at the bridgehead made the north and south flanks too weak, too vulnerable, while the infantry at the bridgehead were always too slow to come to aid the north or south wings should they be attacked.”
“You doubt my generalship, Willem?”
The outlander’s response was an eloquent silence. Quintala frowned as she buckled on her sword belt. “You have too little imagination, Willem. You say two thousand orcs and you think only of soldiers to stand in line of battle. I say two thousand orcs and I see bait, bait my brother has finally taken.”
“You meant for this to happen?”
“The bridgehead detachment can march to the entrance of the Torrockburn valley. They may be too slow to catch my brother, but they should be fast enough to block off his path of retreat.” She nodded as realisation slowly dawned on the outlander’s face. “Aye, you see it now.”
“Rugan is trapped on the plain between the ri
ver and the mountains.”
“And it is a long ride south before he will find another pass through the hills that will take him back to the illusory safety of Medyrsalve.” She gave a grin. “A very long ride south.”
Willem frowned. “But the master gave orders that you were not to engage with him.”
Quintala scowled, was there no one in this castle who was not a spy for Maelgrum, checking that she conformed to her orders of restraint and passivity. “I am not to invade Medyrsalve, that much is true.” She spread her palms disingenuously. “But I must defend my own territory against invasion.”
“Listcairn is not to be abandoned, your principal duty lies in this tower,” his eyes flicked upwards to the room above where they both knew the medusa’s corpse lay, preserved at Maelgrum’s mysterious pleasure.
Annoyance tugged at Quintala’s features. “I’m not abandoning Listcairn,” she snapped. “I’m leaving you in command.” She raised a coiled hand to him, fingers poised to cast an enchantment. “Unless you think you are not up to that task, Willem.”
The outlander stepped back, paling at the threat implicit in the half-elf’s twisted fingers. Quintala stepped closer, eyes blazing. “Are you about to challenge me, Willem, or to fail me?” She flashed a quick smile. “It amounts to much the same thing.”
“No,” Willem kept his voice remarkably even. “I will do neither, Lady Quintala. But I would not like you to risk the master’s displeasure.”
She jerked her hand, he shut his eyes, leaning back in instinct driven fear. She opened her palm and patted him lightly on the cheek. “Then you will have to keep Listcairn safe until my return.”
His glare might have been taken as defiance or assent. Quintala decided it meant the latter. “Good boy, Willem,” she said. “Never come between a half-elf and her brother, not when they have unfinished business.”
***
Pietrsen trotted up besides Niarmit. “We should stop soon, your Majesty. There is a brook beyond the next rise. We can water the horses there and pitch our camp on the high ground.”