The Kinslayer Wars Page 3

  The commander of the Wildrunners knew his force was ready for this, the opening battle of his nation’s first war in over four centuries. Not since the Second Dragon War had the elves of the House Protectorate taken to the field to defend their nation against an external threat.

  The ring on his finger – the Ring of Balifor – had been given to his father as a reminder of the alliance between kender and elves during the Second Dragon War. Now he wore it and prepared to do battle in a new cause. For a moment, he wondered what this war would be named when Astinus took up his pen to scribe the tale in his great annals.

  Though Kith-Kanan was young for an elf – he had been born a mere ninety-three years ago – he felt the weight of long tradition riding in the saddle with him. He knew no compelling hatred toward these humans, yet he recognized the threat they presented. If they weren’t stopped here, half of Silvanesti would be gobbled up by the rapacious human settlers, and the elves would be driven into a small corner of their once vast holdings.

  The humans had to be defeated. It was Kith-Kanan’s job, as commander of the Wildrunners, to see that the elven nation was victorious.

  Another figure moved through the trees, bringing the bodyguards’ swords swooshing forth, until they recognized the rider.

  “Sergeant-Major Parnigar.” Kith-Kanan nodded to the veteran Wildrunner, his chief aide and most reliable scout. The sergeant was dressed in leather armor of green and brown, and he rode a stocky, nimble pony.

  “The companies are in place, sir – the riders behind the ridge, with a thousand elves of Silvanost bearing pike behind them.” Parnigar, a veteran warrior who had fought in the Second Dragon War, had helped recruit the first wild elves into Kith-Kanan’s force. Now he reported on their readiness to die for that cause. “The Kagonesti archers are well hidden and well supplied. We can only hope the humans react as we desire.”

  Parnigar looked skeptical as he spoke, but Kith suspected this was just the elf’s cautious nature. The sergeant’s face was as gray and leathery as an old map. His strapping arms rested on the pommel of his saddle with deceptive ease. His green eyes missed nothing. Even as he talked to his general, the sergeant-major was scanning the horizon.

  Parnigar slouched casually in his saddle, his posture more like a human’s than an elf’s. Indeed, the veteran had taken a human wife some years before, and in many ways he seemed to enjoy the company of the short-lived race. He spoke quickly and moved with a certain restless agitation – both characteristics that tended to mark humans far more typically than elves.

  Yet Parnigar knew his roots. He was an heir of the House Protectorate and had served in the Wildrunners since he had first learned to handle a sword. He was the most capable warrior that Kith-Kanan knew, and the elven general was glad to have him at his side.

  “The human scouts have been slain by ambush,” Kith-Kanan told him. “Their army has lost its eyes. It is almost time. Come, ride with me.”

  The commander of the Wildrunners nudged Kijo’s flanks with his knees, and the stallion exploded into a dash through the forest. So nimble was the horse’s step that he dashed around tree trunks with Kith-Kanan virtually a blur.

  Parnigar raced behind, with the two hapless guards spurring their steeds in a losing struggle to keep pace.

  For several minutes, the pair dashed through the forest, the riders’ faces lashed by pine needles, but the horses’ hooves landing true. Abruptly the trees stopped, exposing the wide, gently rolling ridgetop. Below, to the right, marched the endless army of humankind.

  Kith-Kanan nudged Kijo again, and the stallion burst into view of the humans below. The elven general’s blond hair trailed in the sun behind him, for his helmet remained lashed to the back of his saddle. As he rode, he raised a steel-mailed fist.

  He made a grand figure, racing along the crest of the hill above the teeming mass of his enemy. Like his twin brother Sithas, his face was handsome and proud, with prominent cheekbones and a sharp, strong chin. Though he was slender – like every one of his race – his tall physique lifted him above the deep pommels of the saddle.

  Instantly the trumpeters of Silvanost sprang to their feet. They had lain in the grass along this portion of the crest. Raising their golden horns in unison, they brayed a challenge across the rolling prairie below. Behind the trumpeters, concealed from the humans by the crest of the ridge, the elven riders mounted their horses while the bowmen knelt in the tall grass, waiting for the command to action.

  The great column of humans staggered like a confused centipede. Men turned to gape at the spectacle, observing pennants and banners that burst from the woods in a riotous display of color. All order vanished from the march as each soldier instinctively yielded to astonishment and the beginnings of fear.

  Then the human army gasped, for the elven riders abruptly swarmed over the ridgetop in a long, precise line. Horses pranced, raising their forefeet in a high trot, while banners unfurled overhead and steel lance tips gleamed before them. They numbered but five hundred, yet every human who saw them swore later that they were attacked by thousands of elven riders.

  Onward the elven horsemen came, their line remaining parade-ground sharp.

  On the valley floor, some of the humans broke and ran, while others raised spears or swords, ready and even eager for battle.

  From the front of the vast human column, the huge brigade of heavy lancers turned its mighty war-horses toward the flank. Yet they were two miles away, and their companies quickly lost coherence as they struggled around other regiments – the footmen – that were caught behind them.

  The elven riders raced closer to the center of the column, the thunder of their hooves crashing and shaking the earth. Then, two hundred feet from their target, they stopped.

  Each of the five hundred horses pivoted, and from the dust of the sudden maneuver, five hundred arrows arced forth, over the great blocks of humans and then down, like deadly hawks seeking out their terrified victims.

  Another volley ripped into the human ranks, and suddenly the elven riders retreated, dashing across the same ridge they had charged down mere moments before.

  In that same instant, the humans realized they were going to be robbed of the satisfaction of fighting, and a roar of outrage erupted from ten thousand throats. Swords raised, shields brandished, men broke from the column without command of their captains, chasing and cursing the elven riders. The enraged mob swept up the slope in chaotic disarray, united only in its fury.

  Abruptly a trumpet cry rang from the low summit, and ranks of green-clad elves appeared in the grass before the charging humans, as if they had suddenly sprouted from the ground.

  In the next instant, the sky darkened beneath a shower of keen elven arrows, their steel tips gleaming in the sunlight as they arced high above the humans, then tipped in their inevitable descent. Even before the first volley fell, another rippled outward, as steady and irresistible as hail.

  The arrows tore into the human ranks with no regard for armor, rank, or quickness. Instead, the deadly rain showered the mob with complete randomness, puncturing steel helmets and breastplates and slicing through leather shoulder pads. Shrieks and cries from the wounded rose in hysterical chorus, while other humans fell silently, writhing in mute agony or lying still upon the now-reddening grass.

  Again and again the arrows soared outward, and the mob wavered in its onrush. Bodies littered the field. Some of these crawled or squirmed pathetically toward safety, ignored by the mindless rush of the others.

  As more of them died, fear rose like a palpable cloud over the heads of the humans. Then, by twos and fives and tens, they turned and raced back toward the rest of the column. Finally they retreated in hundreds, harried back down the newly mud-covered slope by pursuing missile fire. As they vanished, so did the elven archers, withdrawing at a trot over the crest of the ridge.

  At last the human heavy lancers approached, and a cheer rose from the rest of the great army. A thousand bold knights, clad in armor from hea
d to toe, urged their massive horses onward. The great beasts lumbered like monsters, buried beneath clanking plates of barding. A cloud of bright pennants fluttered over the thundering mass.

  Kith-Kanan, still mounted upon his proud stallion, studied these new warriors from the ridgetop. Caution, not fear, tempered his hopes as the great weight of horses, men, and metal churned closer. The heavy knights, he knew, were the army’s most lethal attack force.

  He had planned for this, but only the reality of things would show whether the Wildrunners stood equal to the task. For a moment, Kith-Kanan’s courage wavered, and he considered ordering a fast retreat from the field – a disastrous idea, he quickly told himself, for his hope now lay in steadfast courage, not flight. The knights drew nearer, and Kith-Kanan wheeled and galloped after the archers.

  The great steeds runbled inexorably up the slope, toward the gentle crest where the elven riders and archers had disappeared. They couldn’t see the foe, but they hoped that the elves would be found just beyond the ridgetop. The knights kicked their mounts and shouted their challenges as they crested the rise, springing with renewed speed toward the enemy. In their haste, they broke their tight ranks, eager to crush the deadly archers and light elven lancers.

  Instead, they met a phalanx of elven pikemen, the gleaming steel tips of the Wildrunners’ weapons arrayed as a bristling wall of death. The elves stood shoulder to shoulder in great blocks, facing outward from all sides. The riders and archers had taken shelter in the middle of these blocks, while three ranks of pikemen – one kneeling, one crouching, and one standing – kept their weapons fixed, promising certain death to any horse reckless enough to close.

  The great war-horses, sensing the danger, turned, bucked, and spun, desperate to avoid the rows of pikes. Unfortunately for the riders, each horse, as it turned, met another performing a similar contortion. Many of the beasts crashed to the ground, and still more riders were thrown by their panicked steeds. They lay in their heavy armor, too weighted down even to climb to their feet.

  Arrows whistled outward from the Wildrunners. Though the shortbows of the elven riders were ineffective against the armored knights, the longbows of the foot archers drove their barbed missiles through the heaviest plate at this close range. Howls of pain and dismay now drowned out the battle cries among the knights, and in moments the cavalry, in mass, turned and lumbered back across the ridgetop, leaving several dozen of their number moaning on the ground almost at the feet of the elven pikemen.

  “Run, you bastards!” Parnigar’s shout was a gleeful bark beside Kith-Kanan.

  The general, too, felt his lieutenant’s elation. They had held the knights! They had broken the charge!

  Kith-Kanan and Parnigar watched the retreat of the knights from the center of the largest contingent. The sergeant-major looked at his commander, gesturing to the fallen knights. Some of these unfortunate men lay still, knocked unconscious by the fall from horseback, while others struggled to their knees or twitched in obvious pain. More humans lay at the top of the slope, their bodies punctured by elven arrows.

  “Shall I give the order to finish them?” Parnigar asked, ready to send a rank of swordsmen forward. The grim warrior’s eyes flashed.

  “No,” Kith-Kanan said. He looked grimly at his sergeant’s raised eyebrows.

  “This is the first skirmish of a great war. Let it not be said we began it with butchery.”

  “But – but they’re knights! These are the most powerful humans in that entire army! What if they are healed and restored to arms? Surely you don’t want them to ride against us again?” Parnigar kept his voice low but made his arguments precisely.

  “You’re right – the power of the heavy knights is lethal. If we hadn’t been fully prepared for their assault, I’m not certain we could have held them. Still …”

  Kith-Kanan’s mind balked at the situation before him, until a solution suddenly brightened his expression. “Send the swordsmen forward – but not to kill. Have them take the weapons of the fallen knights and any banners, pennants, and the like that they can find. Return with these, but let the humans live.”

  Parnigar nodded, satisfied with his general’s decision. He raised a hand and the line of pikemen parted, allowing the sergeant-major’s charger to trot forward. Selecting a hundred veterans, he started the task of stripping the humans of their badges and pennants.

  Kith turned, sensing movement behind him. He saw the pikemen parting there, too, this time to admit someone – a grimy elven rider straddling a foaming, dust-covered horse. Through the dust, Kith recognized a shock of hair the color of snow.

  “White-lock! It’s good to see you.” Kith swung easily from his saddle as the Kagonesti elf did the same. The general clasped the rider’s hand warmly, searching the wild elf’s eyes for a hint of his news.

  White-lock rubbed a hand across his dust-covered face, revealing the black and white stripes painted across his forehead. Typical of the wild elves, he was fully painted for war – and covered by the grit of his long ride. A scout and courier for the Wildrunners, he had ridden hundreds of miles to report on the movements of the human army.

  Now White-lock nodded, deferentially but coolly, toward Kith-Kanan. “The humans fare poorly in the south,” he began. “They have not yet crossed the border into elven lands, so slowly do they march.”

  White-lock’s tone dripped with scorn – a scorn equal to that Kith had heard him use when describing the “civilized” elves of crystalline Silvanost. Indeed, the wild elves of Kagonesti in many cases bore little love for their cousins in the cities – antipathy, to be sure, that mirrored the hatred and prejudice held by the Silvanesti elves for any race other than their own.

  “Any word out of Thorbardin?”

  “Nothing reliable.” The Kagonesti continued his report, his tone revealing that dwarves ranked near the bottom on his list of worthwhile peoples. ‘They promise to assist us when the humans have committed sufficient provocation, but I won’t believe them till I see them stand and fight.”

  “Why does the southern wing of the Ergothian army march so slowly?” Kith-Kanan, through his Wildrunner scouts, had been tracking the three great wings of the vast Caergoth army, each of which was far greater in size than his entire force of Wildrunners.

  “They have difficulties with the gnomes,” White-lock continued. “They drag some kind of monstrous machine with them, pulled by a hundred oxen, and it steams and belches smoke. A whole train of coal wagons follows, carrying fuel for this machine.”

  “It must surely be some type of weapon – but what? Do you know?”

  White-lock shook his head. “It is now mired in the bottomlands a few miles from the border. Perhaps they will leave it behind. If not …” The Kagonesti elf shrugged. It was simply another idiocy of the enemy that he could not predict or fathom.

  “You bring good news,” Kith noted with satisfaction. He planted his hands on his hips and looked at the ridgeline above, where Parnigar and his footmen were returning. Many waved captured human banners or held aloft helmets with long, trailing plumes. Every so often he saw a dejected and disarmed human scuttling upward and disappearing over the ridge as if he still feared for his life.

  Today Kith and the Wildrunners had directed a sharp blow against the central wing of the human army. He hoped the confusion and frustration of the elven attack would delay their march for several days. The news from the south was encouraging. It would take months for a threat to develop there. But what of the north?

  His worries lingered as the Wildrunners quickly reformed from battle into march formation. They would pass through partially forested terrain, so the elven army moved in five broad, irregular columns. They followed parallel routes, with about a quarter of a mile between columns. If necessary, they could easily outdistance any human army, whether mounted or on foot.

  Kith-Kanan, with Parnigar and a company of riders, remained behind until sunset. He was pleased to see the human army encamp at the scene of the attack. In t
he morning, he suspected, they would send forth huge and cumbersome reconnaissances, none of which would find any trace of the elves.

  Finally the last of the Wildrunners, with Kith in the lead, turned their stocky, fast horses to the west. They would leave the field in possession of the foe, but a foe a little more bewildered, a little more frightened, than the day before.

  The elven riders passed easily along forest trails at a fast walk, and at a canter through moonlit meadows. It was as they crossed one of these that movement in the fringe of the treeline pulled Kijo up sharply. A trio of riders approached. Kith recognized the first two as members of his guard.

  “A messenger, sir – from the north.” The guards puffed aside as Kith stared in shock at the third rider.

  The elf slumped in his saddle like a corpse that had been placed astride a horse. As he looked toward Kith-Kanan, his eyes flickered with a momentary hope.

  “We tried to hold them back, sir – to harass them, as you commanded,” the elf reported in a rush. “The human wing to the north moved onto the plain, and we struck them!”

  The scout’s voice belied his looks. It was taut and firm, the voice of a man who spoke the truth and who desperately wanted to be believed. Now he shook his head. “But no matter how quickly we moved, they moved more quickly.

  They struck at us, sir! They wiped out a hundred elves in one camp and routed the Kagonesti back to the woods! They move with unbelievable stealth and speed.”

  “They advance southward, then?” Kith-Kanan asked, instinctively knowing the answer, for he immediately understood that the human commander of the northern wing must be an unusually keen and aggressive foe.

  “Yes! Faster than I would have believed, had I not seen it myself. They ride like the wind, these humans. They have surrounded most of the northern pickets. I alone escaped.”

  The messenger’s eyes met Kith’s, and the elf spoke with all the intensity of his soul. “But that is not the worst of it, my general! Now they sweep to the east of my own path. Already you may be cut off from Sithelbec.”