The Kinslayer Wars Read online

  The panicked humans cast down weapons, shields, helmets – anything loose and cumbersome – in their desperate flight. They scattered away from the charging elves, racing for the shelter of any clump of trees or thick brush they could find.

  The warriors of Silvanost, disciplined even at their steady advance, remained in close-meshed lines. They parted at the obstacles, while several who were armed with shortswords pressed into the grove, quickly dispatching the hapless humans who sought refuge there.

  But even so, it was clear that the great bulk of the routed troops would escape, so rapid was their flight. The close ranks of the elves could not keep pace. Finally Kencathedrus slowed his company to a brisk walk, allowing the elves to catch their breath as they approached the first large expanse of forest.

  “Archers, stand forward to the flanks!” Kith-Kanan didn’t know why he gave the order, but suddenly he saw how vulnerable were the five thousand elves, in the event that he had been tricked. Kencathedrus and his regiment had already advanced nearly half a mile ahead of the main army, while the fleeing humans seemed to melt away before them.

  Two blocks of elves – his keenest longbows, some thousand strong each – trotted ahead.

  “Pikes – in the middle, quickly.” One more unit Kith-Kanan sent forward, this one consisting of his fiercest veterans, armed with their deadly, fifteen-foot weapons with razor-sharp steel tips. They advanced at a trot, filling some of the gap between the two blocks of longbows.

  “Horsemen! To me!” A third command brought the proud elven cavalry thundering to their commander. It seemed to Kith-Kanan that Kencathedrus and his company were now in terrible danger. He had to catch up and give them support.

  Flanked by his mounted bodyguards, the commander led his horsemen through the lines, in a wide sweep toward the right of Kencathedrus’s company. The elven archers carried their weapons ready. Pikes rattled behind them. Had he done everything that he could to protect the advance?

  Kith sensed something in the air as the late afternoon seemed to grow sinister around him. He listened carefully; his eyes studied the opposite tree line, scanned to the right and left to the limits of his vision.

  Nothing.

  Yet now some of his elves sensed the same thing, the indefinable inkling of something terrible and awesome and mighty. Warriors nervously fingered their weapons. The Wildrunners’ horses moved restlessly, shaking off the weariness of many hours’ battle.

  Then a rumble of deep thunder permeated the air. It began as a faint drumming, but in Kith-Kanan’s mind, it grew to a deafening explosion within a few seconds.

  “Sound the withdrawal!” He shouted at the trumpeters as he looked left, then right – where, by all the gods?

  He saw them appear, like a wave of brown grass on the horizon, to both sides – countless thousands of humans mounted on thundering horses, sweeping around the patches of woods, across the open prairie, pounding closer, with all the speed of the wind.

  The horns blared, and Kith saw that Kencathedrus had already sensed the trap. Now the elves of Silvanost retired toward the Wildrunners’ lines at a quick pace. But all who looked on could see that they would be too late.

  The archers and pikemen advanced, desperate to aid their countrymen. They showered the human cavalry with arrows, while the long pikes bristled before the archers, protecting them from the charge.

  But the elves of Silvanost had no such protection. The human cavalry slammed into them, and rank after rank of the elven infantry fell beneath the cruel hooves and keen, unfeeling steel.

  The pikemen and archers fell back slowly, carefully, still shredding the cavalry with deadly arrows, felling the horsemen by the hundred with each volley. Yet thousands upon thousands of the humans trampled across the plain, slaughtering the stranded regiment.

  Kith-Kanan led his riders into the flank of the human charge, little caring that there were ten or twenty humans for every one of his elves. With his own sword, he cut a leering, bearded human from the saddle. Horses screamed and bucked around them, and in moments, the two companies of cavalry mingled, each man or elf fighting the foe he found close at hand.

  More blood flowed into the already soaked ground. Kith saw a human lancer drive a bloodstained lance toward his heart. One of his loyal bodyguards flung himself from his saddle and took the weapon through his own throat, deflecting the blow that would have surely been fatal. With a surge of hatred, Kith spurred Kijo forward, chopping savagely through the neck and striking the lancer’s head from his shoulders. Spouting blood like an obscene geyser, the corpse toppled from the saddle, lost in the chaos of the melee before it struck the ground.

  Kith saw another of his faithful guards fall, this time to a human swordsman whose horse skipped nimbly away. The fight swirled madly, flashing images of blood, screaming horses, dying men and elves. If he had paused to think, he would have regretted the charge that brought his riders out here to aid Kencathedrus. Now, it seemed, both units faced annihilation.

  Desperately Kith-Kanan looked for a sign of the elves of Silvanost. He saw them through the melee. Led by a grim-faced Kencathedrus, the elven reserve force struggled to break free of the deadly trap. Finally they tore from their neat ranks in a headlong dash through the sea of human horsemen toward the safety of the Wildrunner lines.

  Miraculously, many of them made it. They scrambled between the thick wall of stakes, into the welcoming arms of their comrades, while the stampeding cavalry surged and bucked just beyond. By the dozens and scores and hundreds, they limped and dodged and tumbled to safety, until more than two thousand of them, including Kencathedrus, had emerged. The captain tried to turn and limp back into the fray in a foredoomed effort to bring forth more of his men, but he was restrained in the grasp of two sergeantsmajor.

  The archers, too, fell back, and then it was only the riders caught on the field. Isolated pockets of elven cavalry twisted away from the sea of human horsemen, breaking for the shelter of their lines. Kith-Kanan himself, however, after having led the charge, was now caught in the middle of the enemy forces.

  His arm grew leaden with fatigue. Blood from a cut on his forehead streamed into his eyes. His helmet was gone, knocked from his head by a human’s bashing shield. His loyal guards – the few who still lived – fought around him, but now the outlook was grim.

  The humans fell back, just far enough to avoid the slashing elven blades.

  Kith-Kanan and a group of perhaps two dozen elven riders gasped for breath, surrounded by a ring of death – more than a thousand human lancers, swordsmen, and archers.

  With a groan of despair, he cast his sword to the ground. The rest of the survivors immediately followed his example.

  *

  As darkness finally closed about them, the humans turned back from the elven line. Kencathedrus and Parnigar knew that it was only nightfall that had prevented the complete collapse of their position. They knew, too, that the exhausted army would have to retreat now, even before the darkness was complete. They would have to take shelter in Sithelbec early the following day, before the deadly human cavalry could catch them in the open. The entire force of the Wildrunners could suffer the fate of the unblooded elves of Silvanost.

  It seemed to the elven leaders that the day couldn’t have been any more disastrous. Despair settled around them like a bleak cloud as they considered the worst news of all: Kith-Kanan, their commander and the driving force behind the Wildrunners, was lost – possibly captured, but more likely killed.

  The army marched, heads down and shambling, toward the security – and the confinement – of Sithelbec.

  Sometime after midnight, it started to rain, and it continued to pour throughout the night and even past the gray, featureless dawn. The miserable army finally reached Sithelbec, closing the gates behind the last of the Wildrunners, sometime around noon of the following gray, drizzling day.

  5

  AFTER THE BATTLE

  SUZINE AWAKENED TO A SUMMONS FROM THE GENERAL, delivered by a b
ronze-helmed lieutenant of crossbows. The woman felt vague relief that General Giarna hadn’t come to her in person. Indeed, she hadn’t seen him since before the battle’s climax, when his trap had snared so much of the elven army.

  Her relief had grown from the previous night, when she had feared that he would desire her. General Giarna frightened her often, but there was something deeper and more abiding about the terror he inspired after he had led his troops in battle.

  The darkness that seemed always to linger in his eyes became, in those moments, like a bottomless well of despair and hopelessness, as if his hunger for killing could never be sated. The more the blood flowed around him, the greater his appetite became.

  He would take her then, using her like he was some kind of parasite, unaware and uncaring of her feelings. He would hurt her and, when he was finished, cast her roughly aside, his own fundamental needs still raging.

  But after this battle, his greatest victory to date, he had stayed away from her. She had retired early the night before, dying to look into her mirror, to ascertain Kith-Kanan’s whereabouts. She felt a terrible fear for his safety, but she hadn’t dared to use her glass for fear of the general. He mustn’t suspect her growing fascination with Kith-Kanan.

  Now she dressed quickly and fetched her mirror, safe in a felt-lined wooden case, and then allowed the officer to lead her along the column of tents to General Giarna’s shelter of black silk. The lieutenant held the door while she entered, blinking for a moment as she adjusted to the dim light.

  And then it seemed that her world exploded.

  The file of muddy elven prisoners, many of them bruised, stood at resentful attention. There were perhaps a score of them, each with a watchful swordsman right behind him, but Suzine’s eyes flashed immediately to him.

  She recognized Kith-Kanan in the instant that she saw him, and she had to forcibly resist an urge to run to him. She wanted to look at him, to touch him in all the ways she could not through her mirror. She fought an urge to knock the sword-wielding guard aside.

  Then she remembered General Giarna. Her face flushed, she felt perspiration gather on her brow. He was watching her closely. Forcing an expression of cool detachment, she turned to him.

  “You summoned me, General?”

  The commander seemed to look through her, with a gaze that threatened to wither her soul. His eyes yawned before her like black chasms, menacing pits that made her want to hurriedly step back from the edge.

  “The interrogation continues. I want you to witness their testimony and gauge the truth of their replies.” His voice was like a cold gust of air.

  For the first time, Suzine noticed an additional elven form. This one stretched facedown on the carpeted floor of the tent, a tiny hole at the base of his neck showing where he had been stabbed.

  Numbly she looked back. Kith-Kanan stood second from the end of the line, near where the killing had occurred. He paid no attention to her. The elf between him and the dead one looked in grimly concealed fear at the human general.

  “Your strength!” demanded General Giarna. “How many troops garrison your fortress? Catapults? Ballistae? You will tell us about them all.”

  The final sentence was a demand, not a question.

  “The fortress is garrisoned by twenty thousand warriors, with more on the way!” blurted the prisoner beside the corpse. “Wizards and clerics, too —”

  Suzine didn’t need the mirror to see that he lied; neither, apparently, did General Giarna. He chopped his hand once, and the swordsman behind the terrified speaker stabbed at the doomed elf. His blade severed the elf’s spinal cord and then plunged through his neck, emerging under the unfortunate warrior’s chin in a gurgling fountain of blood.

  The next swordsman – the one behind Kith-Kanan – prodded his charge in the back, forcing him to stand a little straighter, as the general’s eyes came to rest upon him. But only for a moment, for the human leader allowed his scornful gaze to roam across the entire row of his captives.

  “Which of you holds rank over the others?” inquired the general, casting his eyes along the line of remaining elves.

  For the first time, Suzine realized that Kith-Kanan wore none of the trappings of his station. He was an anonymous rider among the elven warriors. Giarna didn’t recognize him! That revelation encouraged her to take a risk.

  “My general,” she said quickly, hearing her voice as if another person was speaking, “could I have a word with you – away from the ears of the prisoners?”

  He looked at her, his dark eyes boring into her. Was that annoyance she saw, or something darker?

  “Very well,” he replied curtly. He took her arm in his hand and led her from the tent.

  She felt the mirror’s case in her hand, seeking words as she spoke. “They are obviously willing to die for their cause. But perhaps, with a little patience, I can make them useful to us … alive.”

  “You can tell me whether they speak the truth or not – but what good is that when they are willing to die with lies in their mouths?”

  “But there is more to the glass,” she said insistently. “Given a quiet place and some time – and some close personal attention to one of these subjects – I can probe deeper than mere questions and answers. I can see into their minds, to the secret truths they would never admit to such as you.”

  General Giarna’s black brows came together in a scowl. “Very well. I will allow you to try.” He led her back into the tent. “Which one will you start with?”

  Trying to still the trembling in her heart, Suzine raised an imperious hand and indicated Kith-Kanan. She spoke to the guard behind him. “Bring this one to my tent,” she said matter-of-factly.

  She avoided looking at the general, afraid those black eyes would paralyze her with suspicion or accusation. But he said nothing. He merely nodded to the guard behind Kith and the swordsman beside him, the one who had just slain the fallen elf. The pair of guards prodded Kith-Kanan forward, and Suzine preceded him through the silken flap of General Giarna’s tent.

  They passed between two tents, the high canvas shapes screening them from the rest of the camp. She could feel his eyes on her back as she walked, and finally she could no longer resist the urge to turn and look at him.

  “What do you want with me?” he asked, his voice surprising her with its total lack of fear.

  “I won’t hurt you,” she replied, suddenly angry when the elf smiled slightly in response.

  “Move, you!” grunted one of the guards, stepping in front of his companion and waving his blade past Kith-Kanan’s face.

  Kith-Kanan reached forward with the speed of a striking snake, seizing the guard’s wrist as the blade veered away from his face. Holding the man’s hand, the elf kicked him sharply in the groin. The swordsman gasped and collapsed.

  His companion, the warrior who had slain the elf in the tent, gaped in momentary shock – a moment that proved to be his last. Kith pulled the blade from the fallen guard’s hand and, in the same motion, drove the point into the swordsman’s throat. He died, his jaw soundlessly working in an effort to articulate his shock.

  The dead guard’s helmet toppled off as he fell, allowing his long blond hair to spill free when he collapsed, face first, on the ground.

  Kith lowered the blade, ready to thrust it through the neck of the groaning man he had kicked. Then something stayed his hand, and he merely admonished the guard to be silent with a persuasive press of the blade against the man’s throat.

  Turning to the one he had slain, Kith looked at the body curiously. Suzine hadn’t moved. She watched him in fascination, scarcely daring to breathe, as he brushed the blond hair aside with the toe of his boot.

  The ear that was revealed was long and pointed.

  “Do you have many elves in your army?” he asked.

  “No – not many,” Suzine said quickly. “They are mostly from the ranks of traders and farmers who have lived in Ergoth and desire a homeland on the plains.”

  Kith
looked sharply at Suzine. There was something about this human woman …

  She stood still, paralyzed not so much by fear for herself as by dismay. He was about to escape, to leave her!

  “I thank you for inadvertently saving my life,” he said before darting toward the corner of a nearby tent.

  “I know who you are!” she said, her voice a bare whisper.

  He stopped again, torn between the need to escape and increasing curiosity about this woman and her knowledge.

  “Thank you, too, then, for keeping the secret,” he said, with a short bow.

  “Why did you …”

  She wanted to tell him that she had watched him for a long time, had all but lain beside him, through the use of her mirror. Suzine looked at him now, and he was more glorious, prouder, and taller than she had ever imagined. She wanted to ask him to take her away with him – right now – but, instead, her mouth froze, her mind locked by terror.

  In another moment, he had disappeared. It was several moments longer before she finally found the voice to scream.

  *

  The elation Kith-Kanan felt at his escape dissipated as quickly as the gates of Sithelbec shut behind him and enclosed him within the sturdy walls of the fortress. His stolen horse, staggering from exhaustion, stumbled to a halt, and the elf swung to the ground. He wondered, through his weariness, about the human woman who had given him his chance to flee. The picture of her face, crowned by that glory of red hair, remained indelibly burned into his mind. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

  Around him loomed the high walls, with the pointed logs arrayed along the top. Below these, he saw the faces of his warriors. Several raised a halfhearted cheer at his return, but the shock of defeat hung over the Wildrunners like a heavy pall.