Elven Nations - The Kinslayer Wars Part 23

Nearly two weeks into his search, he was working his way to the north, following a broad zigzag from east to west. The sun was high that day, so much so that he could see his shadow directly below him. Finally the shadow ebbed away toward the east, matching the sun's descent in the west. Still he had seen no sign of his quarry.

It was near sunset when something caught his eye.

"Let's go, old boydown there," he said, unconsciously voicing the command that he simultaneously relayed to Arcuballis through subtle pressure from his knees on the griffon's tawny flanks. The creature tucked his wings and swooped low, flying along a shallow stream that marked a broad, flat valley bottom.

At one place, however, the river spilled over a ten-foot shelf of rock, creating a bright and scenic waterfall. It wasn't the beauty of the scene that had caught Kith-Kanan's eye, however.

The elf noticed that the brush lining the stream banks was flattened and trampled; indeed, there was a swath some twenty feet wide. The matted brush and gra.s.s extended in an arc from the streambed above the falls to the waterway.

Kith-Kanan could see no other sign of pa.s.sage anywhere in this broad, meadow-lined valley, nor were there any groves of trees that might have concealed a trail. Arcuballis came to rest on a large boulder near the stream bank. Kith swiftly dismounted, leaving the griffon to preen his feathers and keep an eye alert for danger while the elf explored the terrain.

The first thing he noticed was the muddy stream bank. Higher up, where the earth was slightly drier, he saw something that made his heart pound.

Boot prints! Heavy footgear had trod here, and in great numbers. The prints indicated their wearers were heading down the valley after emerging from the streambed. Of course! The dwarves had taken great pains to keep the entrance to their kingdom a secret, and now Kith understood why there had been no road, nor even a heavily used path, leading to the north gate of Thorbardin.

The dwarves had marched along the streambed!

"Come onback into the sky!" he shouted, rousing Arcuballis.

The creature crouched low to allow Kith to leap into the wide, deep saddle. The elf lashed himself in with one smooth motion and kicked the griffon's flanks sharply.

Instantly Arcuballis sprang from the rock, his powerful wings driving downward to carry them through the air. As the griffon began to climb, Kith-Kanan nudged him with his knees, guiding him low above the stream.

They glided along the course of the stream while Kith-Kanan searched the ground along either bank for more signs. Thank the G.o.ds for that waterfall! Dusk soon cast long shadows across the valley, and Kith-Kanan realized that he would have to postpone his search until the morrow.

Nevertheless, it was with high spirits that he directed Arcuballis to land. They camped beneath an earthen overhang on the banks of the stream, and the griffon s.n.a.t.c.hed

nearly a dozen plump trout from the water with lighting grasps of his eagle-clawed forefeet. Kith-Kanan feasted on a pair of these while the griffon enjoyed his share.

The next morning Kith again beat the morning sun into the sky, and within an hour, he had left the foothills behind. The mountain stream he followed joined another gravel - bottomed watercourse, and here it became a placid brook, silt-bottomed and sluggish.

Here, too, there were signs that the dwarven column had emerged to march overland.

Now Kith-Kanan urged Arcuballis ahead, and the griffon's wings carried them to a lofty height. The trail became a wide rut of muddy earth, clearly visible even from a thousand feet in the air. The griffon followed the path below while the elf's eyes scanned the horizon. For much of the day, all he could see was the long brown trail vanishing into the haze of the north.

Kith-Kanan began to worry that the dwarves had already reached Sithelbec.

Certainly they were tough and capable fighters, but even in their compact formations, they would be vulnerable to the sweeping charges of the human cavalry if they fought without the support of auxiliary forces.

It was late afternoon before he finally caught sight of his goal and knew that he was not too late. The marching column stretched as straight as a spear shaft across the plains, moving toward the north. Kith urged the griffon downward, picking up speed.

As he flew closer, he saw that the figures marched with military precision in a long column that was eight dwarves wide. How far into the distance the troops extended he could not be certain, though he flew overhead for several minutes after he had observed the tail of the column before he could even see its lead formations.

Now he was spotted from below. The tail of the column split and turned, while companies of short, stocky fighters broke to the right and left, quickly swinging into defensive postures. As Arcuballis dove lower, he saw the bearded faces, the metal helms

with their plumes of feathers or hair, and, most significantly, the rank of heavy crossbows raised to fire!

He pulled back on the reins and brought Arcuballis into a sharp climb, hoping he was out of range and that the dwarves wouldn't shoot without first identifying their target.

"Ho! Dwarves of Thorbardin!" he called, soaring about two hundred feet over the ranks of suspicious upturned faces.

"Who are you?" demanded one, a grizzled captain with a shiny helmet plumed by bright red feathers.

"Kith-Kanan! Is that you?" cried another gruff voice, one that the elf recognized.

"Dunbarth Ironthumb!" the elf shouted back, waving at the familiar figure.

Happy and relieved, he brought the griffon through a long, circling dive. Finally Arcuballis came to rest on the ground, though the griffon pranced and squawked nervously at the troops arrayed before him.

Dunbarth Ironthumb clumped toward him, a wide smile splitting his full, gray-flecked beard. Unlike the other officers of his column, the dwarf wore a plain, unadorned breastplate and a simple steel cap.

Kith sprang from the saddle and seized the stalwart dwarf in a bear hug. "By the G.o.ds, you old goat, I thought I'd never find you!" he declared.

"Humph!" snorted Dunbarth. "If we'd wanted to be found, we would have posted signs. Still, what with the storms we've been dodgingfloods, lightning, even a black funnel cloud!it's a lucky thing you did find us. Why were you looking?"

The grizzled dwarf raised his eyebrows in curiosity, waiting for Kith to speak.

"It's a long story," the elf explained. "I'll save it for the campfire tonight!"

"Good enough," grunted Dunbarth. "We'll be making camp after another mile." The dwarven commander paused, then snapped his fingers in sudden decision.

"To the Abyss with it! We'll make camp here!"

Dunbarth made Kith-Kanan laugh easily. The elf commander ate the hardtack of the dwarves around the fire, and even took a draft of the cool, bitter ale that the dwarves hold so dear but which elves almost universally find to be unpleasant to the palate.

As the fire died into coals, he spoke with Dunbarth and a number of that dwarf's officers. He told them of the mission to capture the griffons and of the forming of the Windriders. His comrades took heart from the tale of the flying cavalry that would aid them in battle.

He also described, to mutters of indignation and anger, the complicity of Than-Kar and his brother's plans to arrest the amba.s.sador and return him to King Hal-Waith in chains.

"Typical Theiwar treachery!" growled Dunbarth. "Never turn your back on 'em, I can tell you! He never should have been entrusted with a mission of such importance!"

"Why was he?" Kith inquired. "Don't let it go to your head, but you were always a splendid representative for your king and your people. Why did Hal-Waith send a replacement?"

Dunbarth Ironthumb shook his head and spat into the fire. "Part of it was my own fault, I admit. I wanted to go home. All that talking and diplomacy was getting on my nervesplus, I'd never spent more than a few months on the surface at a time. I was in Silvanost for a full year, you'll remember, not counting time on the march."

"Indeed," Kith-Kanan said, nodding. He remembered Tamanier Ambrodel's remarks about that elf's long months underground. For the first time, he began to understand the adjustment these subterranean warriors must make in order to undertake an aboveground campaign. Growing up, working and trainingall their lives were spent underground.

Surprising emotion choked his throat, for suddenly he realized the depth of the commitment that had brought forth the dwarven army. He looked at Dunbarth and hoped that the dwarf understood the strength of his appreciation.

Dunbarth Ironthumb gruffly cleared his throat and continued. "We have a tricky equilibrium in Thorbardin, I'm sure you appreciate. We of the Hylar Clan control the central realms, including the Life-Tree."

Kith-Kanan had heard of that ma.s.sive structure, a cave city all of its own carved from the living stone of a monstrous stalagmite. He nodded his understanding.

"The other clans of Thorbardin all have their own realmsthe Daergar, the Daewar, the Mar, and the Theiwar," continued Dunbarth. The old dwarf sighed. "We are a stubborn people, it is well known, and sometimes hasty to anger. In none of us are these traits so prevalent as among the Theiwar. But also there is a level of malevolence, of greed and scheming and ambition, among our paleskinned brethren that is not to be found among the higher dwarven cultures. The Theiwar are much distrusted by the rest of the clans."

"Then why would the king appoint a Theiwar as amba.s.sador to Silvanesti?"

Kith-Kanan asked.

"Alas, they are all those things I said, but so too are the Theiwar numerous and powerful. They make up a large proportion of the kingdom's population, and they cannot be excluded from its politics. The king must select his amba.s.sadors, his n.o.bles, even his high clerics from the ranks of all the clans, including the Theiwar."

Dunbarth looked the elf squarely in the eye. "King Hal-Waith thought, mistakenly it would appear, that the crucial negotiations with the elves had been concluded with my departure from your capital. Therefore he took the chance of appointing a Theiwar to replace me, having in mind another important task for me and knowing that the Theiwar

Clan would make a considerable disturbance if they were once again bypa.s.sed for such a prominent amba.s.sadorship.

"I think you start to get the picture" Dunbarth continued. "But now to matters that lie before us, instead of behind. Do you have plans for a summer campaign?"

"The wheels are already in motion," Kith explained. "And now that I have caught up with you, we can put the final phase of the strategy into motion."

"Splendid!" Dunbarth beamed, all but licking his lips in antic.i.p.ation.

Kith-Kanan went on to outline his battle plan, and the dwarven warrior's eyes lit up as every detail was described.

"If you can pull it off," he grunted in approval after Kith-Kanan had finished, "it will be a victory that the bards will sing about for years!"

They spent the rest of the evening making less momentous conversation, and around midnight, Kith-Kanan made his camp among the army of his allies. At dawn, he was up and saddling Arcuballis, preparing to leave. The dwarves were awake, too, ready to march.

"Less than three weeks to go," said Dunbarth, with a wink.

"Don't be late for the war!" chided Kith. Moments later, the sunlight flickered from the griffon's wing feathers a hundred feet above the dwarven column.

Arcuballis soared into the sky, higher and higher. Yet it was many hours before Kith saw it, a blocklike shape that looked tiny and insignificant from his tremendous height.

He would reach it by dark. It was Sithelbec, and for now at least, it was home.

21.

Late Spring, in the Army of Ergoth.

Long rows of makeshift litters filled the tent, and upon them, Suzine saw men with ghastly woundsmen who bled and suffered and died even before she could begin to treat them. She saw others with invisible hurtswarriors who lay still and unseeing, though often their eyes remained open and fixed. Oil lanterns sputtered from tent poles, while clerics and nurses moved among the wounded.

Men groaned and shrieked and sobbed pathetically. Others were delirious, madly babbling about pastoral surroundings they would in all likelihood never see again.

And the stench! There were the raw smells of filth, urine, and feces, and the sweltering cloud of too many men in too small an area. And there were the smells of blood, and of rotting meat. Above all, there remained an ever-pervasive odor of death.

For months, Suzine had done all that she could for the wounded, nursing them, tending their injuries, providing them what solace she could. For a time, there had been fewer and fewer wounded as those who had been injured in the battles of the winter had been healed or perished or were sent back to Ergoth.

But now it was a new season, and it seemed that the war had acquired a new ferocity.

Just a few days earlier, Giarna had hurled tens of thousands of men at the walls of Sithelbec in a savage attempt to smash through the barricades. A group of the wild elves had led the way, but the elves within the fortress had fallen upon their kin and the humans who followed with a furious vengeance. More than a thousand had perished in the fight, while these hundreds around her represented just a portion of those who had escaped with varying degrees of injuries.

Most of the suffering were humans, but there were a number of elvesthose who fought against Silvanestiand Theiwar dwarves as well. The Theiwar, under the stocky captain Kalawax, had spearheaded one a.s.sault, attempting to tunnel under the fortress walls. The elves had antic.i.p.ated the maneuver and filled the tunnel, jammed tightly with dwarves, with barrels full of oil, which had then been set alight. Death had been fast and horrible.

Suzine went from cot to cot, offering water or a cool cloth upon a forehead. She was surrounded by filth and despair, while she herself bore hurts that could not be seen but which nevertheless cut deeply into her spirit.

So Suzine felt a kinship with these hapless souls and gained what little comfort she could by caring for them and tending their hurts. She remained throughout most of this long night, knowing that Giarna was tormented by the failure of his attack, that he might seek her out. If he found her, he would hurt her as he always did, but here he would never come.

The hours of darkness pa.s.sed, and gradually the camp fell into restless silence. Past midnight, even those men in the most severe pain collapsed into tentative slumber. Weary to the point of collapse, praying that Giarna already slept, she finally left the wounded to return to her own shelter.

Outside the hospital tent waited her two guards, the men-at-arms who escorted her when she moved about the camp. Actually they were a pair of the Kagonesti elves who had joined ranks with the army in the hope that it offered them a chance to gain independence for their people. Oddly, she had come to enjoy the presence of the softspoken, competent warriors in their face paint, feathers, and dark leather garb.

Suzine had wondered how such elves could rationalize their fight, since it was waged with great terror against their own people. Several times she had asked the Kagonesti

about their reasons, but only once had she gotten an honest answerfrom a young elf she was caring for, who had been wounded in one of the attempts to storm the fortress walls.

"My mother and father have been taken as slaves to work in the iron mines north of Silvanost," he had told her, his voice full of bitterness. "And my family's farm was seized by the Speaker's troops when my father was unable to pay his taxes."

"But to go to war against your own people," she had wondered.

"Many of my people have been hurt by the elves of Silvanost. My people are the Kagonesti and the elves of the plains! Those who live in that crystal city of towers are no more my kin than are the dwarves of Thorbardin!"

"Do you wish to see the elven nation destroyed?"

"I only wish for the wild elves to be left alone, to regain our freedom, and to have nothing to do with the causes of governments that have made our lands a battleground!"

The elf had gasped his beliefs with surprising vehemence, struggling to sit up until Suzine eased him back down.

"If the Emperor of Ergoth treats us ill after this war is won, then shall we struggle against him with the same fort.i.tude! But until that time, the human army is our only hope of throwing off the yoke of Silvanesti oppression!"

She had been deeply disturbed by the elf's declarations, for it did not fit her idea of Kith-Kanan to hear such tales of injustice and discrimination. Surely he didn't know of the treatment accorded to Kagonesti by his own people!

Thus she had convinced herself of his innocence and looked upon the Kagonesti elves with pity. Those who had joined the human army she befriended and tried to ease their troubled hurts.

Now her two guards held open her tent flap for her and waited silently outside. They would stand there until dawn, when they would be relieved. As always, this knowledge gave her a sense of security, and she lay down, totally exhausted, to try to get some sleep.