Suddenly the calls of some of the horns changed. An enemy had been sighted.
“Yes, so it seems,” Redhelwar said with remarkable calmness, reaching again for the pieces of his discarded armor. “See to your command.”
Kellen sketched a salute and pelted off again, as fast as his feet could take him.
—«♦»—
THANKS to Vestakia and Kellen, the Elves had gotten some advance warning, but the camp was large, and there hadn’t been time to spread warning throughout the entire camp before the first attackers appeared.
Coldwarg attacked the sentries, appearing out of the snow like ghosts.
This time they were accompanied by Shadowed Elves.
Showing no concern for their own survival, the Shadowed Elves ran directly toward the center of the camp, side by side with their four-footed allies.
Not all of them reached the camp. Those already beneath the trees Jermayan could not reach, but those still on open ground were easy prey for his magic.
But those who did get into the camp caused damage enough. They were armed with bows, not swords—the terrible poisoned arrows that the Elves had learned to fear in their last battle—and with worse than that; sacks of small fragile spheres filled with acid. They threw them with deadly accuracy, and as the spheres shattered, the thick syrupy liquid inside burned through anything it touched.
But because they were fragile, the spheres were vulnerable targets as well. The Elven archers quickly learned to aim, not at the Shadowed Elves, but at the sacks that they carried, shattering the contents with a volley of arrows and leaving the acid-soaked carrier screaming in agony upon the ground for a few brief minutes until a merciful sword stroke ended his life.
There was no order of battle, no organization. Kellen had not even managed to reach his troop again before he found himself facing a slavering coldwarg over the body of a dead Knight. The monster’s jaws dripped blood and saliva. It gazed at Kellen with glowing yellow eyes for a timeless moment, growled, and sprang.
Kellen stepped forward, into its leap, bringing up his sword like a boar-spear. The weight of the coldwarg knocked him flat, but the beast was dead before they both hit the ground, impaled through the chest. He rolled out from under it, wrenching his blade free as he did, and went looking for fresh targets.
He smelled smoke. Some of the tents were burning, and the reek sent a wave of panic through him.
Then discipline took hold of him. Stop. Think,
Kellen took a deep breath and stood where he was. There was nothing to gain by running around like a chicken trying to avoid the barnyard axe. He must use his gifts.
The Shadowed Elves weren’t stupid. Alien to everything the Elves knew, but not stupid. Even with the coldwarg to help them, they were outnumbered here, and had thrown over their main advantages of absolute darkness and confined spaces to make this attack. The Elves would kill them all and they must know it. Yet they had attacked anyway.
Why?
They are creatures of the Shadow. The Shadow fights a war of the spirit. What is the greatest blow it could strike against the Elves this night?
Suddenly he knew.
This is a feint. The Shadowed Elves mean to distract us from discovering their true target until it is too late.
And he knew—with a sudden awful certainty—what it was.
He ran toward his tent.
There were Shadowed Elves and coldwarg along the way that he could have killed. He did not stop.
He found Isinwen near his tent. The rest of his troop was scattered, attacking the attackers, but he sensed them nearby.
“Ciltesse?” Kellen demanded.
Isinwen shook his head.
Kellen had ordered Ciltesse to spread the alarm. He might be anywhere. There was no time to wait for him.
“Gather the troop. Get to the horses. We ride at once. Stop for nothing.”
“Alakomentai!” Isinwen said. He turned away, running toward the others to pass the word.
Kellen moved through the chaos of the camp, giving the same order over and over.
He blessed the Gods of the Wild Magic, blessed Leaf and Star, blessed all the trust he’d earned in the sennights passed—his men abandoned the camp and the battle and followed him. By the time he reached the horse-lines, Isinwen and the others who had gotten there first had retrieved their mounts and saddled them.
Kellen vaulted onto Mindaerel’s back and set her off as fast as he dared, away from the camp and back into the forest. Through deep snow, at night, in the woods… there were a thousand ways for a horse, even an Elven destrier, to break a leg on uncertain footing.
But some of them must get through. And that meant they all needed to know why.
“This attack is a trap to occupy us,” Kellen called back over his shoulder. “They strike at Ysterialpoerin! I think they mean to burn it.”
Unconsciously, he shifted Mindaerel’s path to the left, and realized he’d sensed an obstacle beneath the snow. “Behind me, and follow like my shadow!” he ordered, and shifted to battle-sight. By this time, he had learned to rely upon it as he did his muscles; it was less like shifting to a different way of seeing, and more like focusing on something you wanted to see clearly.
There. The path to take—the clear path, the safe path—burned a bright clear blue against the snow, often narrow, always twisting. He set Mindaerel upon it, urging the mare to her fastest speed. He felt the body beneath him gather, and her speed redouble.
An ordinary horse would not have run so for her rider. A horse’s night-sight was not good, and where a horse could not see, it would not go. But Mindaerel was an Elven destrier. She would answer her rider’s commands until her heart broke. She ran through what to her must be utter darkness, trusting absolutely to Kellen’s touch to guide her. Behind him, the Elven Knights in his command followed in a single file, all riding at breakneck speed in Mindaerel’s hoofprints.
Back in Armethalieh, Kellen had never believed in the Light. Idalia had called it “bloodless,” and it was—even more unconnected to the reality of daily life than the study of the High Magick. Jermayan and the other Elves swore by Leaf and Star—and Kellen had fallen into the same habit—but he wasn’t at all sure what that meant.
As for the Gods of the Wild Magic… well, Kellen believed in the Wild Magic, because he worked with it daily. He had no doubt that it had a purpose outside itself. Maybe that was what the Gods of the Wild Magic were, but they didn’t seem to be anything you could talk to directly.
Right now he wished they were. He’d ask anyone—the Gods of Leaf and Star, of the Wild Magic, the Great Herdsman of the Centaurs, the Huntsman of the Mountainfolk, Vestakia’s Good Goddess—for help in reaching the Shadowed Elves before they did whatever they intended to do. He was certain now that they’d left for Ysterialpoerin before the second group had struck at the camp, and if Sentarshadeen was the head and the crown of the Elven cities, Ysterialpoerin was surely its heart. To attack it, to burn it as the whole might of Andoreniel’s army stood by, oblivious…
Would be precisely the sort of thing Shadow Mountain would love best. It’s why they never did it before. They were waiting for an audience. They want us to see how helpless we are, and despair. They want to break our hearts and our spirits.
He strained his senses as Mindaerel raced over the snow. He had gone now beyond hope, beyond prayer. He willed their victory, because they dared not fail.
He could sense Ysterialpoerin ahead. Its boundaries were as clear to his Knight-Mage senses as if they were lines upon a map. He could see its Elven sentries, and knew that they saw nothing—not the Shadowed Elves, not the Elves racing toward them.
But he could sense the Shadowed Elves.
He urged Mindaerel onward. In the darkness, he dared not take his hands from the reins to unlimber his bow, for his hands were her eyes. He was by far the poorest shot in the entire camp—except perhaps for Vestakia—but a bow had more range than a sword, and even if he didn’t hit any of the Shadowed Elves, he could at least get their attention.
Once they were in range.
At last his battle-sight told him that they were.
And the shining azure path—the path of safety for a running horse— widened out, ringing the city with a band of manicured protection. In that moment Kellen blessed the Elves’ attention to perfection, for now the path was smooth enough that not one destrier would put a foot wrong between here and the city.