Not a weapons cache. Or if that, then more. A tools cache. But why?
What was buried here that was so important to them that they would dig down through ice and snow and frozen earth to get to it in the middle of a battle? And why now? Why not earlier?
There was something beneath the ground as well. Kellen couldn’t quite make it out, and knew he didn’t have the time to spend trying. The Shadowed Elves were trying to get to it, which meant it would be very bad for the Elves.
“I don’t know what they’re doing, but it doesn’t matter. They want what’s there. We must stop them from getting it,” Kellen said to Isinwen—and, with his heart leaping into his throat, gave the signal to charge.
—«♦»—
THEY rode down the valley toward the work party of Shadowed Elves. The second group of Shadowed Elves caught sight of them and began shouting in their strange barking language, running toward them.
“Isinwen, who has the fastest horse?” Kellen shouted, over the sound of their snow-muffled hoofbeats.
“Nironoshan’s Cerlocke is fastest,” Isinwen answered without hesitation.
“Nironoshan—ride to Ysterialpoerin—now—and tell them the Shadowed Elves have broken through our lines. They may expect company!” Kellen ordered at the top of his lungs. His party was outnumbered six to one—at least— and at those odds, it was a more than equal fight. And he dared not assume this was the only group of Shadowed Elves that had broken through Redhelwar’s careful defenses.
“I go!” Nironoshan spurred Cerlocke off at an angle from the main charge, the pale destrier he rode quickly drawing ahead of the others.
Kellen expected the Shadowed Elves to go for weapons as his troop bore down on them, but they only increased their desperate hauling on the ropes. Soon he was close enough to see them by Coldflre instead of battle-sight.
And then to slaughter them.
It was almost too easy. The only difficult thing for him and his troop was reaching them to attack, as the piles of earth and snow on either side formed a natural bulwark that made them difficult to get to. But even while they were being cut down, the Shadowed Elves would not relinquish the ropes leading down into the pit, not even to defend themselves.
And a few seconds after the last of them fell dead, the second wave of Shadowed Elves reached the pit’s edge.
Unlike the others, these were well armed: in the light of the Coldfire, Kellen could see the gleam of looted swords and daggers in their hands.
“On foot!” Kellen shouted, vaulting from Firareth’s saddle and giving the destrier the command to leave the field. Mounted, the Elves were vulnerable to attacks against their horses—the Shadowed Elves had proven that to them time and again this night.
On foot, a chance against these greater numbers. Perhaps.
Once more, his world narrowed to a series of feints and targets, as Kellen’s mind forced his aching cold-stiffened muscles to obey. Each foe he killed was one less for his war brothers to face, and no matter what they did here, Ysterialpoerin was warned.
In a distant part of his mind—the part that must assess things, even now— he’knew the battle was going against them. Time and again he felt his comrades die, and fed his fury at their deaths into the fight. Though it cost him dearly in his exhaustion, he summoned Fire, and set a dozen of the enemy burning like torches.
But fire was easy to put out in the midst of a snowfield, and in the moment he was distracted by setting the spell, two Shadowed Elves got past his guard, swarming him like starving rats. It was his cloak that saved him as much as his armor—the coldwarg fur was heavy and thick; it tangled their blades, buying him the vital moment he needed to throw them off.
The ground began to shake.
Kellen hadn’t thought there was anything that would make a Shadowed Elf break off an attack once one of the creatures had begun. But the two that were attacking him actually cowered back, and in their moment of inattention, Kellen killed them both.
Suddenly the pit behind him exploded upward and outward as if it were a stopped-up fountain, spewing ice, stone, and earth high into the air.
And something was rising with it.
Kellen’s first confused impression was “snake”—and he hated snakes—but this was only as much like a snake as the Deathwings were like true bats.
It was the white of dirty snow. It had a head vaguely similar to Ancaladar’s, but there all resemblance ended. The eyes were dead black and malignant, the body that of a serpent’s—if a serpent were large enough to swallow bulls without choking. It radiated cold like a palpable force—the temperature dropped quickly enough to make Kellen’s face hurt, and the pooling blood on the bodies of the Shadowed Elves he’d just killed froze solid with an audible crack.
“Ice-drake!” Sihemand shouted.
One of the creatures Shadow Mountain had bred in the Lost Lands. They radiated cold and exhaled poison.
“Get to the horses!” Kellen ordered. Suddenly it was difficult to talk.
He looked around. The rest of the Shadowed Elves were gone, faded into the darkness. They’d run the moment the ice-drake had burst free.
And the temperature was still dropping. He’d thought he’d been cold before. Now he knew he’d never known the meaning of the word. The ice-drake radiated a cold as intense and deadly as a forging-furnace’s fire. He backed unsteadily away from the pit. His blood-drenched surcoat was frozen to his armor; it tore like paper when he moved.
The ice-drake towered over him, rising as high as the tallest trees in the forest of Ysterialpoerin before arching its neck and beginning to lower itself slowly toward the snow.
Kellen switched to battle-sight, but instead of the familiar overlay in glowing blue and red—showing him the creature’s attack-pattern, and where he might attack in turn—he saw nothing but the same queer fog that had surrounded the coldwarg when they’d been Demon-bespelled.
“Kellen!” Isinwen shouted, rousing him from his daze. “Run!”
He tried, but by now he was so cold that even to move was agony. He managed a few steps and fell, and knew that he couldn’t get up again.
“You will learn to do that which you think you cannot do.” He could hear Master Belesharon’s words in his head. He tasted snow and blood from cold-cracked lips through the facepiece of his armor. He couldn’t run, but he could move. Clutching at his sword, he used it to lever himself to his feet again.
Cold. Even the ice-drake’s presence was lethal. If he stayed here any longer, he would freeze to death.
The ice-drake appeared in front of him, its chin landing in the snow with a soft thump. It opened its jaws. They were large enough, Kellen realized with a distant sense of astonishment, that he could just walk down its throat. But that obviously wasn’t what it had in mind.
And there was no way he could get out of its way.
Fire. I’ll summon fire, he thought desperately.
But there was nothing here that would burn.
Suddenly the ice-drake burst into flames. Its jaws snapped shut and it reared up, looking affronted. A ragged cheer went up from the Elves.
Kellen stared, bewildered. Though every inch of its body was covered in flames—the snow all around it was melting—the fire seemed to have no effect on the monster itself at all.
And then Jermayan and Ancaladar struck from above with all their might.
The great black dragon stooped down out of the sky and seized the ice-drake just behind the head, as an eagle might seize a snake. With great pounding wing-beats, the dragon carried its far-from-helpless prey into the sky.
Kellen almost fell, the relief of rescue was so intense; instead he forced himself to his feet and began to stagger through the slush. Isinwen met him halfway, and dragged him the rest of the way to the horses, boosting him into Firareth’s saddle.
“Can you see it? Can you see Ancaladar? Kellen, tell us!” he demanded.
Kellen shook his head to clear it, looking skyward.
—«♦»—