by Tara Grayce
Essie shivered. That wasn’t a culture she could fully understand. Maybe because it wasn’t her culture, but suicide by forcing Farrendel to kill them didn’t seem all that honorable.
“If we are ambushed on the road, I may not have the space to use my magic properly.” Farrendel shook his head, his face and muscles hard. He was all Laesornysh at that moment. All warrior and steel, contemplating the best way to deal swift death to his enemies.
King Weylind’s eyes were distant as he gazed over what had been the peaceful glade around Lethorel, the grass now stained with blood and covered with bodies. “Yet we cannot remain here when an invasion might be happening. Tarenhiel needs its king and foremost warrior. We must return to Estyra and deal with this threat, but...the roots seem to have been cut.”
If the roots connecting Lethorel to Arorien had been sliced, then the elves were cut off. They couldn’t ask for more guards to defend them. They couldn’t discover the situation outside of Lethorel.
What was the trolls’ plan? If this was some prelude to another war, then Farrendel had to be a target. They would struggle to win a war against the elves unless they eliminated Farrendel first. Killing all but two members of the royal family would be a bonus.
It might be safer to wait here at Lethorel, but King Weylind was right. A full-scale invasion could be happening for all they knew.
Farrendel glanced at Essie, some of his hardness cracking.
They would have to risk the road back to Estyra, even if it meant the non-warriors among them, Queen Rheva, Brina, Ryfon, Jalissa, the servants, and Essie, would be put at risk.
She might not be the warrior Farrendel was, but she would not be completely helpless in this fight. Neither would Jalissa, nor any of the other elves who could handle a bow and arrows, even if they had never done so in battle before.
Essie raised her chin and faced King Weylind and Farrendel. “I assume we are leaving as soon as possible. And leaving everything non-essential behind.” When King Weylind tipped his head in a nod, Essie faced Farrendel. “I’ll grab you a fresh shirt from our room. You might as well stay in that tunic and pants. They’re probably going to get more blood spattered before the day is out. If you could gather the muskets and ammunition from the dead trolls, I’ll pick out the best one or two guns and as much ammunition as our pack horse can carry. If we’re going to have a major fight on our hands, I’ll do better with the musket than a bow and arrow, and it would be best to save the arrows for those who can use them.”
Farrendel nodded, pivoted, and headed for the dead bodies, strapping on his swords as he went.
King Weylind eyed her up and down then gave a sharp nod before turning away, probably to organize the others. Essie hoped that meant he was all right with the idea of placing a weapon like a gun in her hands.
In half an hour, they were on the trail back to Arorien, all their luggage left behind at Lethorel. Even the dead bodies of the trolls had been left where they lay. They would be taken care of later, once King Weylind had a chance to send a well-guarded burial detail back here. If he got a chance. If they survived.
Essie had the best of the muskets resting across her lap, her right hand steadying it as she guided the horse with her left. While the musket was outdated, it was at least breach-loading and the trolls had a decent supply of the cartridges. It would’ve been a great deal harder to load and fire rapidly if they’d had the even older, muzzle-loading style of musket.
Though, that meant the trolls they had yet to face also had more breach-loading muskets. The trolls they’d already faced had about fifteen guns for the thirty of them. If the rest of the trolls had that many guns, they would have nearly fifty.
Unless they had more guns. If they each had a gun...Essie swallowed. Her single musket would be a poor match against a hundred muskets firing back at them. Even with Jalissa, Queen Rheva, Prince Ryfon, and four of the servants also now armed with bows and arrows, they had a total of eighteen archers. And if things came to hand to hand combat, they had only King Weylind, Prince Ryfon, and the ten guards.
And Farrendel. How many trolls could Farrendel take on his own? He’d made taking on those thirty trolls look easy. Jalissa, King Weylind, and the guards had shot a few more to feel like they were helping. But that had been in an open glade where Farrendel could use his power most effectively. Hemmed in by trees and needing to protect the others at his back...not even Farrendel was making any guesses on how that would go.
This was a chance. A chance they would get through. A chance they could all be killed.
Essie flexed her fingers on the musket, glancing around at the trees as they cantered past. They were pushing the horses, cantering and trotting at a steady pace that the horses should be able to maintain for a while at least.
The pack horse behind Essie kept pace with Ashenifela, tied as the pack horse’s lead was to Essie’s saddle. The pack horse held nothing but Essie’s extra ammunition and a second musket. In the event battle broke out, keeping a hold of that pack horse was Essie’s priority.
She glanced ahead, catching a glimpse of Farrendel’s silver hair between the heads of the others ahead of her. Farrendel was leading, his senses attuned for any sign of a troll ambush. King Weylind guarded their rear while the rest of the elven guards were scattered in the middle. Before they’d left Lethorel, King Weylind had outlined what he wanted all of them to do in those first seconds of the ambush when falling into a tight, fighting formation as quickly as possible could mean the difference between dying and surviving.
Essie tried to swallow, but her mouth was achingly dry, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. Her palm was so sweaty she feared Ashenifela’s reins would slip from her fingers.
If she’d thought those moments huddled next to Jalissa in Lethorel had been bad, this was far worse. Then, at least, she’d had the safety of height and Lethorel’s walls.
Now there was nothing around her but open sky and trees, and those same trees could be hiding the enemy.
She wasn’t wired to be a warrior. More than anything, she wanted to get to Arorien, board the train, and relax on a peaceful trip into Estyra. Would she even be able to raise the musket and pull the trigger if it came to that? Could she take a life, even the life of someone attacking her and the family she’d married into?
With everything in her, she didn’t want to find out. A hard knot in her stomach told her she wouldn’t have a choice.
Farrendel held his hand up. Essie scrambled to rein in Ashenifela as they went from a canter to a skidding halt.
“Down!” Farrendel shouted even as he vaulted from his horse and urged it to lie down crossways across the path.
Something zipped overhead, and a bolt of Farrendel’s magic shot out and burst in the air above them, destroying a bullet and leaving behind the acrid scent of sulfur and overheated metal.
Howls rose from the forest ahead of them. This close, Essie could make out the form of words in the chanting and howling. She didn’t know the trolls’ language to understand what they chanted as they marched to battle, but it was a reminder that these were people just as much as humans or elves, with their own code of honor and orders that spurred them into this battle.
That’s what made battle so terrible.
Essie’s heart lurched into her throat, her heartbeat thundering in her ears until it drowned out the howls of the approaching trolls. Her breath caught in her throat, her body frozen there in the saddle.
Ahead of her, the guards, servants, and Jalissa threw themselves from their saddles, urging their horses down, and yanking arrows from their quivers. Over their heads, Essie spotted Farrendel. His magic crackled, his hair floating with the energy surging around him. He walked forward, his swords drawn, prepared to take on the entire pack of trolls.
She couldn’t let him down. And freezing like this wasn’t helping anyone.
Essie threw herself from the saddle. Ashenifela remained steady, but the pack horse was shifting, tossing its head. Essie tried
to get the pack horse to calm enough to lie down, but the horse only danced more.
She didn’t have time to wrestle with the horse. She was a larger target standing as she was, even if she currently had the bodies of the pack horse and Ashenifela protecting her.
As quickly as she could, she unbuckled the pack and let it fall to the ground. Then she unclipped the lead from the pack horse’s halter, slapped the horse’s rump, and let the horse gallop off down the trail, dodging the others already huddled behind their horses.
Hefting the pack with one hand, her arm and shoulder muscles burning at the weight, she grabbed Ashenifela’s halter and hurried forward. The guards, servants, and Jalissa, who had been ahead of Essie in their traveling line, had already gotten their horses on the ground, forming the front side of a circle. Even one of the guards and Queen Rheva were already there, having passed Essie while she’d been wrestling with the pack horse.
Jalissa pressed her hands to the ground. Prince Ryfon joined her. Around the front of the circle of horses, saplings sprouted from the earth, twining together in a wall.
Reaching the circle, Essie positioned Ashenifela in the next open spot next to one of the guards and dragged down on the mare’s halter. Ashenifela laid down without a protest, even if her ears were twitching, her nostrils flaring. Dropping the heavy pack, Essie threw herself to the ground behind the mare, rested the musket on the horse’s shoulder, and sighted along the barrel, though she didn’t yet have a shot.
The first of the trolls had reached Farrendel, and he sliced through them. His magic spread like blue lighting in shimmering, crackling bolts. Flares popped in a constant barrage along the bolts of power as his magic stopped and incinerated the bullets raining toward him. Not a single stray bullet made it past him, keeping Essie and the others sheltered long enough for the rest of the group to finish forming the circle with their horses.
More of the elves pressed their hands to the ground. The wall of saplings thickened and strengthened. It was now waist high at the front, while before Essie it was barely a foot tall.
The air choked with the stench of gunpowder and blood and a biting, metallic smell that coated Essie’s tongue with the taste of lighting strikes.
The trolls had probably been planning to surround them before launching the ambush, but Farrendel’s alertness had forced them to charge from the front. The trolls would try to flank Farrendel and get past him to reach the elven king and the rest of them huddled back here.
Essie searched for a shot, but she still couldn’t get a clear line of sight past Farrendel’s magic blasting through the air. It was just as likely to take out her bullet as it tried to whip past him as it would stop the trolls’ bullets.
The sapling wall in front of Essie grew another foot. It left an opening around the barrel of her gun big enough for her to see through.
Princess Brina belly-crawled until she lay next to Essie. “Show me how to load your musket.”
Essie glanced over her shoulder at the elf princess. She was seventy years old, which made her roughly fourteen or fifteen. Far too young to be caught in a fight like this.
“Please.” Brina worked the second musket free of the pack on the ground. “I have not the aptitude for the bow nor has my magic developed, but I want to help.”
Essie could understand that. It was bad enough hiding behind her mare’s warm, breathing body and a flimsy wall of saplings while those trolls howled only a few yards away when she had a weapon in her hands. It would be worse to be helpless.
Farrendel’s power crackled, tearing through trolls and trees, blasting over their small circle to keep them safe and sheltered. Farrendel himself was a blur, his swords and hair whipping around him as he tore into the trolls, leaving bodies scattered on the ground in his wake.
If he’d been terrifying back at Lethorel, here he was...Essie couldn’t even come up with a word to describe him. She hadn’t even realized he’d held back before, and now the full extent of his power and skills were unleashed.
They had a few moments. Long enough for her to show Brina how to load a musket. Thankfully, these were breach-loading weapons with the newer metal shell casings on the cartridges. She wouldn’t have trusted an inexperienced hand to load muzzle-loading weapons with the old paper cartridges where the chances of doing it improperly were high and the consequences could be a weapon exploding in their hands.
Essie lay on her back below the shelter Ashenifela provided and showed Brina the lever that cracked the gun in half where the barrel met the stock, how to slide the cartridge into place, and then snap the barrel back, making sure it was secured once again.
Rolling to her stomach, Essie rested her musket across her horse’s back again. Somehow, explaining how to load the gun to Brina had steadied Essie’s hands and cleared her head, even if her heart still pounded wildly. Perhaps that was the key to surviving battle. Don’t think about it. Don’t feel. Don’t worry about dying. Simply go through the familiar motions trained into one’s muscles and just exist until the moment was over.
The trolls had begun to spread out, trying to get past Farrendel’s killing swords and fury of magic. Essie would’ve expected Farrendel to be tiring after all that expenditure of magic and physical strength, but, if anything, the power surging from him kept growing. Was he even in control of it anymore? It seemed impossible that one person, even an elf, could control something that powerfully destructive.
To the far left of the trolls’ line, a root snaked out and grabbed a troll’s ankle, yanking him down, tree roots crawling over him.
A cold wind blew over them, holding a hint of ice and snow. Essie sucked in a breath, her grip tightening on the gun. It was mid-summer. The air shouldn’t feel this cold.
Rocks burst from the ground and hurled toward the wall of saplings protecting them, smashing through several sections. Wood splintered. One of the horses whinnied shrilly while an elf cried out.
The wind built, cold and sharp. Frost formed along the barrel of Essie’s gun.
Was this the trolls’ magic? For some reason, she hadn’t expected them to fight back with magic as well. Though, she should have realized they would. Her musket seemed all too small compared to the forces of ice and rocks and growing things ripping the forest apart around them.
Farrendel’s magic blasted a hot breeze across them, sweeping both the icy wind and a spray of rocks away from the palisade the elves had grown.
A guard to Essie’s right and King Weylind to her left both popped to their knees and released arrows through gaps left in the sapling wall, taking out two of the trolls on the fringes. Farrendel’s magic protected them from any return shots, but Essie tightened her fingers on her musket anyway.
She had an advantage the elves didn’t. They had to reveal themselves, unprotected above their horses’ backs and the saplings, when they wanted to shoot while Essie could shoot on her stomach behind Ashenifela, only a small sliver of her head peeking over the mare’s back. Not that Essie wanted to get shot there since being shot in the forehead would be a fatal, if quick death. But she presented a far smaller target than the elves did.
More trolls spread out, both to the right and left of Farrendel, coming nearly level with Essie’s position halfway around the circle. Strands of Farrendel’s magic lashed back, taking out the bullets, but surely there would come a moment when the trolls were out of reach of his magic.
Rocks pummeled the saplings only a few feet away. An elf cried out, and Queen Rheva crawled toward him, placing her hand over the wound.
More of the elves within the circle popped to their knees, released, and dove back down for cover, doing it at random intervals as far as Essie could tell.
Essie held her fire. As long as the trolls’ bullets couldn’t reach them, she’d let the elves handle it. Her chance would come once the trolls fired back unhindered.
Sunlight glinted on the weapons the trolls facing them carried. She focused on one, watched as the troll raised the gun to his shoulder. It was
hard to tell at that angle, but it didn’t match the musket Essie held in her hands. This reminded her more of...but it couldn’t be. Those guns were a new invention. The trolls couldn’t possibly have gotten a hold of any.
The troll fired the gun and—impossibly—levered a piece of the action and fired again without reloading. A bolt of Farrendel’s magic exploded both bullets in the air, but Essie’s stomach turned to ice anyway.
Somehow, these trolls had gotten their hands on some of the new, rapid-fire carbines the gun manufacturer in Escarland had just shown Averett earlier that year. They had just been put into production. Averett had forbidden them to be traded with other countries, wanting to keep such technology for Escarland as long as possible.
And yet here they were, the trolls levering five shots at a time before needing to reload.
How had the trolls gotten these weapons? Did her country have a traitor? More like, a whole gang of traitors to pull off something like this.
What would it mean for the tenuous peace between Tarenhiel and Escarland? Once the elves figured out the origin of these weapons, would they assume her country and her family had traded the carbines to the trolls on purpose?
It would mean war. A war between the two countries and two peoples Essie called home.
She had to survive today and stop whatever this was. She would not let all the good her marriage had done to build peace be torn apart so easily.
The war howls of the trolls turned into a gruff, rhythmic chanting. Above the crackling zing of Farrendel’s magic, there was the faintest creaking sound.
On the path in front of them, four trolls pushed a large gun mounted on two wagon wheels. At this distance, Essie couldn’t see the individual barrels, but she could see the snaking line of ammunition gripped by one of the trolls and the distinctive crank on the side of the gun.
A repeater gun. Another of the weapons so recently invented and perfected in Escarland. It should not be here. Yet here it was.
