by RG Long
The comet had taken his gaze again. For some reason, the thing attracted Tory. He had watched it for several nights when they had first traveled from Thoran to Beaton. It had mostly given him the creeps. But now he saw something different there. Not just a reason to be scared. He saw something foreboding. He saw something close at hand that was terrible and disastrous.
But what it was exactly, he couldn't tell.
“Uniting these elves with the others who aren't quite so delusional as to think the problems of the world can be solved by genocide will do a great good,” Holve answered.
Tory turned and looked at him.
As his gaze had been taken by the comet, Holve's was consumed in the fire. Tory tore himself away from the window and shut the curtains. He sat down in one of the four armchairs and painfully recalled that, just last night, Lote had occupied the one opposite him.
He ground his teeth together, keeping his lip from quivering.
Gray had been taken away from him by Rayg and his Mercs.
Cory had been taken from him by Androlion and his madness.
Now Lote was gone due to her father's insatiable lust for power.
Maybe the world would be better off wiped clean, he thought. Not just elves and dwarves, but everyone. Maybe it all needs a fresh start.
“Tory,” Holve said, and he realized his general wasn't looking into the fire anymore, but staring directly at him.
He positioned himself differently in the chair, fighting to keep his eyes dry.
Why did he care so much?
“She died fighting for what she believed in,” Holve said.
It was too much for Tory. He shot out of the chair and rounded on Holve.
“What she believed in!? She was forced to fight! The whole lot of us have been forced to fight! We didn't want war! We wanted peace, Holve! Wasn't that the goal!? Peace!? Now look where we are! Holve, I've lost everything that matters anything to me! What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
White-hot tears were streaming down his face. He couldn't remember the last time he had ached like he did now.
He wanted peace. Not war. He wanted it all to stop. Not to march an army south.
“What should I do?” he repeated, falling back into the armchair and heaving with sobs.
Holve said nothing for a long time.
He let Tory weep into his hands. When he finally felt like he could control himself, Tory looked up and saw that Holve had returned his gaze to the fire.
A deep sigh escaped from him.
“It's hard,” he said. “Fighting for what you believe in when all you can see is what you believe in dying all around you. But what if we stopped fighting? Hmm? Would that make Androlion lay down his arms and go home? Or would he march his army unhindered throughout Ruyn? I think you and I both know what that would mean.”
Holve looked from the fire back at him. A single tear ran down his cheek.
“But it's worth fighting for, Tory,” he said. “I've seen horrors I can't tell you, even in broad daylight, without looking over my shoulder to see if they're coming for me. What we're fighting for is worth it.”
Tory looked into the fire himself for a while.
Though outside their room the wind was blowing and new snow was falling, a small heat was coming from Tory's chest. The fire was warming it, slowly, but it would have to grow many times over to convince him that what Holve was saying was true.
For now, he would fight because he had to. Because it just made sense.
Later, Tory prayed, he would believe the reason he had told the elves and Holve spoke of now. Maybe sometime later he could claim it for his own.
31: Close Combat
The suns rose high over Beaton as the army from the Southern Republic battered the walls and inched ever closer to the defense in their siege towers. The defenders were ill prepared to fight them off. Catapults had mostly stopped lobbing their rocks in an attempt to let their towers get close. Only every so often did a stone come hurtling at the wall, threatening to dislodge mortar and brick.
No sooner had the Silver Suns claimed victory over the Red Guard did they find themselves, of necessity, fighting side by side to protect the same city they fought over. The irony was not lost on Ealrin.
Standing in-between a group of ragtag looking defenders who had Silver Suns masks pushed up onto their foreheads and another group clad in the uniformed livery of the Red Guard, he, Bertrom, Wisym, and Silverwolf did their part to repel the invaders. Unlike the one group in masks and the other in red, Ealrin thought he and his party were actually accomplishing something.
That, he knew, was due to their being accompanied by fifty of the best archers he had ever seen. The elves of Talgel were fierce warriors, there was no denying. Each and every shot they fired from their bows found a mark. Out on the plains below, a large gap was made in the attackers, starting from where they stood atop the walls.
But fifty elves could hardly stop an entire army.
“It's happened before!” yelled Wisym after she gave the command to fire at will. The line of them had been shooting in unison, a near dance that Ealrin, Bertrom, and Silverwolf could barely admire fully, let alone join.
The three of them were trying to stay out of the way.
“Stupid thing,” Silverwolf said, trying to fit another arrow to her bow. Long ranged weapons were not her strong point, it seemed.
After trying, again, to aim her shot, the missile clattered to her feet. Bertrom, despite sweating furiously from nerves, stifled a chuckle. The assassin shot him a dirty look that quieted him with great speed. The young soldier went back to fetching quivers of arrows for the elves along their part of the wall.
Ealrin was simply trying to do his part.
Lacking elven sight, he could never be sure if his arrows landed harmlessly among the sea of soldiers down below or if they found a target. Instead of loosing volley after volley, he spent a good deal of his time trying to find a target within the range he had discovered he could shoot.
He was little better than Silverwolf.
Trying not to breathe too hard, he focused on those few men who were exposed below as they tried to push a siege tower towards the wall. He squinted up his eyes, trying to focus, and let an arrow fly towards them.
In the chaos below, he was fairly certain it bounced harmlessly off of the war-machine.
“Not bad,” Wisym said, suddenly standing close to him. She had taken up a bow herself and was also aiming at the same group as Ealrin. She let her missile fly and let a satisfied grin cross her face. She turned to Ealrin.
“Got him for you,” she said.
Ealrin felt himself going a little red in the face before an arrow nearly scratched his cheek as it flew past.
“Sorry,” Silverwolf called over the confusion as an elf down the line caught the slow traveling arrow before it did any damage.
Ealrin had the slightest impression Silverwolf was neither sorry nor as bad of a shot as to cause her own side damage.
Then again, he was still a bit uncertain whose side the assassin was really on.
He saw her glancing around every time a Silver Sun or Red Guard approached, going one way or the other on the wall. How many of the Suns had she known and worked with? How many of the Red Guard knew about the famed assassin from the north?
Was she really staying in a group of elves from the south because it was who she chose to fight with?
Or was she there because she was in the company of those who had no quarrel with her?
He fixed the last arrow from his quiver onto his bow and took aim. Wisym stood behind him and adjusted his elbow and titled his shooting arm a bit. She helped him pull back the string to make it a bit more taut, and said, “Now.”
The arrow flew straight and true. He turned to Wisym, a smile on her face.
“That one found a good target,” she said. Her face was not quite as red as his.
“I just wish they'd get up here on the wall already,” Silverwolf said,
pushing herself between the two and attempting to shoot an arrow of her own. A smug look came over her as she attempted to align her body in the same way as Ealrin had and loose her arrow at the army below.
It flew nearly six feet in the air before dropping to the ground.
“I really hate shooting things,” she muttered.
Ealrin was sure about one thing: Silverwolf would be more useful in fighting when the invaders got closer. Having spent his arrows, he unsheathed his sword and, with his other hand, grabbed hold of the spear he had kept with him as a reminder of one who was braver and a better fighter by far. The ornate tip glinted in the sun. It would soon be put to use.
IT WOULDN'T TAKE LONG.
Though the elves were putting up quite the defense, the rest of the citizens of Beaton were not performing as well. One siege tower was nearly feet from the wall and ready to drop its ramp. The defenders began to consolidate there to repel that one tower, desperately trying to keep it from reaching the wall. But with every defender who went to stop one tower, three more invaders were becoming closer because they were not as fiercely attacked.
“Should we go and help over there?” Ealrin asked as he watched the tower edge closer and closer.
Wisym looked over to where the fighting was growing strong due to the proximity of the structure.
"No," she replied. "I think it'd be best if we stayed and..."
But what it was she was going to suggest they do became lost. A new volley of catapult fire was launched at the section of wall the elves were defending. Large stones hurtled towards the wall and shook the brick and stones that held it together.
Silverwolf cursed and grabbed onto the wall for support. Bertrom slipped and fell onto his back, scrambling to regain himself. Wisym and Ealrin managed to turn around to see that every catapult the Southern Republic had was aiming right at their position.
"Cowards!" Wisym was shouting. She then barked out orders to her troops. Ealrin, though he was standing next to her, could barely make them out. He hoped elven ears would hear her, or the commands would fall silently amongst the deafening roar of boulders crashing into solid wall.
And then Ealrin felt the wall beneath him begin to crack.
"Wisym!" he yelled. "The wall!"
But it was too late. The huge wall of Beaton was beginning to break under the constant barrage. Dust and debris began to fly through the air. Ealrin found himself struggling to keep his footing as the wall crumbled below him. Then he felt himself being tugged backward, hard. He landed with a thud on rock wall, thankfully solid for the moment, and looked straight into the face of Silverwolf, panting hard with her hands now on her knees.
"You might consider losing some weight," she said to him, as she heaved herself up. Bertrom lay at her feet as well, apparently dragged from where he had fallen into the safety of the moment.
"Thanks," Ealrin said, comprehending that the barrage of rocks had stopped.
Silverwolf took a step forward, to where there was once solid wall, and looked down.
"Don't thank me yet," she said. Ealrin got to his knees and crawled over to where she was looking.
"What happened?" Bertrom asked as he tried to roll over, struggling in a pile of rock.
A gaping hole had been made in the wall and large piles of debris lay on either side. Perfect for climbing up from the outside or sliding down on the other.
Green clad soldiers began pouring closer to the hole, swords and spears flashing in the light of the suns.
Silverwolf pulled her knife from its sheath and grinned down at Ealrin.
"Finally," she said, grinning down at Bertrom and Ealrin with a look that gave him the chills. "Close combat."
Ealrin was nowhere near as glad to see the tide of soldiers as she was.
Before he could stop her or offer his help, she jumped off of the ledge with a flourish and landed down among the swirling mass of soldiers below. The last thing he saw of her was a dizzying whirl of blades and death.
“Come on, Bertrom,” Ealrin said, helping the only soul from Thoran he knew of in close proximity to his feet. “Let's find a way down that's not suicide.”
He tried to sound calm, but there was more than a twinge in his heart for the silver-haired sell sword. More than he feared her blades being turned on him, he feared her already among the slain defenders of Beaton.
WISYM HAD BEEN THROWN back to the other side of the wall with most of her number. A few were separated from her with Ealrin and Bertrom. They nodded salute to Ealrin and ran with him down the length of the wall to the nearest set of stairs. Their arrows were spent at this point. Blades were all they had to offer.
As they ran down the length of the wall to the nearest stair, Ealrin saw that the troops on the ground were splitting their number. A large portion of them ran to the crumbling wall, where Southern Republic troops were already spilling into the city. The rest were drawing closer to where the siege tower had finally made contact with the wall. Ealrin could see that the bridge on top of it had lowered and a steady stream of soldiers was coming from within it.
“Come on Bertrom,” he said as he rounded the stair and began to rush down them. He looked back to check that the young soldier was with him, but he wasn't.
Ealrin stopped and several elves ran past him to join the troops on the ground. Backtracking to the top of the wall, he found Bertrom standing on the wall, transfixed. His eyes were wide and his sword held loosely in his hand.
Sweat covered his forehead. Judging from the cool wind that was blowing, the perspiration had nothing to do with heat.
“I don't...” he said slowly, his eyes not leaving the troops filling Beaton. “I don't think I can, Ealrin. I... I just can't."
He had backed up to the entrance of a guard tower. A group of defenders, Red Guard from the look of their uniforms, came rushing toward them. Ealrin grabbed Bertrom and pushed him into the tower and out of the way of the advancing troops. Bertrom let his sword fall with a clang onto the stone floor and went down to his knees.
"There's too many of them," he said in a voice that quivered. "How can we possibly fight them? There are just too many."
Bertrom was breathing heavily. He wiped something away from his eye with a gloved hand.
Ealrin stooped next to him, with one knee on the ground. The walls around them continued to shake as more bombardments hit the defenses. He knew they couldn't stay where they were for long. The whole wall might be coming down. Dust and small bits of rock rained down on them from the roof above them. The tower wouldn't last long.
"Bertrom!" he shouted, louder than he meant to, but glad that it was enough to get the young soldier to stop shaking. "Sitting up here won't stop harm from coming to you! Going and fighting will definitely mean you're putting yourself in harm's way. But, at least down there, you can control some of your fate. Sit here for long and the catapults will clobber you!"
The last statement was becoming more and more apparent. The Southern Republic had not let up in their catapulting the wall, even with one section demolished. Though he couldn't see out of the tower at the moment, Ealrin could definitely feel new crashes to his right. Another section of the wall was being demolished.
"If you stay here, you'll die," Ealrin said, trying to motivate him to move. "If you fight, you may live to see another sun rise. That's the choice fate has given us, Bertrom! I know it's not what you would have chosen for yourself, but fate doesn't work like that."
He paused and looked out of the window of the tower, towards the streets below. The Southern Republic was making small ground. Fortunately, it looked like Beaton's defenders were putting up a good fight, for the time being at least.
And then a massive explosion shook the entire wall. Ealrin raced to the other side of the tower. Smoke billowed and debris still fell from the sky. The wall where the river ran through Beaton was demolished. Two ships that had sailed towards the defenses were splintered and broken. What pieces of them remained were on fire. Some magic or other thing h
ad exploded within them. Stone and brick rained down on the river and began to dam it up, giving the Southern Republic a bridge to walk over into the city. Three spots in the wall were now compromised.
The siege was now an invasion. They were sure to be swept up in the tide of soldiers if they stayed on the wall.
Ealrin returned to Bertrom, still hunkered down on the floor.
"Now's our chance," he said, resting the spear so he could pick up Bertrom's sword. He stood and offered it back to him. "Let's make good out of what fate's given us."
There was a moment where Ealrin thought fear had overwhelmed Bertrom completely. He didn't move. Ealrin glanced around and out the door. More troops were running down the wall, away from the section of the wall getting blasted and down into the lower sections. Would he have to leave Bertrom here?
But then he saw that, though shaky and still sweating heavily, Bertrom was rising to his feet. He took his sword from Ealrin and grasped it firmly. He coughed and cleared his throat, as well as adjusted his shoulders.
"To what fate has given us," he said, sniffing once, and then putting on a determined expression Ealrin knew was difficult for him.
Ealrin took him by the shoulder.
"Together," he said.
Ealrin grabbed Holve's spear and, as one, they ran from the tower and out into the melee below.
AN HOUR LATER, EALRIN and Bertrom were fighting with the residents of Beaton on a street surrounded by shops in what was once the beautiful market district. The week's fighting before the Southern Republic attack had done plenty of damage to the shops that lined the streets. Before the fighting reached these spots, storefronts had been dismantled, windows had been smashed, awnings were ripped, and signs were trodden into pieces.
But now a full scale invasion was turning the ruined buildings into rubble.
