by K. J. Hargan
Ronenth pondered Frea's words. He would look for a woman with similar qualities as Frea's. Ronenth shook his head. What was it about Frea that he loved? Her courage, of course. Her determination. She was going to stop the Dark Lord any way she could, and help the man she loved to do it, as well. Ronenth smiled. Envy edged at his heart, but his love for Arnwylf wouldn't let jealousy settle on his glaf soul. Frea had a confidence borne out of adversity. She had faced awful, nightmarish things and come through stronger, regal, powerful. Who did Ronenth know that was like that? Frea was a princess. But, it wasn't the royal title, but how took the mantle of authority reluctantly, and didn't abuse it. For all their squabbling, Frea was loved and respected by her people.
Ronenth thought of his people, the glafs. They were gone. There was only himself and Yulenth. He remembered when the garonds came. The city of Glafemen fell quickly to the garond army, since the glafs had just finished a debilitating war with the Northern Kingdom of Man barely a moonth earlier.
Ronenth remembered fleeing with his mother, brother and sisters. They had died days later when garond patrols sought any glafs that had fled the destruction. He hid amongst trees and bushes until the garonds were satisfied every glaf was dead. Those days were nothing but screaming terror and bloody horror. Ronenth wondered how he had ever survived with his sanity, let alone his skin.
The garonds will pay me a debt, Ronenth thought, specially the general, Ravensdred. He has much to account for. Ronenth gripped the hand holds on the inside of the silver leaves until his hands were numb.
Derragen, the Archer from Kipleth, scanned his arraigned archers. The garonds were going to get a good surprise when they came up the river, he thought to himself.
The Archer peered out at the horizon, surely his elf would come to be with him. Her smile, though infrequent, burned in the memory of his heart like a bonfire.
Then, the things the Green Man had said troubled Derragen. He would have to make a difficult decision.
Derragen allowed himself to remember the teachings of his mentor, Sehen the blind Sage. Whenever he felt emotions clouding the skills he had acquired, a quick review of Sehen's instructions calmed and centered him.
"Nothing is ever lost for good," Sehen had said. The Archer reached back to his quiver to feel the fletching of the last Arrow of Yenolah. He, Derragen, had been lost and found again in the arms of the elf. The Archer could feel his emotions rising again, and strained to remember his lessons.
Instead Derragen thought of meeting Sehen on the Eastern Meadowlands a few days earlier. Was that a ghost? Derragen thought of Sehen's last words to him.
"Your target is where you want it to be, and you must trust your arrow to find it," the ghostly Sehen had said.
A strange calmness came over the Archer.
Halldora hugged her daughter Frea. Frea was to command the Athelings of Man. The warriors had an almost inbred instinct to follow the mark of royalty. And Frea played upon that.
"Athelings of Man!" Frea commanded her warriors, raising her black sword high. The Athelings and warriors of Man gathered around Frea.
"Our race has endured much treachery and cowardice," Frea called out to the sea of grim faces. "I have had enough of the divisiveness of our nation! Today we strive together with the rest of the human race, or we all die separately. No more arrogance! No more selfishness! Today let us regain our honor and valor!" Frea handed her black sword to her mother. Then Frea ripped her skirt up to the middle of her left thigh. She tied back the skirt with the ends of the hem to show the brand of the Sun Sword on her thigh, her mark of royal birth. Frea stood defiantly, legs slightly apart. Her brand seemed to glow with a challenging power.
Frea could see a fierce determination begin to ripple among the soldiers of Man as they beheld the mark of the highest seat of Man. Frea took her sword back from Halldora. "By this mark of the Mattear Gram! For Ethgeow! For Man! For all of humanity!" Frea cried raising her black sword high.
"For Ethgeow! For Man! For all humanity!" The Athelings yelled with honorable wrath, raising their swords in fealty.
"Be careful daughter," Halldora said amidst the avowals of honor and courage, and left Frea for her post up stream.
Frea turned to the warriors of Man. "No garond passes to the Dark Lord!"
The warriors and Athelings of Man filled the sky with their war cries. "No garond passes to the Dark Lord!"
"Husvet! Geleiden!" Hermergh cried as he approached the far perimeter with the wolves. "Arnwylf says to attack the twisted garonds now!"
Husvet turned to look at the obscene garonds dumbly standing where they were chained. It would be a slaughter.
Then an urgent cry stopped the wolves' attack.
Klad, from his hiding place, looked up at the Wanderer, an irregular, white mark on the pale blue of the late morning sky. It was time. He heard the vyreeoten splashing up the river.
"Guk (grunt)!" Klad bellowed and his fifty, elite garond warriors rose from their hiding places and charged a sparse line of human sentries, positioned down river from the main body of the human army to raise the alarm if the garond army disembarked further down the river than anticipated.
Arnwylf watched in horror as the water began to flow upstream. The screams of the first vyreeoten were unnerving, a thin, high pitched, wavering squeal. Arnwylf knew what he had to do.
"Call the wolves over here!" Arnwylf bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Conniker!"
Conniker heard his brother's voice loud and clear. The white wolf barked a command to the three hundred wolves, and without question or hesitation, they turned and sprinted, all three hundred, scurrying through the ranks of astonished human soldiers, back towards the river.
"Wood arrows and spears!" Arnwylf cried as hundreds of vyreeoten barreled up the river, white streams of foam sprayed high, their repulsive bodies undulating so quickly, they appeared to be vibrating in the water. The growing screams of hundreds of vyreeoten intensified with sickening volume, but the men along the river banks, clutching wood spears, held fast.
Just as the first sea beasts got to the river bank closest to the citadel, Arnwylf saw Conniker, the white wolf leap full over his head and tear into the closest vyreeoten. The white wolf clamped down on the sea serpent's throat, and the wolf let his momentum carry him as he tore the vyreeoten's throat clean away in a spray of dark purple blood.
"Support the wolves!" Arnwylf cried, and the men with the wood spears charged into the shallow river to attack the growing numbers of vyreeoten. The wolves furiously tore and rent the sea beasts, shaking their heads with fury. The vyreeoten had an advantage in the water, but the wolves had the humans with wooden spears behind them to keep the slashing mandibles of the sea creatures back.
Some wolves were lost and a few men killed by the fangs of the vyreeoten. The fighting was at a standstill with neither side gaining ground.
Arnwylf saw Derragen give him a signal from the far bank.
"Get back! Conniker call your brothers back!"
The wolves and men carefully retreated, sloshing through the water and mud to Arnwylf's side of the river, as the vyreeoten gathered, regrouping to charge.
"Now!" Derragen cried, and a hundred kiplethite archers, from the other side of the river, sang burning arrows into the hides of the vyreeoten. The fire, when it caught, caused the sea beasts to burn with an oily intensity.
"Arnwylf! Arnwylf!" Hermergh cried, running up. "The garonds are landing further down the river!"
"Hermergh," Arnwylf said, "run up to Halldora and tell her to act."
Arnwylf turned to Stralain. "Take half the soldiers and meet the garonds down river. We will be behind you as soon as the vyreeoten are finished."
Stralain acknowledged his orders. "Wealdkin, with me!" Stralain yelled and ran south. Thousands of soldiers followed Stralain.
"Derragen!" Arnwylf cried to the Archer across the river. "The garonds have landed further down!" From across the river, the Archer signaled to Arnwylf that he understood, and se
t off with his archers to meet the garonds downstream.
"Don't go into the river again!" Arnwylf commanded Conniker. "Let them come to you! Understand?!"
"Yes," Conniker barked in wolfish. The wolves then set themselves along the banks of the river, ready to fight the vyreeoten as they tried to get out of the river.
The elf stood on the prow of the lead elvish ship. The garond long boats were only a league and a half further up the river. It didn't seem as though the garonds had taken any notice of the titanic ships quickly closing behind them.
Ravensdred's arrogance will be his undoing, Iounelle thought to herself.
The huge elvish ships started to scrape the rock bed of the river. Iounelle gave a small cry of frustration. They would have to unload the reian soldiers now, and they would have to run up to the battlefield, a disadvantage. Iounelle frowned.
"Should we let down the gangplanks?" Zik called from the helm. Iounelle was about to say yes, but then she stopped and turned as her sensitive elf ears caught a sound that made her smile.
Hermergh, nearly dead from all the sprinting, ran up to Halldora who had been waiting upstream. "Arnwylf says 'now'," Hermergh said and collapsed.
Halldora turned to those assigned to her.
"Let it go!" She cried.
Several hundred women and children, kept back from the front lines heaved at the heavy timbers that dammed the Syrenf. An overpowering wash of water flooded down the river.
Deifol Hroth came to a part of the Syrenf River that was usually shallow and easy to cross. Instead, the river was flooded. Then, the water suddenly receded.
The Dark Lord looked up and saw a thin line of smoke on the horizon in the direction of his citadel. He cursed under his breath, splashed across the river, and walked on.
The garond army came to the place where Klad and his garonds had slaughtered the few humans that had been placed to guard that portion of the river. Ravensdred barked the order and his soldiers poured out of their long boats. The lower river made the banks muddy and difficult to get across.
A barked exclamation made Ravensdred look back. The billowing sails of huge ships could be clearly seen down river. The ships looked too large to come much farther up the river. Ravensdred smiled to himself, too little, too late, he thought to himself.
"Get out of the boats! Get out!" Ravensdred bellowed in garondish to his soldiers. He pushed several soldiers down to the mud to make his own way ashore.
"Now!" A clipped human voice cried from the other side of the river. Ravensdred looked back to see hundreds of flaming arrows plunging into his long boats. The pine pitch used to make the long boats watertight caught fire with fury.
"Get out!" Ravensdred yelled. "Get your worthless hides out of the boats!" The garond general snarled with violence. Too many of his soldiers were dying as the fire rapidly spread among thousands of tightly clustered long boats jamming the river.
Ravensdred whipped his head around at the sound of the screaming vyreeoten rushing towards him. The surge of water would hit in a moment.
Ravensdred stepped on his own soldiers, pushing them down into the mud, to get ashore. The garond general smiled to himself. The wash of water would put out the fire raging among his long boats. But it would also...
Ravensdred bellowed a garond curse and commanded his soldiers to move towards the burning citadel.
Iounelle shouted with glee as the wall of water lifted the elvish ships up in the river. But her celebration was short lived as the wall of water began to push the tall ships back down stream.
Frea saw the tall sails of the elvish ships peaking above the tree line, stalled down the river, then moving backwards. She knew what they were and guessed who they carried. Without a clear understanding, as if some deep need rose up in her, she shouted in fury. Frea felt the wind move around her body. The Athelings near her marveled and crouched in wonder at the strange power of their princess, as the wind whipped up like a sudden, angry vortex.
Zik gripped the wheel of the elvish ship, as the massive sails suddenly filled with a furious wind. Zik yelled with a wild whoop as the huge, gray ship pushed forward. Vyreeoten, carried down river, thudded against the hull of the titanic ships. A few of the repugnant sea creatures were killed as they smashed against the towering hulls of the elven ships. As the wash of water calmed, the sea serpents turned and violently swam back upstream.
Zik saw the longboats filling the river ahead.
"Hang on to something!" Zik yelled. The first gray ship crashed into the closest long boats, throwing them up in a shower of splinters. Many garonds were still on the long boats and thrown up into the air with the impact of the elvish ship. The reian warriors crammed on the elvish ship tumbled into heaps of humans as the colossal ship pitched with the collision.
"We're not done yet!" Zik yelled, looking back. The ships behind Zik's came barreling at them, uncontrollable from the blasting wind, their sails straining hard, full to tearing. Zik could see the reians on the other ships trying to cut their sails free.
The other six, gray, elvish ships smashed up against the foremost ship with a slow, sickening, unstoppable intensity. All seven of the gigantic ships crunched together with the slow, steady energy of their weight and momentum.
Iounelle looked down, as she desperately clung to the railing at the bow. The prow of the ship plowed through the still half full garond long boats. The elvish ship pushed right into the long boats on fire.
The furious wind stopped as quickly as it began. The fire began to catch the first elvish ship.
"Get off!" Iounelle cried in her unnaturally loud Voice. "Get off! The ship is on fire!"
Arnwylf watched for vyreeoten, but the sea serpents still alive had all been washed down river. He heard the clash and screams of war down stream. Arnwylf turned to Conniker.
"Do not let the vyreeoten come behind us," he told the white wolf. "But you must also watch the twisted garonds over by the burning citadel. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Conniker replied in wolfish. They had lost about fifty wolves with the first attack. But the wolves and archers had killed what appeared to be half of the vyreeoten. They were now much more evenly matched. But, with the twisted garonds behind them, although still immobile, the wolves were placed in a dangerous position.
Arnwylf stood. "With me!" He cried, and led the human army left on the river banks at a sprint to the battle raging down river, leaving the wolves to protect their flank.
When the oak door had burned enough, Yulenth was able to kick it down. Yulenth steeled himself. He carefully made his way through the blaze raging in the uppermost room of the tower. He didn't know if the Evil One would be in his chamber. It was a gamble, and it paid off. The room was empty.
Yulenth grabbed the Lhalíi, and rushed down the spiral stones stairs of the tower. The citadel was empty now. Any garonds left to the Dark One had been changed and set outside the citadel. Smoke billowed through the empty stone corridors.
Coughing, Yulenth raced the growing fire to the passageway that led out of the evil castle. The mist was rising, dissipating. The growing heat from the burning citadel left Yulenth no choice but to pick his way through the field of horrific creatures.
Hundreds of twisted garonds, staked out with chains, surrounded the citadel. Yulenth began to slowly pick a path through the monsters, trying to gage the length of chain that held any particular beast.
The human army, only half a league away, was clearly agitated by the sight of the transformed garonds, but they didn't attack. Why are they not killing these monsters? Yulenth wondered to himself.
A garond that had six legs and no arms rushed at Yulenth, its mouth agape with crooked razor teeth. Yulenth jumped back, but looked behind himself. There was a garond that was covered in scaly plates, claws wide, waiting for him to move too far back, into its range of capture.
Yulenth shuffled ahead, eyes wide, cradling the Lhalíi, like the player of an elaborate board game, cautiously navigating a safe path thr
ough a multitude of chained, magic-twisted obscenities.
Deifol Hroth, the Lord of Lightning, the Dark Lord of All Evil Magic, came to the grounds of his citadel. The tower and stone circle that made up the complex of the citadel was fully engulfed in a raging torrent of flame. His magic twisted garonds dumbly stood awaiting the order to begin the slaughter.
He heard the clash of the human and garond armies to the south.
The Evil One smiled as Yulenth, covered in soot, staggering from the deadly arena of chained abominations, clutching the elvish crystal, the Lhalíi. Deifol Hroth almost burst out with laughter at the stunned expression of the glaf. Yulenth stood like a child that had been caught stealing sweets.
A war cry made Deifol Hroth turn. Halldora and several thousand armed women and children, finished with their task of damming, then releasing the river, charged to protect the human army's flank.
He really couldn't help himself at that point.
The Dark Lord tipped his head back and let out a long, hearty laugh. Then, he bowed his head and with dangerous anger playing across his darkened face, squeezed the Ar grasped in his right hand.
Yulenth turned to flee north with the Sun Shard, the Lhalíi.
An earthquake, starting slow then building in intensity began to shake the earth. Yulenth looked back and saw the waves of sod spreading out from the Dark Lord, like the radiating ripples of a splash made by a huge stone thrown into a pond. Yulenth was immediately flung up in the air with a violent thrust of the earth.
Halldora, and her women and child warriors were also flung to the earth like rag dolls.
Conniker readied himself for the vyreeoten he heard rushing up the river. He barked a warning order to the wolves waiting along the banks of the Syrenf. They wouldn't have the protection of the humans with wooden spears, but they would fight with ferocity anyway.
