by Greg Curtis
It was only twenty feet, but it was one of the longest journeys she had ever made.
On the ground she stepped out of the noose and looked back at the portcullis behind her, and then up at the line of worried faces above her. And it was actually quite reassuring to see that they were worried, though Juna really looked more horrified. He hadn’t had a chance to hear her plan.
“Thank you. Now stick to the plan.”
Sophelia stepped out in to the open, maybe three or four paces away from the safety of the rope and stared out at the great green expanse of grass dotted with figures. And for the first time as she set eyes on them she wondered for a brief moment if she truly had been breathing the mist of the moon maiden. There was absolutely nothing between her and them save distance, and her life line was a rope held by people who didn’t like elves. She turned to look back at it. It seemed so very flimsy.
But still there was a job to do. There was a reason she had embarked upon this madness. She took a deep breath, turned to face the enemy, and started waving her arms about and shouting.
“Hello there. Look at me. Pregnant elf. Can’t run very fast.” Did it matter what she said? It sounded so stupid to her. But somehow she doubted they understood. What they did understand was that she was alive and moving around, and making noise. Like cats they were mesmerised, understanding nothing but the mouse in front of them.
From the very first words out of her mouth she saw them turning to face her for at least a thousand paces. All of them. And then they started shambling for her as fast as they could. At least the first part of her plan was working she realised. She’d attracted their attention. Somehow that didn’t seem like a good thing in terms of her personal safety.
Still she kept doing it, trying to bring more and more of them to her. And in to the cannon’s field of fire.
It seemed to work. The more she shouted, the more they rushed to her, and the closer they got to her, the closer they bunched together. Like hunting dogs, they naturally formed a pack.
Then the nearest of them crossed into the range of the eight footer. She saw him pass the seven hundred pace marker that had been placed into the ground to range their shots, and knew a thrill of fear. But they were still too spread out. They had to get closer.
“Hold.” She shouted up to the soldiers, hoping they would still take orders from her. If they ever really had. Somewhere among them she could hear the guttural sounds of the dwarf and she knew he would never allow himself to be ordered around by an elf. But he understood the plan, and he would also know what was needed.
Six hundred paces. They shambled past the marker, forty or fifty of them at least, and she could see her plan working. But she could also hear their screeching, and her blood chilled. That was not a sound to be made by either man nor animal. It was something else. Something much worse. She so wished she had her longbow with her. While she was not an expert marksman just the feel of its wood in her hands would have been a comfort. No doubt it was packed away in a trunk somewhere.
Leggings and a fast riding horse would have been welcome too. Sophelia felt distinctly vulnerable in her long dress. It might be expected of a lady of the court to wear the finery, but when death was in the offing, it didn’t seem right. She wanted something comfortable.
Five hundred paces, and the first bunch had formed up into a pack. Just a perfect target. But already a second group was gathering behind them and she knew that was dangerous.
“Left cannon only. Take aim.” She yelled it out as loudly as she could and even pointed to her left. If she sounded worried it was because she was. It was the only way the plan could work. Each cannon to fire while the other was reloaded. She only hoped the soldiers understood that. That they didn’t both fire at the leading bunch and let the other through.
“Ready!” Someone from behind her yelled out and she didn’t have to think twice about her next cry.
“Fire!” She dropped her left arm quickly and the world exploded all around her. It was as though the demons of the underworld had all shouted at once. It felt as though the volcanoes had opened up beneath her. It was that and still so much more that she couldn’t even have imagined it. Fire spat past her, smoke and flame billowing out like a dragon’s breath, and the rush of the wind sent her long dress flapping. The thunder was so loud even through the rags she’d stuffed in her ears, that for a moment she worried she’d gone deaf. She could feel the roar in her stomach, like the baby kicking. She could feel it in her feet as it shook the ground.
And none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the enemy. And Before the smoke had taken her sight away, she’d seen them go down. The entire group, cut down like sheaths of wheat before a farmer’s scythe. Most of them she knew would not get back up. Not when the blast had torn right through them. Ripped them apart in one enormous fountain of black blood and body parts.
Still she was nervous as she waited for the smoke to clear. More than nervous. Being blind while there were abominations somewhere out there was not easy on the nerves. The soldiers though were shouting and screaming with joy on the walls behind her. But then they were higher up than her. They could see what the cannon had done. They could see the enemy lying in pieces. She hoped.
When the smoke finally did clear she could see that the first group had been cut down, broken. She would have said killed save that she wasn’t sure they had been alive to begin with. A few, a very few, were still standing with body parts missing. Injuries that would have killed any normal man. Others on the ground were writhing, trying to get up but unable. They should be dead, but they somehow refused to die. Most however weren’t even bodies. They were less than that. They were scraps of meat scattered over the green grass. And those scraps, well, they didn’t move at all.
It seemed that if you tore them into small enough pieces even abominations could be killed.
The next bunch however were hurrying towards her regardless. They cared nothing for their fallen comrades. They knew nothing of fear. They didn’t have the slightest knowledge that they were walking to their deaths. Or if they did they didn’t care. They knew only hunger and the delicious elf not that far away. They had already passed the six hundred pace mark. A long way off, but still too close.
“Left cannon reload. Right cannon take aim.” She had to shout to make herself heard over the shouting from the soldiers behind her. They’d started celebrating early and apparently weren’t stopping.
She gave the orders as before, hoping against hope that it would go perfectly, and that the first cannon would be reloaded by the time the next group came within range. They were already forming up. And behind them she could see an almost endless stream of abominations heading her way. Still cresting the distant hill. She didn’t have to attract their attention any more. They were hunting her.
“Fire!” She dropped her right arm, and the world exploded all over again. The thunder and fire when the right cannon spoke was actually almost louder than the first, impossible as that seemed, and she thought the fire actually shot twice as far beyond her. She must have been standing a little closer to its mouth, or else they’d used more powder. But the result was the same. They abominations crossed the five hundred pace mark and when the smoke finally cleared, only a few were still standing.
But a few was still a few too many. She realised that when she saw three badly wounded enemy from the first group still trying to reach her, and getting closer. Much closer. They were within three hundred paces and moving quickly despite their awkward gait. Frighteningly quickly. Sophelia risked a quick peek back at the waiting rope behind her and tried to guess how long it would take her to reach it. There was still time. But there was another option. The one that she had to take.
“Archer’s head shots!” Was her voice slightly higher pitched than normal? Probably.
The moment the words left her mouth she watched three arrows find the abominations’ heads, and they finally fell down. Even the one that was hopping on one leg. Arrows, not bolt
s. That caught her by surprise. But a welcome surprise. They were still out of range for the crossbows. But then she realised that there were only a few who could make that shot. And when her hearing returned a little more, she knew that there was only one woman in the world who could wail at her like that.
Nervously she turned back to see her family standing on the wall, longbows in hand, and they did not look happy. Her father looked even less happy than the others, his face like thunder.
“Daughter, we are going to speak of this later.” Beside him her mother was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks despite the fact that she was still alive, her sisters much the same, and Herodan was standing there white faced, concentrating on the enemy as he held his bow straight, an arrow notched. That was a good sight to see. Of all of them he was the finest shot.
Sophelia turned back to face the enemy somewhat relieved, and for the first time wondering if they were really such a terrible danger compared to her father.
“Right cannon reload. Left cannon take aim.” She gave the orders and steadied her nerves as she waited for the next attack. With the abominations still forming a horde running all the way back to the distant hill, she knew it was going to be a very long day. And then, if she was lucky enough to survive it, a longer night.
Chapter One Hundred and Twelve.
It looked like rain. The sky was uncommonly dark as the sun peeked over the distant hills, the clouds full and heavy. It was probably an apt omen for what was coming. And the rain would wash away the blood.
Iros was nervous. He had reason to be. Though he had been a soldier for many years and he had fought, he had never gone to war. None of them had. Not among the rangers and sprites at least. They’d all been spared that monstrous evil. Until now.
Iros didn’t like his command either. Not that he disliked the rangers or the windriders. He just didn’t understand them. Dragoons he understood. He’d served with them for five years. He knew their tactics, their fighting style. He knew their strengths and weaknesses. He knew how to fight as one of them. But rangers? Three and a half thousand rangers at his command? That was madness. They were lightly armed, horse mounted archers. He knew little of their fighting style. And windriders? Sprites with magic short bows and little armour to speak of. Until a few months before he’d never even met one. Now he was in charge of twenty five thousand of them. It made no sense.
His every instinct told him to run a cavalry charge. To use the speed of the horses to cover the distance between them and the enemy as quickly as possible, and then to rely on his armour and swords to take down the enemy while the infantry caught up. It was quick and crude, brutal and bloody, and often dangerous, but it was effective. And it was what he knew. But neither rangers nor windriders fought that way. They simply didn’t have the armour. So they would have stand back and use the infantry’s armour instead.
As for the enemy’s strategy, he simply didn’t understand it. He understood his own troop’s strategy of course. It was logical given what they faced. But he didn’t understand why the enemy was suddenly fighting as if they were defending a battlefield. And he didn’t understand why they were expecting him to continue doing that. Surely even the most stupid commander would realise at some point that his troops would be slaughtered if they didn’t attack first. These were abominations after all. They had no minds. Only hunger and savagery. That was their strength. Yet now they were hunkering down behind makeshift fortifications. They were being organised into an actual army instead of a mob? That was wrong. It was unbelievably stupid.
Yet it allowed them to set their formations for the attack. And so a thousand cannon were now lined up within four hundred paces of the fortifications, primed and ready to go. Tens of thousands of dragoons and other cavalry stood ready to make their charge when the enemy fortifications came down, and tens of thousands of infantry and archers were waiting to back them up. Or if the enemy finally did do what they should have done from the start and charged, the infantry would defend, taking the brunt of the assault on their steel shields, while the archers picked them off, before the cavalry charge. Whatever the enemy did they were ready. But they had no idea what the enemy would do.
The abominations had thrown away their madness to form an incoherent military strategy, when it was their madness itself that made them so dangerous.
Walls and fortifications were only of any use if you could attack from behind their safety. The abominations couldn’t do that. They had no bows or cannon. They had only teeth and claws. They had to leave the safety of the walls to attack, and all the time they spent cowering behind the ludicrous makeshift walls waiting, was time when the cannon would be tearing them apart. If the enemy had had any thought of tactics he would have had his army of abominations out on the trail as they rode through it, progressively weakening the invading army with non-stop attacks. But instead he had set one ambush along their path, and that had somehow been defeated, and then apparently given up.
Whoever led them, had no true understanding of strategy. But then he suspected that that leader was Y’aris, and the once High Commander of Elaris was just such a fool. Perhaps Iros should give thanks to the Divines for his foolishness.
As for the temple itself, every time he looked at it, the mass of moss and lichen covered stone sent shivers down his spine. Bad ones. It wasn’t just the unlikely size of it, and the temple was less a single building and more a small citadel. It was the fact that it had somehow remained hidden for a thousand years. How? Why had it not been destroyed the first time the Reaver had been fought and defeated?
All good questions with no good answers.
Maybe the priests knew. When the horn sounded for the first time, its mournful cry echoing through the still air, his thoughts turned instantly to them. Three hundred elders, surely nearly all that the elves could find, beginning the war with a prayer. How much use could that be? Yet still as he turned around in his saddle to look up at the small knoll behind them, he could see the elders all falling to their knees and bowing their heads in prayer. And all around him he could see his rangers and windriders doing the same.
Maybe it made some sense. Maybe it would grant the men a little courage. But as a soldier he knew that the battlefield was never a place for the divine.
Still he bowed his head with them, and muttered a few short words of pleading to Silene.
While they were all waiting, what harm could it do?
Prayers over, Iros knew it was time to speak to his troops. Even though they were already in formation, spread out in a long line holding the flank, he addressed them thanks to aided by a small gnomish device he had been given. Iros had spoken to them many times before over the long march, knowing that more than anything else they needed confidence. They needed to see the dawn on the far side of night. That was his responsibility.
“My friends.” He called them that because that was what they were. He might not know them, but that changed nothing. Anyone who would ride into battle beside you was a friend.
“You know the plan, and you know your roles. And I know that you will keep to them, as you know that I will.” It was strange how his voice seemed to echo a little as the little device carried it across the distance.
“For now though I want you to know one thing more. I want you to know why we ride.”
“It is not for glory. Glory is for bards. It is not for vengeance. Vengeance is for fools. It is not for the thrill of battle. We are not savages. We ride to save our families. To save our loved ones. Always.”
“You know, I know, all of us know - that the battle ahead will be tough. We know that many of us may not survive. But that does not matter to us. Not today.”
“What matters, the only thing that matters, is that we win. That we destroy this dark temple completely. That we kill its foul priests and the hideous abominations it creates. Because if we do not, in time they will come for our families and they will be either killed or turned into abominations themselves.”
“So we wil
l fight! We will not back down! We will win through! And we will send these foul creatures back to the underworld!” He raised his voice a little for the last and wasn’t surprised when he heard cheering. He was telling them what they wanted to hear. Giving them what they needed. Hope.
“And when it is over. When we stand in triumph on the ruins of that foul temple, we will celebrate! The bards will compose great ballads which we will probably sing badly. And we will let them have their strange beliefs of glory as they buy us jugs of ale and call us heroes. But in our hearts we will celebrate survival. Our survival. Our families’ survival. Our world’s survival.”
“And the Reaver as he rues his miserable eternity in the darkness of the underworld, will know better than to ever come for us again! His horns will quiver in fear at the very thought!”
“Brothers and sisters, it is an honour to stand here with you. To know that there are men and women of such good heart. I thank you for your courage.” Iros then bowed to his troops as he handed the device to his aide. Because he knew that someone should.
