My guesses mattered little. Ilttaia’s front line of pike warriors were given the signal to raise their long spears. The weapons were anchored into the ground and dozens of the lances pointed at the massive black warhorse and its skull-armored rider. It didn’t matter how strong Kaiyer was in combat. Riding full speed into a wall of pikes would incapacitate him.
If it didn’t kill the man.
There was an explosion. A crash of thunder so strong that it rang a hundred times louder than the human war cry. Every Elven winced at the sound and I almost expected the ground to sway. For a few seconds it was hard to comprehend what had happened at the impact of Kaiyer’s charge. Dozens of Ilttaia’s warriors were dead. Some were covered in blood, others trampled by the giant black horse, and three were impaled together on the length of Kaiyer’s skull-etched lance.
He was almost halfway through Ilttaia’s foot soldier ranks but still three hundred yards down the slope from my position. He dropped his lance and then pulled out the mace that he was rumored to wield with incredible power. He made one downward swing with his left hand and three Elven heads exploded into a mist of blood and brain.
“Shit,” Relyara and I said at the same time. The entirety of Ilttaia’s forces seemed to converge on the lone human and his horse. The animal was almost as fearsome as its rider. Every time Kaiyer attacked with his mace and blocked with his shield the creature either kicked, stomped, or spun into the mob of my warriors. After only a few more seconds the leader of the humans had killed four more of my warriors and his mount had tallied just as many.
Ilttaia’s warriors had recovered from the surprise of having their target in the depths of their ranks and they began a more coordinated attack. The mob of warriors backed away from the spinning horse and a few of the Elvens with shorter spears made dual attacks at the man and horse. His shield was always in the way, or the horse skipped to the side of each attack.
Then the rest of the humans collided into the ranks of pike warriors.
The troops had been so distracted by Kaiyer’s penetration into their lines that they seemed unaware of the oncoming charge from the rest of the army. Dozens of humans and scores of horses were impaled on the grounded pikes, but more cavalry than was acceptable made it past the first two lines. Death sounded all around, filling the air with anguish and the scent of blood.
One of Ilttaia’s warriors grabbed Kaiyer’s armored leg and was rewarded with a strike to the skull. He was unbelievably fast. His arm blurred when he attacked like a hummingbird's wing. The only indication I had that he struck anything was the death and explosion of blood that emanated from the body of his victim. The horse spun again and its armored hindquarters brushed aside some spear strikes aimed at his master.
“This is impossible!” Relyara gasped from my side. I could only nod and fight the lump forming in my throat and the cold pit of anguish that grew in my stomach. Kaiyer must have killed twenty or more of my soldiers in little more than a minute and he showed no signs of tiring. Gorbanni was trying to beat a path through the throng of my other warriors but I doubted the man would actually succeed.
One of Ilttaia’s commanders, Kilotrra, managed to jump on the back of Kaiyer’s horse and wrestled with the human’s shield. Other Elven warriors seized the opportunity and moved closer to thrust their spears into him. He tipped over precariously with Kilotrra’s efforts and a cheer of jubilation swelled up from the surrounding Elvens.
Then Kilotrra was thrown from the back of the horse. She still clutched the skull shield, but Kaiyer had slipped out of it to keep from being taken off his mount. The angry steed stomped and galloped purposely to its side and the brave woman was crushed beneath the monster’s hooves.
Kaiyer was shieldless now, but it did not seem to matter. He was able to make larger sweeping strikes with his mace and quickly smashed three warriors that had attempted to impale him with their spears when Kilotrra had seized his shield. The horse spun again and I noticed that many of the spear strikes had pierced the creature’s armor and its night-black hair was dripping with dark red blood. The animal wasn’t magical and would eventually fall. When it did, Kaiyer would not have the height advantage and my soldiers would have an easier time capturing him.
A spear warrior made a quick stab at Kaiyer from his flank and the human dodged out of the way at the last fraction of a second. Then his armored hand came up and grabbed onto the lance. The horse spun sideways and the leader of the human army ripped the weapon out of the hands of my warrior. A split second later, the spear spun around in Kaiyer’s hand and my lover was able to jab, stick, and thrust the spear into the surrounding crowd to keep the tide back.
Then Gorbanni and a few of his guards made it to Kaiyer.
“Fuck,” I sighed. Capturing the man would take an exponentially greater number of lives than I had planned. I glanced over to the side position and saw that the line tasked with holding Shlara’s troops was intact. At least one part of this battle was going as planned.
“He can’t keep this up forever.” Relyara seemed to read my mind. “His horse is halfway dead. See how it moves?” I returned my attention to Kaiyer and saw that the horse lashed out with its massive back legs again and killed two of my soldiers with precise blows to their skulls.
“Yes. The creature appears incapacitated.” I sighed and continued to watch Kaiyer, his horse, Gorbanni, and their guards push through the lines of Ilttaia’s troops.
The longer I watched Kaiyer in battle the larger the knot of ice in my stomach grew. The man seemed to somehow see in all directions. He would lean over his saddle to smash one of my kin with his mace and then almost turned to smoke dodging spear thrusts aimed at his armor. The combined efforts of my entire army must have amounted to hundreds, perhaps over a thousand attacks aimed at his body; other than the loss of his shield, they had accomplished nothing. I realized that I had made a massive mistake and completely underestimated his power. He was not a man anymore. He was not my lover. He was something else. He was a force of nature, like a tornado or an earthquake whose only purpose was the destruction of my race.
I had created this monster and I would never be able to stop him. My people would die at his hand and humans would again rule this world, despite what the Gods wanted.
Finally, Kaiyer’s terrible horse staggered and pitched sideways.
I felt the scream of victory escape my throat and the sound was repeated by every one of my kin who had seen the beast collapse. It was a symphony of joy and the song seemed to invigorate my exhausted troops.
It had been Ilttaia who felled the horse with a massive cut to its chest. She was one of the few warriors in my army that felt comfortable wielding a two-handed sword. It wasn’t a very practical weapon in traditional pike lines, but my general normally stayed midfield, and if the battle ever reached her position, she used the long weapon to kill the humans effectively.
Kaiyer jumped off his horse mid-fall and the long red cloak he wore seemed to spread out over the sky as a sea of blood. He aimed his spear and then dove like a black-feathered eagle.
Right into Ilttaia.
“No!” Relyara screamed beside me. Kaiyer’s spear ripped through the chest of my general’s armor and came out the other side into the ground of the battlefield. Without pause he grabbed her massive sword with his right hand, twisted sideways, and cleaved two other warriors in half with the long blade. Blood, organs, and bone sprayed through the air and almost seemed to become a part of his red cloak.
I heard cracking below me and I realized that my hands had snapped the thick wooden railing of my command platform. I took a deep breath and forced calm through my body and mind. Ilttaia was dead. She was not only one of my more intelligent generals, she was also a friend and talented warrior.
A cheer from below ripped me away from the sadness of my loss and I looked from the wood railing to see that one of Gorbanni’s guards had fallen off of his horse and was about to be executed by Juilytian. The large warrior had been Ilttaia’s lov
er and I imagined my sadness was more than matched by his fury. He raised his polished sword over his head and was about to bring it down to end the human’s life.
Kaiyer was suddenly in front of Juilytian and he ripped Ilttaia’s sword across her own lover’s neck, lopping off his head before he could land the killing blow on the fallen human. Then he threw the two-handed sword to his side like a spear, it traveled almost forty feet and pierced the back of another of my warriors who was poised to take Gorbanni off of his horse.
“How is this even possible?” Relyara’s voice shook with terror and I could smell the bitter vegetable scent of fear radiating from her. “He wasn’t even standing next to Juilytian. He was almost fifty feet away. How did he cover that distance so quickly? Does he possess magic we don’t know of?”
I could only shake my head in response. Kaiyer had pulled the spear out of his guard’s side and fended off half a dozen of Ilttaia’s warriors. They were frantic now, desperate to avenge their leader, and I knew that Kaiyer would soon fall. Sure enough, Gorbanni and his last guard were taken off of their horses and a cheer went up amongst the remaining forces of Ilttaia’s troops. Kaiyer would not be able to defend himself and two others at the same time. I looked back at the front lines and saw that the rest of the human ram cavalry was still tied up with the first row of Elven pike warriors. It would be five more minutes until they made it to their commander and by then he would be dead and Kaiyer captured.
Then I saw the flank.
Shlara’s forces pulled away and seemed to retreat. I guessed it was a feint and I raised my command flag for my brother’s troops to hold position. If we fell out of place now or gave chase to Shlara’s dragon-armored warriors, we would risk her moving to outmaneuver that shoulder and piercing our ranks.
“She is pushing down the middle,” Relyara stated the obvious. For a few precious seconds I shook my head at the foolishness of the woman. Gorbanni’s troops were already there and the melee was extremely tight. Suddenly, Gorbanni’s cavalry disengaged and pulled back from the front line of pikes. The horses sprinted to the side and Shlara’s dragon-armored warriors pulled out their long bows.
“Fuck.” I wanted to scream as thousands of arrows ripped into my shieldless pike rows. Gorbanni’s cavalry never meant to penetrate the main force. They had just been a distraction so that I would set up my lines incorrectly.
I debated my options for troop rotation and came up with no answer. It would take too long for Grednil’s warriors to pivot around and face Shlara. I could pull Fusik’s cavalry in to plow over Shlara’s troops, but I guessed the human bitch had considered that play; Gorbanni’s remaining horses had fallen back and shifted toward the side there. If Fusik left Nyarathe’s army unprotected, they could be destroyed by the humans.
I did a quick count of Ilttaia’s troops. Despite the destruction that Kaiyer had personally wrought, only a fourth of the ground forces were dead. The skull-armored man continued to murder my kin from behind the ranks. How soon would he be captured? Two more minutes? Five more? Every second he was standing drained strength from the morale of my ground forces and gave Shlara a chance to penetrate the ranks and guard him.
“Sound the retreat!” The words tasted horrible in my mouth. I raised the flag and the couriers quickly mirrored it with their own. Horns blared from each segment of my army and my soldiers began their careful move backward.
Shlara’s forces pushed harder once they heard our signal and I saw the bitch push forward to join Kaiyer’s side. For a brief second I toyed with the idea of using magic to attack her from my position on top of the command platform. My magic would be easy to see coming and I had no doubt that she would evade the attack. It would accomplish nothing but revealing my position to Kaiyer and his general.
“Let us fly.” I jumped off of the platform and landed on my horse. My guards were ready, and as soon as Relyara joined me on her own steed we kicked them into a sprint.
Neither of us spoke for the next fifteen minutes. My mind mulled over what I had done wrong and what I could improve upon in the next battle. Unfortunately, I doubted that I would ever have an opportunity like this again. We had Kaiyer alone, in the thick of my army, and we still could not capture him.
A dark idea poured into my head. It was surely an act of desperation and I was not even sure if it was possible. But things were desperate. I could not beat Kaiyer. He was too powerful and his forces too capable. My people were on the verge of extinction and we probably only had a handful of battles left in us before the end.
I was to blame for all of this.
I had sparked Kaiyer’s hatred and quest for revenge when I killed his family. I stayed behind when search parties looked for him and the other escaped slaves. I ran and hid for years while he built up his people and destroyed mine. I could have remained with my tribe, leading their army and crushing the humans when they were still small in number and inexperienced in battle. If I had done what the tribes requested and mated when they wanted me to, I could have produced powerful offspring by now who would be helping me win this war. I could have been the hope for our race I was born to be.
“What are you going to do, Iolarathe?” Relyara finally voiced the question. The battlefield was many miles behind us now and the guards led me to the army’s fallback location.
“I am going to speak with the dragons,” I said.
Chapter 31-The O’Baarni
“I don’t know how it works. My sister studied these devices, but I never cared to. Now I wish I had paid attention when she wanted to explain them to me.” Her fingers formed beautiful lines on the parchment with the quill pen.
“It only allowed her to go through?” I wrote back. Footsteps sounded down the hall past the room Iolarathe and I shared. We paused our movements and then resumed when the steps continued down the hallway and into another room.
“The Ovule only had enough power for one use. I convinced her to go without me,” she wrote. We had been planning the infiltration of Malek’s estate for the entirety of the night, and while I had asked the beautiful Elven woman for more details about my daughter, she declined to explain until we had completed our plans.
“These Radicles lead to other worlds? Are they just like this one?” I hated that she refused to speak, but I understood her caution. I didn’t know if any of my generals were hunting for us, but if they were, there would be searches at all the inns of the city.
“They all have land, forests, oceans, and can support life. The Gods made them for us,” she wrote.
“If our daughter is on one of these other worlds, will she be able to survive?” My hands shook when I wrote the words. I wanted to know everything about the girl, but I knew that too many focused questions about our child would just make Iolarathe frustrated and switch the topic back to getting the Ovule from Malek’s home.
“She is more than capable of taking care of herself,” she wrote, but frowned slightly. “That isn’t the issue. She isn’t on the world yet. She is stuck in between.”
“How?”
“She went into the Radicle alone with the guardian. The old fucker heard us arguing and she managed to convince him that this was the safest way.” She ran her nails down the edge of the table and it made a painful screech. She stopped as soon as the wood cried out and sighed softly.
“How is this safer?”
“The guardian told me how to pull her into the other world, but I need this Ovule. She didn’t want to go on without me and I couldn’t keep her on this world.”
“Because of me?” Ice formed in my stomach. Was Iolarathe worried that I would kill our own child like I had her kin?
She shook her head and a small shadow of a smile spread across her lips. “I thought you were dead all these years, Kaiyer.” Iolarathe’s smile grew from the shadow and my chest filled with warmth. “She told me you weren’t dead, but I never believed her.”
“Why did she have to leave this world? What is her name?” I had asked the last question before,
but she would not answer.
“There are creatures on this world far more dangerous than your people. I will explain once we have the Ovule.” She finished writing and I shook my head with a soft sigh. I needed to sleep, but the electrifying closeness of Iolarathe had every part of my body dancing with joy.
“You are tired,” she wrote on the parchment.
“Now is not the time to rest. Once we are on the Sea Dog and a few hundred miles out on the ocean, I will relax,” I scribbled.
“I am confident in our plan. As long as your people aren’t expecting us to risk stealing the globe from Malek’s estate, we should be safe.” I nodded in agreement.
My joints creaked when I stood and I realized we had been sitting at the table for far too long. It was a half an hour after I normally took my meal. If I waited any longer, we risked the innkeeper Tuirp coming up here to check on me. I gestured to my mouth and raised an eyebrow. She nodded, and I quietly opened the door to the room and slid into the hallway. I hated to leave her. I felt it like a physical ache.
“Late to bed means late to rise eh, Neas?” Tuirp greeted me when I entered the common room of the inn. A few other patrons were finishing up their meal, but most of the tables were empty.
“Wise words, friend. I did have that late night, if you recall.” I smiled at the man, while in my head I wondered if I would need to kill him now that he had remembered the alias I had given him earlier.
I was probably just being paranoid.
“Most have gone to work. You heading to the smithy? Which one did you say you worked at?” He pointed to a giant pot of eggs and I nodded. His questions confirmed my paranoia and I began to think through the most discrete ways to end his life.
The Destroyer Book 4 Page 36
