“Well said,” agreed Tomkin, who was in no real hurry to honor his commitment to aid the Kindred.
“Gronig will fall,” said Corbin.
“Maybe,” said Brand. “But I’ve seen the town and I’ve seen the Earthlight. Their defenses make Riverton and Hamlet look weak in comparison. The Kindred are stronger than the River Folk,” he said.
Not liking the taste of his words, many there began to argue. No officer liked to hear any mention of weakness.
“No, no, let the truth be spoken,” said Brand, holding his hands up for quiet. “We’ve added new recruits, but the Kindred have always had double or triple our numbers. We will come to their aid as promised, but I’ll not dash my forces into some trap to speed up our arrival by a single day. Just as I won’t force-march through the Deepwood all tonight, I’ll keep my army in a single piece. The Kindred will have to see to their own defense for another day.”
Brand stood up suddenly. He left the tent, and everyone else soon figured out the meeting had been adjourned. Corbin followed him.
“It’s not like you, cousin,” said Corbin when the others were out of earshot. “What happened to the battle-lusting killer I witnessed at the merling village?”
“Fortunately,” said Brand, “I’ve got my wits about me right now. Listen, Corbin.”
The two men stopped and they leaned closer, not wanting the troops around them to pass on their every word.
Corbin put up his hand in a warding off gesture. “I’m sorry if I annoyed you by arguing. I suppose I should have asked you in private about my plans.”
Brand shook his head. “I don’t care about that. I don’t mind if you argue with me in a command meeting, as long as you support my final decision. What I want you to think about is the importance of this army to the Haven. We can’t lose this force. The troops you see here represent most of what stands between all our folk and a dozen enemies.”
Corbin nodded slowly, looking around at the troops who threw dice and ate hardtack biscuits by firelight. He looked at Brand with a new expression. “I begin to understand you better. When in battle, you are ferocious and aggressive. But strategically, when moving about your forces, you are cautious. It’s an interesting combination.”
The statement sounded so much like Corbin, so analytical, that Brand smiled at his cousin and clapped his stout back. “Good to have you with me, cousin. I’m going to get some sleep now, and I suggest you do the same.”
Much later, in the final hour of the night before dawn broke, Brand was startled awake. He flashed out his axe without hesitation. Shaking the sleep from his eyes, he blinked at Tomkin, who hopped away in concern.
Brand’s brow furrowed. What had the manling been up to? Had he dropped seeds into his nostrils again? Had he tugged at his fresh growth of beard? Ambros pulsed, and he kept it upraised.
“Tomkin? Why are you messing about?”
Tomkin hopped down from the peak of his tent, where he had taken refuge. Brand lowered his axe slowly, forcing himself to take deep breaths.
“News, Lord Rabing,” said Tomkin. He performed a mocking bow.
Brand let his axe drop all the way down to his side. Of all the folk in his army, Tomkin was possibly the only one who still had the guts to toy with him. He had to force himself to keep the axe lowered. The Amber Jewel still throbbed, like a growling dog at its master’s feet.
“Speak,” he said, swaying slightly. He was still half-asleep. There had been a terrible dream, he recalled vaguely. Creatures of marching bones had crossed the Berrywine by walking upon the river bottom. Could such nightmares have a basis in reality? He almost shuddered to think it, despite the courage provided by the axe.
“Word has come from the front. My scouts have returned. The news is not good.”
“Yes, tell me.”
“The Kindred town of Gronig is broken and burning. The Kindred shoot flaming weapons, raining sparks down upon the elves and their own townspeople indiscriminately. The elves are advancing into the mountains to stop the bombardment.”
“What? Are we to miss the battle then?”
“Possibly,” said Tomkin with a shrug.
Brand growled with frustration. It took a fantastic effort to put away the axe again. After he managed it, he sat down upon a bench, sweating.
With typical nonchalance, Tomkin took up a comfortable stance atop a small folding table. As the commander, Brand’s tent boasted amenities that no one else had.
“Are you addled with sleep?” asked Tomkin after a few moments.
“I’m thinking, dammit,” growled Brand.
“None too clearly, I’d wager.”
Brand closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. He wondered that he rarely took swipes at Tomkin with the axe. His tiny friend could be thoroughly irritating at times. He called for the guard who was stationed outside his tent and the man poked his head in immediately.
“Get me some broadleaf coffee,” Brand snapped. “Hot coffee.”
After the guard hurried off, he stood up and began dressing. He would have to get the army moving early.
He turned to Tomkin, who yawned mockingly. The manling’s thin fingers tapped his lips.
“We are breaking camp, and we will march. We will move out at dawn’s first light. We will not stop marching until we reach Gronig.”
Tomkin snapped a shoddy salute and hopped outside into the chill air. The guard who now hurried back toward the tent was startled and ducked as Tomkin bounded cleanly over his head. Tomkin slapped the top of his helmet with both hands and whooped.
The guard nearly dropped the steamy mug of broadleaf coffee he carried.
Chapter Nineteen
The Starbreak Fells
There were seven major tunnels that led from the Earthlight down into the Everdark. Five of them were blocked with huge plugs of burnt stone laced with iron. The sixth was the magma pool beyond the Great Vents, by this route Fafnir had entered and attacked the Kindred months ago. A seventh, lesser known path existed inside the cone of fire, into which the Kindred regularly tilted the bodies of their fallen.
Accordingly, Gudrin had set one of her precious few golems on guard at each of the five major plugs, skipping only the magma chamber and the cone of fire. Kobolds and even gnomes were not immune to the effects of lava. She felt it unlikely that an attack would come that way, from the fiery pits themselves.
Many smaller routes existed as well. These were usually no larger around than a Kindred was tall, but with enough time an invading force might manage to use them to great effect, gathering a host upon the floor of the underground chasm without the Kindred realizing they were there until they were ready to attack. At each known minor tunnel, she stationed a bored trio of Kindred. Two of each trio were to stay awake and watchful at all times, while the third rested.
And so it was that while the great bombards arced fire across the skies outside the Earthlight, inside things were quiet and even dull. Stationed as they were, each trio of Kindred at the tunnel mouths had no knowledge of the battle that raged outside in Gronig and upon the shoulders of the Black Mountains. Instead, they rolled dice and muttered in their beards of less frightful times.
At the low ebb of the night, just before the Great Vents were tipped open slowly to reveal the red light of the world’s core—what served the Kindred as “dawn” in their underground world—the attack from below finally began.
First to begin the assault were the stealthiest of kobolds. Small, wiry things with arms like broomsticks and eyes like fireflies, they crept up the black tunnels. A dozen or more snaked their bodies forward, a painted-black dagger in every mouth. In some cases, the guards were distracted, playing their dice and yawning. In a few, they had even nodded off. But in most cases, they were detected before they could sidle close enough to strike with their deathly weapons, made by the elves and distributed for this very moment.
All over the great chasm, unknown to the sleeping Kindred citizens and the red-eyed sleepless commanders
as well, more than a dozen desperate struggles erupted. Daggers snaked forth from shadows and bit deeply. Dead on their feet but roaring anyway, Kindred launched themselves awake and fought with savage tenacity. In most of the fights the guards, surprised and sleepy, were overwhelmed and eventually brought down. In a few isolated spots, the kobolds were defeated and the last Kindred guards tottered away from the carnage, blood running from a dozen wounds, to sound the alarm.
All of these miraculous survivors carried within their bodies several dagger points, however, each of which wormed its way with agonizing, unnatural movement toward their vitals. All save one of them died on the way to the nearest guard post.
The last, a young female named Anna, reached her destination. Behind her, a trail of dark drops lay in the dust of the cavern floor. She had taken a slash to the throat, and was unable to speak, but reached her guard post. She pushed past the oak doors and crawled to the gong. A dozen strong hands lifted her, and many gasped to discover their fingers were sticky with blood.
“Anna? Is it the kobolds?” demanded her commander, but she was beyond answering him. She struggled with the hands holding her aloft and they gently let her go. She limped, almost crawled, to the gong that lay in the center of the post. Half-mad with pain and exhaustion, she beat the gong with her fists. The others tried to help her, but she beat the gong for a full minute until she slumped down, stone dead.
All eyes went to the commander. “Fire the beacon,” he ordered. Several hastened to obey.
Up atop the Great Gate, the queen remained at her headquarters. She slept upon a couch they’d dragged up to the battlements for the express purpose. When the chamberlain awakened her and told her a beacon had come alight on the floor of the cavern, far to the west, she sat up and nodded.
“It has begun.”
“Surely milady, the kobolds don’t have the strength nor the stomach to assault the Earthlight in force. We will slaughter them.”
“They can, they will and in fact they already have, I’d wager,” said Gudrin, struggling into her boots. “Order out a single crawler to each of the great plugs, with a company of troops behind it.”
The chamberlain sputtered. “But milady, the attack has come from the tunnels, not the great plugs.”
Gudrin turned around and slapped the fool. She glared into his startled eyes. He was too surprised to be angry. “We are not facing a single attack, a single enemy or a single army. We are facing a dozen armies, perhaps. The elves and merlings should not have the guts to attack us either, but they do. Why? Because they are not alone. If they were alone, we would slay them easily. But Oberon is no fool. He would not launch this attack without having the forces necessary to win. We must assume he does. Now, get out and send a crawler to each of the plugs before I blast you!”
He hurried off to do her bidding. She called for her attendants and breakfast. She would eat quickly and well, as she suspected it would be a very long day indeed.
* * *
Oberon and his forces left Gronig behind them and mounted the steep cobbled road that led up to the ridge where the bombards belched fire in an endless series of slow volleys. The run from the skirts of the smoldering town to the foot of the mountains was the worst part of it. In the open, there was no defense from the flying shot from above other than speed and luck. The black-hearted Kindred commander knew it too, and immediately trained the bombards on the land between the town and the roadway. Terrifying splashes of fire erupted. Elves, merlings and great gouts of green, grassy earth rocketed skyward wherever the shot happened to fall. Far from precise in their aim, firing into a mass of struggling troops was a perfect situation for the bombards.
Oberon sensed, rather than was told, that the merling forces were near to breaking again. If a panic set in, he would be forced to either order his elves to cut down the deserters or to let them go, and neither solution was satisfactory.
They had not signed on for this sort of abuse, he knew. He had given them sweet words, promises of Kindred wealth untold in the looting of the fabled underground city. Instead, they were miles from the Great Gates and were already taking grievous losses.
Accordingly, he ordered his own troops to take up the lead with lances that shimmered at their tips. The order wasn’t received well, but it was obeyed. After seeing the elves with fluttering cloaks striding ahead of them, the merlings hastened to follow. Perhaps, they believed, they were being led to an escape route, rather than into the teeth of the bombards.
Once the army reached the cobbled path that wound up the mountainside, they were relatively safe, as the bombards could not easily be angled to strike the road. When they reached the top, however, Oberon knew that doom awaited many of them. If the bombards fired into their charging column, backed by a Kindred host, many if not most of the attackers would perish. There would be no escape up upon the ridge. On either side a cliff dropped away into the fells, forward would lie the enemy, rearward would be the pushing mass of more charging, screaming troops. It would be a struggle to the death up there.
Oberon ran with the rest. Merlings croaked and slapped their great flapping feet beside him, elves loped with easy grace. Everyone carried weapons, many of which glimmered with ensorcellment, but not all. Quite a few of the magic weapons he’d spent months crafting in the Great Erm had already been used upon one Kindred corpse or another. Their tips, rather than shimmering, were burnt to a smoky gray and blunted.
When he reached the top of the ridge, he realized he’d made a mistake. The enemy had not stood their ground. As soon as the elves had reached the roadway, the enemy had fled. He cursed volubly. Shouting orders that were largely stolen by the stiff cold winds, he ordered his archers to take the van.
They should easily be able to outrun the enemy, burdened as they were with the fantastic weight of their bombards. He did not want them to reach the safety of Snowdon with those weapons intact.
By late afternoon, they’d reached the top of the ridge which was perhaps twenty meters wide. The troops pursued eagerly now, sensing revenge would be theirs for hundreds of lost comrades.
In the distance he saw the escaping bombards. They rumbled along the ridge, stone wheels crunching the cobbles. Kindred heaved at the rear of each deadly contraption, trying to push them faster, while ahead Kindred dragged long chains, roaring as the hauled upon them.
The elves advanced into a region known as the Starbreak Fells, where to either side twin cliffs dropped away into a jamble of broken, jagged rock. Soon, running fast and lightly, Oberon’s archers led the pack. They gained ground upon the fleeing Kindred and could see their chainmail up ahead, flashing in the sunlight. As he watched, a group of them detached and stood their ground with shields upraised. Behind every shield crouched not one Kindred but two. The second was a scout with a crossbow.
Oberon nodded as he watched the formation gather. They would sell their lives dearly, giving the bombards more time to escape. He screamed for his forces to charge, to overrun the enemy.
A hundred bowstrings snapped. A hundred arrows with deadly black tips flew truly and sank into shields, armor, and occasionally the flesh of a screaming Kindred victim. A lighter shower of crossbow bolts pelted them in return, doing far more damage. His army, particularly the merlings, had little in the way of armor that could stop a Kindred crossbow bolt. Dozens fell keening and writhing. Some toppled off the ridge and slid downward into the waiting stony teeth of the Starbreak Fells.
The charge went on for what seemed like a very long time. Volley after volley was released by both sides, but the crossbow volleys came much more slowly. The Kindred line held patiently, seemingly unaffected by the elf archery. It was as if they shot their arrows into living stone.
And then, suddenly, the rolling mass of troops reached the enemy line and they were among the Kindred. Oberon’s column of lancers and croaking merlings broke over the Kindred like a wave striking a rocky shoal. The fight was vicious and short, but not short enough. They were delayed.
When finally the last of the hard-dying Kindred was pushed off the cliffs down into the rocky fells, his red cloak fluttering as he dropped, Oberon felt a flash of admiration for them. Two dozen of them lay hacked apart at his feet, along with an equal number of elf lancers and a full company of merlings. Not a single one of the enemy had wavered for a single moment. Not one trooper had begged for mercy, jumped over the side, or turned to hopelessly flee. Each of them had fought with grim tenacity, teeth bared, eyes wild. Although he was not easily capable of the emotion, he felt a touch of melancholy at the passing of such heroic fighters.
A ragged cheer went up from Oberon’s troops at this small victory, and they were ready to surge forward. He took the time, however, to stir up a monster from the remains of the fallen enemy. The bloodhound lapped at his feet, its tongue darting with impossible rapidity. Its eyes glowed with a redness that spoke of madness and death.
A new abomination arose, fully a dozen feet tall and with twice as many twitching limbs. It stood unsteadily and tottered upon the ridge before him. He launched it into a lurching charge toward the next knot of Kindred defenders. He ordered his troops to follow behind the monster, in the wake of its shambling run.
Up ahead, the next suicidal knot of Kindred waited for them stoically. He had no doubt they would delay him as had the first group. Oberon smiled grimly. His abomination might speed up the matter. At the very least, it would absorb the deadly crossbow fire. He would let the next volleys of Kindred crossbow bolts sink into his creation. The Kindred would be shooting into the very flesh of those who had once been their own comrades.
* * *
Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK Page 20
