“She’s not answering,” he said.
Kyra grimaced, her brow furrowing. Beside her, however, Avans cracked a grim smile.
“Well, you can hardly expect her to stick around,” he said. “Doubt she expected you back. I’m sure she found somewhere safe.”
“Right,” Elias said. He eyed the door a final time before abandoning it. “You’re probably right. We’ll, uh, we’ll check Kyra’s next.”
“I can manage on my own,” she said. “It’s not far and you need to find Offert. That’s more important.”
“I… I suppose,” Elias said. Linn’s absence had flustered him more than he anticipated. “If you’re certain.”
“I’m certain,” Kyra said. Forcing a grin, she stepped forward and pulled him into a tight embrace. The gesture was firm but fleeting. And, as she pulled back, she kissed him warmly on the cheek. “Thank you, Elias. Stay safe.”
“You… you too,” he said. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Kyra was gone, racing down the street toward her own home. Like Elias, Avans watched her go, albeit with a slightly sour expression.
“I’ll stay safe too,” he called wryly.
It was actually Rhona who spurred them back into action. Stepping forward to fill the gap Kyra had left, the Gwydas took Elias by the hand and squeezed it.
“Come,” she urged him. “We go now.”
Elias nodded.
The road to the Governor-General’s palace was somewhat longer than the one that had brought them to Elias’ home but it felt to him as though they’d run for an hour before reaching it. The homes and shops they passed along the way were larger and rather more densely packed than the ones they’d seen before, but that only exacerbated the crowd of citizens lining the streets. Many had begun to retreat. They weren’t fleeing openly, but they were clearly not content to remain so near to both the seat of power and the barricades. The sounds of conflict had grown louder now and distinct enough for Elias to pick out individual screams. The fact that he couldn’t tell which came from the wounded and which were bellows of anger and determination made the noise all the more hellish.
Unlike the rest of the city, there were numerous guards stationed at the palace gates. There were at least a dozen that Elias could see, plus several more waiting nearer the palace itself. Their officer took one look at Elias, glanced passed him to the hooded trow, and barked an order. Immediately, the host drew swords and those with spears leveled them.
“Wait, wait!” Elias called. Lifting his empty hands, he trotted forward. The sentries here were men, not boys, and he knew better than the try and bully his way past them. “Who’s in command here?”
The officer eyed him warily and did no lower his sword. Instead, he rested it against his gleaming, steel pauldron and took a cautious step forward.
“I’m Lieutenant Hayes,” he said brusquely.
“Elias Ansiri.” He spotted a glimmer of recognition in the lieutenant’s eye and so dispensed with his planned explanation. “I need to speak with Offert. Is he here?”
“No,” said the lieutenant softly. He nodded in the direction of the cacophonous battle. “Governor-General is commanding directly.”
“What about Vaalen?”
Again came the nod. “Last I heard, the Sheriff was there too.”
“Thank you,” Elias said. He fought the urge to curse as he turned and hurried back to where the others stood waiting. Truthfully, he wasn’t positive why it felt so important to find Offert personally. He didn’t care much for the man and it wasn’t as though the news he brought would affect the battle at hand. But committing himself to Islesmark’s defense without explaining things to someone felt too dangerous. If he fell without passing on the information he’d acquired, any counter-offensive might well march straight into Tereus’ ambush. Avans or Kyra might be able to convey the same facts, but would they be enough to convince Offert? Besides, as much as he trusted the both of them, he couldn’t be certain that they alone would be able to protect Gilla, Rhona, and the rest.
It had to be him.
“Offert and Vaalen are fighting,” he explained. The trow shuffled forward to form a half-circle and watched him, despite the fact that Elias doubted most could understand him. “We need to find at least one of them.”
“Why?” Avans asked, folding his arms. “Why not wait until the battle is over?”
“We need to let them know what we’ve discovered about Tereus, Nessun, and all that,” he explained.
“We’re not going to make much of a difference,” Avans countered. “So why not wait? If we die, who’s going to tell Offert?”
“Kira will. Besides, it’s important that the elves see us fighting alongside trow. They’ll assume there are more of them. It might be enough to break their morale.”
Gilla stiffened, her expression darkening.
“You said nothing about this before,” she said. “If the elves flee, they will inform Tereus. He will assume my people fight against him.”
“Don’t they?” Elias asked. He stared at her. “Could he treat them any worse than he already does?”
Gilla stared back at him for a moment, eyes burning with indignation. Then she sighed.
“No,” she said. “You are right. It changes nothing. And I did promise to kill elves.”
Elias smiled grimly.
“Then let’s go do that,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The sounds of chaos, death, and conflict grew more intense the nearer they drew to the unbarricaded boulevards where Offert and his soldiers had funneled the elves. The further they went, the emptier the streets became, their former occupants long having since fled. As such, there was nobody to slow their progress and the first souls Elias espied set his heart to pounding.
It was impossible to tell precisely how deep the human ranks were, but they stood shoulder-to-shoulder for the entire breadth of the street. There must have been hundreds of them, perhaps even a thousand, but the individuals blurred together into a heaving mass of roaring humanity. The few exceptions were archers. Three or four dozen of them crouched on rooftops and in upper story windows, rising or leaning just long enough to loose an arrow at the unseen foes before darting back into cover.
To the rear of the lines, a handful of officers shouted orders as they paced the street. Nearby, a wagon lay on its side and an officer balanced atop it. He crouched behind a shield that sported enough bolts to fill a quiver. In response to some tactic or ploy which Elias could not see, the man ducked and shouted something which sent one of his aides sprinting down an alley to the north.
Gesturing to the others, who stopped in their tracks, Elias hurried forward. One of the wagon-based man’s subordinates spotted him almost immediately and moved to intercept him.
“What are you doing?” the man barked. The silver studs on his breastplate identified him as a junior lieutenant. “Get out of here! We don’t have time to deal—”
“Where’s Offert?” Elias interrupted. He had to shout to make himself heard. “I need to speak with him.”
For a moment, the red-faced lieutenant looked ready to strike him, or at least argue. Then, as the chorus of voices swelled, he glanced back at the shifting, perhaps faltering ranks. Impatiently, without a word, he gestured northward at the same alley the runner had taken seconds earlier, and raced back toward the overturned wagon.
Elias turned and gestured for the others to follow. They sprinted toward him and he waited a few seconds for them to catch up before heading down the alley himself.
The adjacent street was, if anything, even larger and more chaotic than the first. The ranks that filled it stretched at least a hundred men wide and they ebbed and flowed like waves as the tide of battle shifted moment by moment. The sight was so distracting, and alarming, that it took Elias a few seconds to tear his gaze away long enough search for Offert. Fortunately, he didn’t have to look for long.
The Governor-General stood
in a circle of advisors, officers, and personal guards. There must have been two dozen men in all and most were shouting, struggling to make themselves heard over the din. From the look of things, Offert was doing his best to maintain a semblance of order, but the man’s scowl and harsh gestures fell on deaf or uncaring ears.
It wasn’t until Elias was nearly among them that the first of Offert’s petitioners spotted him. The man froze, his mouth still ajar, and nudged the man next to him with an elbow. The next man fell silent as well, then the next, and so on until nearly the entire circle was staring at him. Offert was among the last to turn and the man’s surprise would have made Elias laugh under different circumstances.
“Governor-General,” Elias said loudly. “We need to talk.”
His words broke the spell and Offert’s face hardened back into a scowl. “Later, Ansiri,” he snapped. “As you can see, I’m a little busy.”
“I’ve brought allies.”
Offert spun, brows climbing. They fell a second later as his gaze landed on the hooded trow at Elias’ back. Scoffing derisively, he turned back to his advisors.
“Wonderful,” the Governor-General sneered. “I’m sure a dozen—”
A chorus of loudening screams was the only warning. Elias whirled, reached for his sword, and managed it halfway from its scabbard when the left flank collapsed. The men didn’t flee. They weren’t pushed back by an insurmountable tide of elven bodies. One moment they were standing there, fighting, bleeding, and dying, and the next, they were blown backward with a noise like the cracking of a whip high in the heavens. The men forming the rearmost ranks staggered and fell but it was the men at the front who fared worse. Dozens flew through the air like windswept leaves, weapons torn from their hands, and landed hard atop allies or cobblestones with a sickening crunch of bones and armors.
The resemblance was unmistakable and Elias swallowed hard as he scanned for the ambrosian. There wasn’t one. Instead, he saw the elves.
The blessed elf was easy to spot, despite the fact that he wore the same armor and tunic as the rest. His hands glowed like Cotora’s had, bright as the sun and equally painful to look at. The only difference was the color; rather than an eerie blue, the elf’s palms glowed a golden-orange as if he carried enormous coals fresh-plucked from the fire.
Elias stared at him, frozen in place. And for just an instant, he felt as though the elf was staring back at him. Then, the elves around him charged and both the tymis and his hands vanished among a tide of charging bodies.
“Shit,” Elias growled. Drawing his sword, he rushed forward to fill the gap.
He’d gone less than a dozen paces when the elven archers appeared. There weren’t many of them, only three or four lurking in the shadow of the corner building, filling a gap between the charging elves and the stunned defenders trying to rise from the ground. But Elias felt their presence as if he’d been dunked in icy water. And when they turned their bows in his direction, he nearly forgot how to move his legs. If his bladder hadn’t already been empty, he would have pissed himself right then and there.
The archers loosed in unison and Elias ducked, despite himself. He felt the breeze of the arrows as they passed and it took him two whole breaths to realize he hadn’t been struck. Straightening, he resumed his charge.
He didn’t make it in time. Most of the toppled soldiers recovered before he could reach them, gathered together in clumsy, undisciplined ranks, and surged forward to recover the ground they’d lost. They left a multitude of bodies in the wake, wounded soldiers who wailed as they clutched and clawed at splintered limbs, but the gap closed fully by the time Elias arrived. He paced for a few seconds, waiting to see if the opening would reappear. Then, when it did not, he turned back.
To his surprise, Gilla and Avans were so close he could have reached out and touched them. The rest of the trow had come to his defense as well. Even Rhona was there, though her face was pale and she clutched her cloak as she stared down at the wounded men around her feet.
“Thanks,” Elias said, patting Avans on the arm. The noise of battle was far too great, but he assumed the man would understand. Gilla, however, was another story. “Can you heal them?”
Gilla frowned and cocked her head in confusion. Grimacing, Elias indicated his legs, her lips, and then the multitude of casualties. Eyes widening with sudden comprehension, she turned and eyed the men skeptically. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why; there were quite a few.
She opened her mouth to answer him—not that he would have been able to hear her words—but Elias was no longer looking at her. He stared past her, at Offert, and a great pit opened up in his stomach at the sight.
The Governor-General lay on the cobblestones, staring in disbelief at the arrow embedded deeply in his thigh. The bolt had pierced his armor. And, judging by the frantic activity of his guards as they pushed his adjutants aside, the wound was not a trivial one.
Elias didn’t hesitate. Seizing Gilla by the elbow, he spun her around and half-dragged, half-urged her toward the wounded Offert. The others followed at a distance, glancing nervously between the Governor-General’s coterie and the wavering ranks of ordinary soldiers.
At first, nobody tried to stop them. The shock of Offert’s injury had frozen most of the man’s advisors in place and they slipped past his harried guards with ease. It wasn’t until they knelt beside him that one of the men noticed and leapt to intercede.
“Back! Get back!” the man yelled, grabbing Elias by the shoulder and bodying him aside.
“Off—the fuck off!” Elias snarled, twisting free of the man’s grip. A second guard moved to join the first. Cursing again, Elias lifted his sword with one hand and gestured furiously at Gilla with the other. “Stop, damn it! She can heal him!”
The men hesitated, their eyes darting urgently from Elias, to Gilla, and then to Offert. When no orders were forthcoming, one of the pair gave a fitful, shaky nod.
Turning back to Offert, Elias dropped to his knee at the Governor-General’s side. Offert’s face was a bizarre patchwork of deathly pale and angry red but it was easy to see why. Jaw locked, the man sucked in great, hissing breaths through his teeth.
“Thought I told you I was busy, Ansiri,” Offert growled.
It was the most likeable the man had ever been. Elias grinned despite himself.
“Can’t have you dying here,” he shot back. “You still owe me the Legion.”
Throwing back his head, Offert groaned to the sky. Elias glanced at Gilla just as the trow snapped the arrow in two. Again, Offert cried out. This time, it was more of a strangled scream.
“Can you do it?” he asked.
Gilla nodded distractedly. Tearing open Offert’s trousers just above the knee, she thrust her hand into the gap and carefully maneuvered the man’s leg into position.
“The arrow—the head came out the other side,” she announced. “I need to remove it before I heal.”
“What can I do?”
“Hold him down. This will hurt.”
Elias cringed but did as instructed. Grasping the Offert’s shoulders, he pressed the man firmly to the ground. He didn’t resist though, to Elias’ surprise, Offert seized a fistful of his shirt and stared daggers.
“Fucking do it,” the Governor-General spat.
Flecks of spittle peppered Elias’ face but he had no time to be disgusted. Offert gasped a shallow breath and went rigid. His back arched violently and it took all of Elias’ strength simply to keep the man from thrashing. He heard the man’s boots—one of them at least—kicking desperately against the cobblestones. And far softer, he heard the quiet scrape of wood-on-metal, and then wood-on-flesh.
“Al no echar,” Gilla said. She shouldered Elias aside, slipped an arm beneath Offert’s neck, and hauled him up into a sitting position. Then, one hand still firmly planted on his wounded leg, she pressed her lips to his.
Protests and murmurs erupted around them and Elias glanced up to real
ize they were not alone. Offert’s guards and adjutants kept their distance but were clustered tightly around them. Most stared down in a mixture of confusion, alarm, and suspicion. But, thankfully, no one tried to interfere.
Exhaling slowly, Gilla pulled back. Her eyes remained closed, her lips moving with unheard whispers as she repeated the prayer in an endless refrain. It didn’t last long, no more than half a minute, but the men surrounding them had grown impatient and fidgety by the time she finally reopened her eyes.
“He’ll live,” she declared, pulling her hand from the hole she’d torn in the man’s trousers. Her fingers and palm were coated in blood.
One of the guards stepped forward and reached for Gilla. Before Elias could react, however, Offert grunted a denial and the man froze. Frowning, the Governor-General tested his leg. Then, to a chorus of astonished whispers, he climbed unsteadily to his feet.
Elias rose as well and offered Gilla his hand. She accepted it with the less bloody of her own and stood, only marginally steadier than her than Offert had.
“Thank you,” the man said. His words were terse, clipped, and far more begrudging than Elias would have preferred, but it was something.
“Sir,” interrupted one of the men nearby. “Captain Holmes is requesting—”
Offert silenced the man with a wave. “You handle it, Captain,” he said. Turning to Elias, he gave a reluctant, prompting nod. “Very well, Ambassador. I’ll hear you out—but make it fast.”
Bowing slightly, Elias did just that.
Chapter Thirty
Elias did his best to be brief but the sheer volume of information he wanted to convey made that difficult. So, rather than try and recount his experiences in some sort of chronological fashion, he focused instead on the most pertinent issues.
“I’ll provide a full report later,” he said. “But Tereus is alive and ruling the elven capital. He’s been preparing this army for quite some time, perhaps even before I left Islesmark. But it’s not the only one. A second army left Dan Tien a few days ago, heading northwest.”
Ambassador (Conqueror of Isles Book 1) Page 24
