“My King,” Naemyn interjected. “Allow me to walk with Traegon and Voll so that our two forces can separate peacefully.”
“Then go, Naemyn, but hurry back so you can escort Traelyn to safety.”
“I will return shortly.” Naemyn bowed and left.
Satisfied, Jaerick grabbed Traelyn’s hands and smiled. “You are so beautiful, I am so happy that you have not aged in all of this time. How did this happen?”
“It is not as it seems. There is something happening that I am not controlling. Your father sent me away and had me forget everything about you, but then, only recently, all of my memories returned, and I now am not sure why I hated you for so many years.”
“I missed you Traelyn. I looked for you for years, but could not find you, but then something happened and I forgot about you. It was as if you never existed. Now I have been dreaming about you. My dreams predicted this day. What is happening?”
“I think we are near the point where all of the prophecies will come true or change, but right now, I need to find answers to where my father is.”
“I agree, something beyond our control has brought us together again, and we may just be on the cusp of something enigmatic, but first we need to get out of here, all I want to do right now is take you back to safety and never let you go again.”
“That is fine, Jaerick, but I don’t want things to go back to the way they were. I have spent five lifetimes fighting you, and to be honest, I don’t think I can feel for you the way I did so many years ago.”
“I can live with that, but it wasn’t our fault that we were separated, it was my father, Naemyn and the Sorae that did that to us.”
“I know that Jaerick, but I am not certain as to what is happening here, and I am very old. I may not look it right now, but I fear it won’t last long, and I know you are not going to love the old, frail, and bitter woman that I really am.”
“Traelyn, I am not going to worry about that right now. What is important is that I have you back and I am going to take you home and keep you safe as my father promised so many years ago. We will find out together what is going on and we will make it work to our advantage.”
* * *
“Traegon!” Naemyn shouted when he caught up to him and Voll. “I need to talk to you before we leave.”
Traegon and Voll turned around. They were talking to their commanders under a thick grove of majestic pine trees and were just about ready to finalize their plans to retreat. The commanders had been red faced and upset as they had the elves beaten and wanted to finish them off. They wanted, no, they needed their victory that Commander Daegon had promised them. Their rage increased even more when Naemyn approached them, so much so that Naemyn felt the hate from their eyes searing into his soul.
“May I approach?” Naemyn asked, timidly genuflecting, emphasizing obedience with an over-exaggerated bow.
“Do so at your own peril,” Commander Urish said.
“It is ok,” Traegon said putting his hand on the shoulder of the commander.
“But keep your distance,” Voll said trying to keep his rage under control.
“This won’t take long,” Naemyn began. “I just need to tell you how imperative it is that you do not take your forces home.”
“What are you talking about?” Traegon asked, obviously very confused.
“Do you want to see your mother again?”
“What is this trickery? Do you see what they are doing? We beat them militarily and now they take advantage of us by taking our supreme leader as a hostage!” Commander Urish yelled in frustrated rage, and continued his rant, “This is your fault Traegon! Your father never would’ve let them live, he would’ve killed every single elf.”
“Naemyn, what is this, why are you doing this?” Traegon asked.
“I respect your commander, and he is right in thinking as such. It was foolish for you to stop the attack when you had your enemy pinned down.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Voll asked, equally as angered as Commander Urish. “You are merely insulting us for the weakness of our Great Mother.”
“He is setting us up for a trap,” Commander Urish said at the same time.
“No, I assure you, I am not setting up a trap or an ambush. I am telling you that you need to continue north with your force and continue with the attack.”
Everyone looked to Naemyn in shock and confusion.
“Why would you tell us this?” Traegon asked.
“Because our king is going to take your Great Mother away from you, and I alone cannot stop this.”
“Why would you not want that? Without our leader, you hold a great hostage, and have a powerful advantage that keeps us from attacking you, lest you kill her,” Voll added.
“You are correct in that assumption, but there is a bigger picture that you do not see, and one that I am not going to reveal to you. Just know this, you need to go after her, or else you will never see her again.”
“This is a trap,” Voll said, pleading with Traegon to see through the obvious deception.
“I assure you it is not a trap. However, the elves will not allow you to follow them, there will be a fight, but the question you need to ask yourselves is, whether or not you think the fight is worth it. Trap or not, you must press on. I will leave you three to discuss your fate. I will do nothing to learn of your plans. You must decide on your own. And now I will leave you to decide your fate.”
With that, Naemyn turned, raised his hood, and left, disappearing out of the thicket, leaving the three commanders shaking their heads in their uncertainty as to what had just happened.
“Do we attack as he said?” Traegon asked.
“It doesn’t make sense to do what our enemy tells us to do, even if it sounds traitorous on their part, but I don’t see where have much of a choice.” Commander Urish cautioned.
“Commander Daegon would jump on this opportunity and attack. In fact, I don’t think he would be too happy right now, if he knew that you let the Great Mother just walk away with the elves without trying to stop her. You should not have even brought her here Traegon,” Voll Reprimanded.
“What would you have me do? It was her decision to come here, and her own decision to leave with the elves. Even my father could not stop her from doing anything once she set her mind to it.”
The three of them looked north as if visualizing their forces moving forward and attacking the elves. The sun began to set over the western horizon, the tall-forested pines casting dark shadows upon the three men.
“We attack north,” Traegon said with shaky conviction.
Chapter 28
Aegyn flew over Castle Stone Elf a dozen times before she hit them with the first blast of fire. She knew that the elven beings were made from the same creation as she, and attacking them would be akin to attacking her own being. Her mother had often impressed upon her to shirk her impulse for curiosity, but more often than not, she could not ignore that impulse. Today was no exception. The elves and the humans were more active than normal, and more importantly, she spotted her friend Voll with the massive cluster of humans.
Humans and elves fighting amongst each other made her not only very apprehensive but excited as well. Oh, how she enjoyed a good fight. The humans for many years fought amongst each other in small clans, but lately they had joined forces and migrated north. Sometimes the elves and humans even fought each other, but never had she seen so many humans moving this far north, this had to be a precursor to a large fight, and she was not about to miss it.
All she had done was fly over the elven castle looking and waiting for some fighting to start. Many elven archers were massed atop the
castle’s battlements and many more elves were mustered in the yard just behind the gate mounted on horses, and even more in full battle armor were mulling around the yard behind them.
She then flew back to the humans to look at them and even to see if she could see Voll again, which she did, but he did not even look up at her. Many other humans saw her and scattered into the tree line. Then she flew back to the castle and that is when they attacked her. A large bolted harpoon tied to a long rope cut the air close to her just missing her left wing as she banked around the castle.
Why were they attacking her? They had seen her before, and never feared her then, and in return she had never attacked them, or given them any reason to fear her: until now. They did not attack her outright, but when the elves opened up their gates and charged out of the castle, their composure became tense. Arrows flew towards her at the same time the gates opened, but all of the arrows fell short as she flew higher than any competent archer could reach.
Feeling the tension, she stayed far away, but watched the elves scatter into the tangled woods and disappear as if they became part of the forest. When she lost sight of them, her curiosity got the best of her so she flew directly above the canopy to get a better view.
Not very far away, she could also see the human force charging through the tangled forest. Swordsmen hacked away with swords that were longer than they were tall and blades twice as wide as a normal broadsword. As they hacked away, soldiers on foot and on horseback followed also hacking away at any left over tangle protruding in their path.
Behind them, the large force followed. Then the elves came out of the forest first, attacking the human forest hackers. First, they sent out a barrage of arrows from archers hidden within the canopy, destroying the front line of the hacking force on the left and right flanks. The center of the force kept hacking away as the human cavalry began sending arrows of their own into the forest knocking many of the elves out of their tree posts.
The humans behind the vanguard were then commanded to scatter within the woods and press on. They stayed in groups of twenty and traversed through the thick forest foliage individually and hacking only if they needed to as they were commanded to get to the fort as quickly as possible. This command seemed to be successful as Aegyn saw the trees shake, as though a massive beast were moving through the trees. The elven archers that remained in the trees were not enough in number to stop the force as they scattered throughout the forest. It did not take long for the elven archers to realize that they were outnumbered, outflanked, and surrounded when the human force clashed with the elven cavalry.
The elves on horseback knew the forest very well. They had pre-carved out trails in the forest for just such battles, for hit and run tactics, but when the humans found those paths, they devastated the elven cavalry. The elves put up staunch resistance, but the human numbers were too great and the elves soon retreated with less than half of their force intact. The humans trampled over the dead archers and dead horses that scattered the trail.
The elves had no choice but to retreat to Fort Stone-elf, passing by a large statue of one of their most celebrated warriors, Eranon, also known as the Stone-elf. A name given to him because of his glorious battles with the humans, of whom he once said had the combined intelligence of a single stone. It was his job to eradicate every stone from the forest.
He was also found to have said that for every human he killed, they would be transformed back into their original form of a stone and he therefore collected stones as if they were prized jewels. The elves then erected this large stone statue to symbolize that he did indeed become made of all of the stones he collected in his life.
The statue stood next to the front gate reaching twenty feet tall and was dressed in full battle armor with his sword pointing south towards the human tribes. As the elves passed by Eranon they lowered their heads in shame, but Eranon still stood tall as if he was now asking his elves to stop and make a stand that he would proudly lead in the defense of the fort of his name.
It did not take long for the human force to realize that the elves had retreated and sped up their attack even more. Within an hour they came out of the tangled forest and into a small clearing, surrounding the fort on three sides. They could not surround the northern side of the castle as the forest climbed up the battlements on the backside of the fort, completely sealing it from any known approach. The human force stopped short of the clearing, staying hidden in the forest as they stared at the statue of their known and hated enemy, Eranon the Stone Elf.
Aegyn made another pass over the fortress, and that is when she felt her wings sticking to her body, disabling her from flying. The spider battalion had fired a large harpoon that turned into a spider web substance upon impact, and surrounded her whole body. Panicking she wiggled and turned trying to free herself from the sticky substance. Her attempts to free herself only caused her to go into a headfirst corkscrew spiral to the ground. She closed her eyes as she saw the ground coming towards her at breakneck speed. The ground was coming up fast, but she was able to direct her fall just slightly enough that her tail caught the top of their prized statue shattering his head into thousands of pebble sized pieces.
Before she hit the ground headfirst, she heard her mother’s voice reprimanding her as she had done many times about never trusting the humans or the elves. Elves she had told her often, were part of them, but they had their own agenda and did not care for dragons, but humans were bred from the evil side of creation and would only destroy the land. Aegyn knew her mother was right as she landed head-first, destroying a dozen majestic pines with her tail and body as she rolled out of the forest and into the clearing unconscious.
The humans saw the dragon fall to the ground and cheered so loudly that it seemed that the air shook louder than the ground did when the dragon first crashed to the earth. Then before the cheers ended, the humans witnessed over two hundred elves appear out of nowhere. They quickly realized that the spider battalion had fired the harpoon, snaring the dragon with the intent of capturing it. Their cheers turned to fear and trepidation as they watched the elves roll out a large crate with a crane-like arm that surrounded the dragon with a large chain mesh.
They worked with the crane and dragon for nearly an hour as the human archers attempted to pick them off as they worked. The elves responded in kind by outflanking the humans and counter attacking them from the trees. Commander Voll had decided that elves were more interested in the dragon and now was the time to take advantage of the situation to organize an attack of a larger scale.
First, he commanded Commander Urish to take one third of his front line archers to the west side of the fortress and begin hammering them with everything that they had. He decided to have Traegon stay in the center and hold and wait with the main force. He would take command on the eastern side where the dragon was and begin to attack the elves.
Voll could not believe that the elves had actually taken down not only a dragon, but had taken down Aegyn. He still did not have a love for dragons, but he did feel that he understood this one very well, having ridden on her back and actually spoken with her. How he could feel compassion for a large murdering beast he had no idea, but he did, and watching the elves take her down and work on capturing her infuriated him in a way he could not explain.
Voll’s attack happened close to the same time as Commander Urish’s barrage with his archers. The two attacks did not do much to the elves, other than causing the elves on the front face of the fortress to take cover. Since the elves providing cover on the fortress wall were now taking cover, they could no longer protect the elves working on the dragon. This softened their force as they transferred some of their archers to the south and west walls. This is what Voll hoped would have happened, and when he saw that he had achieved this, he had a force of three hundred maneuver through the woods and pop out of the
tangle and into the clearing just as the majority of the archers left the east side.
Voll sent a first wave of fifty humans to attack the elves with a foot charge of swordsmen and spearmen. The spearmen hit first and then backed off behind the swords as they hacked the elves off of the dragon one by one. To his surprise, the attack, and the loss of a few archers, did not distract the elves from their mission. Like the disciplined unit they were, they continued attaching ropes around the dragon’s wings and muzzle.
The elven archers near the dragon responded with a barrage of arrows that exploded above the humans, dropping little spiders from the air which landed on top of the humans, causing them to drop their weapons and retreat. Voll watched his warriors run back into the woods either swatting at their bodies or stripping off their armor as they ran.
“Damn spiders!” Voll cursed as he watched his first wave return having only killed a handful of elves.
“Send the second wave!” he yelled to his captain, and within seconds, a second wave ran into the fray of terrified retreating warriors. The second wave attacked with swords forward in one hand and their shields covering their head with their other hand. Archers lined the wood line and sent a barrage of arrows into the tangle in an effort to have the spider elves take. This allowed the human warriors to again hack at the elves as they worked on securing the dragon.
The humans had knocked off and killed a few dozen elves, and then without warning they stopped what they were doing and jumped off of the dragon and disappeared into the woods. The humans began to follow, but the elven archers launched another barrage of spider arrows that again exploded tiny little venomous spiders above them. The humans, not having anyone left to fight, turned and ran back to the forest before the spiders landed on any of them.
As they ran back, the humans heard commands from the handful of elves that remained as the crane lifted the dragon off of the ground and onto a large multi wheeled cart. Within minutes, the cart began to move, and as it did, the elves launched another barrage of spider arrows that went above the forest canopy dropping into the trees. Within seconds of the arrows landing, spiders began dropping from the canopy on hundreds of long webs reaching to the ground searching for new victims. The human warriors, seeing this, fled deeper into the forest.
Quarterstars Awakening Page 24
