Ed Greenwood - The Herald

“A-a ghost,” Arclath replied, as he rushed to embrace her.

Their kiss was fierce and deep, but brief-as Rune broke free and whirled away from him, to point at the door and command, “Hurry!”

It was dimly blue wherever they looked, and everywhere they beheld blue leaves and green glowing softly against the dark brown of old dead leaves and the brown-black of forest soil. On all sides the great dark pillars of duskwoods and blueleaf trees soared up to an almost unbroken blue-green canopy. In every direction, over gentle hills cloaked in endless trees, the vista looked much the same.

“Where by Shar’s howling holy darkness are we?” Mattick snapped. “These tluining trees!”

He slashed at the nearest leaves in his temper, sending them spiraling down to the moss-girt fallen trunks underfoot.

“Still in the forest,” Vattick offered, mock-helpfully.

They’d been fleeing wildly through the seemingly endless deep woods around Myth Drannor for some time now, just the two of them. Both were scorched, breathless, and bedraggled.

They’d escaped death by the proverbial hair-slicing thickness of a sharp sword blade’s edge, by both desperately working the same last-moment spell to forcibly swap places with Shadovar arcanists elsewhere in the siege.

So two bewildered unfortunates had almost certainly died in the spells hurled by the coronal and her four high mages, while Mattick and Vattick, wounded and more frightened than they’d been in battle for a long time, had found themselves out in the forest surrounded by startled mercenaries.

Whom they’d departed from the company of immediately, for they were interested now only in getting away. To Shar’s never-seen rump with their father’s grand plans, and with butchering their ways through this old and overgrown elf city they’d never seen before and didn’t care one whit if they ever saw again! It was time to get gone, far and fast, and-and seek their own lives, for as long as they could.

Oh, the Most High would find them soon enough, and that meeting would be less than pleasant, but in the meantime they were still alive, and-

“I,” Mattick vowed, crashing through some dead branches and seeking a little open ground to stride through, “am going to get me some folk I can lord it over, for once. I’m done with all of this conquer worlds upon worlds for the greater glory of Shar!”

“And the greater satisfaction of Telamont Tanthul,” Vattick agreed, before he came to a frowning stop.

“Brother,” he added, “I thought we were leaving Myth Drannor behind, but look.”

He pointed with his sword through the trees ahead.

Mattick peered and swore.

“Elves! More bloody elves! Everywhere we go, it’s rutting, fluting-voiced, tree-swinging elves!”

The twin princes strengthened their wards and strode to meet these new foes, who likewise stalked through the trees to meet them.

As they got closer, both princes could see bodies, both human and elf, strewn here and there, and some shattered walls and towers that were now mostly heaps of rubble.

“We must have got turned around, somehow,” Vattick mused. “That, or Myth Drannor spreads through the forest farther than I’d thought, with far-flung clusters of buildings and wild forest between them.”

“I,” declared Mattick, “am beyond caring about elf architecture or settlement patterns. I just want to hew me some longears! Yeeeeee arrrgh !”

And with that sudden bellow, he launched himself into a wildly swinging charge. Vattick planted his sword in the soft forest mold beside him and worked magic instead-and as the elf warriors closed in, limp bodies and blocks of rubble rose into the air behind them, to whirl forward in silent haste and dash the elves to the ground.

Preparing to hack his way into half a dozen foes, Mattick found them all writhing helplessly at his feet, so it was ease itself to ruthlessly stab through the backs of their necks, one by one.

Only one determined elf reached him upright, and that was after four elf corpses had slammed into that elf from behind. Off-balance and winded, the elf could only parry desperately as Mattick slashed at his face. Which left him vulnerable to the prince’s hearty crotch kick.

As the elf was propelled into the air, mewing in shocked pain, Mattick moved to where he could hack the falling body viciously-and did so. The elf’s neck broke at his second blow, and its owner slammed heavily into the ground, loose limbed and dead or dying.

Mattick regarded his work with some satisfaction, but Vattick slapped his arm on the way past and hissed, “Come on. There’ll be plenty more showing up if we tarry!”

Mattick sighed, nodded, and followed his brother over a heavily wooded ridge, and down into a little dell ringed by the smooth-curved walls of elf buildings that looked more like gigantic garden plantings than dwellings. Fearful-faced elf children and wrinkled elders emerged from the arched doorways of some of the buildings, all heading off to the princes’ left.

A lot of children, but only a few withered elders-and no other sort of elves at all.

The two princes looked at each other, then nodded in unison, hefted their swords, and started forward.

“It’s always a good day to butcher elves,” Vattick hissed, as they began their charge.

Storm was fighting hard in the teeth of the fray.

She was drenched with blood not her own, and despite subsuming the spark of silver fire she’d swallowed in her kitchen-the spark that had once belonged to her fallen sister Syluné-she was more than tired. She kept her matted silver tresses plucking up fallen daggers whenever she saw them and hurling them at the hireswords she couldn’t reach, the ones crowding to get at her from behind the men she was busy killing at the moment.

And those men seemed endless. The Myth Drannor still in elf hands was down to just a few buildings, the battered and weary defenders dwindling to mere hand counts-and still the Shadovar hirelings came pouring out of the trees, a forest of moving helmed heads that outnumbered the trees within sight.

There could be only one end to this, and it might well come very soon.

Slashing open a warrior’s throat and kicking his body down off the high stump he’d joined her atop won her a few moments to draw breath and twirl for a proper scan all around.

That whirlwind of dying mercenaries was Fflar and three or four elf knights fighting with him, and-

There . That was the coronal. Fighting hard, too, with none too many knights and not a single high mage left to stand with her in battle.

“Sorry, saers-must run!” Storm called merrily to the besiegers warily approaching her stump, and she sprang down to hit the ground sprinting. She might as well get as close to the coronal as she could before she had to stop and hack and hew the rest of the way.

Storm could still run like the wind when she had to, and got surprisingly far, but her reward for that was to have a score of silver-plate-armored armsmen converge on her. Obviously all stalwarts hailing from the same elite mercenary company.

All that gleaming armor gave her an idea, but she would have to time things just right. When the foremost trio of the shiny helms reached her, Storm backed away hastily, looking scared.

And as she’d hoped, one of them fell for her ruse, sneering at her and swaggering forward, drawing back a great war axe for a cleaving blow.

Storm sprang at him like a panther, reversing her sword and dagger so two hard pommels slammed into the axeman’s nearest elbow, driving his swing farther back than he’d intended. He overbalanced with a profanely startled yell-and crashed back into the knees of his fellow full-plate mercenaries, driving them back in turn. One crashed back into the hurrying man behind him, and the other fell unopposed to the ground but bounced and flailed, tripping another mercenary who was at a full run, charging to get at Storm.