Nancy Berberick - The Lioness

“Archers,” Kerian said, surprised by the coolness of her voice. “Draconians first. Go after them the way they used to go after dragons in the days before dragonlances—aim for the eyes, send your shaft right through to their tiny brains and drop them where they stand. Let the Knights wade through the poison.”

Jeratt laughed, liking the picture of that.

“We never leave this hill,” Kerian said. “We make them come up.”

Closer, the draconians slashed through the underbrush, and now Kerian heard their voices, growling curses in a language whose every word seemed like a curse. She put a hand on Jeratt’s arm. She knew this was the moment to steady him or he’d leap too soon.

“Easy,” she said. “Let them see us. Let them come to us.”

He quivered under her hand, but he held. Because he did, the rest did. Arrows whispered from quivers. By the handful each archer took them, one to nock to the bowstring, four to hold between clenched teeth.

“Not till you see the first of them among the ashes of our fires,” Kerian warned.

Below the crest, on either side, men and women with swords and war-axes stood ready to fall upon whatever enemy made it up the hill.

“Soft,” Kerian said, “now patient, patient.”

The first draconian stepped into the empty campsite, stopped and looked around. His fellows came after, and they slowed, then stopped, looking around for prey.

Stanach stood and tucked his whetstone into the little pouch at his belt. Jeratt took a careful breath around the shafts of his arrows. He lifted his bow. Every archer had an eye on Kerian, and every one of them saw her lift her hand, drew breath as she did, and let fly when she dropped her fist.

The arrow-storm whistled down the hill, shrieking in the morning silence. One draconian fell, and another. A third, and one after that. Four in the first volley! It was not enough. Came the second volley, and two more fell. One stumbled into the decomposing corpse of his fellow and died screaming. Three fell wounded, and it needed another volley to kill those.

Kerian shouted, “Archers!” and the fourth volley flew.

Beyond the hissing, reeking corpses of draconians, the Knights stopped. Some stumbled into the acid, others pulled away in time, and those saw their prey atop the hill.

“Go!” shouted Thagol, pointing. “Charge them!”

The Skull Knight drove them hard, howled at them, cursed them, and sent them around the deadly draconian corpses. They split and regrouped to come up the hill from the sides.

Heart hammering, her sword in her right hand, the dwarf-made knife in her left, Kerian looked at Jeratt, looked at Stanach.

“Now,” she said, as the first of Thagol’s men came up the hill. “For the song!”

For the song, she cried, and even as she did, her battle cry changed to a baffled shout as the line of Knights wavered at the sides and in the rear. From the crest, she saw them falter and fall out, one after another staggering from the line. Some cried out, others fell in silence, as death came suddenly.

“Look!” Jeratt shouted. “What is that?”

He pointed. Something moved like a shadow behind the Knights, dark and swift and silent.

“By the gods,” Jeratt whispered. “It’s him.”

Kerian’s heart lifted. “It’s Dar,” she said, for she recognized the tactic, the swift charge with filled bows and the equally swift retreat. The foray out from shadows with cudgel to smash a skull, with sword to gut a foe, then slipping away. The newcomers flashed in and out of shadows, striking swiftly, sometimes in silence so that they seemed like ghosts, sometimes howling to chill the blood of their enemies.

“Look!” Stanach cried, even as the confused Knights turned in on themselves, back to the ground they’d tried to flee. The dwarf laughed. “They’re being herded like cattle!”

As they watched, the Kagonesti shifted ground, surrounding the Knights, and indeed, herding them. Hurt, confused, their numbers falling away before their eyes, the Knights tried to break out, tried to find their lord or hear his commands. Kerian didn’t doubt the Lord Knight shouted or tried to direct his men, but no one could hear him above the blood-chilling war cries of Dar and his warriors. A little at a time, though they fought hard and sometimes bravely, the Knights were driven toward the bottom of the hill, forced to mass—in many instances weaponless—to the place Kerian defended.

“Will we just stand here?” Jeratt said.

Kerian flashed him a bright and sudden grin. “I don’t think we’d better or we’ll be overrun by fleeing Knights.”

Shouting, Jeratt waved their warriors down. Behind Kerian the archers filled their bows again.

The Knights, beset from behind, driven from the sides, heard at last the voice of their lord. Thagol’s command ripped through the melee, rallying his men until they formed three forces, one at point, two flanking. One of the flanks turned into the forest eastward, the other westward. The point of the spear, the draconians and the Knights, no longer driven, charged the hill again.

In the wood the air filled with war cries and death-screams as the Kagonesti and the Knights came together. Kerian saw them, the Wilder Elves outflanked, the Knights and draconians rampaging among them, savaging Dar’s band from two sides.

“Go!” she shouted to her warriors. “To the Kagonesti! Go!”

First down the hill was Jeratt, eyes alight, face shining with a warrior’s half-mad laughter. He ran to help an old comrade, the friend who had never forgotten him, and whooped a high and joyous battle cry.

Before her eyes, Jeratt staggered. He stumbled, turned, upon his face the same expression she’d seen on Ander—the utter shock of the dying. He fell, his hands clutching his chest, blood spilling out over his fingers, out around the steel of a Knight’s flung dagger.

Kerian shouted, “No!” and bellowed orders to her warriors to fight on. Someone yelled, “For Jeratt!”

For Ander! For Felan!

For Qualinesti!

They went, and as they did the two flanks of Knights and draconians turned again, wheeling to meet the charge. Outnumbered, still Kerian’s warriors fought, for it was Jeratt at their head, Jeratt, somehow still stumbling forward, unwilling to turn from embattled friends until death stole his last breath. From the hill, commanding her archers, Kerian saw the Wilder Elves and her own warriors falling before the draconians and the Knights like hay before the scythe.

Furious, Kerian turned to the archers. Every one of them stood drained of color, the blood run out of their faces, leaving the flesh ashen. Stanach, halfway down the hill, stood like stone, while blood and battle lapped up the hill. Eyes on the forest where Kerian’s warriors had gone to fight for the Wilder Elves, he shouted:

“There! By Reorx! There!”

The forest trembled. The trees shook. Darkness came, and darkness went as though the wood itself possessed eyes to blink. Shadow and light ran together, not in dappling but in a great whirling force as though they rushed to each other like live beings, long parted and longing for one another’s embrace.

Screams arose from all around, and these were not the shrieks of the dying. These were screams of terror, cries in elven voices and human voices. Somewhere, draconians raged, but their voices sounded small.

The ground heaved, and the trees danced. They lifted root, raised branches like revelers. The earth gaped wide, in places swallowing combatants. Not one of the fallen was an elf, Qualinesti or Wilder, however. Kerian drew breath to call back her warriors and let the breath go. A great howling filled the world, as though from the throat of the earth itself.

It rose from ground, from stone, a beast with arms like enormous trees, legs like hewn stone. Stanach cursed and prayed. Beside him, Kerian felt as though she were falling, falling into a vortex. She had seen this in Elder’s fires! Listening to the whisper of the ancient’s magic, she had listened to the distant thoughts of Elementals. This beast she had dreamed in smoke and firelight, with a woman so old no one knew her name. It rose before her now, a misshapen thing, with a head like hills, eyes like forest fire, and hands like slabs of stone. A creature made of the elements of air and earth walking among them.