Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

Miraculously, many of them made it. They scrambled between the thick wall of stakes, into the welcoming arms of their comrades, while the stampeding cavalry surged and bucked just beyond. By the dozens and scores and hundreds, they limped and dodged and tumbled to safety, until more than two thousand of them, including Kencathedrus, had emerged. The captain tried to turn and limp back into the fray in a foredoomed effort to bring forth more of his men, but he was restrained in the grasp of two sergeants-major. The archers, too, fell back, and then it was only the riders caught on the field. Isolated pockets of elven cavalry twisted away from the sea of human horsemen, breaking for the shelter of their lines. Kith-Kanan himself, however, after having led the charge, was now caught in the middle of the enemy forces. His arm grew leaden with fatigue. Blood from a cut on his forehead streamed into his eyes. His helmet was gone, knocked from his head by a human’s bashing shield. His loyal guards—the few who still lived—fought around him, but now the outlook was grim.

The humans fell back, just far enough to avoid the slashing elven blades. Kith-Kanan and a group of perhaps two dozen elven riders gasped for breath, surrounded by a ring of death—more than a thousand human lancers, swordsmen, and archers.

With a groan of despair, he cast his sword to the ground. The rest of the survivors immediately followed his example.

As darkness finally closed about them, the humans turned back from the elven line. Kencathedrus and Parnigar knew that it was only nightfall that had prevented the complete collapse of their position. They knew, too, that the exhausted army would have to retreat now, even before the darkness was complete.

They would have to take shelter in Sithelbec early the following day, before the deadly human cavalry could catch them in the open. The entire force of the Wildrunners could suffer the fate of the unblooded elves of Silvanost. It seemed to the elven leaders that the day couldn’t have been any more disastrous. Despair settled around them like a bleak cloud as they considered the worst news of all: Kith-Kanan, their commander and the driving force behind the Wildrunners, was lost—possibly captured, but more likely killed. The army marched, heads down and shambling, toward the security—and the confinement—of Sithelbec.

Sometime after midnight, it started to rain, and it continued to pour throughout the night and even past the gray, featureless dawn. The miserable army finally reached Sithelbec, closing the gates behind the last of the Wildrunners, sometime around noon of the following gray, drizzling day.

Suzine awakened to a summons from the general, delivered by a bronze-helmed lieutenant of crossbows. The woman felt vague relief that General Giarna hadn’t come to her in person. Indeed, she hadn’t seen him since before the battle’s climax, when his trap had snared so much of the elven army. Her relief had grown from the previous night, when she had feared that he would desire her. General Giarna frightened her often, but there was something deeper and more abiding about the terror he inspired after he had led his troops in battle.

The darkness that seemed always to linger in his eyes became, in those moments, like a bottomless well of despair and hopelessness, as if his hunger for killing could never be sated. The more the blood flowed around him, the greater his appetite became.

He would take her then, using her like he was some kind of parasite, unaware and uncaring of her feelings. He would hurt her and, when he was finished, cast her roughly aside, his own fundamental needs still raging. But after this battle, his greatest victory to date, he had stayed away from her. She had retired early the night before, dying to look into her mirror, to ascertain Kith-Kanan’s whereabouts. She felt a terrible fear for his safety, but she hadn’t dared to use her glass for fear of the general. He mustn’t suspect her growing fascination with Kith-Kanan.

Now she dressed quickly and fetched her mirror, safe in a felt-lined wooden case, and then allowed the officer to lead her along the column of tents to General Giarna’s shelter of black silk. The lieutenant held the door while she entered, blinking for a moment as she adjusted to the dim light. And then it seemed that her world exploded.

The file of muddy elven prisoners, many of them bruised, stood at resentful attention. There were perhaps a score of them, each with a watchful swordsman right behind him, but Suzine’s eyes flashed immediately to him. She recognized Kith-Kanan in the instant that she saw him, and she had to forcibly resist an urge to run to him. She wanted to look at him, to touch him in all the ways she could not through her mirror. She fought an urge to knock the sword-wielding guard aside.

Then she remembered General Giarna. Her face flushed, she felt perspiration gather on her brow. He was watching her closely. Forcing an expression of cool detachment, she turned to him.

“You summoned me, General?”

The commander seemed to look through her, with a gaze that threatened to wither her soul. His eyes yawned before her like black chasms, menacing pits that made her want to hurriedly step back from the edge.

“The interrogation continues. I want you to witness their testimony and gauge the truth of their replies.” His voice was like a cold gust of air. For the first time, Suzine noticed an additional elven form. This one stretched facedown on the carpeted floor of the tent, a tiny hole at the base of his neck showing where he had been stabbed.

Numbly she looked back. Kith-Kanan stood second from the end of the line, near where the killing had occurred. He paid no attention to her. The elf between him and the dead one looked in grimly concealed fear at the human general.

“Your strength!” demanded General Giarna. “How many troops garrison your fortress? Catapults? Ballistae? You will tell us about them all.” The final sentence was a demand, not a question.

“The fortress is garrisoned by twenty thousand warriors, with more on the way!” blurted the prisoner beside the corpse. “Wizards and clerics, too—” Suzine didn’t need the mirror to see that he lied; neither, apparently, did General Giarna. He chopped his hand once, and the swordsman behind the terrified speaker stabbed at the doomed elf. His blade severed the elf’s spinal cord and then plunged through his neck, emerging under the unfortunate warrior’s chin in a gurgling fountain of blood.

The next swordsman—the one behind Kith-Kanan—prodded his charge in the back, forcing him to stand a little straighter, as the general’s eyes came to rest upon him. But only for a moment, for the human leader allowed his scornful gaze to roam across the entire row of his captives.

“Which of you holds rank over the others?” inquired the general, casting his eyes along the line of remaining elves.

For the first time, Suzine realized that Kith-Kanan wore none of the trappings of his station. He was an anonymous rider among the elven warriors. Giarna didn’t recognize him! That revelation encouraged her to take a risk.

“My general,” she said quickly, hearing her voice as if another person was speaking, “could I have a word with you—away from the ears of the prisoners?” He looked at her, his dark eyes boring into her. Was that annoyance she saw, or something darker?

“Very well,” he replied curtly. He took her arm in his hand and led her from the tent.

She felt the mirror’s case in her hand, seeking words as she spoke. “They are obviously willing to die for their cause. But perhaps, with a little patience, I can make them useful to us ... alive.”

“You can tell me whether they speak the truth or not—but what good is that when they are willing to die with lies in their mouths?”