Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

Sithas sat shrouded in gloom. His mind would not focus. He considered all the progress that had been made toward a counterattack. The training of the Windriders was nearly complete. In a few days, they would fly west to begin their part in Kith-Kanan’s great attack. The final rank of elven infantry—four thousand elves of Silvanost and the nearby clanholds—had already departed. They should reach the vicinity of Sithelbec at the same time as the Windriders. Even these prospects did not brighten his mood. He imagined the satisfying picture of the dwarven ambassador Than-Kar captured and brought to the Speaker of the Stars in chains, but that prospect only reminded him of the prisoners of the Oakleaf mines.

Slave pits! With elven slaves! He accepted the fact that the mines were necessary. Without them, the Silvanesti wouldn’t be able to produce the vast supply of arms and weapons needed by Kith-Kanan’s army. True, there were good stockpiles of weapons, but a few weeks of intensive fighting could deplete those reserves with shocking speed.

“I wonder,” he said, surprising himself and Quimant by speaking aloud.

“What if we found another source of labor?”

The lord blinked at the Speaker in surprise. “But how? Where?”

“Listen to this.” Sithas began to envision a solution, speaking his thoughts as they occurred to him. “Kith-Kanan still needs reinforcements on the ground. By Gilean, we were only able to send him four thousand troops this summer! And that left the capital practically empty of able-bodied males.”

“If Your Majesty will remember, I cautioned against such a number. The city itself is laid bare. . .”

“I still have my palace guard—a thousand elves of the House Protectorate, their lives pledged to the throne.” Sithas continued. “We will form the slaves—the elven slaves—from your mines into a new company. Swear them to the Wildrunners for the duration of the war, their sentences commuted to military duty.”

“They number a thousand or more,” Quimant admitted cautiously. “They are hardened and tough. It’s perhaps true that they would make a formidable force. But you can’t close down the mines!”

“We will replace them with human prisoners captured on the battlefield!”

“We have no prisoners!”

“But Kith’s counterattack begins in less than two weeks’ time. He’ll break the siege and rout the humans, and he’s bound to take many of them as captives.” Unless Kith’s plan is a failure, he thought. Sithas wouldn’t allow himself to consider that possibility.

“It may just work,” Quimant noted, with a reluctant nod. “Indeed, if his attack is a great success, we might actually increase the number of, ah ... laborers. Production could improve. We could open new mines!” He warmed to the potential of the plan.

“It’s settled, then,” Sithas agreed, feeling a great sense of relief.

“What about Than-Kar, Excellency?” inquired Quimant after several more miles of verdant woodlands slipped by.

“It will be time for retribution soon.” Sithas paused. “You know that we intercepted his spy with a message detailing the formation of the Windriders?”

“True, but we never discovered who the message was intended for.”

“It was being carried west. It was sent to the Ergoth general, I’m certain.” Sithas was convinced that the Theiwar had joined with the humans in a bid for dominance of the dwarven nation. “I’ll keep Than-Kar in suspense until Kith is ready to attack, so he doesn’t find out that we’re onto his treachery until it’s too late for him to send another warning to the west.”

“A fine trap!” Quimant imagined the scene. “Surround the dwarves in their barracks with your guard, disarm them before they can organize, and like magic, you have him as your prisoner.”

“It’s too bad I promised to return him to King Hal-Waith,” noted Sithas. “I’d like nothing better than to send him to your coal mines.” Suddenly they leaned toward the front of the cabin as the coach slowed. They heard the coachman calling out to the horses as he hauled back on the reins.

“Driver? What’s the delay?” inquired the Speaker, leaning out the window. He saw a rider—an elf, wearing the breastplate of the House Protectorate—galloping toward them from the front of the column.

The elf wasn’t a member of the escort, Sithas realized. He saw the foam-flecked state of the horse and the dusty, bedraggled condition of the rider, and knew that the fellow must have come a long way.

“Your Majesty!” cried the elven horseman, reining in and practically falling out of the saddle beside the speaker’s carriage door. “The city—there’s trouble!

It’s the dwarves!”

“What happened?”

“We kept a watch over them as you ordered. This morning, before dawn, they suddenly burst out of the inns where they were quartered. They took the guards by surprise, killed them, and headed for the docks!”

“Killed?” Sithas was appalled—and furious. “How many?”

“Two dozen of the House Protectorate,” replied the messenger. “We’ve thrown every soldier in the city into the fray, but when I left six hours ago they were slowly fighting their way to the riverbank.”

“They need boats,” guessed Quimant. “They’re making a break for the west.”

“They sniffed out my trap,” groaned Sithas. The prospect of Than-Kar escaping the city worried him, mostly because he feared the dwarf would somehow be able to warn the humans about the Windriders.

“Can the house guards hold until we get there?” demanded the Speaker.

“I don’t know.”

“Dwarves hate the water,” observed Quimant. “They won’t try a crossing at night.”

“We can’t take that chance. Come in here,” he ordered the rider, throwing open the

coach door. “Driver, to the city! As fast as you can get us there!” The gilded carriage and its escort of a hundred mounted elves thundered toward distant Silvanost, raising a wide plume of dust. * * * * *

“They’ve made it to the river, and even now they seize boats along the wharf!” Tamanier Ambrodel greeted Sithas on the Avenue of Commerce, the wide roadway that paralleled the city’s riverfront.

“Open the royal arsenal. Have every elf who can wield a sword follow me to the river!”

“They’re already there. The battle has continued all day.” The royal procession had arrived in the city with perhaps two hours of light remaining. Sithas leaped from the coach and took the reins of a horse that had been saddled for him on Tamanier’s orders. He quickly donned a chain mail shirt and hefted the light steel shield that bore the crest symbolizing the House of Silvanos.

In the meantime, the riders from his escort had dismounted, readying for conflict.

“They’ve barricaded themselves into two blocks of warehouses and taverns, right at the waterfront. It seems they’re having some difficulties getting their boats rigged,” explained the lord chamberlain.

“How many have we lost?” asked the speaker.

“Nearly fifty killed, most in the first few hours of the fight. Since then we’ve been content to keep them bottled up until you got here.”

“Good. Let’s root them out now.”

Surprisingly, that thought gave him a sense of grim satisfaction. “Follow me!” Sithas cried, turning the prancing stallion down the wide Avenue of Commerce. The elves of his guard followed him. He inspected detachments that held positions down several streets that led toward the wharf. Just beyond these companies, Sithas could see hastily erected wooden barricades. He imagined the white, wide eyes of Theiwar dwarves peering between the gaps of these crude defenses.

“They’re there,” a sergeant assured Sithas. “They don’t show themselves until we attack. Then they give a good accounting of themselves. Our archers have picked off more than a few of them.”