Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

Kith-Kanan veered toward the Ergothian foot soldiers, the line of Windriders following in precise formation. He took up his bow and carefully nocked an arrow. He let the missile fly, watching it dart downward and penetrate the shoulder of one of the foot soldiers. The fellow toppled forward, his helmet rolling in the mud, and Kith-Kanan got a jolt when he espied the long blond hair cascading around his body. Other arrows found targets among this company as the griffons passed overhead, and the general noticed with surprise these other men, too, all had blond hair.

One of them turned and launched an arrow upward, and a nearby griffon shrieked, pierced through the wing. The animal’s limb collapsed, and the beast tipped suddenly to the side, plummeting to the earth among the Ergothian archers. The rider died from the force of the crash, but this didn’t stop the soldiers from hacking and chopping at his body until only a gory mess remained.

Kith shot another arrow, and a third, watching grimly as each took the life of one of these blond savages. Only when the humans had been riddled with losses did the Windriders consider the death of their comrade avenged. As they soared away, Kith-Kanan was struck by the narrow face of one of his victims, lying face-up in the mud. Diving lower, he saw a pointed ear and blond hair. Elves! His own people fighting for the Army of the Emperor of Ergoth!

Growling in anger, he urged Arcuballis upward, the rest of his company following. With terrible purpose, he looked across the mud-and-blood-strewn field for an appropriate target.

He saw one group of horsemen, perhaps two thousand strong, that had rallied around a streaming silver banner—the ensign of General Giarna himself, Kith knew. Instantly he veered toward this unit as the general was urging his reluctant troops into a renewed charge. The griffons flew low, no more than ten feet off the ground, and the creatures shrilled their coming. Unaffected by the curses of their commanding general, the human riders allowed their horses to turn and scatter, unwilling to face the griffon cavalry. Kith-Kanan urged Arcuballis onward, seeking the general himself, but the man had vanished among the dusty, panicked ranks of his troops. He might already have been trampled to death, for all Kith-Kanan knew.

The Windriders flew across the field, landing and attacking here and there, wherever a pocket of the human army seemed willing to make a stand. Often the mere appearance of the savage creatures was enough to break a formation, while occasionally they crashed into the defending ranks and the griffons tore with talons and beaks while their elven riders chopped and hacked with their lethal weapons.

The elves on the ground and their dwarven allies raced across the field, encouraging the total rout of the human army. More and more of the humans held up their hands in surrender as they concluded that escape was impossible. Many of the horses were stampeded, riderless, away from the field, lost to the army for the foreseeable future. A great, streaming column of refugees—once a proud army but now a mass of panicked, terrified, and defeated men—choked the few roads and scarred new trails across the prairie grasslands. When the Windriders finally came to earth before the gates of Sithelbec, they landed only because there were no more enemies left to fight. Huge columns of human prisoners, guarded by the watchful eyes of elven archers and dwarven axemen, stood listlessly along the walls of the fortress. Amidst the smoke and chaos of the camps, detachments of the Wildrunners poked and searched, uncovering more prisoners and marking stockpiles of supplies.

“General, come quickly!” Kith-Kanan looked up at the cry, seeing a young captain approaching. The elf’s face was pale, and he gestured toward a place on the field.

“What is it?” Sensing the urgency in the young soldier’s request, Kith hurried behind him. In moments, he knew the reason for the officer’s demeanor. He found Kencathedrus lying among the bodies of a dozen humans. The old elf’s body bled from numerous ugly wounds.

“We beat them today,” gasped Kith-Kanan’s former teacher and weaponmaster, managing a weak smile.

“Didn’t we, though?” The general took his friend’s head in his hands, looking toward the nearby officer. “Get the cleric!” he hissed.

“He’s been here,” objected Kencathedrus. Kith-Kanan could read the result in the wounded elf’s eyes: There was nothing that even a cleric could do.

“I’ve lived to see this day. It makes my life as a warrior complete. The war is all but won. You must pursue them now. Don’t let them escape!” Kencathedrus gripped Kith’s arm with surprising strength, nearly raising himself up from the ground. “Promise me,” he gasped. “You will not let them escape!”

“I promise!” whispered the general. He cradled Kencathedrus’s head for several minutes, even though he knew that he was dead.

A messenger—a Kagonesti scout in full face paint—trotted up to Kith-Kanan to make a report. “General, we have reports of enemy activity in the north camp.”

That part of the huge circular human camp had seen the least fighting. Kith nodded at the scout and gently laid Kencathedrus’s body on the ground. He rose and called to a nearby sergeant-major.

“Take three companies and sweep through the north camp,” he ordered. He remembered, too, that General Giarna and his horsemen had escaped in that direction. He gestured to several of his Windriders. “Follow me.”

Suzine watched the battle in her glass. Here in her tent in the northern camp, she did not feel the brunt of battle so heavily. Though the men here had raced to the fight and suffered the same fate as the rest of the army, the camp itself had not yet experienced the wholesale destruction that marked the south and west camps of the humans.

She had seen the Windriders soaring from the east, had watched their inexorable and unsuspected approach against her general’s army, and she had smiled. Her face and her body still burned from Giarna’s assaults, and her loathing for him had crystallized into hatred.

Thus when the elf commander had led the attack that sundered the army around her, she had felt a sense of joy, not dismay, as if Kith-Kanan had flown with no other purpose than to effect her own personal rescue. Calmly she had watched the battle rage, following the elven general in her mirror. When he led the charge against Giarna’s remnant of the great cavalry brigades, she had held her breath, part of her hoping he might come upon the human general and strike him dead, another part wishing that Giarna would simply flee and leave the rewards of victory to the elven forces. Even when her elven guards fled from their posts, she had taken no note.

Now she heard marching outside her tent as the elves of the sortie force moved through the north camp looking for human survivors. Suzine heard some men surrender, pleading for their lives; she heard others attack with taunts and curses, and finally screams and moans as they fell. The battle coursed around her, washing the tent city in smoke and flame and pain and blood. But still Suzine remained within her tent, her eyes fixed upon the golden-haired figure in her mirror. She watched Kith-Kanan, mounted upon the leaping, clawing figure of his great beast, slash and cut his way through the humans who tried to challenge him. She saw that the elven attack moved steadily closer to her. Now the Wildrunners fought a mere thousand yards to the south of her tent.

“Come to me, my warrior!” she breathed.

She willed him to come to her with all of her heart, watching in her glass as Kith-Kanan hacked the head from a burly human axeman.