Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

“I am here!” Suzine desperately wanted Kith-Kanan to sense her presence, her desire, her—did she dare believe it—love.

The opening of her tent flap interrupted her reverie. It was him! It must be!

Her heart afire, she whirled, and only when she saw Giarna standing there did brutal reality shatter her illusion. As for Giarna, he looked past her violently, at the image of the elven commander in the mirror.

The human general stepped toward her, his face a mask of fury, more like a beast’s than a man’s. It sent an icy blade of fear into the pit of Suzine’s stomach.

When Giarna reached her and seized her arms, each in one bone-crushing hand, that blade of fear twisted and slashed within her. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think; she could only stare into those wide, maddened eyes, the lips flecked with spittle, stretched taut to reveal teeth that seemed to hunger for her soul.

“You betrayed me!” he snarled, throwing her roughly to the ground. “Where did these flying beasts come from? How long have they been waiting, ready to strike?” He knelt and punched her roughly, splitting her lip. He glanced at the mirror on the table. Now, her concentration broken, the image of Kith-Kanan had faded, but the truth of her obsession had been revealed.

The general’s black-gauntleted hand pulled a dagger from his belt, and he pressed it between her breasts, the point puncturing her gown and then brushing the skin beneath it.

“No,” he said, at the very moment when she expected to die. “That would be too merciful, too cheap a price for your treachery.”

He stood and glared down at her. Every instinct of her body told her to scramble to her feet, to fight him or to run! But his black eyes seemed to hypnotize her to the ground, and she couldn’t bring herself to move.

“Up, slut!” he growled, kicking her sharply in the ribs and then reaching down to seize her long red hair. He pulled her to her knees, and she winced, closing her eyes, expecting another blow to her face.

Then she sensed a change within the small confines of the tent, a sudden wash of air against her face . . . the increase in the sounds of battle beyond . .

.

Giarna cast her aside, and she looked at the door to the tent. There he was!

Kith-Kanan stood in the opened tent flap. Beyond him lay bodies on the ground, and she caught a glimpse of men and elves hacking against each other with swords and axes. The tents in her line of view smoked and smoldered, some spewing orange flame.

The golden-haired elf stepped boldly into the darkened tent, his steel longsword extended before him. He spoke harshly, his blade and his words directed at the human general.

“Surrender, human, or die!” Kith-Kanan, obviously not recognizing the commander of the great human army in the semidarkness of the tent, took another step toward Giarna.

The human general, his dagger still in his hand and his body trembling with rage, stared soundlessly at the elf for a moment. Kith-Kanan squinted and crouched slightly, ready for close-quarter fighting. As he studied his opponent, recognition dawned, memories of that day of captivity a year before, when the battle had gone against the elves.

“It’s you,” the elf whispered.

“And it is fitting that you come to me now,” replied the human general, his voice a strangled, triumphant snarl. “You will not live to enjoy the fruits of your victory!”

In a flash of motion, the man’s hand whipped upward. In the same instant, he reversed his grip on the dagger, flipping its hilt from his hand and catching the tip of the foot-long blade in his fingertips.

“Look out!” Suzine screamed, suddenly finding her voice. Giarna’s hand lashed out, flinging the knife toward Kith’s throat. Like a silver streak, the blade flashed through the air, true toward its mark. Kith-Kanan couldn’t evade the throw, but he could parry it. His wrist twitched, a barely perceptible movement that swung the tip of his sword through an arc of perhaps six inches. That was enough; the longsword hit the knife with a sharp clink of metal, and the smaller blade flipped over the elf’s shoulder to strike the tent wall and fall harmlessly to the ground. Suzine scrambled away from Giarna as the man drew his sword and rushed toward the elf. Kith-Kanan, eight inches shorter and perhaps a hundred pounds lighter than the human general, met the charge squarely. The two blades clashed with a force that rang like cymbals in the confines of the tent. The elf took one step back to absorb the momentum of the attack, but Giarna was stopped in his tracks.

The two combatants circled, each totally focused on the other, looking for the slightest hint, the twitch of an eye or a minute shifting of a shoulder, that would warn the other of an intended lunge.

They slashed at each other, then darted out of the way and just as quickly slashed again. Neither bore a shield. Consummate swordsmen both, they worked their way around the spacious tent. Kith-Kanan tipped a dressing screen in front of the human. The man leaped over it. Giarna drove the elf backward, hoping to trip him on Suzine’s cot. Kith sensed the threat and sprang to the rear, clearing the obstacle and then darting to the side, driving against the human’s flank.

Again the man parried, and the two warriors continued to circle, each conserving his strength, neither showing the weariness of the long day’s battle. Where Giarna’s face was a mask of twisted hatred, however, the elf’s remained an image of cool, studied detachment. The man struck with power that the elf could not hope to match, so Kith-Kanan had to rely on skill and control for each parry, each lightning thrust of his own.

The woman glanced back and forth, her eyes wide with horror alternating with hope.

They were too equal in skill, she saw, and given this fact, Giarna’s size and strength inevitably would vanquish the elf. An increasing sense of desperation marked Kith’s parries and attacks. Once he stumbled and Suzine screamed. Only Giarna’s heavy boot, as it caught in a fold of her rug, prevented his blade from tearing through the elf’s heart.

Nevertheless, he managed to cut a slash in Kith’s side, and the elf grunted in pain as he regained his balance. Suzine saw a tightness in his expression that hadn’t been there before. It could be called the beginnings of fear. Once he glanced toward the door, as if he hoped for assistance from that quarter. Only when he did that did Suzine notice the sudden quiet that seemed to have descended across the camp. The fight outside had moved beyond them. Kith-Kanan had been left behind.

She saw Giarna drive Kith backward with a series of ringing blows, and she knew she had to do something! Kith sprang forward, desperation apparent in each of his swinging slashes. Giarna ducked away from each blow, giving ground as he searched for the fatal opening.

There! The elf overreached himself, leaning too far forward in an attempt to draw blood from his elusive target.

Giarna’s sword came up, its tip glistening from Kith’s moist blood, held for just a moment as the elf followed through with his reckless swing. Kith tried to twist away, raising his left arm so that he would take the wound in his shoulder, but Giarna simply raised that deadly spike and drove it toward the elf’s neck.

The sound of shattering glass was the next thing that Suzine knew. She didn’t understand how she came to hold the frame of her mirror in her hands, didn’t comprehend the shards of glass scattered across the rug. More glass, she saw, glinted upon Giarna’s shoulders. Blood spurted from long slashes in his scalp.

The human leader staggered, reeling from the blow to his head, as Kith-Kanan twisted away. He looked at the woman, gratitude shining in his eyes—or was that something deeper, more profound, more lasting, that she wished to see there?