Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

The elf’s blade came up, poised to strike, as Giarna shook his head and cursed, wiping the blood from his eyes. His back to the door, he stared at the elf and the woman, his face once again distorted by his monstrous hatred. Kith-Kanan stepped to Suzine’s side, sensing the man’s hatred and protecting her from any sudden attack.

But there would be no attack. Groggy, bleeding, surrounded by enemies, Giarna made a more pragmatic decision. With one last burning look at the pair, he turned and darted through the tent flap.

Kith-Kanan started forward but stopped when he felt Suzine’s hand on his arm.

“Wait’” she said softly. She touched the bloodstained tunic at his side, where Giarna’s sword had cut him.

“You’re hurt. Here, let me tend your wound.”

The weariness of the great battle finally arose within Kith-Kanan as he lay upon the bed. For the first time in more months than he cared to remember, he felt a gentle sensation of peace.

The war almost ceased to exist for Kith-Kanan. It became distant and unreal. His wound wasn’t serious, and the woman who tended him was not only beautiful but also had been haunting his dreams for weeks.

As the Army of Ergoth scattered, Parnigar took command of the pursuit, skillfully massing the Wildrunners to attack concentrations of the enemy wherever they could be found. Kith-Kanan was left to recuperate and paid little attention to his lieutenant’s reports of progress.

They all knew the humans were beaten. It would be a matter of weeks, perhaps months now, before they were driven back across the border of their own empire. Wind-riders sailed over the plains, dwarves and elves marched, and elven cavalry galloped at will.

And back at the nearly abandoned fortress, the commander of this great army was falling in love.

Already the cool winds presaging autumn swirled northward from the Courrain Ocean, causing the trees of the great forestlands to discard their leaves and prepare for the long dormancy of winter. The elves of Silvanesti felt the winds, too, throughout the towns and estates and even in the great capital of Silvanost.

The city was alive with the great jubilation of victory. Word from the front told of the rout of the human army. Kith-Kanan’s army was on the offensive. The elven general had sent columns of Wildrunners marching swiftly across the plains, fighting the pockets of human resistance.

The dwarven league did its part against the humans, while the Windriders swept down from the skies, shattering the once-proud Ergothian regiments, capturing or killing hundreds of humans, and scattering the rest to the four winds. Most bands of desperate survivors sought nothing more than flight back to the borders of Ergoth.

Great camps of human prisoners—tens of thousands—now littered the plains. Many of these Kith-Kanan sent to the east upon the orders of his brother, where the human prisoners were condemned to spend their lives in the Clan Oakleaf mines. Others were assigned to rebuild and strengthen the fortress of Sithelbec and repair the damage to settlements and villages ravaged by two years of war.

These should be the greatest days of my life, Sithas brooded over the reports from his great emerald throne. He was reluctant to leave the Hall of Audience for the brightness of the garden or the city despite the beautiful late afternoon sky.

An hour ago he had ordered his courtiers and nobles to leave him alone. He was disconsolate, despite the most recent missive from Kith-Kanan—borne by a Windrider courier, the news less than a week old—which had continued favorable reports of victory.

Perhaps he would have been relieved to talk to Lord Quimant—no one else seemed to understand the pressures of his office—but that nobleman had left the city more than a week earlier to assist in the administration of the new prisoner slaves at his family’s mines in the north. He had no clear idea when he would return.

Sithas’s mind ran over his brother’s latest communication. Kith reported that the central wing of the Army of Ergoth, which had tried to march home by the shortest and most direct route, had since ceased to exist. The entire force had been eradicated when the Wildrunners gathered and attacked the central wing, causing massive casualties.

There was no longer much of a southern wing, either. Its soldiers had suffered the highest toll in the initial counterattack. And the smaller northern wing, with its thousands of light horsemen and fast-moving infantry under the shrewd General Giarna, had been scattered into fragments that desperately sought refuge among the clumps of forest and rough country that fringed the plains.

Why, then, could Sithas not share in the exultation of the Silvanost citizenry?

Perhaps because reports had been confirmed of Theiwar dwarves joining with the fleeing remnants of Giarna’s force, even though their cousins, the Hylar, fought on the side of the elves. Sithas had no doubt that the Theiwar were led by the treacherous general and ambassador Than-Kar. Such internecine dwarven politics served to further confuse the purposes of this war. Neither was there any doubt now that large numbers of renegade elves fought on the side of Ergoth. Elves and dwarves and humans fighting against elves and dwarves!

Quimant continued to advocate the hiring of human mercenaries to further reinforce Kith-Kanan’s armies. This was a step that Sithas was not prepared to take. And yet . . .

The immediate victory didn’t seem to offer an end to the differences among the elves. Would Silvanesti ever be pure again? Would involvement in this war break down the barriers that separated elvenkind from the rest of Krynn?

Even the name of the war itself, a name he had heard uttered in the streets of the city, even murmured from the lips of polite society, underscored his anguish. Following the summer’s battles and the lists of the dead, it had become the universal sobriquet for the war, too commonly known to be changed even by the decree of the Speaker of the Stars.

The Kinslayer War.

The name left a bitter taste on his tongue, for to Sithas, it represented all that was wrong about the cause they fought against. Blind, misguided elves throwing in their lot with the human enemy—they forfeited their right to any kinship!

More serious to Sithas, in a personal sense, was the nasty rumor now making the rounds of the city, a preposterous allegation. The scurrilous gossip had it that Kith-Kanan himself had taken a human woman for a consort! No one, of course, dared present this news to Sithas directly, but he knew that the others believed and whispered the ludicrous tale.

He had ordered members of the House Protectorate to disguise themselves as workers and artisans and to enter the taverns and inns frequented by the citizens. They were to listen carefully, and if they overheard anyone passing this rumor, the culprit was to be immediately arrested and brought to the palace for questioning.

“Pa-pa?”

The voice brightened his mood as nothing else could. Sithas turned to see Vanesti toddling toward him, carrying—as always—the wooden sword Kith-Kanan had made for him before departing for Sithelbec.

“Come here, you,” the Speaker of the Stars said, kneeling before the throne and throwing wide his arms.

“Pa-pa!” Vanesti, his beaming face framed by long golden curls, hastened his pace and immediately toppled forward, landing on his face.

Sithas scooped the tyke into his arms and held him, patting him on the back until his crying ceased. “There, there. It doesn’t hurt so bad, does it?” he soothed.

“Ow!” objected the youth, rubbing his nose.

Sithas chuckled. Still carrying his son, he started toward the royal door that led to the