Douglas Niles: The Kinslayer Wars

The glass looked like a normal mirror, but it didn’t show a reflection of the lady’s very lovely face. Instead, as she studied the image, she saw a long line of foot soldiers. They were clean-shaven, blond of hair, and carried long pikes or thin, silver swords.

She watched the army of Kith-Kanan.

For a time, she touched the mirror, and her vision ran back and forth along the winding column. Her lips moved silently as she counted longbows and pikes and horses.

She watched the elves form and march. She noted the precision with which the long, fluid columns moved across the plains, retaining their precise intervals as they did so.

But then her perusal reached the head of the column, and here she lingered. She studied the one who rode at the head of that force, the one she knew was Kith-Kanan, twin brother to the elven ruler.

She admired his tall stance in the saddle, the easy, graceful way that he raised his hand, gesturing to his outriders or summoning a messenger. Narrow wings rose to a pair of peaks atop his dark helmet. His dark plate mail looked worn, and a heavy layer of dust covered it, yet she could discern its quality and the easy way he wore it, as comfortably as many a human would wear his soft cotton tunic.

Her lips parted slightly, and she didn’t sense the pace of her breathing slowly increase. The lady did not hear the tent flap move behind her, so engrossed was she in her study of the handsome elven warrior.

Then a shadow fell across her, and she looked up with a sharp cry. The mirror faded until it showed only the lady, her face twisted in an expression of guilt mixed with indignation.

“You could announce your presence,” she snapped, standing to face the tall man who had entered.

“I am commander of the camp. General Giarna of Ergoth need announce his presence to no one, save the emperor himself,” the armor-plated figure said quietly. His black eyes fixed upon the woman’s, then shifted to the mirror. These eyes of the Boy General frightened her—they were hardly boyish, and not entirely human, either. Dark and brooding, they sometimes blazed with an internal fire that was fueled, she sensed, by something that was beyond her understanding. At other times, however, they gaped black and empty. She found this dispassionate void even more frightening than his rage. Suddenly he snarled and Suzine gasped in fright. She would have backed away, save for the fact that her dressing table blocked any retreat. For a moment, she felt certain he would strike her. It would not be the first time. But then she looked into his eyes and knew that, for the moment, anyway, she was safe.

Instead of violent rage, she saw there a hunger that, while frightening, did not presage a blow. Instead, it signaled a desperate yearning for a need that could never be satisfied. It was one of the things that had first drawn her to him, this strange hunger. Once she had felt certain that she could slake it. Now she knew better. The attraction that had once drawn her to Giarna had waned, replaced for the most part by fear, and now when she saw that look in his eyes, she mostly pitied him.

The general grunted, shaking his head wearily. His short, black hair lay sweaty and tousled on his head. She knew he would have had his helmet on until he entered the tent, and then taken it off in deference to her.

“Lady Suzine, I seek information and have been worried by your long silence. Tell me, what have you seen in your magic mirror?”

“I’m sorry, my lord,” replied Suzine. Her eyes fell, and she hoped that the flush across her cheeks couldn’t be noticed. She took a deep breath, regaining her composure.

“The elven army countermarches quickly—faster than you expected,” she explained, her voice crisp and efficient. “They will confront you before you can march to Sithelbec.”

General Giarna’s eyes narrowed, but his face showed no other emotion. “This captain ... what’s his name?”

“Kith-Kanan,” Suzine supplied.

“Yes. He seems alert—more so than any human commander I’ve faced. I would have wagered a year’s pay that he couldn’t have moved so fast.”

“They march with urgency. They make good tune, even through the woods.”

“They’ll have to stick to the forests,” growled the general, “because as soon as I meet them, I shall rule the plains.”

Abruptly General Giarna looked at Suzine inquiringly. “What is the word on the other two wings?”

“Xalthan is still paralyzed. The lava cannon is mired in the lowlands, and he seems unwilling to advance until the gnomes free it.”

The general snorted in amused derision. “Just what I expected from that fool. And Barnet?”

“The central wing has gone into a defensive formation, as if they expect attack. They haven’t moved since yesterday afternoon.”

“Excellent. The enemy comes to me, and my erstwhile allies twiddle their thumbs!” General Giarna’s black beard split apart as he grinned. “When I win this battle, the emperor cannot help but realize who his greatest warrior is.” He turned and paced, speaking more to himself than to her. “We will drive against him, break him before Sithelbec! We have assurances that the dwarves will stay out of the war, and the elves alone cannot hope to match our numbers. The victory will be mine!”

He turned back to her, those dark eyes flaming again, and Suzine felt another kind of fear—the fear of the doe as it trembles before the slavering jaws of the wolf. Again the general whirled in agitation, pounding his fist into the palm of his other hand.

Suzine cast a sidelong glance at the mirror, as if she feared someone might be listening. The surface was natural, reflecting only the pair in the tent. In the mirror, she saw General Giarna step toward her. She turned to face him as he placed his hands on her shoulders.

She knew what he wanted, what she would—she must—give him. Their contact was brief and violent. Giarna’s passion contorted him, as if she was the vent for all of his anxieties. The experience bruised her, gave her a sense of uncleanliness that nearly brought her to despair. Afterward, she wanted to reach out and cover the mirror, to smash it or at least turn it away. Instead, she hid her feelings, as she had learned to do so well, and then lay quietly as Giarna rose and dressed, saying nothing. Once he looked at her, and she thought he was going to speak.

Suzine’s heart pounded. Did he know what she was thinking? She thought of the face in the mirror again—that elven face. But General Giarna only scowled as he stood before her. After several moments, he spun on his heel and stalked from the tent. She heard the pacing of his charger without, and then the clatter of hooves as the general galloped away.

Hesitantly, inevitably, she turned back to the mirror.

The two armies wheeled and skirmished across the flatlands, using the forests for cover and obstruction, making sharp cavalry sweeps and sudden ambushes. Lives expired, men and elves suffered agony and maiming, and yet the great bodies of the two armies did not contact each other. General Giarna’s human force drove toward Sithelbec, while Kith-Kanan’s Wildrunners countermarched to interpose themselves between the Ergothian army and its destination. The humans moved quickly, and it was only the effort of an all-night forced march that finally brought the exhausted elves into position.

Twenty thousand Silvanesti and Kagonesti warriors finally gathered into a single mass and prepared a defense, tensely awaiting the steadily advancing human horde. The elven warriors averaged three to four hundred years of age, and many of their captains had seen six or more centuries. If they survived the battle and the war, they could look forward to more centuries, five or six hundred years, perhaps, of peaceful aging.