Douglas Niles - The Puppet King

During the voyage, the plan evolved from its simple beginnings. Instead of a single landing at the broad clearing located by Aleaha Takmarin, the army would be split into two divisions and would land in two places, on the northeast and northwest ends of the island. In each place, the ground troops would quickly establish a large, fortified encampment. The Qualinesti, on their griffons, would fly back and forth, maintaining communication between the two divisions, and the Silvanesti would quickly venture forth to clear the ground between the two camps of draconians and other dangerous inhabitants. Once the two forces were securely united, the Wildrunners would commence a southward sweep, spanning the width of the island and forcing all unfriendly denizens into a south corner at the bottom, where—if any survived—they would be confronted in a battle of annihilation.

With the griffons wheeling back and forth overhead and the sure knowledge that this was the last outpost of the nightmare that had plagued their realm for three decades, the Silvanesti elves on the boats treated the four-day journey down the river almost as a holiday outing. The splendid woodlands around them were sculpted as perfectly as any formal garden, with groves neatly arranged, framed by trimmed hedges, often complemented by regular, reflecting pools. At night, no worm was safe anywhere near the army encampment, and all day fishing lines drooped into the water from stem to stern of each boat. The elves ate well—fresh fish morning, noon, and night—and the crated provisions hadn’t even been touched as the army finally came within sight of the festering island.

These were veteran troops, of course, and now all vestige of holiday excursion vanished from the members of the expedition. The stench of decaying swampland thickened the air around them, and the sight of the bleeding, tormented trees provided a strong reminder of the purpose that had brought them down the river. A shrill whistle sounded from the shore—this was the atrakha, the unique horn used by the Kirath to communicate among themselves—and the anchors were dropped. Under the full control of the boatmen now, the rivercraft waited a mile north of their destination.

Here Aleaha Takmarin came over for a last conference before the elves went ashore. She paddled a slender canoe from the thicket on the shore and quickly found Porthios to give her report.

“The island remains quiet,” she informed him. “Still, don’t abandon caution. We’ve seen signs of many draconians, and I still don’t like the way that they’ve stayed away from their villages.”

“You know we’ll be careful... and thanks for your report,” Porthios replied. “Do you still think the two clearings are good places to land?”

“Yes, if you want to risk dividing your force,” she said cautiously. Almost as an afterthought, she reached into a pouch at her waist and drew out a small packet of woven grass. “Here—a greenmask. It’s a gift from the Kirath. Wear it when you go into battle, and it will offer some protection from noxious gases, smoke, and the like.”

“You still suspect there might be green dragons?” he asked.

She shrugged. “We haven’t seen any sign of them, but it’s like Samar said, this seems like a perfect place for them.”

“I’m afraid of the same thing,” he admitted. “I appreciate the gift.”

“My scouts will be on the island. We’ll make contact later, try to keep you posted on the enemy’s movements.”

“Thanks. Be careful.”

Minutes later, on the bow of the lead boat, Porthios met with Tarqualan, who commanded the company of Qualinesti flyers, and the two Silvanesti division commanders, the scarred veteran, Bandial, and the aristocratic noble, Cantal-Silaster. Also present were several of the nature priests of House Woodshaper, who would be charged with beginning the long, slow healing process of the woodland, and two of the white-robed elven wizards who would be entrusted to lending magical might to the Silvanesti ground forces.

“We’ll time the landings so that both divisions come ashore simultaneously,” Porthios clarified. “The Qualinesti archers will fly overhead, giving protection against attack from the air and keeping watch for any reaction on the ground. I want both camps established by nightfall, completed with palisades.”

“Shouldn’t be difficult,” Bandial said, with a look at the sun, which had not even reached its zenith as yet. “Can we move out as soon as we have a wall up?”

Porthios shook his head. “I want to keep a sense of coordination between the divisions. Even if one of you gets the camp established ahead of time, you’re to wait within the palisade. I’ll be flying back and forth and will put together orders for an attack with the dawn.”

“I thought you said you only expected a few draconians,” Bandial countered, adjusting the eye patch that he wore proudly. “Why all the caution?”

With a sigh, the marshal tried to make sense of his answer. “It’s just a feeling I have. We could have some trouble with this one. True, Aleaha looked the place over and didn’t see any sign of dragons or ogres, and not many draconians, at that. Maybe it was their villages. Too many of them looked abandoned, as if perhaps they still lived there but were hiding out in the woods.”

“If the denizens of nightmare are there, we’ll find them,” Cantal-Silaster promised. “You know that, my lord marshal.”

Porthios looked at these elves with real affection. “I do know that, my brave men and women. And it is my sincere wish that every elf with us survives this campaign to make it back home again. But these woods are thick, even for Silvanesti forests. It will be hard to see what’s happening from the air, and in the event of a surprise, I want all forces ready to defend themselves.”

“Understood, sir,” agreed Bandial cheerfully. “Now, good luck to you!”

“And to you all!”

Stallyar and another griffon came to rest on the boat’s upper deck, and Porthios and Tarqualan took to their saddles. The great, winged creatures leaped into the air, and the prince of elvenkind, Speaker of the Sun, and Military Governor of Silvanesti once more made ready to lead his troops into battle.

Aerensianic watched the elven deployment with keen interest. The green dragon was coiled through the limbs of three massive trees, just below the upper canopy of tattered leaves, the barrier that would probably have masked his supple green body from the prying eyes of any of the elven scouts on their cursed griffons. However, Aeren was not relying on mere camouflage for protection. As he had when the elven scouts had first scoured this island, he was concealing himself behind a spell of invisibility.

If his features could have been seen, they would have been creased by an obvious frown as he watched the elven riverboats divide into two separate flotillas. One group of the long, flat craft glided to the dragon’s right, while the other floated toward the shore not far from the dragon’s concealed vantage.

The green dragon was remembering his second meeting with the Silvanesti traitor, the elf who hated this Porthios so much that he had bargained his own army—and a portion of his ancestral homeland—away so that this bold marshal might be killed. The elf’s information had been useful and accurate, so far as it went. The elven army appeared on the river exactly on the day the general had predicted. The mob of creatures lurking in the woods below—ogres, goblins, and draconians, all held together under the tenuous reins of Aerensianic’s lordship—was emplaced, ready to strike at the landing forces. They, too, had hidden from the scouts, ignoring their almost irresistible compulsion to attack early.

But the traitor had said nothing about a landing in two places. Secure in the knowledge that the elves were too far away to smell him, Aeren snorted a cloud of deadly chlorine gas, irritated with this new development. Unlike the disciplined elven army, the unruly creatures who had answered the green dragon’s call to arms were far too disorganized to perform any complicated offensive maneuvers. He would have to leave them where they were, letting the battle develop as it would.