Paul Thompson - Alliances

“I’ll steer for the trees!” Kerian added. The juniper grove was where the main battle was raging.

Hytanthas, Samar and Porthios, and the rest of the sky-riders fell in behind Chisa. Alhana leaned far to the side, drew back her bowstring, and loosed. A Khur wearing the brown-and-blue striped geb of a Mikku threw up his hands and fell from his horse.

Following Alhana’s example, the griffon riders rained arrows on the nomads. They could hardly miss. The mass of humans below was so dense, their horses so uncontrollable, the elves barely had to aim.

Soon enough, the remaining nomads quit the juniper grove and galloped back up the slight rise to Adala and the warmasters.

The panicked horses didn’t stop there, but stampeded past, all but knocking Little Thorn over. Adala shouted at the men, but they couldn’t control their animals. The last of twenty thousand thundered by, leaving her enveloped in clouds of choking dust, colored red by the fast-dying sun.

The air stirred violently, and the dust was driven away by the downdraft of beating wings. Seeming to materialize from the blood-red air, the agents of the nomads’ catastrophic reverse alighted in front of Adala. She glanced back and saw her warmasters and chiefs returning to her. They’d given up trying to urge their beasts hack and were hurrying forward on foot. Curiously, Little Thorn seemed unaffected by the griffons. He dropped his head and cropped a tuft of saltbush. A single figure swung down from one of the lead griffons and approached her on foot.

The griffon rider appeared unarmed. Below a metal skullcap, the figure’s face was covered by a dust cloth. When the dust cloth was pulled down, Adala recoiled in shock.

“By what magic do you appear to me alive?” she exclaimed.

“A god’s magic, it seems,” the Lioness replied.

Adala glanced over her shoulder again. The main body of her host had recovered control of their horses and were drawn up several hundred yards away.

“You came back in time to perish!” she said.

“I’ve come back to take my people into Inath-Wakenti.” Kerian gestured to the griffon riders behind her. Two more dismounted and came to stand by her. She introduced them.

“This is Alhana Starbreeze, once queen of Silvanesti. And this is Orexas, leader of the elf army of the West.”

Adala’s expression settled into hard lines. “It doesn’t matter who you bring against us, laddad. We will not yield. If it costs every life we have, we will not yield!”

“You see?” the Lioness said to Porthios. “What can you do with such a fanatic? Reason doesn’t work. Nor fear. The sword is all she understands.”

“Must we wade through blood to find peace?” asked Alhana.

“Yes!” Adala said. Her chiefs and warmasters had struggled through the churned-up sand to stand on either side of Little Thorn, their swords drawn. Adala added, “The battle will resume. Flying beasts or no flying beasts, you will not pass!”

“I think we will.”

Porthios stepped forward and addressed Adala. “I was once like you, proud, defiant, certain of the rightness of my cause. I faced enemies far more powerful than you without hope of victory because I knew I was destined to win in the end.”

“Every foolish warrior in the world thinks that,” Adala said, dismissive. “I am not a warrior. I am a woman, mother of my people, and Those on High have granted me the gift of maita. How can the destiny of a single laddad compare to the fate promised me by the gods?”

She had asked a similar question of all her opponents. The humans had joined her or been struck down by her divine maita. The laddad had been delivered by it into her hands.

Porthios was silent for a moment, making a decision, then he said, “Maita means ‘fate ordained by the gods,’ I believe. Perhaps you do have your gods’ favor.” His hands dropped to his waist, and he untied his ragged sash. “Or maybe you’ve just been lucky.” He loosened the gray cloth winding around his neck.

Kerian realized what he meant to do. It was brilliant and terrible, matchlessly brave and utterly selfish. For the first time during their endless, arduous trek, she admired him.

His hoarse voice went on, unstoppable, impossible to ignore. “Let me tell you about fate, you insolent barbarian. I once ruled the greatest, most civilized nation in the world. I was married to a queen who was as good, honest, and brave as she was beautiful—and she was very, very beautiful.” A tiny sob escaped Alhana’s lips, but Porthios went on, remorseless. “We had a child, a son to rule our combined nations. He was handsome, intelligent, and courageous as only a prince of elves could be.”

He dragged the scarf away from his neck. The flesh was mottled red and scarred like the skin of a lizard. The Khurish chiefs muttered. Adala blinked a few times, but held firm.

“All this greatness I lost. My son threw away his life on a false love and an evil cause. My wife never forgave herself, or me, for his death.” He pushed back his hood.

“Oh, my love, don’t,” Alhana whispered brokenly.

His gloved hands halted for an instant, and he glanced at her. “I must, beloved. It’s maita.”

He spoke to Adala again. “No mortal being should have survived what I survived. You speak of your divine fate. You know nothing! I am divine fate. It is all that keeps me alive, and I will not be denied.”

In one motion Porthios drew off the cloth mask. Nomad and elf shrank back in horror. Kerian had seen this once before. Although she looked away, she saw it still. The image was burned into her memory. Only Alhana did not recoil or avert her eyes. She looked full upon the ruin of her husband’s face, and she did not waver from his side.

The dragon’s fire had burned Porthios’s flesh down to the last layer of skin. Flame-red, it covered a head devoid of ears, nose, and lips, the eyelids retracted to nearly nothing. Almost as if to mock what was gone, a fringe of long hair remained on the lower half of his skull, but the hair was dull, dead gray. His face was a skull, covered by crimson muscle and slashed by harsh, white scar tissue.

He turned his head stiffly toward the shocked warmasters and several dropped to their knees. “We will enter this valley, and you will do nothing more to stop us. Go!”

The apparition before them was horrid enough; to hear it speak was the final straw. The chiefs and warmasters fled. Even Adala’s fortitude wasn’t proof against the sight. She did not flee, but she lifted her dust veil over her eyes.

“Abomination,” she gasped. “You should not be!”

The lipless mouth moved in an awful parody of a smile. “I agree. But here I am. Do you really want to match your fate to mine?”

He stepped forward and slapped the donkey’s flank. Faced with the wall of elves and griffons ahead, the donkey snorted and jogged back toward the men and horses he knew. Adala clutched reins and wiry mane to avoid being pitched off. She did not try to halt his going.

Porthios could not move. He had bared his shame to the world, and he could not turn to see the horror in the eyes of those behind him, especially one pair of violet eyes. A hand, clutching his mask, appeared at his side. He turned to find Alhana standing close by. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but there was no revulsion on her face, nor even pity, only love. He replaced the mask, raised his hood, and began to wind the long cloth around his neck again.

“Get the people moving,” he said. “If the humans think too long, they may try to fight again.”

Kerian climbed onto Chisa. She expected Alhana to follow, but the former queen stayed by her husband. Porthios told Samar to go without him.