Richard Baker - Final Gate

“Be careful,” Ilsevele whispered to Fflar. She leaned over from Swiftwind and kissed him lightly. “The daemonfey will be looking for you.”

“And you,” he said in answer. “You won’t stay out of the fighting for long, I fear.”

“I know.”

Ilsevele turned Swiftwind away from the banner and urged the horse into an easy canter, riding back to where the Silver Guard of Elion and hundreds of Sembian cavalry waited, a few hundred yards behind the two standards. She had been placed in charge of the allied armies’ reserve-not because it was any safer there than elsewhere on the battlefield, but because it was an assignment of crucial importance. Seiveril trusted no one else beside Fflar to choose the moment to fling the allies’ last strength into the fray, and he needed Fflar to lead from the front in this fight.

Sehanine, watch over her today, Fflar prayed silently.

“Forward the banner!” Seiveril shouted, and Fflar spurred his mount into an easy walk. Instead of hiding their standard, the elflord and his guard marched in plain sight near the center of the army, surrounded by the Knights of the Golden Star, the Moon Knights, Selkirk’s own Silver Ravens, and the Evereskan Vale Guards, who were the best troops to be found in either army. Fflar glanced over his shoulder one more time. Ilsevele took up her spot at the head of her warriors, who stood watching in a double line of horsemen.

“Beware the fey’ri!” someone cried near Fflar.

He looked back around, just in time to see the whole daemonfey legion taking to the air, along with scores of the demons, devils, and other such things that could fly. The wing beats echoed like thunderclaps across the downs. They climbed higher, making ready for the strike to come. Below the winged warriors and monsters, the rest of Sarya’s motley array howled, shrieked challenges, and gnashed fangs, eager for the taste of mortal flesh. More than a few of the Sembian mercenaries slowed their pace, shrinking from the prospect of getting anywhere near the foul monsters. But still the combined armies moved on.

“Spellcasters, ready your defenses,” Seiveril called.

The leading companies drew within two bowshots of the daemonfey horde, and heavy brazen horns sounded deep in the enemy ranks. All at once, the leash was slipped, and the cacophonous tide of hellborn monstrosities surged forward to meet the advance. Bulldoglike canoloths as big as draft horses bounded across the field, barbed tongues lolling from their terrible jaws. Mezzoloths clacked and hissed, leaping over the wet grass with astonishing speed for creatures as big as ogres. Fflar reached up to close his visor over his eyes, and drew Keryvian in one smooth motion. The sword burned with bright blue fire, sensing demonblood nearby.

“Archers! Mages! Take them!” Selkirk called.

Streaking balls of fire sailed out of the Sembian ranks, along with flight after flight of white arrows. The demons and the rest responded with infernal spells of their own, scouring the ranks of the human and elf warriors with ripping blasts of scarlet lightning and worse. Then the fey’ri overhead dropped down low and added their own deadly sorcery to the barrage of hellwrought spells and blights searing the field. The battlefield erupted into waves of roaring fire, booming thunderclaps, glowing shields and barriers, as on both sides hundreds of clerics, wizards, and demons hurled magic at their foes or sought to parry enemy strikes.

“Tymora preserve us,” Miklos Selkirk muttered, so softly that no one more than ten feet away could have heard him.

Humans and elves died by the hundreds in that awful moment, charred to smoking corpses, blasted into bloody pieces, or smothered beneath life-snuffing necromancy. But fey’ri burned and fell out of the sky, while demons screamed in rage at spells that destroyed them or hurled them back to their own foul plane.

“Demons! Demons among us!”

An uneven wave of sulfurous bursts all around the standards announced the appearance of demons and devils by the hundreds, teleporting themselves to attack the twin standards. Elves and humans cried out in alarm or screamed in mortal pain, while the fiendish creatures roared, hissed, or bellowed in obscene laughter. Fflar swore savagely and closed up with Seiveril, guarding the elflord’s back. In the skies above them the fey’ri legion climbed back above bowshot and soared over the allied army.

“It’s the Lonely Moor again!” Seiveril shouted to Fflar. “They are trying to surround us!”

“That didn’t work before,” Fflar replied. “The daemonfey are up to something else!” Then he found himself hurled out of his saddle by a deafening thunderclap.

His horse screamed once in mortal agony, and the ground hit him like a giant’s hammer. For a moment he stared into the sky, his head swimming. The demons came after the standard despite our guards, he realized. Then he rolled to his hands and knees and pushed himself upright.

Seiveril was nowhere in sight, but all around him the elf knights of the Golden Star fought furiously against dozens of demons-fire-wreathed things that looked like black skeletons, hulking toadlike hezrous that filled the air with their noxious reek, even buzzing chasme demons that flitted over the ground like monstrous flies. Sun elf knights battled the monsters, swords aglow with holy fire, while blazing arrows streaked from spellarchers’ bows and elf battle-mages hurled destruction in a dozen forms. Human warriors fought beside them, spending blood and strength with an extravagance that awed Fflar. Even though few wielded weapons that could harm a devil or a demon, still they stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their elf comrades.

“Dieee, elfff!”

A darting chasme swooped toward Fflar, knifelike claws extended to impale him. Its buzzing, chittering voice stabbed like daggers in his ears, but Fflar leaped to meet the creature and sheared off its arms and half its head with one great upstroke of Keryvian. The sword rang shrilly with its first kill of the day.

“You’ll have more than enough today, old friend,” Fflar said to his sword.

To his right a hezrou clawed an elf knight out of the saddle and stooped, catching the unfortunate warrior’s head between its huge, wet talons. It leered at its victim, needle-like fangs dripping in anticipation-and Fflar sliced into it from its side, hewing great black cuts in its quivering flesh. The hezrou let loose a gurgling wail and collapsed. Fflar reached down and dragged the wounded warrior to his feet.

“Watch yourself, friend!” he called.

The sun elf clamped one hand over his side and nodded, shaking, behind his visor. He stooped to pick up his sword, and turned back to the fray. Fflar turned, seeking the next threat.

Metal scraped and creaked nearby.

“Now what?” the moon elf warrior murmured.

He looked toward the sound, and for a moment didn’t see anything at all-it was coming from behind the line of demons and fiends fighting savagely at the army’s front. But a flash of lightning and sharp thunderclap slashed through the ranks, clearing his field of view.

Tall, ponderous iron shapes lumbered up out of the demonic ranks. They were shaped like elves dressed in ancient armor, their fists encased in huge spiked gauntlets. Each was fully ten feet tall. Bright blue flashes sparked from the joinings of their armor and glowed behind their expressionless visors. For a moment he thought they were lumbering up to attack Sarya’s demons from behind, destroying them against the swords of Evereska’s Vale Guards. But the fiends simply ignored the old elven constructs. With mindless determination, the battle golems raised their fists and struck down elves and humans alike.

What new deviltry is this? Fflar wondered.