James Barclay - Rise of the TaiGethen

Jeral pounded on, driving himself forward, refusing to give in to the fear. He raced around a banyan trunk and was struck by two hundred pounds of solid muscle. The wind was knocked from him and he was hurled back to sprawl through the leaf litter, fetching up face down in a slew of muddy sludge.

Jeral rolled over quickly, getting his sword in front of him, but all he could see was Hynd standing stock still, his back to a tree, staring towards the river. Jeral surged to his feet, gasping a breath into a bruised chest. The panther had not broken stride and was streaking towards the water’s edge. Jeral could see elves too, and other panthers, all taking the attack to the main column.

The screaming behind him hadn’t stopped. Guards ran past, chasing the ClawBound. The sound of the last alarm ward died away and Jeral looked to the screaming. Bodies lay around a fire. One man still stood, a mage by his clothes. He was rigid, his hands clenched by his sides.

Down towards the river, orders were hollered out. Jeral heard men come to ready. He heard the roar of many panthers and realised he didn’t have a choice. Not really.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘Hynd, see to him.’

Jeral turned and ran back towards the river, where he saw it all. ClawBound pairs exploded from the forest, hammering into his men. Panthers leapt. Jaws and claws ripped and raked, sowing confusion and panic. He saw a mage spin about and fall into the river, his face torn open. A warrior sliced the empty air with his sword as a panther leapt above it and clamped jaws about his skull, bearing him down.

But the elves weren’t with them. They were attacking to the left and right of the targeted units. This was no random attack to scare and kill. This had a defined purpose.

‘Target the elves! Stop them!’

Jeral leapt over a root, ran through some brush and burst from the forest. The body of a mage slapped into the ground in front of him. The panther snapped its jaws through his neck and turned to roar at Jeral.

Jeral slashed at it with his sword, simultaneously trying to slither backwards. His blade clipped an ear, slicing off the tip, and the panther howled, unaccustomed to a fight, and leapt away. Jeral tracked its path straight to an elf who had broken from the fighting to clamp a hand over his own ear.

In the midst of the fight, Jeral stared open-mouthed, just for a few moments. Swords flashed all around them. Men and ClawBound engaged in ferocious fighting. The army was closing in on both sides, and in the midst of it all the elf knelt by his panther and covered her wound with his hand. The pair of them touched heads then turned to stare straight at him. Then they moved, fast.

‘Oh no.’ Jeral cast about him. He was surrounded by fighting but there was no one close enough to help. ‘To me! I have incoming!’

Jeral couldn’t back away except into the forest, which offered nothing but a lonely death. The ClawBound pair streaked towards him. To his left, a mage cast. The invisible mana cone caught up two elves and hurled them back into the forest. The next instant, a panther roared as if in mortal pain. She pounced on the mage, her claws slashing great rents in his chest and her jaws ripping flesh from his shoulder.

The ClawBound pair was on him. Jeral held his sword in front of him, determined not to die a whimpering coward. But they did not attack. They moved apart and slowed, forcing him back. The elf barked like a wild dog and the elves and panthers pushed away in their attacking arc, forming a defensive line into which enslaved Sharps ran.

‘Cast!’ shouted Jeral. ‘One of you ca-’

The elf in front of him stepped in and cracked a punch against his chin. Jeral didn’t even see it coming until he was falling. He hit the ground and all he could hear was running feet. Belatedly a spell howled away, and he heard the death cry of a single elf and the agonised roars of panthers.

Jeral tried to get up. His head was swimming. Rough hands helped him back to his feet and someone pushed his sword into his hands. Men were running into the forest and Jeral went with them, groggy at first but then with increasing sureness. He ran towards the guard fires, coming to a stop by Hynd and calling to his men to end the pursuit. They were already chasing shadows.

‘Hynd,’ he said.

Hynd was with the stricken mage, who was still standing in the same position, staring at the forest. Men were filtering back past them. Some saw the mage and their eyes widened as they hurried past. Hynd gestured Jeral to him.

Jeral could see the blood before he saw the wounds, and when he looked at the poor mage could feel nothing but pity for him. Around the fire, the quickly slaughtered guards and other mages lay mercifully blind. Jeral understood the violence of their deaths, but he could not comprehend the cruelty that had been visited upon the sole survivor.

Jeral thought he recognised him as Pirian but could easily have been mistaken. The cuts, inflicted by panther and elf, began on his forehead. A long wound ran from temple to temple, described with clinical precision. Blood ran down into his eyebrows and over his face. His nose had been sliced along its length and the cut continued down and through his top lip.

Pirian’s cheeks each carried four ragged tears that ran from the sides of his nose all the way to his ears, both of which had been bitten half away. And finally, his neck had been sliced from the tip of his chin all the way to the top of his shirt. No single cut was deep enough to be fatal but every single one was designed to scar. Jeral touched his own facial wounds and blessed his relative good fortune.

Pirian himself was lost to shock. His eyes were seeking an end to his nightmare and his face was shrouded in his blood. But while his face and mind were wrecked, the rest of his body was wholly undamaged.

‘Can we move him?’ asked Jeral. ‘Have you tried?’

‘He’s totally rigid. I think we’ll have to carry him,’ said Hynd, his voice quiet. ‘Why have they done this? Why not just kill him?’

Jeral sighed, and another small door into the elven psyche opened for him. His fear and respect for them grew in equal measure.

‘It’s a message,’ he said. ‘By morning, everyone will know what has happened to him. Sooner or later, everyone will see him. The elves know we can’t kill him, or leave him behind, and so every day he will be there, the most chilling reminder of what is waiting for us out here.’

‘They came all this way just to do that? Deliver that message?’

‘Oh no,’ said Jeral. ‘This was just a sideshow. They’ve just freed about seventy Sharps. Didn’t bother killing as many of us as they could have, either. But they’ve weakened us nonetheless.’

‘What can we do about it?’

‘Build. More. Barges.’

There was Ix, jumping and sparkling, laughing, capricious and mischievous. Yniss laughed and the forest echoed with his joy. Ix danced along the lines of the earth and cavorted in the rivers and streams, matching her movements to the energies Yniss had laid there. Because she loved it so, he made her its warden and her laughter echoes still among Beeth’s boughs.

The Aryn Hiil

It was not until the next morning that Auum noticed something that he should have seen much sooner. He found Onelle, and after they had prayed together at the statue of Yniss, they walked towards the Hallows of Reclamation beyond the village.

‘Takaar has been here, hasn’t he?’ asked Auum.

Onelle nodded. ‘I’ve wanted to speak to you about it but Lysael’s news rather took over, didn’t it? And you needed more rest last night. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you be the one to bring it up.’

‘You have nothing to apologise for. He’s taken your orientation class, hasn’t he?’