Michael Williams: The Dark Queen

When the Istarians had passed, he would slip from the stone disguise, appear in their midst with surprise and havoc.

The elf rises out of the ground …

His company of followers, the Que-Nara, hid in the high grass behind him, their faces painted brown, black, and yellow to match their flowing robes, the hard shadows, and the first slanting rays of the sun.

He was the rock amid the reeds. He was the stony heart of the army.

The left flank of the Istarian infantry passed not fifty feet from where Stormlight and his party lay hid shy;den. The horsemen spread out before the advancing army, a dark-haired Solamnic Knight in the vanguard with three of his subordinates.

It was just as Fordus had predicted. The desert storm had gathered; a huge cloud of sand and hot blasting wind scoured the edge of the battlefield, seeming to await his command. The Kingpriest's army consisted of two thousand infantry, five hun shy;dred archers, and five hundred cavalry, among those a division of Solamnic Knights-the most formidable cavalry in the world. And yet the expected army looked curiously dwarfed, dimin shy;ished, as though half its number had deserted in the night.

Stormlight stood serenely in the howling storm as the horsemen passed and the legion followed, heads lowered against the harsh, corrosive wind.

The sterim had allied itself with the rebels. When shy;ever an army arrayed itself against Fordus, it seemed that even the weather plotted to shape the fortunes of the day.

Fordus stood on a rise, in waving knee-high yel shy;low grass, and faced the advancing Istarians. Bran shy;dishing a vicious-looking short axe, he shouted to his troops, challenged the approaching Solamnic cavalry…

Then he ducked and vanished.

The Solamnic outriders gaped and scanned the ranks, but Fordus was gone, true to his ghostly leg shy;end. Almost at once, a volley of arrows and stones rushed to meet them. Raising their shields against the onslaught, they forgot all about the rebel com shy;mander.

Meanwhile, Fordus slipped and dove through the high wind-driven grass. He moved swiftly, in a crouch, racing through the no-man's-land between the armies into the midst of the Solamnic horse. He weaved almost soundlessly amid churning legs and huge equine bodies, bound at unnatural speed for the western wing of his army-Larken's wing, waiting in hiding along the right Istarian flank, with the bard's hawk spiraling above like a soli shy;tary predator.

Running with uncanny, sure instinct, he side shy;stepped the first Istarian legionnaires, the blare of their trumpets canceling his soft footfalls on the dry ground. It was the moment of battle he loved, the first confusion in the enemy ranks, when he reveled in his fleetness of foot, his gift from the gods, his greatest deception, racing from one place on the field to another far-flung outpost with the speed of an antelope or the leopard that pursued it.

He ran so swiftly that survivors would claim that Fordus Firesoul was in two, three places at once. That he was not even human, but a phenomenon-a prince of the air and the shifting weather.

Crouching even lower, nearly tunneling through the rustling waves of grass, Fordus raced by the last of the cavalry so closely that his shoulder brushed against the white flank of a Solamnic mare. Into the far field he rushed, and suddenly two shadowy forms emerged from the nodding undergrowth.

Istarian infantry. Swordsmen.

In one immaculate movement, Fordus plucked a throwing axe from his belt and, scarcely rising from a crouch, launched it with a whirling sidearm motion at the head of the man on the right. The blade flashed neatly beneath the Istarian's chin, and, wheeling through the air in a bright red spray, embedded itself-in the other man's back. Both sol shy;diers gaped and fell to their knees, their arms jerking grotesquely at their sides.

As their eyes glazed over, the rebel passed between them and recovered his axe with no further resistance.

Just as Fordus reached his troops, he heard the Solamnic war cry from behind, answered by a whoop from the Que-Nara, the shrill trumpets of the charging Istarian infantry, and finally the sudden clash of metal against metal as the armies closed and the first serious combat began.

Rising to his full height, Fordus peered over the whipping grass as the rear guard of the Istarian army broke ranks and rushed to join the battle. He saw the enemy's battle standards dip and nod as the last of them breasted the tall grass, bound for the heart of the struggle. The cloud of wind-driven sand moved onto the field just as they reached it.

Fordus chuckled softly. It had all worked accord shy;ing to his plan. In five minutes, maybe less, the two flanks of his army would rise from hiding and attack the Istarian army from behind. Assaulted from all sides, blinded and coughing, the Istarian soldiers would battle surprise and chaos as well as his sea shy;soned rebels.

The trap was baited, sprung, and closing. It was magnificent, clean and swift, like the tumble of a well-thrown axe through the air. And it was all too easy.

In a matter of minutes, the battle was decided, though the sandstorm raged through the whole afternoon.

When the Twelfth Istarian Legion hit the center of the rebel lines, Stormlight sprang from the rock-cloak and signaled his troops. The Que-Nara forces struck the reserves viciously with a flanking attack. Armed with the traditional weapons of the plains- bow and bola and hook-bladed kala-they tore fiercely into the unexpecting ranks. Reeling from the sudden onslaught, the Istarians panicked. The legionnaires dropped pike and sword, shield and broadaxe, and fled before the reckless barbarians, the fleet Plainsmen.

Fighting with no more weaponry than his hands and feet, Stormlight cut his way to the midst of the Istarian ranks, the stony crust of his skin slashing arm and leg and throat like a fierce, serrated blade. Spinning around a grizzled lancer, he felled a swordsman with a crisp stroke of his hand. Two mercenaries rushed to meet him. He dove between the baffled pair, and as they turned to strike, the elf drove his heels into their faces with a quick, power shy;ful handspring.

Bounding to his feet, Stormlight spun high in a circle, his right foot catching yet another Istarian lancer in the throat. The man's javelin broke as he fell, impaling him and finishing what Stormlight had begun.

With a deep breath, the elf looked around. There, on horseback, vainly trying to rally his troops, Gen shy;eral Josef Monoculus caught sight of the charging Stormlight and drew his ancient Solamnic sword to receive the rush of the enemy. With a cry and a cart shy;wheeling leap, Stormlight hurtled through the air, his heel crashing against the side of the general's helmet.

With a soft groan and unfocused eyes, the Istarian commander fell heavily from the saddle. Stormlight bounded onto the horse's back and, raising a broken Solamnic standard, rallied the rebels to this spot in the center of the fight, laughing and singing an old Abanasinian war song.

The men whooped when they saw Stormlight rise in the fallen commander's saddle. Descending from the grass-covered rise, they struck the leaderless Istarians from the other flank, dealing quick death as they slashed through the disorganized lines.

From the high ground, Fordus watched a little absentmindedly as the rebels and the storm closed like a vise around the floundering legions of Istar.

He saw the bird dive toward a distant cropping of high grass, an Istarian archer level his bow at the creature. . And then, with a blinding magic that still bedazzled the rebel leader, no matter how many times he had seen it happen, Lucas vanished into a fireball, into a nova of red and amber as though the sun itself had opened and swallowed the bird.

The hawk would return later, from the high air. It would bear stories to Larken of how the Istarians had fled from the desert rout.