Douglas Niles - Goddess Worldweaver

So he moved to the fore of the deck, with the legionaires and the pikemen, and he felt the planks begin to lower. The ship changed around him, the once-steep hulls bending, folding, flattening to form a smooth ramp. This ramp descended into the shallows, and the front of the vessel was open, facing the land. In a single mass the ghost warriors charged down and out, splashing into water that surged as high as their hips, slogging toward shore with rifles, pikes, spears all leveled toward the enemy lurking on the dunes.

From somewhere within him a cry gurgled up, a howl of battle that was no longer a human sound nor even the noise of any living thing. Instead, it was a plea for blood, a promise of violence… and as the death ships came to shore it erupted, simultaneously, from twenty thousand ghostly throats.

Tamarwind’s knees went weak as he heard that awful sound wail upward from the shore. Elves in his line, warriors who had trained for hundreds of years, clapped their hands over their ears and fell, writhing, to the ground. A whole rank of younger troops turned and started to flee, only to pause before the roaring scorn of Rawknuckle Barefist, who had blocked the inland paths in fear of just such a rout.

The beach was black with charging troops, spears and bayonets bristling all along the front. Against that tide Tam’s regiment of elves, a thousand strong and arrayed in a two-rank line, seemed like a tissue paper dike attempting to hold back the tide. Even the knowledge of other formations-more great regiments of elves, as well as legions of gnomes and an army of trolls-seemed like merely potential casualties. All would fight bravely he knew, but one of them would eventually be overwhelmed. With the line breached, the rest of the defenders would be imperiled; they would have to flee or die. At best, they could hope to buy a little time, for a tremendous payment in lives and in blood.

Yet he had trained and prepared too long to abandon hope now. He shouted commands, inarticulate barks for the most part that nevertheless served the purpose of stiffening the ranks, letting the elves know their captain was with them. Most of these men had never been in a battle before, but he knew they would serve bravely and well. He had first learned this about himself nearly five hundred years earlier: the elven heart had some kind of instinctive war memory that proved unfailingly courageous in the hour of need.

At the same time, he was overwhelmingly sad, thinking about these elves who could have looked forward to hundreds more years of pastoral life. All that was put at risk, for many would be lost, because of the necessity to fight.

Lastly, as the ships towered above the beach, still surging forward with teeming decks, Tamarwind allowed himself to think of Belynda. There were so many things he wished he had told her: for centuries he had planned to speak to her, to convince her of his love, and yet the time had never been right. He had waited, always hoping for a better opportunity, and now it occurred to him that his opportunities might have run out. That thought frightened him more than death or injury, violence or flame, and in that awareness he wanted very much to get away from here alive.

The death ships had spilled their cargo with appalling haste. Tam had watched in astonishment as each bow had folded into a ramp, dropping forward into shallow water to disgorge a tight rank of shadowy warriors. Already the first of these were scrambling out of the surf onto dry land. Water dripped from their tunics and legs just as it would drip from real flesh, and for the first time the elven veteran accepted the fact that these were real foes capable of inflicting genuine and lethal wounds.

He was heartened to see a few silver spheres fly through the air as Gallupper’s guns, atop the nearby dune, opened up. The metallic shot skipped across the sand, rolling into the tightly packed ranks before exploding in a blaze of white heat. Again and again the batteries spoke, dozens of shots scattering into the files of ghost warriors, tearing great rips in those lines. There were more of them shooting from the dune to his left, and as the enemy masses tried to form ranks, they found themselves under resolute and fiery assault.

But still more of them were coming ashore, the numberless tide of death ships looming tall and black just beyond. Those already on land, meanwhile, ignored the lethal barrage, re-formed the ranks where they had been torn by the explosions, and started to march toward the elves. Either the batteries slowed their fire or, more likely, the numbers of the enemy simply dwarfed that responding barrage. In any event, it seemed to Tam that they came on without so much as awareness of the explosions flashing among them.

“Steady-raise those pikes. Hold your ranks, elves!” Tamarwind shouted, taking some comfort from the sound of his own voice. The front of the elven line bristled like a hedgehog as the steel-headed pikes were tilted forward. At the junctures where one company met the next, giants stood ready, fighting in trios armed with massive, long-handled axes.

“Giants-take up your halberds and move into position!” Tam called, as the ghost ranks advanced, approaching the markers that had earlier been placed. When the leading rank was a hundred yards away, the elf turned to the rear, signaled the company of longbowmen who had been waiting for his sign. “Fire away-volleys, one after the other!”

The deadly missiles arced overhead, flying in eerie silence, slashing through the sky and then plunging down into the dark rank of attackers. Many arrows plunged into the sand, but numerous others tore into flesh, puncturing heads and shoulders and chests among the grim legion. A hundred attackers fell in that first volley, and already the second barrage of arrows was rising into the sky, passing high over the elves to once more pepper the lethal horde.

Now that eerie wail was repeated, an ululating cry from a hundred thousand bloodless throats. Sand churned, and the air itself seemed to tremble as the Deathlord’s legion advanced into a trot, then a ragged run. The tight discipline wavered as the faster runners broke ahead of the slower. A hundred tall, black spearmen, carrying leather shields and garbed as Zulu veterans, rushed toward the center of the elven line. They halted, casting their spears into the midst of Tam’s troops, then came on in another rush. A few fell to well-aimed arrows, and the rest met a bloody end on the pikes that danced and bobbed before the defenders’ faces.

But now the rest of the horde was close, and there was a great clattering of wood and steel as the pike butts were planted and the blades chimed together, then quivered under the impact of undead but very corporeal flesh.

Tamarwind drew his sword, the slender, double-edged blade forged a hundred years ago by a druid master. He stood with the First Company to his right, and a trio of halberd-armed giants at his left. In another instant the ground before him was swarming with dark, hateful faces. A spear thrust toward him, and he hacked the weapon in half with a single slash. Two muskets tipped with lethal bayonets jabbed, and he was forced to take a half step backward. But he lunged forward again, two quick stabs dropping the ghost warriors that might have been summoned here from Shiloh or Gettysburg.

A giant roared, and the mighty axe blade swept past, cleaving a centurion in two before plunging deep into the sand. The halberdier tried to wrest his weapon free as three swordsmen rushed in; Tam dropped one with a throat-cutting slash, then held the other two at bay until the giant raised the halberd and brought both attackers down with a single, haymaking swing.

Feeling the rhythm of his comrade, Tamarwind rushed forward in the wake of the halberd’s swing, stabbing a charging Turk in the throat. The man, who might have fought in Saladin’s army or even in the legions of Mohammed himself, fell to the sand and thrashed, choking and gasping as new death slowly claimed him. Tam had already found his next target and moved on from there.