James Barclay - Once walked with Gods

He flew back towards the fighting. In the gloom, he could barely follow it. More so because the elves were so damned fast. Three leapt above the men they were approaching, rolled in the air and came down striking out. Three men died. Mages behind them made to cast. Woefully slow. Blades licked out. Mages fell.

In the centre of the street a knot of soldiers had formed, facing in all directions and bristling with weapons. The elves ran at them, leapt over them, continued on down the street while the men scattered. Elves came from nowhere. Hands and feet struck out. Men were spun on their heels. Heads snapped back. Blades caught the torchlight. Blood misted into the night sky.

‘Dear gods around us,’ whispered Keller. ‘It’s a massacre.’ In the centre of their force, the humans were packed too tight to fight. They couldn’t free their swords. They pushed for space. Angry shouts rattled across their lines. Panic was beginning to grow. Men were dying. Elves were not. Mages dare not cast in the confined space. More and more took the route of the coward and flew straight up, abandoning their comrades to the cold, disciplined fury of the TaiGethen.

‘Forward!’ called Grafyrre. ‘Keep moving forward.’

Blood slicked the cobbles. Bodies of men choked the gutters and the central drains. Auum spun and kicked high, his foot smacking into the side of an enemy’s head. The man fell sideways. Auum moved into the space. A sword came at him, hurried through waist high. Auum ducked it. The soldier couldn’t control the sweep. The blade sank into the gut of one of his own.

Takaar ensured the man went down hard. He moved up. Marack blocked aside a downward cut. Takaar slid a blade through the man’s ribs. Space. Auum moved up. Takaar paced forward and leapt. He twisted in the air, landed and hacked down. Blood surged from his target’s shoulder.

Auum dropped, slid the feet from a mage. Marack hacked into his chest and moved into the space. The press was getting thicker. The pressure increasing from behind too. Auum felt his movements hampered for the first time. Ahead, men were slowly getting themselves together, holding their swords straight out and using them for stabbing. Overhead, mages were flying down the Path of Yniss. Not in confusion, with purpose. Auum saw them and knew in his heart that time was short for the doomed threads.

‘Follow me!’ yelled Takaar.

‘Where?’

Auum diverted a blade coming for his gut and thumped the heel of his palm into his enemy’s chest. The man fell back against the rank behind. Takaar pointed to the sky.

‘Up.’

Auum smiled. ‘Graf! Heads up and run.’

Grafyrre relayed the idea as an order and the TaiGethen reacted as one. The man Auum had just knocked down had been caught by those behind. Auum ran up the front of his body and launched himself from the man’s face. He jumped high above the human army. He cycled his arms and legs, reaching out as far as he could, searching for the ideal landing point. He saw it catch the light of torches from either side of the Path of Yniss.

A helmet.

Auum glanced left and right. His clear view across the street afforded him the sight of TaiGethen elves soaring above their enemies. Faces were turning up, but those who had seen them were already too late to stop them, much less follow them. Marack was turning a somersault next to him, Takaar another of his horizontal flights, fierce and graceful. Grafyrre and Merrat were hand in hand, coming down on their left feet and pushing off in perfect balance.

Auum landed. The helmet’s occupant grunted and ducked at the brief weight on the top of his head but Auum was already gone. Like running the sucking mud of the Mouth of Orra at the outflow of the River Ix, or the quicksands out at Palynt Reach. Quick steps, minimum weight down and the whole body canted forward at a steep angle. Always pushing away, never levering forward. Olmaat used to describe it as nothing more than a controlled fall.

A wave of incredulous fury followed in their wake. By the time soldier or mage had reacted, the elves were past him. Swords waved ineffectually and belatedly overhead. Fists punched empty space. Fingers grabbed at nothing.

Auum bounced left and right as he ran. His eyes searched four moves ahead, his mind trusting his feet to land without error. The TaiGethen passed across the heads of their enemies like the last mist blown from the surface of the ocean. Felt and gone.

‘Cover on landing. Left turn. Orsan’s Yard for muster,’ said Grafyrre, his voice carrying across the soaring line of elven warriors.

Auum saw the back of the human lines. It was loose there and they could see what was coming at them. Auum growled a warning, his panther voice focusing the eye of every TaiGethen. He selected his landing point, straightened his body and slammed down hard with both feet on the head of his last mark.

The mage collapsed beneath him. Auum dropped, rolled and rose in one movement. The TaiGethen moved forward, a single unit. Auum drew his second blade. He jammed his left into the gut of a hapless soldier and spun past his falling body. He whipped his right blade into the neck of the man next to him, dragged his left clear and buried it to the hilt in the chest of the man behind. Takaar hurdled a body, Marack in his heel prints, and took the next man two-footed on the point of the jaw. Marack ran past him and tore the throat from a fifth with the ends of her fingers. Auum came to her left, blocked a wild slash and chopped into the hamstrings of a sixth.

Clear space but the mages would be turning and clear of the bulk of the army.

‘Go, go,’ said Auum, pressing a hand into Takaar’s back.

They headed for the left turn to take them into Keeper’s Row. Grafyrre and Merrat were ahead of them, the bulk of the TaiGethen around them. Ten yards to the turn, the first way off the Path of Yniss from the mouth of the temple piazza.

‘Casters ready!’ called a voice. ‘Move!’

Takaar pulled Auum and Marack along, practically threw them around the corner. A freezing wind howled past the opening. Auum felt his hair crisp with frost. His blade gleamed with ice. The TaiGethen were already pounding away to the south, heading into the warren of the Grans.

Auum and Marack followed in Takaar’s wake just in front of the rear cells. Abruptly, Takaar stumbled. He reached out a hand, which Auum was able to grasp.

‘Takaar?’ he asked.

Takaar carried on running but he’d slowed dramatically.

‘Something’s growing,’ said Takaar. ‘Something ugly and evil. Like Gyal building to a storm of wrath but beneath my feet. In the energy lines. In the magic. I don’t think we have much time.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘If Ystormun really wants to commit genocide on the lesser threads of elves he isn’t going to do it with the sword,’ said Takaar.

Auum remembered the mages flying fast overhead. He shuddered.

They ran into Orsan’s Yard and faced fifty and more blades and axes. The two groups faced each other for a moment before Merrat broke and ran forward, dragging Pelyn into a fierce embrace.

‘Yniss bless you and the axes of the Apposans. We need you now.’

‘Couldn’t quite bring myself to follow Katyett’s last order,’ said Pelyn. She frowned. ‘Where is she?’

No one needed to speak the words. The first line of a lament to the fallen was whispered by every TaiGethen. Pelyn closed her eyes and tears escaped down her cheeks. Takaar, the nausea rising within him as the magic built in intensity, walked forward still using Auum for support.

‘There will be time for grief, Pelyn,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you had planned to do here. Quickly. Time is short.’

Pelyn’s stare was quick and angry but she could see there was no arrogance in his face. Only the pain of what was growing underfoot.