Barb Hendee - Rebel Fay

Curled in his tree's bower, Most Aged Father gaped in pain. The pale-skinned monster touched the birch the instant his awareness slipped into it.

He felt the tree's life slipping away into her flesh. He felt it as if she touched his skin, feeding upon him, and memory welled up to wrap him in suffering.

Another like her had come for him in the dark… long, long ago…

Sorhkafare-Light upon the Grass. That was his true name back then.

He had dropped weary and beaten upon a stained wool blanket, filthy from moons of forced marches. He did not even care to have his wounds tended and lay in the darkness of his tent.

Only two of his commanders had survived the day. He had lost more officers upon that field than duringall of the last moon. Someone called to him from outside his tent but he did not answer. Hesitantly, the voice came again.

"The human and dwarven ranks are too depleted for another engagement. They must fall back."

The enemy's condition was unknown. With his eyes closed, Sorhkafare saw nothing but the sea of dead he had left on the rolling plains. The fragile alliance had been outnumbered nearly five to one on this day.

Again he did not answer. He could not look at the faces of the living, and even if he opened his eyes, he couldn't stop seeing those of the dead.

The enemy's horde had pressed north along the eastern coast of the central continent. At dawn, he had received word that Baalale Seatt had fallen to an unknown catastrophe. The dwarven mother-city in the mountains bordering theSumanDesert had long been under siege. Scattered reports hinted that neither side had survived whatever had happened there.

The enemy's numbers seemed endless. And all that remained in the west to stop them were Sorhkafare's forces, the last to keep the enemy from turning inland toward Aonnis Lhoin'n-First Glade-the refuge and home of his people.

He heard the footsteps outside fade away. Finally they left him alone.

Sleep would not come, and he did not want it. He still saw thousands slaughtering each other under the hot sun. He had lost all reckoning of whose cries were those of his enemies or his allies. He lost fury and even fear this day upon the plain.

Countless furred, scaled, or dark- to light-skinned faces fell before his spear and arrows, and yet they kept coming. One mutilated body blurred into another… except for the last rabid goblin, dead at his feet when it all ended. Its long tongue dangled from its canine mouth into the blood-soaked mud.

Sorhkafare heard a shout and then a moan somewhere outside in the camp, and then another.

The wounded and dying were given what aid could be rendered, but they only suffered the more for it. Who would want to live another day like this one?

More shouts.Running feet.A brief clatter of steel.

Someone fumbled at the canvas flap of his tent.

"Leave me," he said tiredly and did not get up.

The tent ripped open.

Camp bonfires outside cast an orange glow around the shadowed figure of a human male.Sorhkafare could not make out the man's face. The light glinted dully upon the edges of his steel-scaled carapace. His skin seemed dark, like that of a Suman.

Sorhkafare's senses sharpened.

By proportions, there had been as many humans among the enemy's horde as among his alliance forces. Most with the enemy had been Suman. Had one slipped into camp unseen? He sat up quickly.

The man's arm holding aside the tent flap was severed off above the wrist. His other hand was empty.

No one walked about with such a wound. Sorhkafare heard another cry somewhere out in the camp.

The crippled skulker rushed in with a grating hiss, guttural and full of madness.

Sorhkafare rolled to the tent's far side and pulled his war knife. His attacker fell upon the empty bedroll. As the man turned upon the blanket, Sorhkafare drove his blade down.

It sank through the man's dark-skinned neck above the armor's collar, and he slumped, limp.

Sorhkafare rushed from the tent. He searched the night camp for any officer to chastise over the failure of the perimeter watch. The few remaining cries died away one by one.

The nearest fire had been doused, and only smoking embers remained. Many of the torches were gone, and darkness had thickened in the camp. The moon was not yet high enough for his elven eyes, but he thought he saw figures moving quickly from tent to tent. Now and thencame strange muffled sounds or a short cry.

"Sorhkafare… where were you?"

A figure approached, slow and purposeful, between the rows of tents.He knew that voice. It grated upon his nerves every time the man spoke.

Kжdmon, commander of the humans among Sorhkafare's forces-or what were left of them.

Sorhkafare had no strength for another argument. It was always Kжdmon who challenged him. He pushed his men too hard and kept demanding night strikes after his people had marched all day.

Kжdmon drew closer, and Sorhkafare saw the dark rents in the tall man's chain armor. He had not bothered to remove it, but Sorhkafare could not blame him. There was no point in doing so, as they would only ride hard with the dawn, either in flight or to face an endless enemy once more.

Someone stepped from a tent beyond Kжdmon, dragging a body.

Sorhkafare had no more sorrow to spare for those who succumbed to wounds. But the shadowed figure dropped the body in the dirt and turned away to the next tent.

"Didn't you see them come?" Kжdmon said. "Did you not hear us cry for help as the sun dropped below the hills? Or was it only your own kind… your wounded that you culled from the dead today?"

Sorhkafare turned his eyes back to Ksedmon. He barely made out the man's long face and square jaw below a wide mouth.

"What venom do you spit now?" he answered. "We left no one who had even a single breath in them! All were carried in, even those with no hope to see tomorrow."

The man's ugly square jaw was covered in a few days' growth of beard. Stubble on his neck looked darker still. His steel coif and its chain drape were gone, exposing lank black hair hanging around his light-skinned face. His bloodthirsty human eyes glittered.

"You didn't bring me," Kжdmon hissed back and his words grew awkward as if he had difficulty speaking. "I still breathed when they crept across the dead, looking for those you forgot… when the sun vanished from sight."

A dark patch at Kжdmon's throat glistened as he stepped to within a spear's reach.

Sorhkafare stepped back.

A gaping wound in the side of Kжdmon's neck had covered his throat in blood mixed with some black viscous fluid. His lips and teeth looked stained as well.

Kжdmon's eyes were as colorless as his pallid skin.

"I can't stop myself… they won't let me stop."

Kжdmon shook with clenched muscles as his crystal eyes scrunched closed for an instant. He took a jerking step. All tense resistance vanished, and he charged with open hands.

Sorhkafare set himself but did not raise his knife.

Kжdmon had seen too much in these long years of battle. They all had. The man's mind finally broke under the strain. No matter their differences, he was an ally who had fought hard beside Sorhkafare's own people. Kжdmon had lost his own father when their settlement was overrun before alliance forces arrived to defend it. But still the man fought on, and his loyalty had never wavered.

Sorhkafare sidestepped, ready to slap away Kжdmon's grasp. He barely drew back his hand before Kжdmon's grip latched around his throat.Too sudden and too quick for a wounded man.

Kжdmon closed his fingers.

Sorhkafare could not breathe. He tried to break the man's grip. Kжdmon's features twisted in agony as his mouth opened.

"Don't fight," he whispered. "Please don't make me… make you suffer."