Nancy Berberick - The Inheritance

"I know the bargain we made," Brand said, his voice soft, his lips against her ear. He spoke for only her to hear. "But you can't walk out of here now, princess. Come inside. What will happen out there, will happen."

"No," she said. "I have to see. They are my people. I have to see."

He kissed her. He had never done so till then; she had not wanted it, he had never forced it. He kissed her, and it was a very gentle thing. He put her foot to ground, but he held her with his arm around her waist.

Lindenlea stood high in her stirrups, looking out over the plain. A slow smile spread across her lips, a wolfish tugging.

"Ready," she said to the elf at her side. "Get ready."

He nodded briskly and sent the order along the line of mounted warriors stretched before the narrow road that would lead to the first gate of Pax Tharkas. They saw the dust cloud first, and they heard the armies next-thunder of hooves, shouting voices, goblin-speech and Elvish all mingling into a distant roar of battle-song. One elf looked up and back, seeing Elansa on the Tharkadan. He saw her held close between a dwarf and a tall, bearded human. In his eyes, she stood a captive, and the blood in him burned to see the hand of the human on the arm of his princess.

"For the princess!" he cried, and the shout went long the line, a new war cry.

Lindenlea looked up to the wall, to the captive princess. She changed the battle cry. "To free the princess!"

The thunder of war came closer, the dark horde of fleeing goblins and the bright mass of elves behind.

"Stand," Lindenlea said to her aid. "Stand, hold, and wait till they're where we need them."

Stand! Stand! Stand! The command went down the line. Horses snorted, bridles jingled, and soldiers held their position.

The goblins came on, running in no formation now, and it seemed they followed no one. Indeed, they were driven. In the rear a terrible creature ran, a thing with black flesh peeling from its bones, its eyes white and staring, its mouth a bloody gash from which curses and screams of agony poured. Fire ran on it, like a cloak blown back by wind; fire poured from its hands, burning all those who did not get out of its way.

"Hold," Lindenlea said, and the horses stamped restlessly, catching the scent of fear. "Hold."

The goblins saw the road and the waiting army in the same instant. They broke, screaming, then reformed, for there was no place to go but back. The hob drove them, and Kethrenan drove the hob.

"Go!" she cried, and her army thundered forward.

They crashed together, the elven army and the goblin army. Mounted elves trampled the goblins, and the goblins did not die easily. They thrust swords into the bellies of horses. They held ground and hacked at the legs of the riders. When horses went down, the goblins swarmed them, yanking elves from the saddles, cutting throats and turning the stones red with blood.

"Get the hob!"

The order roared out over the heads of the fighters, and Lindenlea’s heart leaped to hear it. Across the battle she saw her prince, Kethrenan at the head of his warriors. Spurring her mount, Lindenlea sprang to obey. She slashed her way across the bloody ground, trampling goblins. Those of the elves who saw her coming cut a path for her, laughing and cheering her.

"Lindenlea! Lindenlea! Lindenlea!"

And someone shouted, "Free the princess!"

Lindenlea had her eye on Kethrenan when that cry went up. She saw him hear it, and his head snapped around. She saw him look upward. She saw his face when he saw his wife, his Elansa Sungold standing on the Tharkadan, hemmed by outlaws.

It was the seeing that killed her, her attention on her prince. Lindenlea didn't see the goblin's arrow winging from her left. And of course, she didn’t feel it. She fell to the bloody ground, dead before her horse trampled her.

On the Tharkadan, Elansa saw the elves cut a path through the goblins. She saw two bright figures, elves in gleaming mail, spur their mounts for the place in the dark horde where the fire flashed. That light. She knew it. It was magic’s light, and she knew that it ravaged the hobgoblin.

Char sucked in a sudden breath.

"That’s him," the dwarf said. "There's the hob." He laughed, and he nudged Brand with his elbow. "There, it looks like a couple elves have an eye for him."

Char leaned on the parapet, watching as one of the elves fell, like a star falling out of the sky, bright to the ground.

Elansa groaned. It was as though she had fallen. It was so far away she couldn't know who that was. She couldn't see the elf's face when the arrow plucked away life. She heard a cry, though, faint and far and carried on the cold wind.

"Lindenlea! Lea!"

So cried her husband, the warden of Qualinesti, in the moment he lopped the head from the hobgoblin. Then, his sword dark and running with the blood of all this killing, Prince Kethrenan looked up, and again he saw his wife on the battlements of Pax Tharkas. Who else of the elves saw her, saw a princess held captive, kept close between two outlaws, a dwarf and a rough human. Kethrenan saw another thing, and all the heat of battle drained out of him. His blood ran cold in his veins. Whoever else of the elves saw her then, saw her bow her head to weep. Kethrenan saw her rest her cheek upon the shoulder of the bearded human, of Brand the outlaw. He saw her turn in his embrace and hide her weeping against his chest.

While the lengthening shadows lay on the stone floor of the room that had, for days, been her home of sorts in Pax Tharkas, Elansa sat with her back against the wall. Brand's cloak covered, and his sleeping furs made her warm. The broken tiles of the mosaic floor shone where the shadows did not fall and the dust had been scuffed by foot traffic. A great silence sat upon the room, upon the fortress itself. For a time there had been a flurry of coming and going as Brand and his few had gone into the cellar to see that no threat remained. None did. They found the corpses of gully dwarves and two dead goblins, only lately gone cold. It had been Char who had found the Chamber of Columns and the opened crypts.

"Ain't but a few got opened," he said, "and nigh more than a dozen or two left closed." He shuddered. "You can feel them in there, behind their doors. You can feel them smelling the blood, the flesh on your bones."

Raised in Thorbardin and on all the proud stories of the dwarven past, Char knew his history. He knew as well as Elansa who those undead had been, a long time ago when honor had moved them and a dark magic had not yet touched them. At Char's insistence, they sealed the doors as best they could and left the corpses behind.

Through this, Elansa sat alone, waiting.

Outside the battle had ended. She heard the martial voices of elves, soldiers setting up camp, giving orders, accepting orders, now and then laughing in the flush of their victory. The cries of ravens haunted the sky when night came, and wolves padded down from the mountains. Most of the killed goblins burned upon a high pyre. This Kethrenan commanded not to do them honor but to clean the field before the gates. Over the elves, small cairns of stone were being laid. It was a small honor to keep the wolves away. No one expected the little piles to stand long.

Sometimes Elansa slept, close in Brand's arm. He held her against him, gently. In her sleep, she smelled the blood of his wound, the sword cut that had torn the flesh of his right arm below the shoulder. The wound was bound and no longer seeping. He never groaned over it or even looked at it after Dell cleaned and dressed it. He was used to these things, the pain and the healing. When she did not sleep, she simply sat waking, as now.

And so she saw the shadows of the day’s ending on the floor as she listened to the elves outside the wall. She looked around and saw the outlaws, Dell and Char and grieving Ley, these few who remained to Brand. They looked like they always did, like foxes in the den. Wary, they watched the door, and they talked in low whispers. Brand himself said nothing. He simply sat with the princess in his arm.