01 - Empire in Chaos (9 page)

He moved on, picking his way silently through the trees. He paused again,
touching his fingers to the cold earth. He lifted them to his nose, sniffing
delicately. His concern grew.

These were not human tracks, he was sure of that now. Nor were they made by
any of the foul creatures that existed within the dark, foreboding forests that
engulfed the Empire.

Urging Annaliese to hurry, he began to run lightly trough the trees. Swift
and silent, he leapt over fallen logs and ducked beneath low hanging branches,
leaving no trace of his passing. Decades earlier he had mastered the art, and he
now he did not break even single blade of grass with his soft footfalls. None
would be able to track him.

The same could not be said for the human woman however. She crashed along
behind him, and he had to pause often so that she was not left behind. He shook
his head slightly at the noise she made as twigs and sticks cracked beneath her
heavy footfalls. He glanced back sharply, irritation and impatience flashing in
his eyes, and she looked up at him apologetically. It was unfair to blame her,
he knew, but that didn’t make it easier to accept her inept blundering.

For three hours he pushed on, allowing Annaliese little time to catch her
breath. He couldn’t explain to her what he feared these tracks portended, but
she seemed to understand his need for urgency. He was still confused by the
tracks, but a deeply unsettling feeling had settled in his stomach.

He cursed himself for a fool. If the elven patrol had been ambushed by
enemies, then he knew that he and he alone was to blame, and that he would carry
the burden upon his shoulders. If he had not gone to the aid of the human child,
then none of this would have happened.

His mind drifted back to the fateful events. The shame of his capture still
cut him.

He had been scouting a wide range in front of the advancing senthanos. The
group had been made up of a dozen of the Asur, led by a powerful seer. Eldanair
was the scout for the senthanos, their Shadow Warrior, and it was his duty to
ensure the paths they travelled were clear of the enemy.

There had been a scream, the high-pitched cry of a child, and he had dropped
to his haunches among the low-lying ferns. The birds in the dark canopy far
above had gone silent, and there was no sound but the icy howl of the wind
whipping through the skeletal boughs of the trees, the creaking of branches that
longed for the thaw to come.

A second scream carried to him on the wind. Spitting a curse, he had risen
from his crouch and raced through the woodland towards the sound. To an
onlooker, he knew that he would have appeared as little more than a shadow as he
ghosted through the trees, moving at great speed.

What he had discovered had been sickening. It was the sight of a massacre.
Human bodies were strewn across the road, blood pooling beneath their still
forms. They had been savagely mutilated, and dozens of wounds covered each of
the corpses so that they were almost unrecognisable, little more than
hacked-apart meat. There were puncture wounds in most of the bodies, and
Eldanair knew that that was where arrows had been pulled from their flesh. Or
crossbow bolts, he thought darkly.

The eyes of each corpse had been cut out, and by the evidence of the ripped
open chest cavities, it looked to Eldanair as if they had all had their hearts
removed. Even the mule hitched to the wagon had been killed, its throat slashed
open and its eyes torn from their sockets.

A girl, probably less than five human years old, was standing on the back of
the wagon, her face pale as she looked around at the devastation that had been
wrought. She must have hidden when the attack had come.

Eldanair had approached the girl, speaking soothingly, and she stared at him
with the frightened eyes of a doe, her body trembling. He approached slowly, and
his voice was soft and calming. He placed his bow down upon the ground, and
walked towards her his hands outstretched.

Her eyes flicked over his shoulder, and then she screamed again, loudly and
piercingly. He spun around to see a score of rough looking human soldiers moving
out of the trees to encircle him. He cursed. In his haste, he had not heard or
smelt their approach.

The men stared at the carnage with despair and outrage, their weapons
levelled in his direction. When they looked upon him again, he saw the hatred,
the fear and the anger written in their eyes.

He had lifted his hands up, showing he was unarmed, but they clubbed him to
the ground anyway, and had dragged him back their village. He hadn’t seen the
little girl again.

Shaking himself from his reverie, Eldanair motioned to Annaliese to halt, and
to be silent.

He ghosted up a rocky escarpment, crouching low to the ground. Nearing the
top, he dropped to his stomach and wormed his way to its edge. He was careful to
keep himself concealed amongst the wet ferns and not make any of them move,
giving away his position. What he saw below made his blood run cold. He had
found his companions. He had found the senthanos.

They were dead.

Their broken corpses lay strewn across the protected clearing, their white
and blue cloaks and robes torn and slashed, stained dark with blood. Sorrow,
shock and guilt fought for dominance within him, and he swallowed dryly.

He almost cried out when he saw the form of the seer, his slender frame
hanging against the trunk of a tree. Crude wooden nails had been hammered
through his wrists and ankles, and the robes had been torn from his chest. His
ribs were splayed open, exposing his internal organs, and his heart was missing.
By the look of agony on the dead seer’s face, Eldanair guessed that his death
had not been quick.

The human woman, Annaliese, had crawled up beside him, and her eyes widened
in horror as she looked down upon the sight of the massacre. Her mouth opened to
scream, but Eldanair clamped his hand over it tightly, holding her firmly in his
arms. His eyes were locked on a shadow on the far side of the clearing.

The shadow was moving, so slowly at first that it was almost impossible to
discern. But Eldanair’s eyes were far keener than the eyes of a human, and he
could see the movement, even if Annaliese could not.

It was a slim figure, clad from head to toe in black, and it wore the
darkness around it like a cloak. Shadows seemed to follow it, clinging to its
rangy form like living creatures, and every muscle in Eldanair’s body tensed
with a deep and all-consuming hatred.

The black clad figure stepped gingerly over the corpses, turning its head
from side to side as if sniffing the air. Black cloth covered the lower part of
its face, and a deep black hood covered its head, but Eldanair caught a glimpse
of the figure’s face, and he burnt its visage into his memory.

The face was delicate and fine-boned, with high cheekbones that gave it an
arrogant and graceful appearance, and Eldanair saw that it was female. Her flesh
was as pale as his own, and her eyes were wide and cruelly, seductively curved.
A small crossbow was held in one hand, and he made out a teardrop tattoo beneath
her left eye before she turned away.

She dragged the concealing shadows with her as she left, and Eldanair cursed
that he did not have his bow to hand. It would have been so easy to have killed
her then and there. In an instant she had disappeared, melting into the darkness
beneath the trees, and Eldanair tensed himself to go after her, hatred and the
need for vengeance burning within him. He would hunt down and kill every one of
the cursed murderers.

He glanced to his side and saw Annaliese’s eyes wide and filled with
helplessness and fear. To leave her was as good as a death sentence, and he
cursed softly in elvish.

They lay unmoving for almost an hour before the elf deemed it safe to move
from their position.

His heart heavy with sorrow and grief, he climbed down towards the mutilated
bodies of his kin. Annaliese came down with him, tears in her eyes as she
surveyed the carnage.

She said something to him, but he didn’t know what her words meant.

Fixed in his mind’s eye was the face of his enemy.

“Druchii,” he said to himself, the word spat with such venom that Annaliese
looked at him sharply.

Dark elves were moving within the Empire.

Four days had passed since they had left the site of the massacre. Eldanair’s
eyes were dark and brooding, and despite their inability to communicate
verbally, Annaliese could see that a heavy burden weighed upon him.

If possible, he seemed even more distant, more cold and removed, than he had
done previously. Nevertheless, the bond between the two had certainly
strengthened, and Annaliese no longer feared him as she had done. She was
convinced that he had not been one of the murderers that slaughtered the poor
family on the road, for it seemed to her that the same killers were the ones to
have set upon his own people.

Eldanair had worked tirelessly to give his people a simple burial. In shallow
graves he had arranged their bodies carefully, crossing their arms over their
chests, to death they looked ghostly and ethereal, yet at peace once Eldanair
had cleaned away the blood from their flesh, and covered their wounds with
draped cloaks. Annaliese was surprised to see that several of the party were
female, yet garbed for war in the same manner as their comrades. Their weapons
and personal belongings were placed alongside them, and the mourning elf had
sung a soft, haunting song for them in the moonlight. With Annaliese’s aid, he
had gathered rocks and stones that he carefully piled onto the graves, forming a
dozen cairns spread in a semi circular arc that clearly had some significance,
though its meaning was unclear to her.

Tears had run down her face as Eldanair bid his comrades farewell, speaking
quietly in his lilting, lyrical tongue. Though she could not understand his
words, there was a deep and profound sadness about them.

Eldanair had armed himself, whispering to the fallen as he took up the
weapons. A powerful recurving longbow of pale wood was now never far from his
hands, and a slender longsword and matching knife were sheathed at his side.

Annaliese had felt honoured and moved as the elf had solemnly presented her
with a weapon from one of his fallen kin—a slim-bladed shortsword of beautiful
artistry. It was surprisingly light in her hands, and the blade was so thin that
at first she thought it would shatter with any solid blow. It was far stronger
than it looked—indeed, she now believed that it was far stronger than any of
the broad, heavy blades that her father had on the walls of their cabin.
Perfectly balanced, it felt comfortable in her hand. Even its scabbard was a
work of art—simple and functional, yet highly elegant.

She longed to question Eldanair, about his people and about the murderous
figure cloaked in shadows that she had glimpsed. It had not been human, she knew
that much, for it moved with a sinister grace that human could replicate. It
moved, she noted, in the same way that Eldanair did, though the sheer malice and
hatred the creature had exuded had been palpable. Being unable to communicate
was proving frustrating, though the elf seemed content to remain in silence,
lost in his own brooding, grim thoughts.

Annaliese was unsure of exactly where they currently were, but she guessed
that they were nearing the border of Averland and Wissenland, heading towards
the Upper Reik that divided the two states. It was the furthest she had ever
been from her home, and it made her simultaneously scared and excited. Where
Eldanair was now leading her was beyond her, and she wondered if he even had a
destination in mind. Earlier he had been focused on escorting her to the camp of
his kin, but now she did not know where he was taking her, and his movements
lacked the urgency that had previously marked their travel. She could sense that
he wanted to go after the shadow-cloaked figure, doubtlessly to enact his
vengeance, and he was clearly in two minds. Sometimes she found him staring at
her, with eyes angry and full of pain.

She wondered if he was taking her to a place of safety, to free himself of
the burden of her presence. In honesty she could not guess at his thoughts, for
he gave little away, and his ways, she reminded herself, were alien.

They travelled through woodland when they could, thought this was not always
possible, for these lands had long been dedicated to farming, and great expanses
of trees had been felled generations earlier. The great forests that swathed
most of the Empire were far to the north-west, and even the densest woodland in
the south-eastern states was utterly unlike the claustrophobic, dark and
dangerous Drakwald.

Eldanair was clearly uncomfortable travelling across the open fields, though
they saw few people, and those were far away and easily avoided. They came
across many abandoned farmsteads, and passed through icy fields that had long
been neglected and left to ruin.

They paused to eat beside a natural spring. She guessed it was around midday,
though it was hard to judge—heavy clouds threatened overhead, making the light
dim and gloomy, and thunder rumbled ominously.

They ate a simple meal of berries and mushrooms they had collected while
travelling. Eldanair pointed out edible foods as they passed, as well as
indicating which mushrooms and toadstools were poisonous. Where she had viewed
the snow-covered land as lacking in nourishment, she now realised that there was
abundant food all around if you knew where to look. They drank from the spring,
the mineral laden water tasting slightly metallic but not unpleasant.

After they had eaten, Annaliese slid her thin, elven blade from its scabbard.
The metal was bluish-silver, without a hint of tarnish, and she held it
reverently in her hands, savouring its weight. Eldanair motioned for her to
stand, and she did so warily, sword in hand. He unclasped his flowing grey cloak
and placed it on the ground before drawing his own blade and stepped backwards
to give them some room. With a nod, he made an overly slow attack towards her.