Days Of Light And Shadow (71 page)

“Right cannon reload. Left cannon take aim.” She gave the orders and steadied her nerves as she waited for the next attack. With the abominations still forming a horde running all the way back to the distant hill, she knew it was going to be a very long day. And then, if she was lucky enough to survive it, a longer night.

Chapter One Hundred and Twelve.

It looked like rain. The sky was uncommonly dark as the sun peeked over the distant hills, the clouds full and heavy. It was probably an apt omen for what was coming. And the rain would wash away the blood.

Iros was nervous. He had reason to be. Though he had been a soldier for many years and he had fought, he had never gone to war. None of them had. Not among the rangers and sprites at least. They’d all been spared that monstrous evil. Until now.

Iros didn’t like his command either. Not that he disliked the rangers or the windriders. He just didn’t understand them. Dragoons he understood. He’d served with them for five years. He knew their tactics, their fighting style. He knew their strengths and weaknesses. He knew how to fight as one of them. But rangers? Three and a half thousand rangers at his command? That was madness. They were lightly armed, horse mounted archers. He knew little of their fighting style. And windriders? Sprites with magic short bows and little armour to speak of. Until a few months before he’d never even met one. Now he was in charge of twenty five thousand of them. It made no sense.

His every instinct told him to run a cavalry charge. To use the speed of the horses to cover the distance between them and the enemy as quickly as possible, and then to rely on his armour and swords to take down the enemy while the infantry caught up. It was quick and crude, brutal and bloody, and often dangerous, but it was effective. And it was what he knew. But neither rangers nor windriders fought that way. They simply didn’t have the armour. So they would have stand back and use the infantry’s armour instead.

As for the enemy’s strategy, he simply didn’t understand it. He understood his own troop’s strategy of course. It was logical given what they faced. But he didn’t understand why the enemy was suddenly fighting as if they were defending a battlefield. And he didn’t understand why they were expecting him to continue doing that. Surely even the most stupid commander would realise at some point that his troops would be slaughtered if they didn’t attack first. These were abominations after all. They had no minds. Only hunger and savagery. That was their strength. Yet now they were hunkering down behind makeshift fortifications. They were being organised into an actual army instead of a mob? That was wrong. It was unbelievably stupid.

Yet it allowed them to set their formations for the attack. And so a thousand cannon were now lined up within four hundred paces of the fortifications, primed and ready to go. Tens of thousands of dragoons and other cavalry stood ready to make their charge when the enemy fortifications came down, and tens of thousands of infantry and archers were waiting to back them up. Or if the enemy finally did do what they should have done from the start and charged, the infantry would defend, taking the brunt of the assault on their steel shields, while the archers picked them off, before the cavalry charge. Whatever the enemy did they were ready. But they had no idea what the enemy would do.

The abominations had thrown away their madness to form an incoherent military strategy, when it was their madness itself that made them so dangerous.

Walls and fortifications were only of any use if you could attack from behind their safety. The abominations couldn’t do that. They had no bows or cannon. They had only teeth and claws. They had to leave the safety of the walls to attack, and all the time they spent cowering behind the ludicrous makeshift walls waiting, was time when the cannon would be tearing them apart. If the enemy had had any thought of tactics he would have had his army of abominations out on the trail as they rode through it, progressively weakening the invading army with non-stop attacks. But instead he had set one ambush along their path, and that had somehow been defeated, and then apparently given up.

Whoever led them, had no true understanding of strategy. But then he suspected that that leader was Y’aris, and the once High Commander of Elaris was just such a fool. Perhaps Iros should give thanks to the Divines for his foolishness.

As for the temple itself, every time he looked at it, the mass of moss and lichen covered stone sent shivers down his spine. Bad ones. It wasn’t just the unlikely size of it, and the temple was less a single building and more a small citadel. It was the fact that it had somehow remained hidden for a thousand years. How? Why had it not been destroyed the first time the Reaver had been fought and defeated?

All good questions with no good answers.

Maybe the priests knew. When the horn sounded for the first time, its mournful cry echoing through the still air, his thoughts turned instantly to them. Three hundred elders, surely nearly all that the elves could find, beginning the war with a prayer. How much use could that be? Yet still as he turned around in his saddle to look up at the small knoll behind them, he could see the elders all falling to their knees and bowing their heads in prayer. And all around him he could see his rangers and windriders doing the same.

Maybe it made some sense. Maybe it would grant the men a little courage. But as a soldier he knew that the battlefield was never a place for the divine.

Still he bowed his head with them, and muttered a few short words of pleading to Silene.

While they were all waiting, what harm could it do?

Prayers over,  Iros knew it was time to speak to his troops.  Even though they were already in formation, spread out in a long line holding the flank, he addressed them thanks to aided by a small gnomish device he had been given. Iros had spoken to them many times before over the long march, knowing that more than anything else they needed confidence. They needed to see the dawn on the far side of night. That was his responsibility.

“My friends.” He called them that because that was what they were. He might not know them, but that changed nothing. Anyone who would ride into battle beside you was a friend.

“You know the plan, and you know your roles. And I know that you will keep to them, as you know that I will.” It was strange how his voice seemed to echo a little as the little device carried it across the distance.

“For now though I want you to know one thing more. I want you to know why we ride.”

“It is not for glory. Glory is for bards. It is not for vengeance. Vengeance is for fools. It is not for the thrill of battle. We are not savages. We ride to save our families. To save our loved ones. Always.”

“You know, I know, all of us know - that the battle ahead will be tough. We know that many of us may not survive. But that does not matter to us. Not today.”

“What matters, the only thing that matters, is that we win. That we destroy this dark temple completely. That we kill its foul priests and the hideous abominations it creates. Because if we do not, in time they will come for our families and they will  be either killed or turned into abominations themselves.”

“So we will fight! We will not back down! We will win through! And we will send these foul creatures back to the underworld!” He raised his voice a little for the last and wasn’t surprised when he heard cheering. He was telling them what they wanted to hear. Giving them what they needed. Hope.

“And when it is over. When we stand in triumph on the ruins of that foul temple, we will celebrate! The bards will compose great ballads which we will probably sing badly. And we will let them have their strange beliefs of glory as they buy us jugs of ale and call us heroes. But in our hearts we will celebrate survival. Our survival. Our families’ survival. Our world’s survival.”

“And the Reaver as he rues his miserable eternity in the darkness of the underworld, will know better than to ever come for us again! His horns will quiver in fear at the very thought!”

“Brothers and sisters, it is an honour to stand here with you. To know that there are men and women of such good heart. I thank you for your courage.” Iros then bowed to his troops as he handed the device to his aide. Because he knew that someone should.

And the cheering grew louder.

Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen.

Y’aris stood on the roof of his quarters and stared out across the battlefield, feeling quite pleased with himself. Everything was going according to plan.

Stretched out for a full league in front of him the makeshift fortifications, trenches and rows of spears defended the temple perfectly, while behind them nearly eighty thousand abominations held their ground, waiting for the enemy to charge. And when they did, the abominations would pour forth from behind the defences and fall upon the utra like an angry tide. It was a perfect plan.

Behind them his own small army of fifteen hundred watchmen were already preparing, lining up in ranks in front of his complex, awaiting his command. They would wait while the abominations and the dark priests fought the utra, and then, depending on the outcome, they would either rush into the battle to destroy the enemy, or they would flee taking him, his consorts and the stash of gold from the temple to safety through the rear gate and the pass beyond.

Win or lose, he would escape this battle unscathed. The only thing he didn’t know, was which outcome he preferred.

Was it living as the Reaver’s favourite servant, amassing his personal wealth and armies and beginning his new race? Or was it life among the gnomes without the Reaver and his power but also without having to serve him, and still raising his new empire. Either option was good.

Then he heard the strange words drifting across the valley and a chill ran through him. He knew what it was of course. The prayers of the elders. But these weren’t normal prayers.

He’d expected that the utra would bring a few elders with them. What else would you do when you were at war with a temple? But what he didn’t understand was what the prayers were intended to do. These weren’t the simple prayers spoken to fill soldiers with courage. They were more than that. They were powerful and ancient. Spoken in a tongue that even he didn’t understand. He spoke the true tongue of the elves, but not one this old. A word here and there. That was as much as he recognised.

So what were they doing? And why weren’t the demon’s priests speaking against them? Granted, many of them like Crassis himself were locked away somewhere inside the temple preparing the final defence for the Reaver. But still he thought he should hear some of them fighting their enemy. He couldn’t.

A man screamed from somewhere just  nearby and Y’aris knew a moment of   dread as he suddenly realised what the elders were doing. It was one of his watchmen, falling down to the ground, holding his head and screaming out in agony. The elders were killing his soldiers. His soldiers, not the abominations. Why?

“Hold firm!” His voice came out as little more than a frightened shriek as he called to his watchmen, hoping against hope that they would listen to him and ignore the elders. But even as he cried out, several more screamed and fell to the ground in agony. Soon it was a dozen, and then several dozen, and high up on the roof above his quarters Y’aris knew terror. These were his protection.

Y’aris continued to yell orders at them but none of them listened. Even those who hadn’t fallen weren’t listening to him. He could see it in the rigid postures of their backs. They were listening to the elders. Soon he would have no army. He would be defenceless.

Y’aris broke then, knowing that no matter how the battle went, he was doomed. Either the filthy utra would win through and kill him, or the priests would win the day and Crassis would once more be in control, and he would kill Y’aris for the failure of his watchmen to stand with them. Y’aris had to flee.

Shaking, he rushed down the staircase leading from the roof to his first floor balcony quarters, and inside to his private bedchambers and the small treasury behind it. There, with his fingers shaking, he gathered up all of the gold and moon silver he could find on the floor, and frantically shoved it into a carry sack. He hated having to do it as the small sack would only be able to hold a fraction of the gold and moon silver rightfully his. The vast bulk of it would have to be left behind. But without an army to help carry it he didn’t have a choice.

Suddenly a woman’s scream came from out of nowhere, and his heart stopped beating in fright. The sound she made; it wasn’t mortal. It wasn’t of anything remotely elven. It was something else. Something of pain and rage, of grief and suffering. Something far worse than any mortal throat could make. It was the sound his soldiers had made as the elders’ prayers had broken them. And it was so very near. In the room with him. He turned to face the woman, white faced and trembling, fearing the worst.

“Kalisan?” It was her, but it wasn’t. He recognised her from their time in his bedchamber that very morning, but not as she was. Her eyes had turned completely green with not a trace of the white remaining. Her muscles, and since she was still naked he could see every part of her, were  bulging and knotted like ships’ ropes. The blood had drained from her face and fists so that her normal healthy tan was replaced by white marble. But worst of all was the wrath he could see in her face as she stared at him. Whatever demon possessed her, it hated him.

She was going to kill him.

“Kalisan please!” Frightened Y’aris held up his hand as he tried to placate her, but there was never a chance of that happening. All he was really doing as he spoke to her and tried to calm her down, was giving himself enough time to drop the sack and draw his sword with his free hand. But there wasn’t enough time.

Before he had even had time to pull his sword free she had covered the dozen or so paces between them, and grabbed his sword hand in hers. She squeezed, and he screamed as the bones of his hand were crushed. He could hear them snapping into fragments like gravel under a man’s boots. He screamed some more when he saw the blood pouring from the pulp that had been his hand. The pain was as nothing he had ever felt before.

“Please!” Y’aris begged then, falling to his knees in front of her, knowing that he didn’t want to die. But he couldn’t get more than a single word out. Not when she grabbed him by the throat and lifted him clear off the ground in a single hand. How could she do that? She was so tiny. Little more than a child. But the how suddenly wasn’t all that important when her fingers started squeezing and he found himself struggling for breath.

She didn’t kill him though. She could have easily, but instead she let her free hand strip him of his armour and his clothes, ripping them apart as if they were made of paper, before carrying him out of his treasury and back into his bedchamber. Y’aris struggled, or he tried to struggle, but he had only one working hand and he had to use it to try and hold himself up rather than choke to death in her grip, and his feet were dangling freely. He kicked at her with everything he had, but she didn’t even seem to notice.

Then in the bedchamber she stopped and he knew his end was near. He would have screamed but he simply didn’t have the breath. All he had was fear. And it grew the instant he felt her free hand on his manhood.

“No! Please!” Somehow he managed a shriek, but it wasn’t enough. Her hand had found exactly what she wanted and she squeezed. Her fingers dug deep, tearing into him like claws, and the pain was as nothing he’d ever imagined possible. Despite his lack of air he kept screaming, wanting nothing more than for it to end. But not as it did.

Something tore. He felt it ripping loose and begged for it not to. But it did and a heartbeat or two later he could see it in her hand. His manhood, all of it, a bloody trophy dripping in her hand, not a foot in front of his face.

Time hung suspended then. He stared at everything that had made him a man, hanging in her hand, and knew it could never be healed. He was worse than gelded. She had taken everything from him. And he hated her for that. He hated her as no one had ever been hated before.

Kalisan dropped his body parts to the floor, done with them, and then she dropped him as well. But she wasn’t done with him. Instead, with two impossibly fast stomps of her feet she broke his knees, shattering them, and he knew as he lay broken on the floor and crying with pain, that he would never walk again.

“Stay!” It was the first word she’d spoken. The only word. And he couldn’t understand why she’d even bothered. She’d crippled him completely. But he couldn’t ask. Not when every part of him hurt. Not when he wanted to cry. Not when darkness was claiming him. Between the pain and the blood loss, had could barely think.

Y’aris watched her go. He  heard her slam the door behind her, breaking the wrought iron handle and causing clouds of dust to be shaken loose from the stone frame. Lost in a world of suffering he wondered why? Why she had done this to him?

After all, he had given her everything. He had made her one of the mothers of the reborn elven race. He had given her a place of honour at his side. And this was how she repaid him? It was bitterly unfair. Evil.

He was still wondering why as he lay there sobbing, when he heard the sound of the cannon starting up and abruptly realised the terrible truth. It was the utra. This was all part of a plan. An evil plan. He was still alive because they weren’t finished with him. Soon the filthy utra would be with him. They would break down the door and then they would have him. Worst of all that monster Iros would have him. The filthy utra simply refused to die. And Y’aris couldn’t flee. That was the point of breaking his legs.

Iros! Soon he would be there with him, that filthy utra, and would no doubt laugh  at him. He would finish what the ungrateful wretch had started and torture him to death. Iros would finally win.

That could not happen.

Desperately he started praying. To the Reaver, to the Mother, to the demons and the gods. To anyone who would listen. He needed a way out. He needed to escape before that monster hung him. And he didn’t care who he had to serve anymore. He never had.

The only thing that mattered was that he survived. So that he could kill them all.