Alliances

Chapter 7

Fighting raged in the streets of Samustal all day and into the night. The small band of elves moved through the town, striking anywhere the bandits managed to rally. Despite the intense fighting, not a single Kagonesti was injured. Kerian received a few cuts and bruises—nothing compared to what she’d already been through—and Porthios, unarmed and unafraid, did not get a scratch. He walked through furious skirmishes like a shadow, seemingly impervious to harm.

Despite the elves’ spectacular showing, the victory really belonged to the oppressed people of Bianost, who rose up when trouble erupted. Armed with sticks, tools, whatever came to hand, they threw themselves on their oppressors. Weapons weighed down by the bodies of courageous attackers, the bandits were overcome as waves of angry townsfolk flooded over them.

The cost to the elves was terrible, but they took on Olin’s mercenary legion and destroyed it. The last bandits abandoned the town before dawn, piling into carts or riding any four-legged animal they could steal. As they fled, they were pelted with rotten fruit, stones, and the jeers of the townsfolk.

Porthios, the Lioness, and the Kagonesti band went to the mayor’s palace. The bulk of Olin’s troops were gone, slain in the rioting. His personal guard still stood watch at the mayor’s residence, but they had abandoned the outer porticos to cluster together by the main door, trapped by the riot. Porthios led his band directly to the palace’s front steps. The elves marched in close order, wearing mantles and helmets taken from fallen bandits. Arrows found vital organs, mauls cracked skulls, and the guards fell. Then the way was clear.

The Lioness dueled with a bandit officer until a helpful archer put an arrow through his throat. Porthios stood apart, watching her wade through the fracas.

When she rejoined him, bloody and panting, Porthios remarked, “You’re not the fighter I expected, though you have the reputation of being quite a slayer.”

“I wasn’t born in a palace. I never had fencing lessons,” she retorted, sheathing her captured blade. “I have killed many enemies. It isn’t style that matters, only winning.”

Porthios couldn’t argue with that. One shouldn’t expect style or finesse from a peasant, no matter how experienced.

He led the way inside. Ignoring his followers’ objections, he threw open the mansion’s double doors. Three crossbow bolts thudded into the panels next to his head. Unimpressed, he shouted, “Olin Man-Daleth! Come out and face justice!”

Kerian dragged him aside as more bolts whizzed down the hall. Behind her, Nalaryn had glimpsed the bowmen. With silent gestures, he dispatched four of his people down the side corridors to deal with them.

“You’re too bold for your own good,” Kerian told Porthios tartly. “This revolution will come to a sudden end if you stop an arrow.”

“You’re wrong. What has started cannot be stopped by a single arrow.”

He entered, striding down the center of the ornate hail, calmly examining the bas-reliefs that depicted the rise of the Qualinesti nation. The hall had been defaced by Olin’s men. Statues had heads and limbs hacked off, and the travertine floor showed deep scratches where hobnailed boots and spurs had scored the stone.

They investigated the entire palace, flushing out a few hidden bandits, who died fighting. When they reached the lord mayor’s audience hail, they found a crowd of servants huddled behind the sky-blue and gold tapestries. Kerian drove them out from concealment at sword point. There were eleven, five women and six men. All wore Olin’s livery, a dark green tabard with a triangle of silver daggers.

“Please, good lords, don’t kill us!” one quavered. “We’re humble folk pressed to duty against our will!”

Porthios would’ve dismissed them, but Kerian did not waver. Something didn’t feel right, she said. The servants could have fled at any time, and why were they still wearing Olin’s colors, unless they were supposed to be found so dressed?

She told the archers to keep them covered and grabbed the closest servant, a middle-aged woman with brindled hair. She turned the woman’s hand palm up then sniffed her sleeve.

“Kitchen. Scrubwoman,” she announced and pulled the tabard over the woman’s head. “Go on, get out.”

She repeated this performance for each human, announcing their place in the household by the marks on their hands and the smell of their clothes: baker, wine steward, scullery maid, keeper of hounds.

The sixth, a man, revealed a pair of callused palms with clean, well-trimmed nails. It didn’t take a sensitive nose to notice he was wearing scent. She laid her sword on his shoulder.

“Who are you?”

“Theydrin. Lord Olin’s valet.”

“Where is Olin?” Porthios demanded.

The man glanced at his masked captor with curiosity. “I don’t know, sir. May I go?”

In response, Kerian slashed hard across the man’s chest. His green tabard fell away, showing them a close-fitting shirt of fine mail.

“It’s Olin!” Kerian shouted, leaping back.

The fellow’s reply was to take hold of the female servant closest to him and put a curved dagger to her throat. “I’ll slit her gullet if you try to stop me!”

Porthios shrugged. “So? One less human will hardly distress me.”

“Wait.” Kerian spoke as much to the Kagonesti as to Olin. Nalaryn’s band had nocked arrows and was preparing to draw.

“Kill them both,” Porthios ordered.

Bows creaked back to full stretch. The implacable faces of the Wilder elves were too much for the bandit lord. He released his hostage. Kerian pulled her out of the way. Olin dropped his dagger and held out his hands.

“I have treasure! I’ll pay a ransom! You’ll all be rich!” he babbled.

“Treasure stolen from the people of Qualinesti.”

So saying, Porthios lifted a hand, and two of the Kagonesti loosed. They aimed low, and their arrows took Olin from opposite sides. He shrieked in agony and slumped to the ground. Another Kagonesti finished Olin with a blow from his maul. Horrified, the last weeping servants fled.

Kerian returned her blade to its sheath. “Is this how it’s to be?” she asked. “No quarter?”

“You would show mercy to the man who ordered you flayed alive?” Porthios stared up at the ornate ceiling. “Olin was a brutal killer. All murderers can expect the same. Does that trouble you?”

Kerian knelt by Olin and took his purse. It contained steel coins, several large gems rolled in a silk scarf, and a ring with a dozen iron keys. She shook the ring of keys.

“We should see what locks these open. Prison cells, or treasure rooms, as he said.”

“Free the elf prisoners. I don’t care what you do with the rest. Let the people of Bianost have his stolen hoard.”

His continuing distracted study of the ceiling caused Kerian to look up. The arched ceiling of the audience hall was covered by a mural depicting Kith-Kanan flying on Arcuballis, his famous griffon. The pair soared across a blue sky dotted here and there with puffy white clouds. The painting was well rendered, but the scene was a common one in official Qualinesti buildings. Testily, she asked whether he was enjoying the artwork.

“Very much,” he murmured. He told them of Kasanth, the councilor he’d found being tortured for not revealing the whereabouts of a royal trove.

“He said the treasure was in the sky. I think Olin was closer to it than he ever imagined,” Porthios said, pointing upward. “We must get up there.”

The way proved fiendishly difficult. The Bianost palace was old, with a convoluted layout comprising many rooms. Only by rapping on the walls and finding a hollow spot did the elves locate the concealed door. Behind it was a dark, very steep stairway.

Gifted with excellent vision in the dark, the elves needed no torches. Porthios immediately entered, and the others were close behind. Kerian commented that although the door had been well hidden, the wooden steps were clean of dust. Someone had passed that way not too long ago.

The stairs reversed direction, obviously angling out from the wall and following the rise of the arched ceiling. As the party climbed higher, the stuffy heat increased. The passage ended abruptly on a stone wall with no door, no hatch, nothing.

“No one builds a stair to nowhere,” Kerian muttered. “There must be a hidden door.”

Porthios told his followers not to bother with subtlety, so the Kagonesti battered the walls until something yielded. Low to the floor, a thin wooden panel, painted to resemble stone, shattered under their blows. Wincing with stiffness, Porthios knelt on one knee and peered in, but even his keen eyes could not pierce the profound darkness beyond.

One of the Kagonesti produced flint and steel. A wad of cloth was tied to an arrow shaft and set alight. Porthios thrust the fitfully burning torch inside.

Kerian fidgeted at his silence and even faithful Nalaryn couldn’t bear the suspense. “What do you see, Great Lord?”

“Wonderful things!” Porthios said, hoarse voice filled with emotion. “I see the freedom of our race!”

Like a drop of oil spreading out on the surface of calm water, the bandits, buntings, and slavers expelled from Samustal raced in all directions, seeking other havens in Samuval’s stolen realm. Some went no farther than Griffon’s Ford, fifteen miles from Olin’s fallen stronghold, where they found another of Samuval’s lieutenants encamped.

Gathan Grayden was known as Gathan the Good, an ironic appellation earned by his carefully chosen appearance. Most bandit lords affected a fearsome exterior, with garish tattoos, gaudy armor, extravagant weapons, and a loud, blustering manner. Not Gathan. He dressed simply but in the finest style, spoke softly, and carried himself like a nobleman of impeccable lineage. In fact he was easily the most ruthless of Samuval’s underlings. His fief, centered on the town of Frenost, northwest of Samustal, was the most pacified in all of Qualinesti.

Once a month he led most of his troops on along, circuitous march through his territory. That kept his soldiers fit and reminded his subjects who was in charge. Gathan was returning from one of those marches when the first refugees from Samustal reached him at Griffon’s Ford. In two days’ time, several hundred bandits had gathered, swelling his total complement to two thousand soldiers. Behind the army, a mob of slavers, displaced buntings, and their lackeys gathered. They believed Gathan would restore order in no time, and they wanted to be close at hand when Samustal was recovered. Most had fled with no more than the clothes on their backs.

Gathan led his army south. As he advanced, he sent parties east and west to sweep the countryside for rebels. None were found. Scouts brought word the town still stood and was eerily calm. A few bold bandits entered the outskirts for a closer look. They reported no defenders in sight. Dead bodies there were in plenty but no rebels.

Sensing a trap, Gathan sent scouts to reconnoiter. The squalid squatters’ camp ringing the old town had been burned, but the city proper appeared only lightly damaged, although in Samustal it was hard to know what was new damage and what was mere decrepitude.

The scouts entered through an unguarded gate, the clopping of their horses’ hooves disturbing clouds of insects. The smell of death was familiar to all who took Samuval’s coin, and it overpowered even the usual stench of Samustal. The bandits rode past the bodies of comrades, slavers, and elf townspeople. Flies and vultures were having a feast.

The captain of the scouts decided the rebels had indeed chosen the coward’s course, fleeing Samustal after their coup. He summoned a rider to carry word back to Lord Gathan. The courier was just turning to canter away when an arrow took him in the side of the neck. Before he hit the ground, fifteen of his fellows likewise thudded to the dirt, arrows sprouting in necks, chests, and backs.

“Ambush! Withdraw!” the bandit captain shouted, wheeling his mount. A second volley arrived, and another ten men fell, and the captain finally caught sight of the archers. They were on the parapet of the stockade. The scouts had ridden right under them. The captain cursed the bandits who had reported the town empty of rebels.

Atop the timber wall, Kerian was doing some cursing of her own. The Kagonesti archers lined the parapet, while below several score townsfolk huddled out of sight, clutching captured arms. Since Olin’s overthrow, many of the bolder residents had come and asked to serve Porthios. He allowed them that honor.

“You missed the commander,” she snapped at Nalaryn, crouching near her.

“We hit where we aim. The first rider would’ve carried word back to their general.”

“We ought to have taken them all,” she said darkly. Any that survived could warn their comrades as well as the first one.

The late-afternoon sun threw long shadows across the streets below, and bandits could be seen riding up the side streets parallel to the stockade. Roofs and chimney pots shielded the enemy. The Kagonesti ceased their punishing rain. Porthios did not send out his newly formed militia; the townsfolk would be no match for the mounted bandits.

“They must have more troops nearby. We should never have delayed. We should’ve left this place immediately.”

Kerian knew her grumbling was pointless. Liberating the secret cache from the attic of the mayor’s palace had kept them in Bianost when they otherwise would have made straight for the safety of the woodland. Nobody had expected bandits to return so quickly or in such numbers.

“Do you fear the enemy?”

Kerian turned. Porthios was climbing the stairs to the battlement. His ragged robe flapped around his gaunt legs like the wings of the crows that infested the town. She glared at him.

“Of course I fear them! Twenty warriors and a mob of civilians against an unknown number of trained mercenaries?”

He looked away, seemingly unconcerned, and her anger grew. She yelled down to the townsfolk below, describing the red and yellow livery of the bandits the Kagonesti had stung. She was told those were the colors of Gathan Grayden.

Kerian recognized the name. She had learned a lot about conditions in Qualinesti during her brief but turbulent time as a slave. Porthios seemed unimpressed by her description of the bandit leader as the worst of Samuval’s lieutenants. He stared out over the parapet, although there was little to see. Gathan wasn’t foolish enough to parade his army for his enemies to count.

In fact, Porthios was deep in thought. The strain of taking the town, coupled with finding an unexpected bounty concealed in the mayor’s palace, had set his mind racing. He’d half expected to die liberating Bianost from Lord Olin’s yoke. The future, once confined to a narrow woodland path and a nameless death, appeared much wider. But he had to proceed carefully. He must continue to be bold, or his rebellion would be crushed by Samuval’s superior might. Yet every move had to be considered with care. The entire responsibility lay on his shoulders. Kerianseray was a patriot and a good fighter but hadn’t the finesse to guide the campaign Porthios imagined. His small force must be led with the right attitude.

A leader must ignore the petty troubles that plague lesser minds. Porthios’s divine encounter in the woodland had taught him that. He could not allow himself to be distracted by tactical problems. He must concentrate on the grand strategy. The god had shown him that only by looking beyond the obvious and the commonplace could he free his people.

A shout from the Lioness drew his attention to the Street below. The surviving bandits had made their way to other gates and were spurring for the north road. Before they reached the woods, more of their mounted comrades appeared among the trees, along with sizable companies of foot soldiers. A veritable hedge of pikes filled the road.

“Are they massing to attack?” Porthios asked.

Kerian slumped, turning to sit on the narrow parapet with her back against the stockade. “No,” she said glumly. “They’re encircling us. Grayden doesn’t need to storm the town. He can’t know how many we are, so attacking the wall would be a waste of soldiers. He’s only got to trap us here till hunger and thirst force us to yield, or until he can overwhelm us.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s what I would do.”

Grim silence reigned. Then Porthios drew a deep breath.

“We can’t allow the cache to fall into bandit hands. I’d rather see it destroyed first,” he said. “So we must fight.”

He stood. Instantly, an arrow whizzed by his shoulder, ripping his sleeve as it passed. Kerian grabbed the front of his robe with both hands and dragged him down behind the sharpened logs.

“Take your hands off me.”

She remembered the face under the mask and let go abruptly. With much affronted dignity, Porthios stood again and descended the steps to the street.

Kerian shook her head. She’d known other warriors like him. Bravest of the brave they often were, but frightening. Placing little value on their own lives, they often didn’t value anyone else’s either.

She and Nalaryn peered carefully over the barrier. Here and there, elf eyes could pick out bandit archers settling into position among the burned-out ruins of the squatters’ camp.

Telling Nalaryn to hold his place, Kerian climbed down to the street and followed Porthios back toward the town square.

Once the setting of slave auctions, executions, and Olin’s unsavory entertainments, the square was again a gathering place for the elves of Bianost. Kerian had thought most of the original inhabitants were long gone, driven out or sold away into slavery. But several hundred had gathered, eager to serve their liberator. The word had spread to gather in the square, and the sudden arrival of Gathan Grayden seemed only to whet their appetite for battle.

Porthios walked ahead of Kerian. As he entered the square, his pace slowed. The crowd of elves shifted toward him, determined to get a closer look at their benefactor.

The scene felt oddly familiar to Kerian, reminding her of Gilthas’s progress through the tent city of the exiled elves in Khur. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars was regarded as the noblest being in the world, but while his grateful subjects were welcome to approach the kindly Gilthas, none tried to accost Porthios. Curiosity and gratitude brought them near, but his forbidding demeanor arrested their enthusiasm. Scores lined the way, but not one hand reached out for his ragged robe. Their expressions were different too.

She had nearly reached the fountain in the center of the square before she identified the difference. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars represented a lofty ideal. Porthios was a reflection of each of them, the rage and shame of every elf in the subjugated lands, personified in one gaunt, shabby frame.

The slave pens had been torn down by the mob. Since then, debris and garbage had been removed from the central fountain. Seeing that, Kerian wondered aloud about restoring the flow of water.

An elf standing on the stone platform by the obelisk said, “There is no water.”

“What, none? None at all?”

He explained the feeder pipes were broken or choked with garbage. “Olin never bothered to keep them up. For months, all water has been carried in.”

“In from where?” asked the Lioness, eyes narrowing.

“From the springs in the meadow south of town.”

The squatters’ camp had grown up when traders became tired of tramping in and out of the stockade for water. They moved outside to be closer to the springs.

Kerian gestured peremptorily for Porthios to accompany her. Conscious of being watched by hundreds, he followed. They ascended the steps of the mayor’s palace.

Out of earshot of the crowd, she hissed, “Did you hear? The bandits have us cut off from our only water supply!”

“There are rain cisterns under the streets. We’ll drink that.”

Heatedly, she pointed out the cisterns were likely nearly dry after the long summer drought. Any water in them would be stagnant, an invitation to disease.

“Then we will fight and win before we get thirsty,” Porthios said.

The Lioness’s famous temper nearly broke. Porthios had achieved amazing things, but his bland indifference to their safety made her furious. All the old enmity between city lord and woodland elf welled up inside her for the first time since leaving Khur. This arrogant, mutilated noble was gambling with all their lives!

There was no telling what she might have done had not fate intervened in the person of one of Nalaryn’s Kagonesti, a female called Sky. She jogged up the steps, calling for Kerian and the Great Lord. They were wanted back at the north wall.

Kerian clutched her filthy hair with both hands. “What now?” she groaned.

“The bandits are fighting,” Sky said and took off.

Kerian took that to mean Nalaryn’s band was in peril. She headed down the steps without even looking to see whether Porthios followed.

The crowd of elves in the square peppered her with anxious questions. She fended them off but quickly realized that was a mistake.

“The bandits are coming back,” she announced, not breaking stride. “If you value your liberty and love your race, follow me and bring a weapon. The battle is now!”

There were only a few cries of fear. In a body, the elves grabbed whatever makeshift weapons they could find and streamed after the Lioness.

Near the stockade, Kerian heard the telltale sounds of battle. Entering the last street inside the wall, she was surprised to see Nalaryn’s Kagonesti crouched below the parapet. They did not appear to be engaged, so who was fighting?

She raced up the steps. Behind, the elves of Bianost gripped unfamiliar weapons, their strained faces turned upward.

“What’s going on?” Kerian demanded.

One of the Kagonesti pointed wordlessly. Kerian put an eye to a chink between the logs and peeked out. She drew a breath in sharply.

Beyond the wasteland of squatters’ shanties a considerable battle was indeed taking place. Gathan Grayden’s soldiers, some on foot and some mounted, were milling around their leader’s fluttering standard. No one on the stockade could identify his foe through rising clouds of ash and dirt, but Nalaryn offered a bleak and logical opinion. The rats who’d fled Olin’s town had carried word of his downfall in all directions. The newcomers were probably troops of another bandit lord who sought to grab Olin’s former territory.

“This may be a well-chewed bone, but they’ll fight like rabid dogs to possess it,” he said.

Kerian watched as lancers in bright breastplates charged through Grayden’s disordered ranks. His attention had been focused entirely on the town. He had not expected an attack from elsewhere. The mercenaries formed squares to hold off the cavalry, but they were isolated from each other and unable to do anything but fight to stay alive.

Before the sun set, the battle was over. Grayden himself, surrounded by his best retainers, abandoned the field. His men he left to the mercies of the victor, and like Olin’s mercenaries before them, the bandits broke and scattered. The last Kerian saw of Gathan Grayden was his standard, borne away by a warrior on a black horse.

The townsfolk, watching the melee through gaps in the logs at ground level, set up a cheer when Grayden’s soldiers fled. Kerian silenced them with a thunderous command. The cure might prove worse than the disease.

A block of mounted warriors trotted toward the stockade. The Kagonesti nocked arrows and awaited the order to loose. The approaching column numbered perhaps three hundred.

It was either fight or surrender, and for her part, Kerian had no intention of allowing herself to be chained again. Better to die right here and now.

She gripped her captured sword tightly. Only a modest archer, she left that art to those far more capable. Soon there would be plenty of fighting to go around.

The mounted column halted at the edge of the burned-out section of shanties. A smaller contingent of two score riders came on.

Still peering through the gap between the timbers, Kerian muttered, “I wonder if the Scarecrow has a secret weapon.”

“Only my mind, and my vision.”

He was not two feet behind her, looking out over the notched parapet with customary nonchalance. One day he was going to stop an arrow. She said as much.

“But not today. Can you not see? Those are elves.”

Had he showered the assembled defenders with steel, he could not have astonished them more. Kerian rose partway from her crouch, looking over the top of the timber bulwark. The riders’ armor was commonplace half-plate; their helmets open-faced. Mercenaries from Beacon to Rymdar wore the same harness. Neither did their horses’ trapping reveal any distinctive elven style. What did Porthios see?

The contingent halted just within bowshot. A cloud slid across the sinking sun, and when its shadow covered the field, Kerian finally saw the riders’ insignia. Their bright breastplates bore a symbol inlaid in silver. In full light the contrast was too poor to see at a distance.

The symbol was a star, the eight-pointed star of Silvanesti.

At the forefront, the ranks parted, and three riders emerged, leaving the others behind. The riders on each end were male, one in a commander’s helmet and mantle, the other a well-dressed noble. Riding between them, mounted on a white mare, was a female elf of great beauty. Her riding clothes were jasperine, a fine white cloth woven with gold and red highlights. She put back her hood, revealing black hair.

Kerian stared. The rider looked like… but it couldn’t be. It was too unlikely.

The elderly noble accompanying her hailed them. Atop the log wall, no one breathed, much less answered.

“Great Lord, will you speak?” whispered Nalaryn. There was no reply. For the first time, the unfailingly confident, supremely smug Porthios was speechless. When Kerian saw his state, she knew her guess about the woman’s identity was correct. His eyes were wide. His bony shoulders trembled.

“I cannot!” Hoarse, agonized, the words fell from his lips like blood from a fresh wound. He made choking sounds. “I cannot!”

Everyone was staring, especially the local elves. What new threat could so unnerve the bold savior of Bianost?

Then, astonishingly, Porthios turned and scrambled down the ladder. He stumbled at the bottom, almost falling on his face, regained his balance, and whirled away, parting the amazed townsfolk like a plow turning fresh soil.

Outside the stockade, the noble called out again. Kerian sheathed her sword and headed for the ladder.

Nalaryn stayed her with a hand on her arm. “Are they friends?” he asked.

“They are gifts from the gods!”

She went to the sally port door cut into the stockade gate. Some of the Bianost elves, not understanding the situation, protested. She offered only brief reassurance before flinging open the door and stepping outside.

The white-clad elf woman guided her horse closer. Kerian gripped her sword hilt and stood stiffly at attention, aping the posture of a palace guard.

“Greetings,” the rider said. Her voice was warm and honest. “I am glad we arrived in time. The bandits were spread thin trying to surround the town. We were fortunate to rout them.”

Feeling very shabby and unkempt, Kerian passed a hand over her cropped hair and offered a bemused smile. Although the rider had spoken Qualinesti, Kerian answered in Silvanesti. She was not fluent, but more proficient than when last they’d met. “We are glad of it, too, Highness. I’d hardly expected to be rescued by family,” she said.

The lovely face went blank for a handful of seconds, then:

“Kerianseray?”

The name was a disbelieving whisper. Kerian’s smile broadened into a grin.

Nalaryn emerged with his foresters. The Kagonesti chief asked who the noble lady was.

The mounted elf smiled at him. “I am Alhana Starbreeze, at your service.”