Rise of the TaiGethen

Chapter 12

I was always taught that being able to face your enemy is the prime requisite in choosing whether or not to fight him. The trouble is that when fighting the TaiGethen in the rainforest, you don’t get to face them and you don’t get to choose whether to fight or not. It’s best just to make sure you have a comfortable place to fall when you die.

Reminiscences of an Old Soldie r, by Garan, sword master of Ysundeneth (retired)

Heat and roaring and screaming and burning.

Auum rolled onto his back and opened his eyes. He was surrounded by blue tinged with yellow and blown through with thickening smoke. Magical fire gorging on precious trees and…

‘Malaar!’

Auum tried to sit up. Pain slammed along the length of his right leg and up into his back. His left shoulder was dislocated. His left arm hung limp and pain grated across his neck and up into his skull making him nauseous. Smoke brought tears to his eyes and fogged his vision, but he could see enough. His right ankle was twisted, lodged in a root.

Auum tried to clear his head. A few details filtered in. The explosion had rushed towards him, engulfing Malaar and Wirann. Auum had dived for the cover of a palm tree trunk but hadn’t quite made it. His leap had been spun out of control by the force of the blast.

The roaring in his ears was losing intensity and he could hear the screams more clearly now. From his position, he could see the seat of the explosion and TaiGethen rushing in to see if there were any survivors. The screams told him they were witnessing something awful.

The fire was spreading around the clearing. The trees all around them were ablaze and weakened branches were beginning to fall. The palm tree against which Auum rested was burning on the opposite side. There was fire on the ground all around him where he lay in partial shelter.

Auum put his right hand on the trunk and pushed up with his left leg, letting his right foot drag out from beneath the root as he stood. His whole body was alive with pain and he could feel blood running down his face. The fire surrounded him, the heat growing by the moment. His people were scattered and scared. He needed to move.

He pushed away from the tree, adjusting his balance to mitigate his two key injuries. There was a vibration running through the ground — heavy feet, running hard. Auum cast about him, but the smoke and flame obscured anything beyond twenty yards or so. He was breathing hard, clinging on to consciousness. The air was thick and poisonous and he was struggling to manage the waves of pain sweeping over him.

‘Auum!’

Auum looked to his left. Relief was a balm on his agony.

‘Ulysan.’ The powerful TaiGethen came to his side. ‘Help me get this shoulder back in.’

‘No time,’ said Ulysan. ‘The humans are coming back to finish what they started. Now we know why they ran so readily.’

‘I have to be able to fight,’ said Auum.

‘You’re joking,’ said Ulysan. ‘You’re half dead. Come on. Let me support you.’

‘I will not leave as an invalid. Help me. We have to get our people away from here. You can’t organise it with me hanging off your shoulder.’

Ulysan sighed and shook his head. Ordinarily, Auum would have laughed; he knew exactly what his Tai was thinking. Auum, his right hand resting on the tree trunk and with flame licking ever closer, smoke thickening fast, lifted his left arm, feeling the shoulder ball grating against the socket and his muscles protesting.

Ulysan took the arm in both his hands, continuing the lift as slowly as he dared, his eyes continuously flicking across to the spot where the enemy would emerge, or from which new spells would come. When his arm moved past the perpendicular, Ulysan took Auum’s wrist and bent his forearm around the back of his head and towards his right shoulder.

Auum breathed slowly, feeling the joint move into position. With a distinct thud through his ribs, the ball popped back into the socket. Ulysan released his arm and Auum moved it back down to his side. There was an intense ache across the top of his back and down the arm but at least it now worked. He made a fist and grimaced. It would have to do. He put his right arm around Ulysan’s neck.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Auum’s injured ankle would take no weight whatsoever. The TaiGethen pair moved as fast as they could towards the remains of the elven working party. Despite the risk of fire and smoke, the surviving TaiGethen were all gathered there.

‘Form up!’ ordered Auum. ‘Away into the trees. We cannot-’

Elyss was kneeling on the ground, heedless of the smouldering leaf litter all around her. When he spoke, she turned round and the expression on her face stalled his next words. He and Ulysan moved towards her. She was shivering. Tears flooded down her face, smearing the ash dust that clung there. She was holding something in her hands.

‘It’s all that’s left,’ she said, her voice cracked and raw. ‘How could they do this? Even for them this is…’

Elyss opened her hands and Auum could see they were burned. The belt clasp of Malaar’s jaqrui pouch, fused to the melted remains of the throwing crescents, was sitting in her palms. Auum let his eyes track over the ground, across an area that was scorched black.

Nothing remained. Not a bone remained of a working party of a hundred elves. The force of the spell had obliterated them completely, along with anything else in its radius. The earth was rock hard and had been pitted into a shallow crater studded with irregular black scorch marks.

That Malaar’s jaqruis were recognisable was a surprise in itself but it hardly mattered. Both he and Wirann were gone; wiped from the rainforest as if they had never existed. It made awful sense of all the screams. How could even a soul hope to survive such a conflagration?

Auum reached down with his left hand and half-pulled Elyss to her feet. The surviving TaiGethen were gathered, Illast and his cell among them, bruised but unbroken.

‘TaiGethen,’ he said softly and every eye turned to him. ‘You can all feel through your boots what is coming. Every one of you is carrying an injury. And you are looking at an atrocity that eclipses all others. I know you wish to fight for the memory of those who have fallen but we do not have the strength, not right now.

‘We will head for Aryndeneth to rest and heal. If the humans are heading there, we must be ready. Go now. Acclan will bear Gyneev. Ulysan will remain with my cell and we shall grieve our fallen when we pray.

‘Tais, we move.’

Bitter cold flushed through the forest at their backs. The last fires were extinguished. Ice fell from the trees. Boughs blackened by fire shattered and fell, shot through by the chill.

‘Run!’ yelled Auum.

The TaiGethen fled the scene of slaughter. Auum pushed Ulysan away and let himself drop into an untidy heap on the ground

‘Go, Ulysan. See to Aryndeneth.’

Ulysan looked past Auum at the onrushing frost. He nodded and ran. Auum turned onto his back and saw the cloud of ice carried on an unnatural gale of wind stampede about four feet over his head. He prayed his Tais were fast enough. The vibration in the ground told him that the enemy had slowed to move in behind their spells.

The air was clearing of smoke now and a cold rain fell from the trees, any leaves which had survived the fire had been blackened by frost up into the mid-canopy. Beeth would be urging Gyal to bring fresh rain, but it would not save these ruined trees. Auum lay where he had fallen, waiting.

From his position, feet first towards the enemy, he saw five warriors moving slowly into the cleared space, three mages in close attendance. No doubt there were many others but he dare not move his head. Not yet. The men came forward, swords held ready and bucklers still strapped firmly to forearms. Voices echoed in an arc in front of Auum and there was harsh laughter.

Auum tensed, feeling the strained sinews and muscles in both shoulder and ankle. Mercifully nothing was broken, though his ankle and right leg were useless to him. Nonetheless he wondered how many he could take before they finished him. Two warriors were walking towards him. He could tell by their approach that they assumed him dead, but they were still wary.

Auum’s eyes were closed to tiny slits and he let his body relax. One warrior kicked his right boot. Pain flooded Auum, too much to deny. He cried out and kicked hard with his left foot, feeling his toes connect with the warrior’s groin. Auum sat straight up as the man doubled over, grabbing his light mail shirt and pulling him down and left, and used the momentum to carry him to his knees. Fresh pain crashed through his lower body from his right ankle. Auum ignored it. He grabbed a blade with his right hand and chopped it into the warrior’s neck.

Auum pushed the body aside and bounced up onto his left foot, forced to leave the right one trailing. His stance was awkward, leaving him feeling clumsy. He smashed an elbow into the face of the second warrior and threw a jaqrui at the nearest mage, seeing it deflected by a buckler thrust out instinctively and fly up into his target’s face.

Auum hopped to the right, his left foot kicking down briefly but tellingly on the second warrior’s throat before he landed on solid ground. The remaining three rushed him. Behind them, two mages began to prepare castings and he could hear others racing in from the left and right. The attacking men slowed, seeing him crippled. They spaced out, intending to give him no chance.

Auum focused on the central figure. Clean-shaven and fresh-faced, he was a young man of little experience if the way his grip shifted on his sword was any guide. Auum watched him come in, striding quickly, confident in his chances against an injured elf.

Auum snatched a jaqrui from his belt and hurled it at neck height. The young man ducked. Auum flexed his left leg and jumped high, kicking out straight as he rose, catching the soldier on the top of his head and sending him sprawling backwards. The other two were running at him. He threw his blade at one, missing, and dragged out his other as he landed.

Auum turned to his left. He had little time. In his peripheral vision the mages had completed their preparations and Auum asked Yniss to preserve his soul. Auum dived headlong, his sword thrust out ahead of him, hoping he might evade whatever spells were coming.

His blade skewered the soldier in the gut. Auum’s body thumped into his as it fell and the two of them tumbled in a heap. The dying man landed on top of Auum’s injured leg. Auum screamed and tried to shove him off, scrabbling back and fighting a rising nausea. A mage appeared above him, his palm open to reveal blue fire growing within. The mage reached down towards Auum’s face.

A keening sound split the noise of the skirmish and the mage jerked, blood bursting from his mouth and flooding down his neck. He fell to the side, plucking at the jaqrui lodged just beneath his ear. TaiGethen hurdled Auum’s body as men called out frantically. Auum saw Ulysan poleaxe a warrior with a massive punch to the chin and Elyss ram a blade under his ribs.

A spell was cast. Brief flame shot out and Illast leapt, turned in the air above the flame and kissed back down to the ground, his blades already coming across his face in their killing strikes. Auum could hear swords clash further away. He heard more jaqrui sing through the air and a man howled briefly in agony. Running footsteps dwindled away into the forest and the last human voices faded away.

The dying human was pulled from atop Auum and his neck broken. Ulysan reached down a hand and Auum took it gratefully.

‘This is becoming a habit,’ he said. ‘Faleen’s after the others.’

‘I thought I told you all to run,’ said Auum.

Ulysan smiled and rubbed an ear theatrically. ‘Did you? Damned explosion must have left me half deaf because I’d never knowingly defy one of your orders.’

‘May Yniss keep your hearing muted, Ulysan,’ said Auum. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

The assault on Serrin’s sense of smell fed directly from his Claw and it was truly vile. He was travelling with eight pairs, tracking the human army and dreaming of their blood on his lips.

But this stink had driven all other thought from his mind. The air was laden with a multitude of scents: burned wood, ash, seared flesh and boiling sap just a few among them. Dominant, though, were the twin odours of magic, which hung heavy on the ground caught in the leaf litter and undergrowth, and elven blood, a great deal of which had been spilled.

Serrin walked into a blackened clearing and knew that much of the guilt rested with him. His Claw sampled the ground, finding a charred, fused crater smothered in the remnants of magic and the ashes of elves. Scattered across an area a quarter of a mile on a side, were the bodies of men. Some appeared to have thawed from frozen and all bore the wounds of jaqrui, elven blade or TaiGethen open-hand strike.

Serrin paused, his hand on his Claw’s head. She had moved from the crater and was nosing at a bloodstain on the ground. She breathed it in deep and Serrin experienced a pain of loss he thought never to feel again.

Auum.

His Claw could not be sure if he had perished here and been borne away by his Tais, but he had certainly fought and bled here, and one set of tracks leading away spoke of an elf with serious injuries. Serrin stared at the ground, looking for signs that Auum had moved away unaided, but the tracks were confused. Ten sets of prints crisscrossed the ground, led away, ran back and disappeared into the undergrowth, all of them heading for Aryndeneth, a day’s run to the east.

Serrin, or at least that part of him which glimmered with the memory of a Silent Priest, prayed to Yniss that Auum’s soul had been preserved, whether alive or dead. For those caught in the magical fire and the ensuing inferno, there could be no such hope.

The ClawBound were all assembled in the clearing. Each pair maintained physical contact while the shock of what they saw ebbed away to fuel their desire for blood. They all looked at Serrin, awaiting his signal to close on the tail of the human army and begin to seek their vengeance.

And so they would, but not like this. Serrin let his eyes travel the devastation once more and allowed the guilt to follow. He should have foreseen this reaction. He should have realised Ystormun would prefer to strike back at free elves rather than rip the hearts from his useful slaves in revenge. He should have listened to Auum. He should have stopped his cleansing. They were not strong enough to repel this invasion.

Serrin crouched on the ground and tears welled up in his eyes. He touched the earth and felt its pain. He sampled the air and smelled the death of the rainforest all around him. He listened and heard the desperate cries of Tual’s denizens, unable to comprehend the horror being visited upon them.

And all because the ClawBound had become more animal than elf.

‘Yniss forgive me,’ whispered Serrin. ‘We have fallen too far.’