The elf, grim and silent on his white horse, nodded.
They came quickly. Some infantry, mostly cavalry. Venick watched the enemy elves wash across the red earth and looked for conjurors among their ranks, but all he saw was a field of black. At his command Venick’s army surged forward, rushing to meet their enemy. Their frontlines met. Collapsed. And just like that, with no time to think or plan or prepare, no time for speeches or calls for bravery, no time even to size up their enemy, to get a true handle on what they were up against, it began.
A spray of arrows, from his soldiers or theirs, Venick couldn’t tell. One moment he was spurring Eywen through open air. The next: a clash of bodies and steel and green glass. A gurgled shout, a rush of heat. Venick heaved his sword up and then down again, into armor and flesh, over and over. His shoulder was on fire. His breath came in strained lungfuls. Dirt flung into his eyes, his mouth. He spat it out, only to be sprayed with more dirt, and with blood, which seemed to fall from the sky like rain.
An elf with a spear appeared in Venick’s vision. The elf flew forward, white hair streaming, arm cocked to throw. Venick unhooked his foot from the saddle’s stirrup, flung himself sideways to dodge the quick slice of the spear through the air, and then—against all his training, and to the appalled cry of Dourin behind him—he leapt to the ground.
Idiot, he thought he heard Dourin snap, but the elf’s voice was lost in the roar of battle. Venick brought his sword around, a wide swing that took the spear-thrower by surprise, that caught him squarely in the chest. The elf fell, but Venick was already spinning away, dodging a new opponent, narrowly missing the swing of—reeking gods, was that amace?Venick came to his knees and parried. He shoved back to standing. The elf’s next swing went wide, which was a blessing, a mercy, because Venick wouldn’t have been ready for it, would never have dodged that attack at such close range.
It began to rain. Venick’s vision blurred as he thrust his sword into the mace-wielder, withdrew with barely enough time to check if the elf was dead before moving to sidestep a speeding horse, catching its rider in the gut, cutting the elf out of the saddle. Dead? Not dead. The elf was back on her feet, pulling a throwing knife from her belt, taking aim. Venick ducked. The knife missed. Yet she was on him, a new knife in hand. A cut to Venick’s brow from an earlier strike throbbed. It ran fingers of blood down his face. As Venick focused on staying out of the way of the female’s knives and lightning turned the dark world bright, he found himself thinking that this elf looked like Ellina, even though she didn’t, not even a little bit. Yet there was a similarity. Maybe shefoughtlike Ellina: that quick arm, the viciousness.
It got Venick thinking when he had absolutely no business thinking. He was remembering Ellina in the stateroom battle, and how her poise was as beautiful as it was deadly. He was remembering how she’d looked in Irek, how he’d expected to see that same viciousness come through, and hadn’t.
Her letter, which he’d read under his mother’s probing gaze, asking for a truce. Her handwriting. Familiar. Hadn’t he seen that handwriting somewhere before?
And then there was that dagger in Irek, appearing so suddenly in the conjuror’s back. It had saved him. Venick recalled the short blade, the simple handle. That too had been familiar.
Venick was distracted. His mind was where it shouldn’t be. The female drew her final knife and went for his neck.
He was almost too slow. Venick knew better than to let his thoughts wander on the battlefield, not when a split-second distraction could end in death. He flinched away from the blade just in time, bringing his own up in its place, impaling the elf on its end.
Venick pulled his sword free, stumbled back. His hands were shaking, his stomach in knots. Nauseous. Why was he nauseous? This was not his first battle, not his first time soaked in someone else’s blood. But: the dead elf who did not look like Ellina. Her small hands, the long rope of her hair. Her eyes, glassy and golden and unseeing. He blinked. Drew a breath. This should not have repulsed him.
“Venick.”
Dourin’s voice made him turn. Around them, bodies had begun to pile. The earth was muddied with gore. And still the battle raged. Horses crashed and screamed, their white teeth flashing. Many of his men were fighting on foot now, as he was. Infantry against cavalry. Never a good position.
Venick saw more. His army had lost ground. Their ranks were disassembled, confused and broken. Overhead the storm had condensed, darker and lower than he’d ever seen. It could only be the work of southern conjurors, and if that was true, Venick knew what would happen next. The storm’s shadows would spread. They’d eat the earth, and his soldiers would be thrown into blackness. They’d be left to fight blind in a battle they were already losing.
Venick grabbed a man by the shoulder, one of his own. “Quick. Gather our archers. Tell them to target the conjurors.”
“We’ve almost used up all our arrows.”
“Then gather our fastest horsemen, tellthemto target the conjurors.”
“We can’tfindthe conjurors!”
Venick released the soldier. He understood. The enemy elves all looked the same, outfitted in black, their hair and faces hidden under steel helms. Even if Venick had been able to pick the conjurors out of the mass, he suspected they’d be in the safest position: the back ranks. Targeting them like this would be next to impossible.
Venick’s eyes sought Dourin. The elf was on foot now too, engaged in a skirmish with a thickly-muscled southerner. The southerner came forward but Dourin was quick: a burst of green glass and he’d severed the enemy’s arm at the wrist. The southerner wailed.
“Dourin.”
At a look, they retreated to their own back ranks. Here, men and elves stood pale-faced, weapons drawn, waiting to enter the fray. It was a bubble of calm in the midst of the chaos.
Dourin seemed to know what Venick would say before he spoke. He cut Venick off. “You do not have to do this.”
“We’re being overwhelmed. We can’t win. Not like this.”
“A message might not make it to the Elder in time,” Dourin insisted. “He might not accept your change of heart.”
“I have to try.”
Dourin was stony. “We will send my steed. Grey. He is fastest.”
Venick called for parchment and ink. He wrote the letter with a shaking hand. He rolled it tightly, slid it into a tube, and tied it with a leather throng to Grey’s mane.
Dourin touched the horse’s face, and the animal was off.
