Preparations began in earnest. During the day, the streets came alive with the sounds of stone grinders, hammers on metal, the tap and clackof activity. As soon as dusk fell, however, the chatter and buzz seemed to solidify, hardening like an insect in amber. Though the Dark Army would surely return to finish what they’d started in the woods, it was impossible to say when, and so each night must be treated asthenight. Foot soldiers took their positions along the road. Women and children vanished into underground shelters. Archers on the ramparts, cavalry at the wall. And then: the silence. The waiting.
On the third night, they came.
There was no obvious warning. No blow of war horns or cry of battle. Yet a change seemed to creep into the breeze, what might have been bats on a hunt, and wasn’t. A tuft of clouds shifted to cover the moon. Dusk fell early that evening, as if a sheer curtain had been drawn over the sky.
There was no need to tell the soldiers what everyone already knew, yet runners were sent to deliver the message anyway: the enemy was coming.
Hidden along the main road near the outskirts of the city, Venick looked at his soldiers. Elves and men, mostly, but also a few women, those from the lowlands or the plainslands who had learned—either by desire or necessity—how to wield a sword. Some of the elves had cropped their hair close to the scalp in the human way. If asked, they would say it was a practical choice. Short hair was convenient, less likely to be caught or pulled. While this was true, Venick couldn’t help but see a deeper meaning in the elves’ shorn hair, which was yet another tradition they’d adopted from the humans.
It pleased him. This was what Venick had wanted all along: for elves and humans to meld, for the barriers between their races to fade. Venick liked the way the elves had begun to show facial expressions, to smile or laugh, tell jokes. He liked how they played cards and swore. He even liked how they had learned to swim.
Venick picked up a pebble from the ground, squeezed it between thumb and forefinger, then peered across the city towards the western rampart where Ellina was stationed with the archers. Hurendue wasn’t perfectly fortified. Aside from the fact that there were two separate walls rather than just one, much of the city sat outsideof those walls. Furthermore, the river, called the Angor, split the city in two from north to south, then curved sharply west. It wasn’t as large as the Taro, but it was still too wide and too deep to traverse easily. It was, in many ways, like a third wall.
Venick went utterly still.
An idea.
It began to grow. Venick’s idea was like the pebble in his fingers. There was a sensation of being squeezed between two things.
He saw, suddenly, how they might win.
???
Ellina was given command of the archers, who gathered around her on the rampart like wide-eyed schoolchildren. Dourin appeared, dressed in fitted armor that looked custom made, and which Ellina suspected was another gift from the Elder. Dourin was not an archer, and he would soon leave to meet Venick at the city’s entrance, but he had come for a purpose.
“Hear me now,” Dourin told the archers. “Ellina has a plan. She has explained it to me, and I will explain it to you. You would do best to listen closely.”
He told them what she had in mind. Ellina watched the archers’ round eyes grow even rounder, then narrow. By the time Dourin finished, they looked like Ellina felt: as if forged in fire.
Before departing, Dourin regarded Ellina under the soft blue light of the lanterns. “I hope that will be the only time I must ever speak for you.” His tone, so often flippant, was steel. “Let’s get your voice back, shall we?”
???
Venick heard the Dark Army advancing towards the city from his hiding spot along the road. Boots and hooves. The wheels of carts, cannons.
Venick glanced at his soldiers. He held up his hand.Hold.
He edged around a building to peer down the road.
The Dark Army’s cavalry. Slim, quick-footed horses. No conjurors, not in the front lines where they would be open to attack, but many officers, elves armed with swords and crossbows. Milk-pale skin to contrast black armor. Those faces, all beautiful. Terrible.
Marching closer.
Dourin appeared.
“Where were you?” Venick asked.
“Helping.”
“With what?”
Dourin wagged his finger. “Always so nosy.”
“Tell me this, at least. Is her plan a good one?”
Dourin flashed a smile. “It is brilliant.”
“What aboutthisplan?” Venick asked, then explained what he had in mind.
