???
A spray of arrows hailed from the sky. Venick didn’t see them, but he could hear them as they whistled overhead.
The Dark Army vanguard was switching strategies. They began to pull back, attempting to gain the space they needed to reform their lines. In doing so, they passed the resistance’s semicircle of catapults, which remained abandoned, unlit. Their wooden beams looked like skeletons in the low light.
As the Dark Army was driven beyond the catapults and up against the storm-surged river, Venick thought of Ellina’s stunts. He wondered if this was how she felt when she did something any rational warrior would consider insane: like her heart was cased in fire.
???
Ellina continued to draw the conjurors out. She remained relatively isolated from the central grip of battle, which raged farther down the river. The elves came one by one, and each time Ellina lifted her torch, an arrow—or really, dozens of arrows—found their way into the enemy’s flesh.
Ellina did not know how many conjurors were left alive. Farah’s coven had started with thirty last summer, whittled down to twenty, ten. What Ellina did know was that as the night wore on, the rain began to ebb, slowing to a fine spray that irritated the eyes, then ceased. The clouds broke apart, the moon peeking shyly through. The corpses within Ellina’s line of sight were just that.None stirred to rise.
Her plan was working. Yet there was one conjuror Ellina had not yet seen, and was desperate to see. Her desire for it burned a hole in her heart.
???
The enemy was in position. It was a miracle, a god’s given gift, that the resistance had managed to corral them so quickly, admitting the Dark Army into the city and pressing them towards the river, all while allowing them to believe that’s where they wantedto be. The Dark Army, though massive, and vicious, had a flaw—it was comprised entirely of elves.
Elves were trained in solo fighting. They concerned themselves with the elegance of their own blades and not their neighbors’. Oh, they’d learned a few tricks along the way. With Farah as their leader, they’d managed to organize themselves into the semblance of a real army, capable of doing serious damage. But there were oversights in their training, chinks that only experienced human warriors would know how to spot and patch.
The Dark elves didn’t consider the catapults a danger. Not as they were then, unlit and unmanned.
Venick’s soldiers knew the plan. As they pressed their enemy beyond the catapults and towards the water, their eyes began to stray to their Commander, awaiting his signal. Dourin, too, reappeared long enough to give Venick a final, “Try not to die, will you?” then vanished again. He would not stay for this part of the scheme.
And yet…Farah.
Venick could see her there, still tightly enclosed within a halo of elven soldiers, still looking as if she’d swallowed a mouthful of blood and wanted more. She had not yet crossed the threshold of catapults, which encircled a sector of the city in an expansive arc, dropping off on each end at the river. If Venick gave the signal now, Farah would escape.
And if he waited?
His army would continue to struggle. More soldiers would die. The southerners might even recognize the threat and switch their position.
A true Commander never hesitates.
Venick turned to the nearest soldier and gripped the boy by the arm. “Gather six others. Run to the gunners. Tell them to light the catapults.”
“But,” said the soldier, “the enemy has already moved beyond the catapults. They aren’t in range.”
“Not the missiles.” It was just Venick’s luck that he’d chosen a soldier who’d missed the message. “I want you to light the catapults themselves. The wood.”
The boy’s eyes bugged. “All of them?”
“All of them.”
“Sir…that will create a massive fire. The smoke alone will be suffocating. And the catapults block our way back down the road. We will be trapped here in the city to be burned alive.”
Venick spoke in his Commander’s voice. “Not if you know how to swim.”
???
She walked among a garden of dead.
Ellina’s arms, though they had done little more than lift a torch, shook from fatigue. She felt strained, strung out, and though she sensed how the battle tipped, howshehad tipped it, she still wrestled with those twinned feelings of emptiness and desire. They beckoned her like the song of a siren. If she listened closely, she could hear them sing her name.
Ellina moved along the river towards the main surge of battle. Whatever lines had existed between their sides were dissolved now, the two armies weaving together like a tapestry. The colors, too, like a tapestry: green and gold, brilliant red. As the inky shadows continued to lift, Ellina scanned faces, riffling through them as if through a drawer. She cared not for the general content, only for what she sought.
She saw him from a distance.
