I am sorry, my Lord, Velixar thought, reeling with the pain of a mortal wound. I have failed you once more. .
CHAPTER 49
Nothing had ever filled Aully with as much dread. Not being thrown in the dungeon, not watching the butchering of Noni and Aaromar, not those long days she sat fearing for her mother’s life, not even being forced to sit there helpless as Kindren had his fingers sliced off, one by one. No, the thing that lunged out of the forest before them, toppling trees as it roared, was terror incarnate.
Aully grasped hold of her mother and Kindren and wailed. Her entire body was quivering. She thought of her old friends, now gone after the massive creature tore through the city in the trees, devouring all it came across. Aully had escaped that fate, but now she and those who fled were trapped between the rampaging demon in front of them and the sheer cliff that plummeted into an ocean inlet behind. The choice between becoming a monster’s snack and plunging to her death was not a choice at all. Not even having with them Ceredon, the Quellan prince who had sacrificed so much to save them back in Dezerea, gave her a glimmer of hope.
“Keep steady!” Ceredon shouted, running along the line of survivors. The horde was huge, over two thousand as far as Aully could guess. Most of them were her fellow Stonewood Dezren, but interspersed among them were a number of the eastern deity’s human soldiers, their armor polished black. Although the humans seemed anxious, as if looking for a fight, the elves stared ahead with wide eyes, gawking at the beast rumbling toward them as their feet shuffled backward, edging closer and closer to the rim of the cliff. Few of them were warriors, and those that were had long before pledged their allegiance to Carskel. Aully spotted her bastard brother among their numbers, standing alongside Ethir Ayers, both of their expressions blank with shock, and for a waning moment hatred bubbled up within her, overtaking her fear. She scowled and shoved away from her mother and Kindren’s embrace, heat growing on her fingertips as she mouthed the words to a spell.
A hand grabbed hers. It was Ceredon. “Save it,” the handsome prince told her. “We will need it.”
The spell dispersed.
Ceredon kissed her on the cheek and dashed away, heading back toward the small cluster of human soldiers. When they spoke this time, it was hurried, hands waving, voices raised and frantic. Finally a woman, the most beautiful human Aully had ever seen, grabbed a man with a forked yellow beard by the collar, growled at him, and shoved him away. She handed Ceredon one of the shortswords that hung from her belt. A funny-looking man with a thick red beard and wearing a bright green, bloodstained robe, laughed. The odd man smacked Ceredon on the shoulder and hurriedly called out to the throng of humans in the common tongue.
The demon lurched into action, barreling across the stony ground like a charging bull. The thing was huge and bulbous, at least forty feet long, with a lashing spiked tail. Its rear legs ended in hooves that tore up the ground with each lumbering stride, sending bits of gravel and dirt into the air. The front legs each ended in five long, wickedly sharp claws. Its head was like that of a reptilian horse, with a triangular, slotted nose above a wide mouth filled with huge teeth that dripped with the blood of her people. A pair of giant tusks curled around from the hinge in its jaw, each coming to a point on either side of that slotted nose, and as it ran, it dipped its head, those tusks gouging into the earth. Its eyes were like a raging red inferno. Its forked serpent’s tongue licked the air. It was a nightmare made flesh.
Every remaining human soldier who had a horse mounted up. The beautiful woman swung up onto her charger, drew her sword, and sounded the charge. Hooves pounded the gravel-strewn ground as the humans fanned out. Those who had no horses ran behind, clustered together. There had to be four hundred of them.
“Do not just sit there!” screamed Ceredon. The prince stormed toward Davishon Hinsbrew, who stood gawking just outside of Carskel and his party, and slapped him across the cheek. Davishon staggered back, eyeing the Quellan with fright. “You have a bow-use it,” Ceredon growled at him before dashing away.
Davishon glanced back at Carskel for a moment before he seemed to gather his wits. The elf ran along the line of terrified elves, picking out those few who held bows, and pleading with them to follow him. He snatched his bow as he ran, nocking it just before he reached the front of the line. Only twenty other elves joined him. Their arrows sailed high into the air before descending toward the charging beast.
“Aully, Kindren-with me!” Ceredon yelled. Aully looked away from the archers and saw her protector dashing through the crowd. She was too numb to argue, so she simply followed his command, grabbing Kindren’s hand and putting one foot in front of the other as if in a dream. Lady Audrianna shouted at them to stay put, but her voice was carried away by the ruckus.
Ceredon reached them, grabbed them both by the hand, and then yanked them through the crowd, where another contingent of humans awaited. Unlike the other humans, these wore simple furs and knitted breeches instead of armor. The oddly dressed man in the pointed hat was among them.
Aully felt herself flying forward as Ceredon shoved her and Kindren in the odd man’s direction. “That’s all you have?” the man asked.
“For now, yes. All that I know of. Now go!”
With that, Ceredon sped off, chasing after the stampeding humans on foot. Aully could do nothing but gape as she watched him run headlong for the towering beast.
“You two, get in line!” the odd redhead shouted. “If you have magic, use it!”
“Turock, they might be elves, but they’re children,” one of the other spellcasters added.
“I know.”
Aully’s head slowly turned, and she saw Turock, the redhead, frowning at her. He shook his head and faced forward, along with the other sixteen men who made up his troupe. “All you have!” he exclaimed. “Do it now!” Their arms raised, words of magic poured form their mouths.
Hands wrapped around Aully’s waist, pulling her away just before she was struck by the jagged stream of lightning that leapt from the hands of the man closest to her. Kindren wheeled her around, staring at her intensely. His cheeks were flushed, and he blinked rapidly as if he’d just awoken from a horrible dream.
“Aully,” he said. “Aully, we can help. I know it’s frightening, but together we can be strong.”
“Together we can be strong,” she repeated. She glanced down at her hands. There was a tingling in her chest, a sensation she hadn’t felt in far too long. “Together, we can be strong.”
“We can.”
They turned about and faced the rampaging beast. Arrows bounced off its thick scales, the spellcasters’ fireballs, bolts of energy, and electric strikes dissipated against its hide, seemingly to no effect. And yet the monster’s progress was slowed as the soldiers on horseback raced past it, lashing at its legs with their swords and axes, gouging it with pikes. The beast reared up, its lashing tail thumping a trio of riders, impaling one and knocking the others off their steeds. With its underbelly exposed, the soldiers on foot hurled spears, if they had them. A couple found gaps between the large scales and dangled there like ornaments. Most of them simply bounced off.
“Damn it all, if you’re going to help, help!” shouted the man in the funny hat.
Aully and Kindren nodded to each other before raising their arms. Aully quickly turned her eyes away from Kindren’s mangled hand, not wanting to see his thumb and small finger sticking out on either side of his fist like lost lovers separated by an ocean of scars. She focused on his voice instead, on the confidence with which he spoke. Suddenly, despite the hopelessness of what they faced, Aully felt at ease. She remembered what she’d lost, what she still had. She remembered traipsing with Kindren through the desert, eating foreign foods and laughing with the locals. She thought of the times they’d met in the crypts beneath Dezerea, of Kindren’s broad smile as he spoke to her of legends and days long passed.