“How can that be?” Samar demanded angrily. “It is a simple spell—No, never mind!”
He knew the answer, though he continually struggled against it. Of late, in the past two years, the elven sorcerers had felt their power to cast spells ebbing. The loss was gradual, barely felt at first, attributed to illness or exhaustion, but the sorcerers were at last forced to admit that their magical power was slipping away like grains of sand from between clutching fingers. They could hold onto some, but not all. The elves were not alone. They had reports that the same loss was being felt among humans, but this was little comfort.
Using the storm to conceal their movements, the ogres had slipped unseen past the runners and overwhelmed the sentries.
The briar-wall barricade was burning furiously in several places at the base of the hill. Beyond the flames stood the tree line, where officers were forming the elven archers into ranks behind the barricade. The tips of their arrows glittered like sparks.
The fire would keep the ogres at bay temporarily, but when it died down, the monsters would come surging across. In the darkness and the slashing rain and the howling wind, the archers would stand little chance of hitting their targets before they were overrun. And when they were overrun, the carnage would be horrible. Ogres hate all other races on Krynn, but their hatred for elves goes back to the beginning of time, when the ogres were once beautiful, the favored of the gods. When the ogres fell, the elves became the favored, the pampered. The ogres had never forgiven them.
“Officers to me!” Samar shouted. “Fieldmaster! Bring your archers into a line behind the lancers at the barrier, and tell them to hold their volley until directed to loose it.” He ran back inside the mound. Silvan followed him, the excitement of the storm replaced by the tense, fierce excitement of the attack. Alhana cast her son a worried glance. Seeing he was unharmed, she turned her complete attention to Samar, as other elven officers crowded inside.
“Ogres?” she asked.
“Yes, my queen. They used the storm for cover. The runner believes that they have us surrounded. I am not certain. I think that the way south may still be open.”
“You suggest?”
“That we fall back to the fortress of the Legion of Steel, Your Majesty. A fighting retreat. Your meetings with the human knights went well. It was my thought that—”
Plans and plots, strategy and tactics. Silvan was sick of them, sick of the sound of them. He took the opportunity to slip away.
The prince hurried to the back of the mound, where he had laid out his bedroll. Reaching beneath his blanket, he grasped the hilt of a sword, the sword he had purchased in Solace. Silvan was delighted with the weapon, with its shiny newness. The sword had an ornately carved hilt with a griffon’s beak. The hilt was admittedly difficult to hold—the beak dug into his flesh—but the sword looked splendid.
Silvanoshei was not a soldier. He had never been trained as a soldier. Small blame to him. Alhana had forbidden it.
“Unlike my hands, these hands”—his mother would take her son’s hands in her own, hold them fast—“will not be stained with the blood of his own kind. These hands will heal the wounds that his father and I, against our will, have been forced to inflict. The hands of my son will never spill elven blood.”
But this was not elven blood they were talking about spilling. It was ogre blood. His mother could not very well keep him out of this battle. Growing up unarmed and untrained for soldiering in a camp of soldiers, Silvan imagined that the others looked down upon him, that deep inside they thought him a coward. He had purchased the sword in secret, taken a few lessons—until he grew bored with them—and had been looking forward for some time for the chance to show off his prowess.
Pleased to have the opportunity, Silvan buckled the belt around his slender waist and returned to the officers, the sword clanking and banging against his thigh.
Elven runners continued to arrive with reports. The unnatural fire was consuming the barricade at an alarming rate. A few ogres had attempted to cross it. Illuminated by the flames, they had provided excellent targets for the archers. Unfortunately, any arrow that came within range of the fire was consumed by the flames before it could strike its target.
The strategy for retreat settled—Silvan didn’t catch much of it, something about pulling back to the south where they would meet up with a force from the Legion of Steel—the officers returned to their commands. Samar and Alhana remained standing together, speaking in low, urgent tones.
Drawing his sword from his sheath with a ringing sound, Silvan gave it a flourish and very nearly sliced off Samar’s arm.
“What the—” Samar glared at the bloody gash in his sleeve, glared at Silvan. “Give me that!” He reached out and before Silvan could react, snatched the sword from his grasp.
“Silvanoshei!” Alhana was angry, as angry as he had ever seen her. “This is no time for such nonsense!” She turned her back on him, an indication of her displeasure.
“It is not nonsense, Mother,” Silvan retorted. “No, don’t turn away from me! This time you will not take refuge behind a wall of silence. This time you will hear me and listen to what I have to say!”
Slowly Alhana turned around. She regarded him intently, her eyes large in her pale face.
The other elves, shocked and embarrassed, did not know where to look. No one defied the queen, no one contradicted her, not even her willful, headstrong son. Silvan himself was amazed at his courage.
“I am a prince of Silvanesti and of Qualinesti,” he continued. “It is my privilege, it is my duty to join in the defense of my people. You have no right to try to stop me!”
“I have every right my son,” Alhana returned. She grasped his wrist her nails pierced his flesh. “You are the heir, the only heir. You are all I have left...” Alhana fell silent regretting her words. “I am sorry. I did not mean that. A queen has nothing of her own. Everything she has and is belongs to the people. You are all your people have left Silvan. Now go collect your things,” she ordered, her voice tight with the need to control herself. “The knights will take you deeper into the woods—”
“No, Mother, I will not hide anymore,” Silvan said, taking care to speak firmly, calmly, respectfully. His cause was lost if he sounded like petulant child. “All my life, whenever danger threatened, you whisked me away, stashed me in some cave, stuffed me under some bed. It is no wonder my people have small respect for me.” His gaze shifted to Samar, who was watching the young man with grave attention. “I want to do my part for a change, Mother.”
“Well spoken, Prince Silvanoshei,” said Samar. “Yet the elves have a saying, ‘A sword in the hand of an untrained friend is more dangerous than the sword in the hand of my foe.’ One does not learn to fight on the eve of battle, young man. However, if you are serious about this pursuit I will be pleased to instruct you at some later date. In the meanwhile, there is something you can do, a mission you can undertake.”
He knew the response this would bring and he was not wrong. Alhana’s arrow-sharp anger found a new target.
“Samar, I would speak with you!” Alhana said, her voice cold, biting, imperious. She turned on her heel, stalked with rigid back and uplifted chin to the rear of the burial mound. Samar, deferential, accompanied her.
Outside were cries and shouts, horns blasting, the deep and terrible ogre war chant sounding like war drums beneath it. The storm raged, unabated, giving succor to the enemy. Silvan stood near the entrance to the burial mound, amazed at himself, proud but appalled, sorry, yet defiant fearless and terrified all at the same time. The jumble of his emotions confused him. He tried to see what was happening, but the smoke from the burning hedge had settled over the clearing. The shouts and screams grew muted, muffled. He wished he could eavesdrop on the conversation, might have lingered near where he could hear, but he considered that childish and beneath his pride. He could imagine what they were saying anyway. He’d heard the same conversation often enough.