"Jerreda doesn't seem too busy over on the left," he said to Starbrow. "Let's get some more of her archers over here to help cover our infantry against those damned fey'ri."
"I concur," Starbrow said. He called a runner over. "Find Jerreda on the left flank and ask her to send one hundred archers back to the center."
The messenger repeated the message back to ensure that he had it right, and dashed off toward the steep forests surrounding the tarn on the south side of the Cwm.
Seiveril looked toward the right. Lord Muirreste's mounted elves were hard-pressed, as well. The knights and lighter cavalry were much less numerous than the horde of orcs and ogres attacking them, but the open ground of the Cwm favored them. As long as they stayed in motion, the fey'ri had a hard time hitting them with any kind of massed magical assault. He wanted to send Muirreste some help, but he didn't know if-
"Demons! "
In the space of three heartbeats dozens upon dozens of demons and yugoloths, crackling with sinister magic or stinking of brimstone, appeared all over the hillside surrounding Seiveril. Even though he had been expecting it, Seiveril was paralyzed with horror for an endless moment.
So many of them! he thought. So many! "Vesilde!" he called. "Vesilde!"
He wheeled to look for Vesilde Gaerth's knights, just as the demons struck out with their vile sorcery. Demon fire and destruction blasted the hilltop. Dozens of elves died at once, consumed by foul flames, scoured by unholy power, or hurled like broken dolls by the invisible might of demonic magic. Seiveril endured two searing waves of fire that scorched him even inside his enchanted elven plate. A mighty telekinetic buffet sent him hurling through the air. He picked himself up slowly, and looked up to find a hulking nycaloth rushing at him, its great claws as long and sharp as daggers. Seiveril just had time to raise his shield before the creature was on him, roaring with rage.
The nycaloth's claws scored his armor and almost wrenched his shield away, but Seiveril crouched low and held on while he found the haft of his silver mace with his right hand. He surged up and counterattacked, smashing the holy weapon at the nycaloth. He caught it with a glancing blow across the shoulder, but the mace detonated with a pure, white light that charred a great black scar in the nycaloth's flesh. The fiend screeched and reeled back, and Seiveril used the space he'd bought to quickly shout out a spell, dispatching the creature back to its infernal home.
He turned, searching for another foe, and found himself looking up at three massive hezrous, demons the size of ogres, with wide, toadlike mouths full of needle fangs and huge, powerful talons. The monsters croaked and scrambled toward him.
"Kill the cleric," they snarled. "Break his bones, and suck the marrow. Rip his heart out!"
The fearsome stench of the things gagged Seiveril. He went to one knee, trying to keep from losing his stomach as the monsters closed in. The hezrous hissed in glee and moved closer, their jaws gaping wide.
Then from one side Fflar Starbrow Melruth leaped in among the monsters, his sword Keryvian glowing like a shining white brand too bright to look at. He hewed off the arm of the hezrou closest to him, the sword slicing through demon flesh with a pure ringing sound. The monster roared in pain and tried to recoil, but Starbrow followed closely and rammed the point of the long sword deep into the hezrou's side, taking the monster under the ribs and stabbing it through its foul heart. The ancient magic of the weapon burned everything inside the hezrou's ribs to a foul gray ash, and smoke poured out of the demon's wide mouth as it collapsed.
The second hezrou raked at Starbrow with its huge claws, but the moon elf ducked beneath the blow and rolled up under the demon's guard. He took off its left leg at the knee as he passed by. The demon toppled, black blood pouring from the wound, but snapped and clawed at Starbrow even as it fell. The elf champion danced back out of reach, and darted in to bury Keryvian's point between the hezrou's eyes. Again the sword flashed with its terrible white light, and another demon lay dead.
The third demon wheeled to face the threat of Keryvian, turning its back on Seiveril.
"I will take that sword from your dead hand!" the creature snarled.
It hammered Starbrow with a blast of unholy power, staggering him, but Seiveril hurled himself at the demon's back and smashed the base of its spine with a mighty blow of his holy mace. The hezrou shrieked and threw its arms up in the air, toppling forward-and Starbrow took its head with his white sword.
Seiveril looked over the bodies of the hezrous to Fflar and said, aMy thanks, friend. You saved my life."
Fflar offered a smile and replied, "It only seems fair. Here, stay close by me. You watch my back, and I'll watch yours."
Seiveril glanced around at the furious battle. Elf bodies lay everywhere he looked, but many demons had fallen with them. Straight ahead, the Seldarine Knights of the Golden Star advanced with the sunrise behind them, gleaming like titans of gold as they battled against the foul tide. And to his right Ilsevele, Araevin, and their friends fought a terrible glabrezu. Ilsevele sent arrow after arrow into the creature's torso, while Araevin hammered at the monster with powerful spell blasts, and the cleric Grayth warded them all with his divine spell shields.
"There!" Seiveril called to Fflar. "The glabrezu!"
Fflar nodded and dashed off down the hillside, leaping down at the monster. Seiveril followed, only a step behind. The towering, dog-faced demon seized Grayth in one of its pincer hands and began to squeeze the armored human in its grasp, but then the genasi Maresa darted in and skewered its hamstring with her rapier. The monster roared and batted her away with a backhand slap of another arm-and Fflar and Seiveril were upon the monster. Fflar laid open its thigh with two great cuts of his sword, while Seiveril smashed its kneecap with his holy mace.
"I will destroy you all!" the demon rumbled.
It hurled Grayth aside and reached for Fflar. Then a silver arrow lodged in the side of its neck, and black blood foamed through its mouth. The demon groped closer, catching Seiveril with a weak blow that the cleric easily parried with his shield, and it collapsed facedown in the heather of the hillside.
"Well met, Father," said Ilsevele. She hurried forward, her bow still in her hand. Seiveril winced when he saw that she limped badly, blood streaming from a long cut on her hip. Araevin's cloak was tattered and singed, and the human Grayth was slow in picking himself up from the ground. "How are we doing?"
"We're still holding," Seiveril managed.
He looked around to see what had happened while he had been busy fighting for his own life, and he was surprised to see the daemonfey army falling back. Those demons who had survived the fray on the hilltop vanished one by one, teleporting away from the charge of the Knights of the Golden Star. The surging tide of orc warriors and marauding ogres retreated as well, their charge finally arrested by the terrible losses to bow, spell, and sword. Even the fey'ri overhead were falling back, unwilling to engage the elven army without the savage tribes of orcs to divide the elves' attention.
Maresa followed his glance.
"Actually, I'd say you've held," she observed. "Damn, but was that a fight!"
Fflar turned to Seiveril, clapped him on the shoulder, and said, "Congratulations, Seiveril. You've won your first battle."
Seiveril looked out over the carnage of the elven lines. He felt weary beyond words, weary enough that a breath of wind would be sufficient to carry him to Arvandor. With the sounds of battle fading into a few isolated clashes of steel and occasional spells instead of the deafening crescendo of a few minutes before, he could hear the piteous cries of the wounded and dying-elf, orc, and ogre alike- over all the battlefield. He looked down and noticed that his armor was spattered with blood.