‘Jaqrui!’ called Grafyrre again. ‘Away!’
An order rang out across the human lines. Swordsmen dropped to their knees. Many threw themselves flat, knowing what was coming in front and behind. Mages raised their heads, ready. Jaqruis whispered into their lines. Blades chopped into hands, heads and chests. Mages screamed. Castings bloomed dark as mages lost control at the critical moment. Ice and fire fell on the human lines.
Ten yards and closing. Other mages, calmer mages, steadied and cast.
‘Evade and strike!’
Clouds of ice washed out towards the TaiGethen on a dread frozen wind. Tongues of flame leapt from the hands of mages even as jaqruis struck them down. Takaar saw the castings rush towards them and felt a moment’s peace mingle with his nausea, lessened since the touch of Ystormun’s hands. The din subsided and the energies about him caressed rather than sickened him. He recognised the state. Last time he had felt it was in combat with the Garonin. He breathed it in.
Takaar could see the individual shards of ice in the mass that came towards him. He saw the twinkling yellow reflection of torchlight. Saw them turning end over end or spinning around their horizontal axis. Beautiful. Beguiling. Takaar leapt, pushing off with his left foot and arrowing into the air, his arms straight in front of him. He angled his body horizontal and pushed his arms to the sides.
The ice gouged beneath him. He felt flechettes snip at his jacket and the toes of his boots. The cold air behind the ice shocked his lungs. He was past the cloud in a heartbeat. The enemy were below him. None had even registered what was coming at them. Bloodied bodies, jaqrui victims, writhed on the ground amidst those caught in the hell of their own castings.
Takaar brought his legs under him. He came down in a crouch, straddling a moving body. He jabbed out his hand, straight-fingered, crushing the man’s windpipe. Takaar straightened. Enemies were everywhere. TaiGethen who’d rolled under the castings came to their feet. Others who had chosen to leap landed all around him.
‘Strike forward, guard your backs!’ called Merrat. ‘Tais, we strike.’
The mage in front of Takaar raised his head. Takaar saw him mouth what was most probably a curse. Takaar swept a blade from his back and chopped it hard down the mage’s face. The man fell silently. The TaiGethen surged forward, still singing the mourning dirge. Keller wasn’t lead mage for nothing. He’d seen what was going to happen and cast wings on his back rather than ice for his fingers. He shot straight up into the air past the diving and rolling forms of the TaiGethen and breathed a huge sigh of relief that he was not on the ground.
Garan had ordered seventeen hundred men up the Path of Yniss from the barracks and staging areas the moment the confirmation of the attack on the temple had been confirmed. Everything had been foreseen by Ystormun, but he had not understood the tenacity of the TaiGethen. Maybe he had assumed the temple would be reached but this, he could not have foreseen this.
A few TaiGethen had been trapped in the piazza. They could not get out to the sides or the rear. Sitting targets for spells and then blades to mop up the survivors. That they would attack was against all reason. But up here, where it was safe and the screams of the dying filtered up through the din of barked orders, the low elven chanting and the steady disintegration of order, Keller could see something more.
They weren’t just attacking. They were trying to break through. Unbelievable. Keller flew back towards Garan. He could see the big general amidst his men, too far back to see what was happening further forward.
‘Garan!’ Garan looked up. ‘You have to break your force. They’re in amongst you. No room to fight.’
‘We’ll take them as we are.’
‘You don’t understand. They aren’t fighting head on. They’re trying to get through us. Order daggers drawn at least. Be ready.’
Garan glared at him. ‘That is not the way to face this enemy. They’re too quick. We need heavy defence.’
‘Clear a break. Make room for spells, then.’
‘Now that I might do.’
Keller nodded and rose again. ‘Sooner rather than later.’
He flew back towards the fighting. In the gloom, he could barely follow it. More so because the elves were so damned fast. Three leapt above the men they were approaching, rolled in the air and came down striking out. Three men died. Mages behind them made to cast. Woefully slow. Blades licked out. Mages fell.
In the centre of the street a knot of soldiers had formed, facing in all directions and bristling with weapons. The elves ran at them, leapt over them, continued on down the street while the men scattered. Elves came from nowhere. Hands and feet struck out. Men were spun on their heels. Heads snapped back. Blades caught the torchlight. Blood misted into the night sky.
‘Dear gods around us,’ whispered Keller. ‘It’s a massacre.’ In the centre of their force, the humans were packed too tight to fight. They couldn’t free their swords. They pushed for space. Angry shouts rattled across their lines. Panic was beginning to grow. Men were dying. Elves were not. Mages dare not cast in the confined space. More and more took the route of the coward and flew straight up, abandoning their comrades to the cold, disciplined fury of the TaiGethen.
‘Forward!’ called Grafyrre. ‘Keep moving forward.’
Blood slicked the cobbles. Bodies of men choked the gutters and the central drains. Auum spun and kicked high, his foot smacking into the side of an enemy’s head. The man fell sideways. Auum moved into the space. A sword came at him, hurried through waist high. Auum ducked it. The soldier couldn’t control the sweep. The blade sank into the gut of one of his own.
Takaar ensured the man went down hard. He moved up. Marack blocked aside a downward cut. Takaar slid a blade through the man’s ribs. Space. Auum moved up. Takaar paced forward and leapt. He twisted in the air, landed and hacked down. Blood surged from his target’s shoulder.
Auum dropped, slid the feet from a mage. Marack hacked into his chest and moved into the space. The press was getting thicker. The pressure increasing from behind too. Auum felt his movements hampered for the first time. Ahead, men were slowly getting themselves together, holding their swords straight out and using them for stabbing. Overhead, mages were flying down the Path of Yniss. Not in confusion, with purpose. Auum saw them and knew in his heart that time was short for the doomed threads.
‘Follow me!’ yelled Takaar.
‘Where?’
Auum diverted a blade coming for his gut and thumped the heel of his palm into his enemy’s chest. The man fell back against the rank behind. Takaar pointed to the sky.
‘Up.’
Auum smiled. ‘Graf! Heads up and run.’
Grafyrre relayed the idea as an order and the TaiGethen reacted as one. The man Auum had just knocked down had been caught by those behind. Auum ran up the front of his body and launched himself from the man’s face. He jumped high above the human army. He cycled his arms and legs, reaching out as far as he could, searching for the ideal landing point. He saw it catch the light of torches from either side of the Path of Yniss.
A helmet.
Auum glanced left and right. His clear view across the street afforded him the sight of TaiGethen elves soaring above their enemies. Faces were turning up, but those who had seen them were already too late to stop them, much less follow them. Marack was turning a somersault next to him, Takaar another of his horizontal flights, fierce and graceful. Grafyrre and Merrat were hand in hand, coming down on their left feet and pushing off in perfect balance.
Auum landed. The helmet’s occupant grunted and ducked at the brief weight on the top of his head but Auum was already gone. Like running the sucking mud of the Mouth of Orra at the outflow of the River Ix, or the quicksands out at Palynt Reach. Quick steps, minimum weight down and the whole body canted forward at a steep angle. Always pushing away, never levering forward. Olmaat used to describe it as nothing more than a controlled fall.