The griffons barely slowed as they tucked their wings and sprang forward, propelled by their powerful leonine hindquarters while their deadly foreclaws reached forward as if eager to shred the flesh of the foe.
The single line of griffons, their riders still holding their lances forward, ripped into the bucking, heaving mass of panicked horses. No charge of plate-mailed knights ever struck with such killing force. Lances punctured armor and horses fell, gored by the claws of the savage griffons, and then the elven swords struck home.
Kith-Kanan buried his lance in the chest of a black-armored knight as the human’s horse bucked in terror. He couldn’t see the man’s face behind the closed shield of his dark helmet, but the steel tip of his weapon erupted from his victim’s back in a shower of blood. Arcuballis sprang, his claws tearing away the saddle of the heavy war-horse as the terrified animal crashed to the ground.
His lance torn away by the force of the charge, Kith drew his sword. A knight plunged nearby, desperately struggling to control his mount; Kith-Kanan stabbed him in the back. Another armored warrior, on foot and wielding a massive morning star, swung the spiked ball at Arcuballis. The griffon reared back and then pounced on the man, tearing out his throat with a single powerful strike of his beak.
A chaotic jumble of shrieks and howls and moans surged around Kith, mingling with the pounding of hooves and the clash of sharp steel against plate mail. But even the superior armor of the humans couldn’t save them. With no control over their mounts, they could do little more than hold on and try to escape the maelstrom of death. Very few of them made it.
“To the air!” Kith cried, spurring Arcuballis into a powerful upward leap. Shattered knights covered the ground below them while the thundering mass of their horses stampeded right through a line of human archers who couldn’t get out of the way in time. All around Kith-Kanan, the other griffons sprang into the air, and with regal grace, the Windriders once again soared across the field. Slowly they climbed, forming again into a long line, flying abreast. As the griffon’s wings carried him upward, Kith looked across the field. In the distance rolled great clouds of dust. Some twenty thousand horses had already stampeded away from the battle, and these plumes marked their paths of flight. Human infantry fled from the tight ranks of the dwarven legion, while the elven reinforcements drove terrified humans into panic. Many of the enemy had dropped their weapons and thrown up their hands, pleading and begging for mercy.
Kith-Kanan veered toward the Ergothian foot soldiers, the line of Windriders following in precise formation. He took up his bow and carefully nocked an arrow. He let the missile fly, watching it dart downward and penetrate the shoulder of one of the foot soldiers. The fellow toppled forward, his helmet rolling in the mud, and Kith-Kanan got a jolt when he espied the long blond hair cascading around his body. Other arrows found targets among this company as the griffons passed overhead, and the general noticed with surprise these other men, too, all had blond hair.
One of them turned and launched an arrow upward, and a nearby griffon shrieked, pierced through the wing. The animal’s limb collapsed, and the beast tipped suddenly to the side, plummeting to the earth among the Ergothian archers. The rider died from the force of the crash, but this didn’t stop the soldiers from hacking and chopping at his body until only a gory mess remained.
Kith shot another arrow, and a third, watching grimly as each took the life of one of these blond savages. Only when the humans had been riddled with losses did the Windriders consider the death of their comrade avenged. As they soared away, Kith-Kanan was struck by the narrow face of one of his victims, lying face-up in the mud. Diving lower, he saw a pointed ear and blond hair. Elves! His own people fighting for the Army of the Emperor of Ergoth!
Growling in anger, he urged Arcuballis upward, the rest of his company following. With terrible purpose, he looked across the mud-and-blood-strewn field for an appropriate target.
He saw one group of horsemen, perhaps two thousand strong, that had rallied around a streaming silver banner—the ensign of General Giarna himself, Kith knew. Instantly he veered toward this unit as the general was urging his reluctant troops into a renewed charge. The griffons flew low, no more than ten feet off the ground, and the creatures shrilled their coming. Unaffected by the curses of their commanding general, the human riders allowed their horses to turn and scatter, unwilling to face the griffon cavalry. Kith-Kanan urged Arcuballis onward, seeking the general himself, but the man had vanished among the dusty, panicked ranks of his troops. He might already have been trampled to death, for all Kith-Kanan knew.
The Windriders flew across the field, landing and attacking here and there, wherever a pocket of the human army seemed willing to make a stand. Often the mere appearance of the savage creatures was enough to break a formation, while occasionally they crashed into the defending ranks and the griffons tore with talons and beaks while their elven riders chopped and hacked with their lethal weapons.
The elves on the ground and their dwarven allies raced across the field, encouraging the total rout of the human army. More and more of the humans held up their hands in surrender as they concluded that escape was impossible. Many of the horses were stampeded, riderless, away from the field, lost to the army for the foreseeable future. A great, streaming column of refugees—once a proud army but now a mass of panicked, terrified, and defeated men—choked the few roads and scarred new trails across the prairie grasslands. When the Windriders finally came to earth before the gates of Sithelbec, they landed only because there were no more enemies left to fight. Huge columns of human prisoners, guarded by the watchful eyes of elven archers and dwarven axemen, stood listlessly along the walls of the fortress. Amidst the smoke and chaos of the camps, detachments of the Wildrunners poked and searched, uncovering more prisoners and marking stockpiles of supplies.
“General, come quickly!” Kith-Kanan looked up at the cry, seeing a young captain approaching. The elf’s face was pale, and he gestured toward a place on the field.
“What is it?” Sensing the urgency in the young soldier’s request, Kith hurried behind him. In moments, he knew the reason for the officer’s demeanor. He found Kencathedrus lying among the bodies of a dozen humans. The old elf’s body bled from numerous ugly wounds.
“We beat them today,” gasped Kith-Kanan’s former teacher and weaponmaster, managing a weak smile.
“Didn’t we, though?” The general took his friend’s head in his hands, looking toward the nearby officer. “Get the cleric!” he hissed.
“He’s been here,” objected Kencathedrus. Kith-Kanan could read the result in the wounded elf’s eyes: There was nothing that even a cleric could do.
“I’ve lived to see this day. It makes my life as a warrior complete. The war is all but won. You must pursue them now. Don’t let them escape!” Kencathedrus gripped Kith’s arm with surprising strength, nearly raising himself up from the ground. “Promise me,” he gasped. “You will not let them escape!”
“I promise!” whispered the general. He cradled Kencathedrus’s head for several minutes, even though he knew that he was dead.
A messenger—a Kagonesti scout in full face paint—trotted up to Kith-Kanan to make a report. “General, we have reports of enemy activity in the north camp.”
That part of the huge circular human camp had seen the least fighting. Kith nodded at the scout and gently laid Kencathedrus’s body on the ground. He rose and called to a nearby sergeant-major.