Still, he would send the message by fast courier, then turn to the matter of raising a defense force. Relieved to have reached some course of action, Gilthas left the hall, followed by many worried elves. But he took little notice of the throng around him as he made his way back to his house, wondering what he should wear, where he would find a weapon. And what would he do with a weapon if he had one?
Shaking off his concerns, he stalked away, knowing that he had an army to raise... and just a few hours during which to do it.
The dragon snorted derisively. “So the elves thought they could resist, could stand against the onslaught of blue dragons?”
“Yes!” Silvanoshei insisted. “And some elves, such as my father, did manage to give Lord Salladac pause for thought!”
“Indeed,” Aeren said, “I had heard something about that...”
Chapter Twelve
A Night of Glory and Blood
The outlaws found Palthainon on the muddy field. His hair had been seared off by a dragon’s lightning bolt that had also knocked the warrior elf unconscious, but other than that, the general was unharmed.
The same could not be said for two of his three companies of recruits. Nearly four hundred elves had been caught in the clearing when the blue serpents had flown over, and nearly three-quarters of them had been slaughtered by dragon breath or by the talons of the monsters and the swords of their riders.
Only the elves of the first company—the group that, ironically, would have been the first to suffer the lethal strike of Porthios’s aborted ambush—had survived unscathed, by taking shelter in the thick woods that would otherwise have been their undoing. Though these city elves had tumbled among archers who had been prepared to attack them, both bands of the sylvan folk had been so startled by the arrival of the greater foe that their initial conflict had been immediately forgotten.
Fortunately the dragons hadn’t stayed long after working their butchery on the field. Neither had they discovered the outlaws’ griffons, who had been sheltered in small clearings very near the site of the intended ambush. Now these savage fliers had been gathered, and the survivors of the Qualinesti force had joined with the bandits preparatory to falling back into the forest. General Palthainon was still dazed and disoriented, so Porthios had assumed command of all the elves.
“Get the wounded back to our camp,” he directed. “See that the general is made as comfortable as possible, but don’t waste any time.”
“Lord Porthios!” The cry came from the skies, and the shadow of a griffon’s wings momentarily passed over. One of his Qualinesti warriors gestured wildly as the creature came to rest before him.
“There’s a whole army to the north. It’s a full-scale invasion!”
“All under the banner of the Dark Queen?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“Knights, and columns of marching troops as well—great, blue-skinned brutes, they look like they could crush an elf’s skull with their bare hands. It looks like the dragons are winging back to rejoin the infantry.”
Porthios didn’t know where this army could have come from, but the attack on the elven formation made its objective clear enough. “How far away are the ground troops?” he asked, trying to think, to plan.
“Twenty miles. They’re finding slow going in the woods, but they’re coming this way.”
“Let’s get away from here, then. We’ll make plans as soon as we reach the gorge.”
Together with about three hundred survivors from the Qualinesti militia, the outlaw band made its way back to the encampment. Because so many elves had to travel on foot, the journey took quite a bit longer than the one-hour griffon flight that had led the band to the ambush site. The wounded were loaded onto litters, which further slowed down the party’s progress, and it wasn’t until well after sunset that the weary elves marched down the trail into the deep darkness of the cool gorge.
Once back at the camp, they learned—from Dallatar’s Kagonesti, not surprisingly—that another force of Dark Knights had invaded the eastern end of the kingdom and was even now drawing up against Qualinost itself. Flying scouts had given Porthios an idea of the size of the army marching along the coast. It seemed likely that at least five thousand troops were headed almost directly toward his camp.
The wild elves had come with another fifty or so warriors—“braves,” as they called themselves. With this addition, Porthios found himself with a force of some six hundred elves, but nearly half of them were unblooded recruits, fresh from the streets and courtyards of Qualinost. Furthermore, he had serious questions about whether or not those elven warriors would have the stomach to battle a truly dangerous foe.
The bandit leader met with Dallatar, Samar, and Tarqualan around the firepit in the center of their encampment to discuss a course of action. They were warmed only by a low bed of smokeless coals, for with dragons abroad, the elves knew the need for camouflage and concealment was drastically heightened.
“We can stay here and hope they pass us by, or we can pick up the camp and move,” Porthios began. “Or we can choose to fight a battle against outrageous odds. We have to discuss the question. It’s too important for me to make a decision by myself.”
“I say we attack them from ambush,” Samar urged. “They won’t be expecting it, and we can hit them hard while they’re marching, then use the griffons to get away.”
“My braves fight on the ground,” Dallatar declared. “We have befriended griffons through the years but would not ride them into battle. They should be free to make their own choices.”
“Believe me, these griffons are choosing their allegiance,” Tarqualan said. “They have refused to serve the elves of Qualinesti ever since the Thalas-Enthia ordered Alhana Starbreeze imprisoned.”
“Be that as it may,” Porthios interjected, “there are a little more than two hundred griffons allied with our band. That’s not enough to move all of us anywhere. If we fight, two-thirds of us will have to go into battle on the ground.”
“Still, an ambush is the only way—hit them as they march, then fall back into the woods,” Samar urged. “We’ve spied on these brutes. They move like ogres, and they’ll never catch an elf in thick terrain.”
“I agree,” Dallatar said somberly. “We cannot just move away from them, and my pride will not let them take our woodlands without a fight. We wild elves have already decided—we will attack the invaders. What the rest of you do is a matter for your own councils.”
“I applaud your courage,” Porthios replied with equal sincerity. “And I urge you to remain with us. Surely you can see that, together, we can strike a much harder blow than any part of us working alone.”
“Then you, too, are determined to fight?” the Kagonesti chieftain asked.
Porthios looked at his companions. Samar nodded curtly; he had already made his opinion known. Tarqualan drew a deep breath, then spoke. “Neither I nor my scouts could ever sleep well again, knowing we had turned our backs on such a menace. Even if it leads us to the endless sleep of death, such a battle is preferable to flight.”
“Then we are unanimous,” the outlaw who had once been Speaker of the Sun declared. “For I, too, cannot bear the thought of this incursion passing without a fight. If we are fortunate, Qualinost will stand against the attack from the east, and we can sting this western army hard enough that they will have to rethink their strategy. At the very least, they will know that they have attacked a proud, brave enemy.”
“What of the elders and the little ones?” asked Dallatar. “As a rule, they do not fight beside the male and female braves.”