Finally he dropped down from the tree to report on what he had seen. He looked at the somber, strained faces of his companions and knew that the course of their flight had been drastically changed.
“We’re going to have to reach Splintered Rock on foot,” he told them. “If we set an easy pace we should be able to do it in two or three days.”
With the fortitude born of months of living as outlaws, the others quickly agreed. Porthios led and one of the other warriors brought up the rear as the elves continued through the forest. Where the deer trails worked in their favor, they followed them. For a while, a shallow streambed gave them a path. When the underbrush finally closed in, the men took turns hacking with their swords to open a path.
As night fell they found a large willow tree, with a trunk that had been hollowed by years of decay. Using their swords to expand the makeshift cave, the elves managed to make a shelter that allowed all three women and infants to sleep with some degree of protection from the elements. The men hunkered down outside the entrance and took turns staying awake during the dark, silent night. A short rainstorm washed over them sometime before dawn, and though the warriors were sodden, their wives emerged from the shelter dry and at least partially rested.
One of the warriors took time to collect some wild berries, and these provided at least minimal sustenance before they once more started on their way. Their luck seemed to be improving, however, for within an hour, they stumbled upon a wide path that seemed to bear more or less in the direction they wanted to be going. Porthios led the way again, holding his wife’s hand in his own as he held his weapon at the ready, trying to peer into the shadowy forest that pressed close to each side.
The first clue of the ambush came from a waft of wind that brought the scent of stale, acrid sweat to his nostrils. The other elves sensed it, too, and instinctively looked in alarm at their leader.
Porthios had his sword in his right hand, while his left still gripped Alhana’s tense fingers. He stared into the woods to both sides. He realized that the shrubbery was very thick here, and that the ground sloped up both to the right and to the left. Intuitively he sensed a trap and was about to turn to order the elves to backtrack when the first brutes crashed from the woods.
In a moment of frozen panic, he saw a male elf go down, skull crushed by a massive club. The warrior’s woman screamed and bent over her man, only to be cut in two by the brutal sweep of a massive sword. Dozens of the monsters charged, coming from all directions, and in a moment of crystalline clarity, he saw his wife and child beneath the threat of those crushing blows.
His perceptions, his whole world, twisted violently in that instant. Caution and practicality vanished in a cloud of pure fury.
Like a whirlwind, he flew past Alhana, stabbing one brute through the belly, then cutting the throat of another with the backslash. A club slashed at him from the side, and instinct warned him to duck. He felt the gust of air as the blunt weapon whipped past his scalp and tore at his hair. Lunging to the side, he drove his blade into the flank of the club wielder, sending the creature tumbling backward with a ragged bellow of pain.
Alhana’s scream galvanized him, and he whirled to see a brute’s blue hand wrapped around her wrist. Silvanoshei was swaying in his cradle, crying again. Before the attacker could pull his wife into the underbrush, the prince’s weapon came down and Alhana screamed again, this time at the sight of the dismembered paw still clutching her arm. Clutching her baby, the elf woman fell back, leaning against a stout tree trunk, flailing her arm until the gruesome remnant broke loose and fell into the underbrush.
Porthios lunged past his wife, the bloody blade flashing in a deadly dance, driving several brutes backward with such haste that they tumbled over each other. The sword of his ancestors flashed, drawing howls as he gouged his enemies’ massive legs, but then the prince retreated to stand before Alhana. She was sheltered against the tree trunk, two broad limbs reaching around almost as if to fold her in a protective embrace, and Porthios drew several ragged gasps of breath as he looked at the circle of looming figures.
He was vaguely aware that the other elves had disappeared, slain or captured by the blue-skinned attackers or perhaps escaping into the woods during the initial confusion of the ambush. At least a dozen of the monstrous warriors now faced him, forming a ring that closed off any hope of escape.
“Porthios... get away—over them, through the branches of the tree,” Alhana whispered behind him, her voice taut as a bowstring. “They’ll take me prisoner... you can come for me later.”
In a flash of emotion so strong that it all but burned through his heart, he saw how much he loved her and this child, this son who was the hope of the elven nations through the coming years.
His eyes were clear, his body immediately restored by the power of his emotion. The brutes were all panting, and some of them held hands over cuts and gouges that dripped blood and smeared streaks of blue along their limbs. With a sense of vague detachment, he saw that the creatures were actually covered with paint, that their natural flesh was more like a human’s. They loomed as tall as he was but much more solid, and the growls and barks emerging from their throats showed that they were angry and ready to take their revenge. Clubs were raised, swords readied, as the brutes cautiously closed in.
Porthios did the one thing they didn’t expect. He attacked, throwing himself bodily toward the center of the ring of blue-skinned horror. His sword flashed out like the flicking tongue of some metal-mawed dragon, and in a whistling flash, tore open the bellies of the two nearest brutes. Groaning piteously, hands struggling to contain their spilling guts, the creatures staggered backward and collapsed. The other brutes gaped, momentarily astonished at the audacity of this elf who had charged them so recklessly.
Porthios continued his attack, whirling through the rank of his foes, stabbing one in the back and cutting the hamstrings of another. With a final, skull-splitting blow, he hacked through a fifth brute and once again stood before his awestruck wife, intent on protecting her with every sinew of his body, every drop of his blood. He danced forward, waving the blade, and the remaining attackers actually took a few steps backward.
Still, the ring of deadly warriors remained solid, fully enclosing the elves, though the enemy was a little more cautious about pressing in. When Porthios rushed forward, the brutes fell back quickly, this time stumbling out of reach of his lethal steel. From the corner of his eye, he saw that one of the monsters lunged toward Alhana when he advanced, and like lightning he whirled, cutting the thing down with a stab to the throat.
A red haze filmed his vision, and he vaguely wondered if he was wounded. But it was the heat of his own emotions, the rage possessing him, turning him into a lethal fighting machine. Rushing forward, he had enough control to bluff a charge to the right, then whip to the left and stab another brute before the creature could raise its weapon in a parry. Again he repeated the maneuver, and another monstrous attacker fell back, bellowing in anger and clutching hands over the deep cut in its belly.
Four more remained, and the next time he rushed forward, they stumbled backward in a frantic attempt to avoid his cutting steel. Now they were a dozen paces away from the tree, a loose ring that he could have dashed through with a sudden sprint. But still, there was Alhana and Silvanoshei—they couldn’t run, and he couldn’t leave them.
So he resolved to finish this fight with the same cold violence that the brutes had used to commence it. Porthios charged forward again, faster and farther, and this time he caught one of the brutes before it could retreat. A single slice ended that ugly warrior’s life, and at the sight of the newest corpse the other three turned and raced away, smashing through the brush like panic-stricken cattle.