The Solitary Arrow Ch. 19

A single elf walked from the main body of the army and headed toward the regiment, and one elf separated from the regiment and came to meet him. Harlen watched as the small figure from the new company clutched her cloak to her neck as she spoke to the other, the chilling wind whipping the thin cloth. The shape of her body gave away her sex. They spoke for a few moments, then separated and headed back to their regiments.

As the female returned to her regiment, he caught a flash of a glow in her hand as she brought it down from her neck. Harlen blinked as he looked again. She walked up to another elf, and handed it something, something that glowed with a pale green light. He seemed to slip it into his cloak and the light was snuffed.

He looked over the long ranks of the new regiment, just like the others, but more possessed of bows. These were their archers, Harlen decided, and the reason for their positioning off to the side, opposite another archer-heavy company. They needed a clear field of fire at the walls. They, too wore the cloaks of light gray, their hems just below the knee, like a poncho. The wind caught these garments, and caused the entire company to flutter, their forms ghostly in the dark distance.

The sound even reached their own ears, and it was like a sigh from a grave, the soft rustling of the cloth disquieted the host protecting the town, and many hands shook around their weapons.

Again, the world stopped. It was like Feldare were taking a deep breath before plunging into a flowing river of lava. There would be death this night, and there would be glory, but most of all there would be anger and fear, in equal measures.

A voice cried out in the darkness. And a group of four horsemen detached from the main mass of the traitor army. The rode forth toward the wall.

"A parley?" Harlen asked.

Hyandai nodded. "It would seem." She said. "Perhaps they realize that their surrender is their only hope." She smiled at Harlen over her rather morbid humor.

The two nobles, Hyandai and Harlen descended the stairs from the platform and crossed the open space toward the gate. The gate was opened and the horsemen dismounted and walked under the heavy oaken beams that crossed over the two doors of the entrance.

The apparent leader of the enemy was a large elf, with broad shoulders and a long mane of white hair, bound in a pony tail. He stepped forward from his three companions.

"Captain Cendiolor." Hyandai whispered to Harlen, naming the elf before them. "He used to captain our own guard." Harlen recalled the conversation on the watch platform many days ago.

He walked up to within two paces of Hyandai and gave her a curt head bow. "Lady Hyandai." He said, formally.

"Captain Cendiolor." She replied. Her tone icy and dripping venom. "This army of traitors is at your command?"

He nodded. "They are mine to command, but it is you who betray your people." He said. "You would thwart the will of the majority? Are you so desirous of your human mate?"

She shook her head. "You may have numbers here, but these rabble," Hyandai said, waving her hand to encompass the mass of troops looming in the darkness, "are drawn from all over the land of Windir, and represent a tiny minority in each community, malcontents." She barked a disdainful laugh. "To claim majority because you outnumber a small village is the height of fallacy."

He laughed bitterly. "If you so think." He said. "I see you did find human assistance, after all." He said, eyeing Harlen critically. "Or is this that man you have been breeding with?" His silvern eyes turned to Hyandai's green as he spoke.

She scowled at Cendiolor. "My personal life is none of your concern, traitor." She said through clenched teeth. "I am proud of my betrothal, and my betrothed."

"Well, if you could not find better." He said dismissively. "I suppose he is adequate, and perhaps more than, in certain areas in which I hear humans are quite well endowed." He looked down at her. "It must be a burden to be backed into a corner by your own face."

She seethed at him. "Did you come to parley or simply to insult me?" She said. "For if the latter, I have had my fill and may break the rules of engagement simply to teach you a lesson in civility."

Cendiolor chuckled. "I have come to offer you a chance to surrender." He said. "Now, I will not be so heartless as to make it unconditional. You may all leave, simply walk away and none will molest you." He looked over the palisades. "It is the best you can hope for." He added. He turned back to look between Hyandai and the two nobles, and did his level best to ignore the human who loomed over the entire conversation.

"It may help you to come to a decision to know that your rangers from the Windy Isles were dealt with." He grinned maliciously. "Seems our tardy company there came across their company north of the village." He shook his head. "Sad, really, allying yourself with people who cannot even find a village. They said they encountered them north away." His hand pointed northward. "Really, you should find better folk to associate with." He concluded, shaking his head mournfully.

Harlen and Hyandai managed to keep blank faces during this last bit of monologue. The lord and lady actually looked crestfallen. Had Hyandai withheld the fact that the Windy Islanders were a rumor, manufactured by her own mind? He supposed she had.

"I see." Cendiolor said, noting the expressions on the two nobles with gleeful eyes. "You had much hope placed in them." He gloated. "They will now not be coming to your succor. Rest assured, however, their rotting corpses will nurture the soil well. Thus Windir grows stronger." He said, his eyes flashing with a malice not common to elvenkind.

What is his fey? Harlen wondered to himself as he regarded the tall, wide-shouldered elf. Cendiolor was, like most all elves very attractive, even beautiful, but the current attitude and cruelty he was displaying made mockery of that beauty and turned his elegant countenance arrogant.

"I wish not to treat with you, traitor, to your posting and your people." Hyandai said. "This parley is over, go back to your army of cuthroats and brigands." She spun on her heel and stormed off toward the command tower.

"Man of Morrovale." Cendiolor said. "Is a bit of elven tail worth dying for?" He asked. "I really would like to know."

Harlen stepped forward, causing Cendiolor's escort to reach for their swords until the former captain held up his hand, and stared evenly at the much taller man.

"You're about to die for much less, silver eyes." Harlen growled down at the elf. He was larger than almost all elves, Captain Cendiolor was, but compared to Harlen, he felt suddenly very small, and vulnerable. "Go back to your lines, and prepare to face me, you pathetic, weak thing. I will carve a path to you through the bodies of your traitorous thugs. Then I will kill you."

The man's hand upon the hilt of the massive broadsword made Cendiolor nervous, he looked down at it. It was a large, powerful hand, and the knuckles showed white. How much force was needed to snap an elf's neck? Could those hands muster such strength? Very likely.

Cendiolor swallowed then gave a half-hearted grin. "Human, even your pitifully short life will end early." He said. "And much is the shame. To deny poor homely Hyandai her massive organ for a while, before she too dies, of lonliness."

Harlen spun about in preparation to walk away, an old trick came to him from his days in the service of the duke. He pushed down on his hilt and lifted the far tip of his sword in doing so. As he turned the sheathed point came around and forced Cendiolor to jump back to avoid being struck in the genitals with the reinforced club. Some jeers fell upon Cendiolor from the ranks of the elves upon the palisades.

The gates began to swing shut as Harlen and the two nobles walked away. Hyandai was already issuing last minute orders to various captains. The parley was forced to retreat as the doors threatened to close upon them.

They mounted their horses and rode back to the main lines of the enemy.

Hyandai started to speak as he and the nobles, and their aides came up the stairs. "What was he talking about, there was n . . .." She stopped speaking at a warning glance from Harlen. He shook his head minutely and she spoke again. "No way on Feldare we were accepting those terms." She concluded the truncated sentence, with a new ending.

A rider came up to the tower and leaped from the saddle, sprinting up the stairs. "Lady Hyandai, the southern force of the enemy is routed, they flee the field!"

She smiled at that. "Very good." Hyandai said. "Their losses?"

The rider thought a moment. "Only five, Warleader. Seemed they expected to be shooting at refugees, not facing a cavalry charge, they had only archers."

Harlen leaned in close to Hyandai's ear and whispered into her ear a moment. Her face broke into a wider smile.

"Bolster them with the remaining cavalry, and order Ceriandel to bring them about to attack the enemies right flank." She leaned close to the rider's ear and whispered. He nodded and took off down the stairs and clambered back onto his horse, riding south through the town.

A few moments later, Harlen heard the cavalry moving around the palisade to the right of them. Before they could have heard, however, the enemy archers began to fall back, and part of the main body of the army move into their place, spearmen to the fore. The cavalry never appeared, however, and simply spun about and retreated back to the south.

Harlen and Hyandai exchanged a quick look and then looked toward the nobles, and their aides.

It was moving now. The enemy forces began to advance. The captains upon the walls called out to the archers, who loaded and readied. Bows creaked in the darkness and one sang out in a ranging shot. It flew out toward the massed troops, falling short by perhaps fifty paces. The elves upon the wall waited for the order to fire.

Harlen noted that the regiment to the left was moving up unevenly, hoping it was a mistake they could exploit, but it seemed simply a confusion on the enemy part, and them being archers, their tight ranks would matter little.

Another ranging shot sang out, landing five paces before the foremost ranks of the army. The army stopped, with much noise of halting feet. This was the last pause, Harlen knew. He had seen it many times before.

He pulled out his spyglass and examined the ranks arrayed before them, now closer and reflecting some of the torchlight from the walls. His view passed over mass after mass of spearmen, swordsmen, and archers, and a tight knot of ehladrim in the center. There were also figures, mixed among them, figures quite active, moving their hands in esoteric and mysterious patterns. Wizards.

He kept looking down the massed ranks, more archers, and still more archers, clutching their smooth, sleek weapons. The left regiment lacked discipline, he saw, and they had stopped with their formation actually almost at a twenty-five degree angle, facing inward toward the main army. He told Hyandai to have the cavalry move around the south side and assault those from the left, they would likely break easily and prevent many deaths if they did so.

He eyed Hyandai's curving bow, with its ornate scrollwork. Then he looked at the wall. There stood the town's archers, with their ornately carven bows.

"Hyandai." Harlen said, his mind racing. "We need the Ehladrel here, now."

She looked at him only a moment before saying. "I agree." She turned to Lord Ircandann. "May I borrow your aides, lord?" She asked.

The elven lord turned from the sight of the massed troops. "Yes, of course." He said, turning to his and the lady's aides. "Rennalath, Centhan, the Lady Hyandai has need of your service."

They both looked at her, awaiting instruction. "I need the both of you to go get the Ehladrel from my chambers." She said.

The two young men nodded and departed at a jog. "Now, beloved, what is going on?" She turned and asked Harlen.

"I believe one of the aides are spying for the traitors." Harlen said. "When I had you feint the cavalry, their forces responded before they could have known the cavalry was coming toward them, the palisades were in the way and they were still too distant to hear."

Hyandai nodded. "And we sent them after the Ehladrel why?" She said.

"Because I need them to not know what I just learned." He replied turning back to the massed forces before the wall.

"And what, my dear, have you learned?" The lord and lady were also very attentive of their conversation. As was obvious, this was war, and their position was subordinate to Hyandai's for the duration, and they knew their place if little else.

"That you elves have been buying Westron longbows." Harlen said, handing her the spyglass and aiming it toward the left flanking archers.

Hyandai. "That is ridiculous, we have no need to bu . . .." She stopped. "Spirits save us!" She exclaimed.

The expressions of confusion upon Lord Ircandann's and Lady Melewen's faces would have to go unanswered for the moment, though, the attack was nigh.

Harlen nodded. Peering over the railing at a small group of combat wizards. "Order one of them to hurl a fireball straight up when the fight begins." He said.

Hyandai leaned over the rail and yelled down. "Yrachas!"

One of the younger wizards looked up and smiled, waving at Hyandai. "Yes, Lady Hyandai?" He said.

"When the fight begins, you are to send a fireball straight upward, an exploding one." She said. "Is that clear?"

He looked at her a long moment. "Well, yes, Warleader." He responded. "It is clear. It will be done, though I know not why."

She nodded. "Good, then prepare yourselves, warlocks, the fight comes to us!" She cried out as the army before the wall set up a loud cry and charged.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"You are certain that is her desire?" Ceriandel asked as the aide, Rennalath nodded.

"Of course, Ehladrim Ceriandel." He said. "She wishes you to leave the horse company, and find ten men to watch the eastern quarter."

The blade dancer nodded. "Very well." he said. Dismounting and gathering up ten nearby militiamen. "You are with me." He said. They followed quietly, but with rather worried eyes. Ehladrim were expected to be in the thick of the fight, and to be beside one was to be there, as well. They were loyal, though, and each privately vowed to do his best.

The shout of battle's beginning could be heard from the north end of the village even where they were now. Ceriandel watched as Rennalath moved off and up the wide stairs up the Turaorn.