To Light A Candle

Kellen found it instructive; he kept his eyes and ears open, and began to learn a great deal about the bonds of camaraderie that other Unicorn Knights had with their mounts.

The Unicorn Knights, of necessity, rode apart from the main army. By Elven standards they were all quite young, though they would have been grandmothers and grandfathers among humans. All of them were still mourning the loss of their comrades, both Elven and unicorn, in the Shadowed Elf ambush, for the community of Unicorn Knights was a small, close-knit one. Not every Elven fighter was even remotely interested in bonding with a unicorn.

Oddly, it was a community that Kellen had never really been a part of, until now. He wasn’t a “real” Unicorn Knight—his bond with Shalkan was part of a Mageprice lasting a year and a day. That wasn’t the same thing as choosing a unicorn for a companion—or being chosen by one. And what happened when the Elf fell in love with another Elf? He—or she—would never see their unicorn friend again. Not up close, anyway.

“You’re thinking like a human, again,” Shalkan observed, when Kellen confided some of these thoughts to him.

“I am a human, in case you haven’t figured that out yet,” Kellen said. It felt good to discuss—for a change—something that had nothing in particular to do with Shadow Mountain.

Shalkan snorted eloquently. “As if I could forget. Humans think the whole world revolves around them—but we have lives of our own, too, you know. The partnership of knight and unicorn is a fine thing, but in most cases both of the beings involved realize at the start that it’s only going to be an episode—a relatively short one—in what will be long lives for them both. A year and a day probably seems like a long time to you—well, for most of these knights, their partnership won’t seem to last much longer.”

Uh-hiih. That sounded awfully cold-blooded to Kellen. Maybe an Elf—who was going to live several centuries—could manage it. Or…

“How long do unicorns live, anyway?” Kellen asked.

“Longer than you’re likely to if you keep asking foolish questions,” Shalkan answered quellingly.

Ah. Evidently there were some things even Kellen wasn’t supposed to know.

—«♦»—

KELLEN didn’t spend all his time with the Unicorn Knights. Fortunately, a Knight-Mage could go where he pleased, and Kellen took full advantage of that freedom.

Jermayan was flying with Ancaladar, doing most of the long-range scouting for the little army, but naturally he had brought Valdien with him. Under Deyishene’s tutelage, Kellen’s equestrian skills had improved to the point where— with Jermayan’s permission, and after a proper introduction to Valdien to assure the destrier that it was, indeed, all right—he could take Valdien out of the horse-lines and ride the great storm-colored destrier among the main body of the troops.

He saw things there that greatly disturbed him.

He knew already that Elves were creatures of great respect for tradition. He saw now that the tradition extended to the organization of their army. The equivalent sons and daughters of these same Elven households had probably ridden in exactly these positions a thousand years ago, the last time the Elves had gone to war.

Which meant, Kellen thought with a frown, that when the Elven armies gathered to face Shadow Mountain, the Demon horde would know exactly who and where everyone was. Idalia had told him that the Demons weren’t merely long-lived, like the Elves, but truly immortal. So it wasn’t impossible that there were actual Demon generals out there that had faced the Allied and Elven armies last time.

He might not know everything about the Art of War yet, but he did know that it wasn’t a good idea for the enemy to know what the entire disposition of your troops was going to be in advance. And if the Elves were as much creatures of Tradition as they appeared—which Kellen had no reason to doubt—Shadow Mountain already knew every possible battle formation they would use.

Not good.

Individually, the Elves were unstoppable fighters—and individually they were perfectly capable of improvisation if they put their minds to it. And they were smart enough to realize within seconds of an encounter that they were no longer playing by the same rules as they once had been. For some of them, that was fast enough to save them. But the larger the group, the more unwieldy and Tradition-bound it became.

The easier to defeat.

He’d identified another problem, Kellen realized with an inward sigh. It was just too bad he couldn’t come up with a solution to it as easily. The Elven Commanders weren’t going to throw out several thousand years of the “proper” way of doing things just on his say-so. And their tactics had worked the last time.

That’s the root of the problem. It worked twice before. They know it