“The passage widens just ahead,” Kellen said quickly to Celegaer. “Hurry— we can’t let them trap us here!”
Without waiting to hear Celegaer’s reply, he ran forward.
At the end of the passageway, wider corridors opened out to the left and right, just as Idalia had described. They were crowded with the Shadowed Elves— too many to easily count—and this time the creatures were armed, not to capture a dragon, but to fight.
The Shadowed Elves wore bits and pieces of looted armor lashed to their bodies with strips of leather. But ragged and mismatched as their armor was, their weaponry was in gleaming earnest. Swords and shields—spears —
And bows.
Kellen dropped into battle-mind. Without thought, he raised his shield, and the first of the small deadly arrows fired out of the dark glanced off it.
The Shadowed Elves swarmed—there was no other word to describe their movement—forward. They obviously didn’t like the light, but they weren’t blinded by it as some of the Elves had hoped. Kellen cut down the creatures before him and pressed forward, he and Celegaer trying to clear the way for the Elves that were moving up behind them.
But he quickly realized that their tactics weren’t working.
Individually the Shadowed Elves were comparatively frail. But they were attacking in enormous numbers, taking advantage of the cramped tunnels—and what was worse, they
They climbed along the walls and ceiling, dropping into the middle of their foes to bear the Elves down by sheer weight of numbers. By ones and twos it was nothing to kill them, but they weren’t attacking by ones and twos.
Kellen fought on, moving deeper into the right-hand cavern at the spearhead of a group of Knights. Up ahead, the Shadowed Elf archers were firing with deadly accuracy. He could see the arrows glowing dull green in his battle-sight, and knew from that that the arrows were poisoned. He would have shouted a warning, but it would have gone unheard. The cavern was filled with the screams of the injured; the clash of weapons; and the hoarse howls and barking of the Shadowed Elves. Kellen shut out the noise and concentrated on his task.
Cut, step, turn, and cut again. Block, attack, dodge. Celegaer was on his left, another Knight was at his back. One of the Shadowed Elves dropped down on him from above. Kellen grunted, bending forward with the impact, turning the move into a forward throw to dislodge the creature.
He felt the wind of an arrow pass his cheek. There was a muffled grunt behind him. Kellen heard—and felt— the Elven Knight fall to the floor of the cavern and die.
He killed the creature on the ground and moved forward.
At last the Elves’ superior battle skills and heavier, more effective armor turned the tide. The battlefield opened up, and it soon became a matter of keeping the Shadowed Elves from escaping, and then it came to executing the enemy wounded and checking the dead.
And that was when Kellen found himself just standing there, sword hanging from his limp grip, staring at an empty tunnel.
“Kellen.” Celegaer laid a gentle hand upon his shoulder. “Go back and rest for a moment. Then ask Idalia if Vestakia is well enough to come forward.”
Kellen blinked, feeling almost as if he were rousing from a deep sleep. He nodded, and turned away.
He had to move carefully through the piles of corpses, and the stone was slick with blood. It soaked the bodies lying in it, staining them all, Elf and Shadowed Elf alike, the same terrible scarlet color. The blue globes of Coldfire—so many, in such a confined space—made the scene shadowless and stark.
Grief and shame hovered over the battlefield like carrion birds. Kellen had expected the grief—there were too many Elven dead, and he knew that soon he would be mourning the loss of friends—but shame? He did not understand. They’d fought well. They’d won. There was no cause for shame.
Was there?
At the end of the corridor he found Petariel. The Captain of the Unicorn Knights had been wounded: a spear had taken him just behind the knee, at one of the weak points of the Elven armor. He leaned against the wall, a makeshift bandage over his wound, his helmet beneath his arm.
And to Kellen’s astonishment, he was weeping.
