On either side of Keraal, the trampled sod rose and flew back. Goblins hidden in camouflaged pockets popped up onto their knees, raised compact crossbows, and sighted. The waiting elves jerked in surprise. The elf who had ridden forward cried out and started to wheel his horse, but he was too slow. Ten bowstrings sang and ten bolts flew — and ten scarlet flowers blossomed on the white hide of the elf’s horse. The animal wore light barding, but it wasn’t armored everywhere and the goblin bolts sought any exposed flesh. The horse screamed and bucked at the pain, fighting its rider’s attempts at control. The goblins were up and running from their hiding places, racing up the dirt track to join the army. Keraal turned his horse and retreated as well, but slowly, mockingly. Bows rose among the waiting elves and arrows buzzed but they were too far and their own man, struggling with his horse, blocked true aim.
The wounded horse shrieked again. It stumbled once and its hindquarters collapsed as the strandpine sap that had coated the goblins’ crossbow bolts burned into its blood. The elf leaped from the saddle and stared in horror at his crippled mount trying to drag itself with its forelegs. Its hind legs kicked uselessly. Then the elf wailed nearly as loudly as his horse, drew his scimitar and leaped forward to slash the beast’s throat. Blood sprayed him, dark against scarlet robes. The horse’s screams fell silent, but the elf’s did not. Still wailing like a madman, he turned and raced after Keraal.
His cries were joined by others as the ragged lines of the Valenar broke and elves streamed into battle.
The only things they hold sacred, Chetiin had once said, are their ancestors and their horses.
Keraal put spurs to his horse and galloped up the track, the Riis Shaarii’mal snapping in the wind of his passage. Arrows loosed by the charging Valenar traced a dark line behind him. Ekhaas stole a glance at Dagii. The young warlord’s face was hard, his eyes intent. He held his left hand in the air, waiting… waiting…
He brought it down. The piercing voice of the warpipes rose.
And out at the edge of the battlefield, just behind the holes left by the emergence of the goblin snipers, long ropes snapped up from among the grass, pulled tight by teams of bugbears lurking in the thin woods on either side of the plain. Shards of broken glass worked in among the fibers glittered in the sunlight.
Charging horses hit the ropes hard. The trees to which they had been lashed thrashed violently, and the heavy stakes that anchored them on the battlefield leaped. The long ropes sagged and snapped, but their damage was done. Horses whinnied and fell, tumbling like toys. They screamed at broken and slashed legs, and their struggling bodies brought down more horses that weren’t quick enough to turn sharply or jump high. Some struggled back to their feet. Others didn’t rise at all. The first charge of the Valaes Tairn had been broken. But there would be another.
An outraged voice roared in Elvish for an attack, and those elves who had held back surged forward.
“Form up!” ordered Dagii and the great drum beat the signal. Lesser drums took it up and the Darguul lines folded and split. Seven squares formed up on the battlefield, shields locked together. Dagii snapped more commands, and five of the squares moved to meet the oncoming elves, warpipes wailing in their midst. Archers among the two companies that remained in the rear sent clouds of arrows arcing down ahead of the marching companies. The elves answered with arrows of their own-arrows that rattled as harmlessly as hail on the locked shields.
Above the din of battle, Ekhaas didn’t hear Keraal approach, but suddenly he was there. In his hand was clenched the Riis Shaarii’mal. He dropped to one knee and held it out to Dagii. The warlord clapped a fist to his chest.
“Ta muut,” he said.
Keraal’s ears flicked. He rose and stabbed the banner’s shaft into the soft ground of the earthworks at the brow of the hill.
The first wave of Valaes Tairn closed on the Darguuls. The beat of the drum changed, and the squares stopped, two ahead, three behind. Shields parted slightly and spears thrust through. The armored turtles of the squares abruptly became bristling porcupines. Charging elves screamed and howled, demons in their flying red robes. They slashed at the air with their scimitars. Even on the hill, Ekhaas thought she could feel the earth trembling beneath the driving hooves of their horses. She had heard stories that during the Last War, human armies that had faced a Valenar charge had often crumbled before a blow was struck, their lines broken by sheer terror.
The Darguul lines stood strong. Valenar wheeled away, forced aside by the unyielding spear points. Crowded by the rush behind them, though, they had little room to turn. Many were forced around the two leading squares, splitting like a stream around stones.
The charge of those who swung too wide to the outside foundered as their horses’ hooves found the third trap hidden under the trampled grass: all of the baskets in Zarrthec and all of the cages of willow switches that an army could weave, hidden under all the loose branches that the forest could provide. Sticks and switches and baskets closed around hooves and legs, doing no damage but fouling the charge as surely as pits of mud. And as the charge slowed, more goblin crossbowmen concealed among the autumn-brown trees at the edge of the plain loosed their bolts-not poisoned this time, but enough to bloody the elves and drop them in their saddles.
The Valenar who flowed between the squares fared no better. They found themselves in broad aisles between the forward and back formations with nowhere to go except out to the sides where branches grabbed hooves or onward through narrower aisles between the three rear squares.
So they raced on-directly into the arrows of the two companies that had stayed behind. More elves fell, but others escaped the trap of the squares.
“Cavalry!” Dagii ordered and the command drum changed its beat. The rain of arrows stopped and the Darguul cavalry took the field, sweeping in front of the standing companies to meet the elves that had made it through the gauntlet. The Darguul horse thundered across the plain, a moving wedge composed of lances, but now the elves had room to move. They melted away before the charge and answered in kind. They streamed along the sides of the horse formation, scimitars slashing, and where they passed, hobgoblins died.
But behind the horse cavalry, they met the cats.
There were no formations for them to evade. The tiger and leopard riders fought as the Valenar did, alone and in clusters. The already-trampled grass became a mass of green and brown as hooves and paws chewed into the ground underneath. Ekhaas watched an elf rider dart close to a hobgoblin, lash out with a scimitar, and wheel away out of sword’s reach. The hobgoblin nudged his tiger mount. The great cat coiled and sprang. Massive claws seized the haunches of fleeing horse and bore it down. The impact flung the elf out of her saddle. A goblin-ridden leopard pounced on her before she could even regain her feet.
The beat of the drums changed again. The infantry companies pressed forward once more, squares altering shape to become blunt-nosed wedges with the brute strength of bugbears at their head. The horse company reformed and drove in behind them.
“We have command of the field!” cried one of the warlords on the hill.
Dagii’s ears pressed flat back against his head. “A blow has been struck,” he growled, “but the battle continues.”
Beyond the foremost of the charging companies, Ekhaas saw one of the Valaes Tairn raise his hand. An orb of violet glass flashed in his grip.
Purple-tinged flames exploded at the head of the nearest Darguul company. Bugbears became writhing torches an instant before dropping. Hobgoblins scattered. The marching wedge cracked like a bone thrown into a fire. With a wild cheer, elves wheeled their horses into the broken company as drums sounded and the Darguuls fought to recover their formation.
Other wizards rode with the elves. Yellow vapors engulfed trees where goblin snipers perched. When they faded, dry leaves and goblins alike lay on the ground beneath. The tiger that Ekhaas had watched bring down a horse fell at the touch of an icy blue ray. Lightning crackled and arced among the spear points of another company. Across the battlefield, flame and frost and lightning ravaged the Darguuls, tearing openings for the Valenar to exploit. Here and there, hobgoblin warcasters responded with blasts of rippling force, but their spells were weak and few-dar were born to war, but elves were born to magic. Lightning-scorched shields parted and a warcaster thrust his staff at an elf wizard. The air shimmered between them, tearing at the elf’s red robes, but he held his ground and responded with a golden bolt that spun the warcaster around and sent him sprawling.
Arrows followed like a swarm of bees, tearing a hole in the Darguul company. Shields closed again, but the damage had been done and the formation was left with a gouge in its side. The company drew itself together, leaving the corpses of the warcaster and half a dozen warriors behind.
