move.’
The three TaiGethen flowed over the parched ground and out of the forward camp that now lay less than a mile from the invasion front. Ahead of them through the withering rainforest were the orange glow of the burning canopy, the stultifying heat that pushed on before it and the last desperate defence against the Garonin.
Auum ran slightly ahead of Ghaal at his left shoulder and Miirt at his right. It had been hard learning to trust a new cell but he had chosen well, he believed. Now would be the test to end all others.
The land they trod was no longer their own. Auum knew they were moving south but no scent, no trail and no recognisable set to the foliage remained. He could no longer read this place. It had ceased to be their home, more alien than Balaia, to where the survivors would flee. Yniss had surely turned his back on them, unable to assist.
Smoke choked their lungs. Ash lay heavy in the air and crumbled underfoot. The green beauty was gone along with Tual’s children, the forest denizens, replaced by a churned, dead land. The war had been lost the moment that Garonin had landed. All that was left now was survival.
The fight against the Garonin was confused and it had to be that way. The warriors of the TaiGethen and Al-Arynaar used the density of the canopy as best they could, keeping the enemy guessing. But with every Garonin pace forward, that density lessened and the fire that came in its wake took more lives.
Auum ran past an elf lying prone, his back a mass of charred flesh. Another tended to him but it would be hopeless. Not even magic could save him, and magic was being taken from them.
‘Keep tight,’ he said. ‘Strike in, turn out. No hesitation.’
A series of white lights flashed through the trees at just above head height. Like teardrops but slicing horizontally, ripping through bark, sundering timber to pulp and bringing down mighty trunks. Fires leapt up where the teardrops impacted. Fire dampers ran in, those that still lived.
Warrior elves in deep green and brown camouflage clothing and paint criss-crossed his path. They were close now. The thud of the machines, the roar of the fires and the steady crump of beasts treading the ground filled the air.
‘Do not be afraid to die,’ said Auum. ‘Our souls are promised to Shorth and he will find them.’
But images of the priestess in the temple of Shorth crowded into Auum’s mind and he found himself doubting his own words.
‘Yniss protect us,’ he whispered. ‘Your servants.’
And there they were. Garonin.
Auum stopped in his tracks, feeling a unique sense of fear. Just like before. Ancient history repeated.
‘It’ll never be over, will it?’ said Miirt, her voice steady.
‘They may not have changed. We are different,’ said Auum.
‘They do not need to change,’ said Ghaal, who had stopped a pace ahead of him.
Auum followed his gaze. An arc of soldiers protected three harvesters, each pulled by two of the great beasts. Hanfeer, the elves called them. Created for this single purpose. The harvesters were huge, bulbous skins taut with the pressure of the gas they contained. Their funnels belched waste into the sky, sensors sought new pockets of mana to exploit and the rumble of another detonation cloud built above.
The massed hundreds of warrior elves faced no more than sixty of the enemy and yet they were losing the fight here and on four separate fronts of which Auum had certain knowledge. The rainforest was being laid to waste.
‘This is not as before,’ said Auum. ‘This level of destruction. This number of soldiers.’
‘They come not just to harvest,’ said Miirt. ‘Their memories are long and bitter.’
God’s Eyes castings struck at three enemy soldiers advancing on the left flank. One went down. The other two staggered and were driven to their knees under the force of the assault, their armour flaring a blinding white. Immediately, two TaiGethen cells sprinted in, backed by a number of Al-Arynaar warriors and mages.
Every Garonin head turned. In every hand, weapons were brought to bear, raised to the eyes and their power unleashed. Streams of white teardrops fled away. Vegetation from ground to ten feet in the air was obliterated, a path of energy driven towards the attacking elves and into their midst. Auum turned his eyes from the impacts but his ears could not block out the screams.
Elves ran in from all sides.
‘Diversion,’ said Ghaal.
Auum was already running. ‘We are TaiGethen. We do not stand and watch our brothers die. Tai, to my mark.’
He made a curving run. Ahead and right an Al-Arynaar exploded under the weight of white tears thudding into her chest. Another lost an arm even as he raised it to strike. Auum kept his head down, pushing his legs to more speed, dragging hot, painful air into his lungs.
His target hadn’t seen him yet. The soldier was moving steadily forward, his weapon still facing the initial attack point.
Auum’s head cleared. He could hear his every breath and the sound of his feet on the cracked ground between the trees. He used what remained of the immediate cover as best he could. The world slowed around him. He closed on his enemy, his Tai at his heels. The Garonin saw them eventually, weapon beginning to come to bear. Auum planted his right foot and used it to launch himself. He twisted as he came off the ground and brought his legs together. He spun in the air, his body a spear, his heels its tip.
Auum struck the soldier in the neck just above his weapon. The enemy could not absorb the blow and crumpled backwards. Auum raised his arms for balance, straightened and landed softly, coming to a crouch and drawing his twin short swords from their back-mounted scabbards. He turned.
Ghaal and Miirt were there before him, blades hacking and stabbing into gaps in the Garonin armour. Auum knelt across the enemy’s neck and ripped away his helmet. The white lettering across the armour faded. What stared back at him was not human. Black orbs bulged from bony sockets. Flat nostril slits flared. The huge mouth clacked together, toothless ridges sampling the air. There was no fear in that face.
‘We will find your weakness,’ said Auum. ‘And we will stop you.’
‘Auum, you know better than that. You cannot beat us. Not in this world, nor in the next,’ replied the Garonin. ‘Yours will be the race extinct. None who escaped us once will do so again.’
The Garonin growled deep in its throat and vanished, leaving Auum clutching at empty air.
‘The hanfeer,’ he said. ‘We can give them pause. Tai, we move.’
‘He knew you,’ said Miirt while they ran towards the great beasts. ‘How did he know you? You cannot be so aged, even for an Ynissul.’
‘My time is longer than you think,’ said Auum. ‘And it is not done yet.’
Precious few had broken through the protective arc to run towards the harvesters, their beasts and the Garonin who marshalled them. Auum tried to shut out the sounds of pain behind him. God’s Eyes arced in overhead, splashing harmlessly against the shielding the harvesters possessed, doing little damage. The rumble was deafening here. The crushing of age-old timbers under the hooves of beast and runners of machine was an ugly symbol of death.
The fires at the rear of the machines ate at the dead ground and gorged at the excess gasses in the air, torching tree stumps and incinerating anything living that came into contact. Nothing would be left in the wake of their passing. Nothing.
Auum ran directly at a trio of Garonin in front of the centremost machine. His Tai were level with him. That the Garonin saw him was not in doubt, but their confidence was such that they did nothing to halt his advance. Theirs was millennia-old information. And it told them the elves would turn aside. Ten yards from them, Auum saw the first flicker of concern in the slight turning of a head.
‘Split,’ he ordered.
His Tai stepped aside left and right. Two paces later, all three dropped and rolled below the sweeping fists of the marshals, coming up behind them. Auum drove his blades into the gaps between boot and calf armour. The Garonin shrieked, anger and pain clashing as he pitched forward. Auum leapt on to his back, dragged his head back and drove a blade into the eye slit of his helmet. The Garonin jerked and disappeared.
Miirt and Ghaal had followed his lead, but to either side none of the other attacking elves had got any further.
‘Strike and turn,’ said Auum. ‘Hesitation is death.’
