“For Azrai and for glory!” he shouted. “Charge!”
The young knights gave voice to their battle cries and with weapons held aloft raced toward their 1 opponents. Caught in midgesture, Michael turned with an expression of surprise and saw the enemy surging toward him. Without hesitation, he raised his wooden sword and gave the command to charge.
The two armies collided on the slopes of Deismaar, and it was the greatest battle the world had ever seen. They fought from sunrise until sunset, and the air reverberated with the clashing of steel against steel, like countless hammers ringing upon anvils. That sound alone was enough to almost deafen those in the center of the fray, but added to it were the cries of men and beasts, goblins screeching, gnolls howling like the hounds of hell, elves giving voice to their unearthly, ululating war cries, humans yelling, horses neighing, the wounded of all races calling out for aid and moaning, all amid the choking dust raised by countless thousands milling on the field of battle.
Aedan found himself face-to-face with Lady Ariel, a grimly determined girl of twelve with long blonde pigtails hanging out from underneath her helm. Her eyes burned with intensity as she raised her sword and launched herself at him, screeching with all the fury and abandon of a berserker seized with battle lust. Oh, gods, he thought, not Ariel.
He back pedaled from the ferocious assault, taking a rain of blows upon his wooden shield. In her fierce determination to prove herself the equal of the boys, Ariel struck as hard as any of them, and Aedan still had
bruises from the last time they had squared off against each other.
With the boys, he could always deliver a carefully controlled whack against the side of a helm to slow them down a bit or “kill” them when they got too carried away, which was almost always, but with little Ariel, he could do little more than block her blows, because he was afraid that even with her armor on, a light blow could hurt her. And he couldn’t simply tap her, because Ariel did not acknowledge such light strokes. Nothing short of a blow that knocked her down would make Ariel admit that she had “died.” The other boys had no such scruples and would bash her hard enough to make Aedan wince, but he was much bigger and much stronger and did not wish to cause her any harm.
As if she knew this, she always sought him out when they played war, as if it were a personal vendetta. He did his best to defend himself from this diminutive amazon.
Aedan glanced around the battlefield, searching for Michael and Corwin in the melee. Corwin had been right next to him when they began the charge, but now he was nowhere in sight. He could only risk quick glances, but could not spot him anywhere among the two dozen or so mingling bodies and, worse yet, he could not see Michael, either.
“Ow!” Ariel had scored a telling blow upon his thigh. it stung, and Aedan knew that it would leave a nasty bruise.
“Down!” she shouted. “Down to one knee! I’ve crippled you!”
‘You have not; it was a glancing blow, merely a scratch.” He could not afford to be crippled at this stage; he still had to find Michael and Corwin and make sure they didn’t take each other’s heads off.
“Liar! I say you’re crippled!” Ariel shouted, smashing away at him with a flurry of blows as she kept up the litany with each furious stroke.
“Crippled …
crippled … crippled … crippled … crippled!”
Aedan backed away and tripped. Ariel immediately pressed the advantage as he tried to regain his feet, but managed only to get up to one knee before she was upon him.
“Die … die … die … die … die!”
She’s out of her mind, thought Aedan, cowering behind his wooden shield as he warded off the rain of blows. And then, miraculously, she struck a blow that hooked his shield and sent it flying out of his grasp as he watched in stunned disbelief.
Thunk!
“Ha! Dead!” Ariel cried out triumphantly.
The blow had come down squarely on his metal skullcap, and Aedan’s vision swam. The sound reverberated inside his head like a ringing gong. The ground came up to meet him as he fell and everything went black.
Toward sunset, it seemed certain Azrai’s forces would prevail, but as the sun sank beneath the horizon and darkness descended on the field of battle, the elves suddenly crossed over to join the forces led by Haelyn, and the tide began to turn.
No one knew precisely what occurred to make the elves change sides.
According to some versions of the story, as darkness fell, the elves saw Azrai revealed for what he truly was and realized they had been duped.
Other versions had it that the elven generals discovered that at the close of battle, when the humans were defeated and the elves were at their weakest, Azrai would betray them and have the gnolls and goblins eliminate the last potential threat to his dominion. But whatever the true reason may have been, Haelyn’s embattled forces were in no position to refuse their help. Elf and human, who for years had tried their utmost to destroy each other, turned and faced the greater enemy, fighting shoulder to shoulder against the troops of Azrai.
to rise, the champions of the As the moon began gods, led by Haelyn and Roele, managed to break through a weak point in the ranks of Azrai’s troops.
Haelyn led the charge straight up the slopes of Deismaar to where the
