her direction.
'Well done, Khelben!' chortled Kiinyon Colbathin. 'Five this time!'
'Yes,' Khelben answered. 'If we had forty hours and a thousand Corellon's Bolts, we could kill them all-but we don't. We're not going to save the mythal by teleporting in to attack once every hour.'
'What do you suggest, Lord Blackstaff?' asked a familiar voice.
Keya glanced over her shoulder and found Lord Duirsar standing a dozen yards behind her with Kiinyon Colbathin and what remained of Evereska's Hill Elders. They were surrounded by the Company of the Cold Hand, a hundred hand-picked Spellblades chosen to wield the sixteen darkswords borrowed from the Vaasans who had fallen when the phaerimm escaped their ancient prison. Because the weapons would freeze the hand of any wielder not of the owning family, the idea was that the first warrior would use the weapon until his hand grew too cold to hold it, then pass it to the next, and so forth.
Khelben stepped to Lord Duirsar's side. 'We must carry the attack into the Vine Vale, and soon.'
'Leave the mythal?' Colbathin gasped. 'Do you know how many warriors we'll lose?'
'A fraction of what we'll lose if we let them wear it down and enter Evereska,' Khelben countered. 'The shadowshell has already weakened it, and this battle is draining it by the minute.' He turned to Lord Duirsar. 'Milord, even if Evereska had arrows and magic enough to squander in this way, the mythal won't last. We must reduce the enemy.'
'You forget that we will be reduced ourselves, tenfold,' Kiinyon objected. 'Surely, it is better to take what kills we can from the safety of the mythal-'
'Do those pointed ears not hear, elf?' roared Khelben. 'The mythal won't last!'
In spite of herself, Keya found her attention wandering from Khelben and the high lords to her cherished Dexon. To her dismay, the Vaasan had noticed her as he passed through the lines of the Long Watch-was, in fact, studying her with the dark look of an angry bear, holding his darksword across his breast and towering over not only the elves, but Khelben and even his fellow Vaasans. Even the night before, when she had spent so many hours climbing over that massive body, she had not realized just how large-how brutish-a man he really was.
When he noticed her watching him, Dexon gave a melancholy smile and extended an index finger in her direction. At first, Keya thought he was trying to use elven fingertalk, but then she sensed someone looking over her shoulder and realized he was pointing. She looked forward again to find Zharilee, the sun elf who commanded her company, standing in front of her impatiently tapping a long finger on her extravagant armor of gold scales.
'Truly, Keya, it is nothing to me if you are attracted to these hairy brutes, but I insist that you leave the flirting until after the battle.' Zharilee turned away, then raised her magic command horn to her lips and shouted, 'Loose!'
Keya drew her bowstring back and sent an arrow arcing over the Meadow Wall into the blinding storm of flame and lightning that was the Vine Vale. She reached for another of the green shafts in her quiver. 'Hold!'
The command came not from Zharilee, but from Kiinyon Colbathin himself-and he sounded none too happy.
'Split by ranks, swords the first, spears the second, bows the third.'
Heart leaping into her throat, Keya slung her bow over her shoulder and pulled her spear out of the ground beside her. Khelben's argument had prevailed, and Lord Duirsar had given the order to leave the mythal to engage the phaerimm. A low, ground-shaking rumble rolled up from the rear as the elite companies trotted up to take attack positions behind the Long Watch.
Even had Keya not learned tactics on her father's knee, she would have known what was happening. As the most inexperienced element of Evereska's military, the Long Watch would lead the charge over the wall and absorb the brunt of the phaerimm attack. With any luck, the elite companies following behind would reach the enemy ranks intact and force the thornbacks to engage in their least favorite kind of combat-close.
Though Keya desperately wanted to steal a last glance over her shoulder at Dexon, she resisted the temptation. Looking at him would only make him worry about her when he should be thinking of killing their enemies. As the rightful wielder of a darksword, he was one of Evereska's most potent weapons against the phaerimm. His shadowy blade could cut through even their mightiest defenses, and he already had three of their tails tucked into his belt to prove he knew how to get close enough to use it. 'Long Watch, charge in three ranks!'
Keya counted a one second delay, then set her spear tip at a slight incline and started forward at a two- step-per-second run-swift enough to cover ground quickly, but not so fast that the charge would disorganize their formation. Instead of starting forward to meet the charge, the phaerimm and beholders hung back, content to hurl spells at the mythal and create a gauntlet of magic for their attackers to struggle through. It was a tactic that would serve them well against the Long Watch-but bring the elite companies behind into the middle of their ranks.
Keya was ten steps from the Meadow Wall when Khelben’s voice came to her in her mind. Nothing to fear, my dear.
Who's afraid? she retorted. Just kill the thornbacks- and tell Dex to keep his mind That was as far as she made it before the first rank reached the Meadow Wall. With only their swords in hand and light Evereskan armor on their bodies, they leaped onto the wall in one stride and disappeared over its crest on the second. Keya and the rest of the second rank were slower. They had to brace a hand on top of the wall and swing their legs up beside them-and by then, the first rank was already stopped dead in its tracks, filling the air with eerie wails as their legs crumbled into ash.
Keya kept herself from going over by dropping to her seat and bracing her spear on the other side of the Meadow Wall. In front of her, Zharilee and half a dozen other elves seemed to be melting into the ground as first their legs, then their hips and torsos dissolved into a pile of gray cinders. She nearly fell when the shaft of her spear crumbled as well.
A young Gold elf from the third rank crashed into her from behind, and she grabbed the back of his helmet to prevent herself from going over. 'What's the hold up?' he demanded. 'Get a move on!'
'Not wise.' Keya pulled his head over the wall and forced him to look at the dissipating ash piles. 'Those are our friends.'
The young sun elf turned the color of a withered birch leaf, but many in the Long Watch were not so fortunate. Much of the third rank simply leaped onto the backs of the second rank, forcing them over the wall into the Vine Vale and beyond the protection of the mythal. As soon as their feet touched the blackened ground, their bodies crumbled into cinders and collapsed.
Without the constant rain of arrows from the Long Watch, the phaerimm and beholders finally began to float forward, coming closer to the mythal. Keya glanced back and, over the retching figure of the elf who had nearly pushed her to her death, saw the Company of the Cold Hand charging up to vault the wall behind them.
Still sitting astride the wall, Keya raised both hands. 'Khelben, stop them! You made a mistake!'
'Mistake'?' Khelben's voice boomed across the valley like a clap of thunder. 'Impossible!' 'Khelben, it is possible-the Vale is a death trap!'
For a long and terrible moment, the Cold Hand continued to rush forward. A golden mythal meteor roared down behind her, cratering the blackened ground and spraying her with so much dirt and stone that she was knocked off the wall back into the meadow. Lord Duirsar’s mages launched a volley of lightning bolts and black death rays that streaked overhead and-so far as Keya could tell from where she was cowering down behind the wall-had absolutely no effect on the enemy.
Then, much to her horror, an avalanche of stones shot across the wall above her and found the young Gold who had nearly pushed her into the Vine Vale. The pile took him square in the chest, reducing his torso to a spray of blood and bone, then crashed to the ground behind him and rolled off trailing a spray of crimson.
That was enough to halt the charge of the Cold Hand-and send what remained of the Long Watch scurrying back toward Evereska. The enemy had attacked into the meadow. The mythal was weakening, and fast. Keya suppressed a gasp and rolled into a crouch, then poked her head up to find a beholder hovering not a spear's length away, its great central eye projecting a powerful antimagic ray into the failing mythal. Behind it, a phaerimm was floating forward to exploit the resulting gap in the LastHaven's magic defenses.
Keya had just time enough to see that the scene was much the same in other places along the wall before the phaerimm pointed in her direction. A stream of stones rose off a vineyard wall and came streaking in her
