Page 123 of Of Empires and Dust
Rist did all he could not to let out a sigh. All he wanted to do was sleep, but he could hear the worry in Neera’s voice. “They’re not thinking. They’re just fighting.”
He could tell by how Neera tensed that was the wrong thing to say.
“Fightingus. Two women died in that granary fire. Two women who would have stood on those walls and protected thiscity. Two women who weren’t expecting to be burned alive by their own people. And you’re saying that’s all right?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Rist drew a calming breath, exhaling through his nostrils.
“Then whatareyou saying?”
“I’m saying that it’s not always so simple.”
“It’s as simple as you make it.” Neera pulled her arms free from around Rist and turned the other way, placing her back against his.
“Wait… What just happened?” Rist twisted in the bed, the back of Neera’s head visible in the dim moonlight that drifted through the window. “How… Ah, fuck it.”
He turned back around, shuffled his pillow, and closed his eyes. He was too tired for this.
Chapter 29
All Great Things
12thDay of the Blood Moon
Elkenrim – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
The fog spreadfor miles in all directions, swallowing hills and trees and streams, like a great beast of the gods. It moved with an unnatural creep, tendrils of grey snaking across the ground. Eltoar had never seen anything of its like until the Battle of the Three Sisters. It rose hundreds of feet from the ground, crashing against an invisible ceiling as though hemmed in by a sheet of glass.
In the days since his return to Elkenrim, he and Voranur had tracked the fog’s movement from dragonback while the armies had dispatched scouts along the adjacent hillsides to watch for any advance elven forces. Lyina had not been happy to hear she would be kept from the fight to come, but her mood had shifted when she’d realised she was being sent to intercept Irulaian and Dravír off the Antiquar coast. Neither Draleid nor dragon hadbeen present at the Three Sisters when Pellenor and Meranta had fallen, but that mattered little to Lyina. Vengeance was vengeance, and she would have hers. But she was unpredictable at present, and Eltoar needed predictable in the defence of Elkenrim.
Rise.
At Eltoar’s thought, Helios angled his wings, and the great dragon swept upwards, the force pulling at Eltoar’s shoulders, the wind whistling through the slits in his helmet.
The sun was already half-sunken over the mountains in the west as Helios ascended, the light of the Blood Moon tinting the landscape in a deep red. The soft glow of hundreds of lanterns spread across Elkenrim’s twin walls, and more again illuminated the staked trench that had been dug around the city’s perimeter.
The elven army would be at the gates by the time night had fully taken hold. But what Eltoar still couldn’t understand was why. Something didn’t sit right with him. Honour and glory were one thing, but neither Vandrien nor Salara were fools. The Lorian armies gathered at Elkenrim contained two and a half thousand Battlemages between them, augmented by the Blood Moon. That force was bolstered by another hundred thousand trained soldiers if the garrison and the reinforcements from Catagan and Merchant’s Reach were included. Even with their dragons, any elven victory would be a pyrrhic one.
The thought led Eltoar to only two possible conclusions. Either Vandrien and Salara had lost their minds, or there was something he didn’t know. The latter was far more likely.
He had known the force shown at the Three Sisters was but a fraction of the elven power. But how large truly was their host? A hundred thousand? Two? Three? If that were the case, Elkenrim’s defenders would need the blessings of every god to prevail.
There was always the possibility that the eight dragons he’d counted at Darnírin’s Hill were not the entirety of those kept hidden all these years. Though that was less likely. If that number were much larger, the elves would not be hiding in the fog.
Eltoar filled his lungs as Helios banked left and swerved towards the city, Seleraine swooping from above to hold level at Helios’s right wing.
“What do you think?” Voranur called from his soulkin’s back, threads of Air carrying his voice.
“That there is something we are missing.”
“Agreed.”
“Make for the city.”
Night had descendedby the time the wall of fog stopped moving a hundred or so feet beyond the trench that ringed Elkenrim’s outer wall. Even the light from the many lanterns at the trench’s edge failed to pierce the opaque grey.
Eltoar clasped his hands behind his back, looking on from the battlements as a number of elves in gold and red stepped from the fog and marched to the trench. One drove a banner into the ground. The golden stag of Lunithír, illuminated by lanternlight, rippled in the night’s breeze.
“I don’t see Vandrien.” Voranur rested his hand on the pommel of his sword.
