“Arissen!” She screams his name aloud.
The creature has raised its arms in triumph and is howling with glee when the first arrow pierces it through its right eye and knocks it backward a step. It tears the arrow free, heedless of the pain, but a second arrow spits its throat and a third buries itself deep in the hairy chest. Eliasson is fitting another arrow to his bow when the creature staggers and sinks to the earth and does not move again.
Simralin is fighting to reach the King, but she is already too late. The last of the Home Guards are cut down, and the once-men fall on Arissen Belloruus like wolves. The King disappears beneath the swarm and does not reappear.
There is nothing Simralin can do. She backs away, calling the rest of the Elves to her, those she can still see amid the carnage, those who are still standing. Maybe half are able to reach her, breaking clear of their attackers. The rest are lost in seconds, buried in the monstrous swarm of bodies that converge on them and bear them to the earth.
She retreats into the rocks with those who remain alive, and they turn their weapons on their attackers. There are so many of them by now that it is virtually impossible not to hit something, and dozens collapse as they surge toward the defenders.
“What do we do?” Chenowyn shouts in her ear.
Indeed. What is there to do? The King is dead and with him almost the whole of his command. Kirisin is safely away, and there is nothing left for the Elves who remain but to fight to save their own lives. A reasonable choice, but flight seems the better option.
“Fall back!” she shouts.
She leads them up into the rocks, through the narrow defiles and rugged terrain, knowing the best ways to go to keep the enemy from massing in pursuit. They may come after the Elves—indeed, they almost certainly will—but they will have to do it in ones and twos. That gives the Elves a chance. There are fewer than fifty of them now, and once they manage to put some distance between themselves and their pursuers, they can go to ground, can find places to hide where they will never be found.
But first they must get clear of the fighting.
For a time, it appears they will. The passage they follow is riddled with dead ends and side trails that go back the way they have come, and if you didn’t know the way, as she did, you would become quickly lost. Their pursuit falls away and then disappears entirely. They continue to climb into the mountains, and she knows that when they reach the high desert beyond, they will be able to use the ravines and ridgelines to hide themselves as they make their way eastward. They will not turn south until they are safely clear of the roads that Kirisin and Logan will have taken. Those roads are too easily discovered, and they would be run down before they reached Redonnelin Deep. Better to fade into the barren landscape beyond, where trails are much harder to find and tracks may be more easily disguised.
“We’ve lost them,” Chenowyn declares with a grin after they have crested the mountains and can see the eastern slopes and the desert beyond.
Indeed, they have. But the demons that control the army have thought ahead to this and sent winged creatures to track them. The creatures swoop down in attack not a mile beyond the rim, when they are still descending the exposed rocky slopes of the higher elevations. They rip and tear at the Elves, who try in vain to protect themselves. The winged creatures are swift and their strikes precise. Several of the Elves are wounded and one is killed before their attackers fly back the way they have come.
Simralin knows what will happen next, and there is no defense against it if they stay together.
“We must separate into smaller groups,” she tells them. “No more than half a dozen each. Then we must fan out and go to ground. The winged things will guide the once-men to where we are, if we give them the chance. We do better by separating. Stay hidden until nightfall, then make your way north to the river. Track it east until you find the camp or signs of its passage. Track it from there to those who will be helping Kirisin.”
They embrace, all of them, before setting out. They do not know which of them will survive this. Some will not. Some will never be seen again.