The splintered bones of the lost patrol stood out white in the gathering dusk. Grasht kicked at half a skull and spat on the ground.
“Told you!” he said. “The Valenar aren’t going to leave masterwork armor lying around. This is pointless!”
Mordan scanned the wreckage. “Not entirely,” he said. “Now we know what happened to them.”
Kalla looked up from the edge of the debris. “Valenar horses, for sure,” she said. “See how long the strides are? They came in from that way, surrounded the patrol. Seven of them. Five elves for sure. The other two didn’t dismount so I can’t tell. Looks like a couple were wounded, but not badly. They headed back over there.” She pointed to a low ridge on the horizon. “Their hoofprints are a little deeper going away, like they were carrying something.”
“There goes the armor,” muttered Cardel. Grasht shot him an I-told-you-so look. Mordan nodded his thanks to Kalla and walked over to where Dern was tossing scraps of dried meat to his glidewing.
The troopers began gathering up the bones without waiting for an order. They were all familiar with the task. Cardel hummed as he worked—a patriotic Karrnathi song about the glory of the dead who rose again to serve their country. The others ignored him.
Grasht, as usual, was complaining. If Fort Bones needed more material for its walls, he muttered to himself, he’d be happy to kill a bunch of recruits and use their bones instead. Then they wouldn’t have to come all the way out here, and he’d have something to eat into the bargain. No one had ever actually seen him eat a human, but he liked to play the savage half-orc.
His grumbling was cut short by a yelp of pain as an arrow caught him in the shoulder. Mordan whirled to see seven Valenar raiders bearing down on them. He cursed Dern for not having spotted them and drew his longsword.
The glidewing leaped into the air as the troopers scrambled to their steeds. Facing a charge of Valenar cavalry was bad enough while mounted. No one wanted to be caught on foot.
Vaulting into the saddle, Mordan edged his mount into line with the others. He drew his longsword and waited, trying to judge which of the Valenar would be closest to him when the charge hit. Beside him, Grasht had pulled the arrow from his shoulder and was hefting his greatsword. The others closed ranks. Kalla had begun to shift, extending her claws and crouching on her saddle, ready to leap at the first elf that came near. Brager was fumbling with his crossbow. Cardel was already aiming.
The elves loosed a volley of arrows at full gallop. A couple rattled off the bones of the undead horses, but none struck the riders. Cardel replied with a shot from his heavy crossbow. It struck deep into the thigh of one of the elves, who winced but kept riding.
Dern’s glidewing swooped low above the charging Valenar, but the horses ignored it; trained for war, they would not spook so easily. As the winged reptile pulled up into a sharp turn, Dern reached behind him into a saddlebag.
Brager had finally loaded his crossbow and loosed a bolt at the Valenar leader, but it glanced off his mailed shoulder. The elves stowed their bows in back-holsters and drew the distinctive Valenar double scimitars. Their leader held a slim and deadly-looking rapier straight forward from his shoulder as he gave his warcry.
A few yards before impact, Dern’s glidewing swooped low over the elves once more. The halfling had one hand on the reins, and a bola spun in the other. The glidewing banked sharply as Dern flung the bola, entangling the legs of one of the Valenar horses. It crashed to the ground, pitching its rider from the saddle.
Mordan twisted his mount to the side, parrying a slashing blade and chopping at his attacker’s arm. From the corner of his eye, he saw Grasht countercharge the Valenar, knocking one of the elves from his horse with a sweep of his greatsword. Kalla threw herself at another of the elves, dodging his blade and dragging him to the ground.
With the impact of the charge spent, Mordan felt safe to dismount. Garn and Grasht did the same, but Cardel and Brager remained mounted, circling the melee and loosing their crossbows from a distance. An elf slashed down at him. Mordan dodged, responding with an upward thrust that caught the rider just beneath the ribs. Dropping his double scimitar, the elf clutched his side. A second slash bit into the elf’s thigh, jarring against bone. He fell from the saddle.
Looking round for a fresh enemy, Mordan saw Garn standing with her back to her skeletal pony, her paired maces smeared with blood. A fallen elf lay at her feet, and another was approaching her cautiously, his double scimitar weaving a complex series of arcs in the air. Focused on this opponent, she was unaware of the Valenar leader behind her. His gray cloak was flung over one shoulder to clear his sword arm, and his rapier was drawn.
Mordan shouted a warning and started to run, but the dwarf was too far away. Before he could reach her, the rapier struck at her pony. It collapsed into a pile of bones, exposing her back; a split second later her eyes widened in pain, fading as she looked down at the bloody tip of the rapier protruding from her chest.
With a cry, Mordan cut down the elf trooper, swatting one blade of the double scimitar aside and plunging his longsword into the elf’s chest. Wrenching the blade free, he stepped over the elf’s body and faced the Valenar leader.
The battle raging around them seemed to recede as the two regarded each other. The elf leader was tall and well-built, with silver eyes and an expression of arrogant amusement. A gem gleamed in the hilt of his rapier—perhaps a dragonshard, Mordan thought. The weapon must be enchanted to drop an undead pony with a single blow. The cloak was probably magical as well—elven cloaks were famed for their ability to conceal their wearer in any terrain. Along with his fine mail and the elaborate gold brooch that secured his cloak, it was clear that the Valenar leader was an individual of wealth and position.
Mordan was unarmored, and the elf no doubt took this for foolishness, or perhaps a concession to the summer heat of the plains. But Mordan had been fighting the Valenar long enough to know that the key to victory was speed rather than protection.
He struck an overhand blow at the elf’s head, stepping back out of the range of the rapier when his opponent parried the blow. The arrogance faded from the elf’s face. He had not expected a human to strike the first blow or to attack so swiftly. With a nod, the elf raised his rapier to the ready position, and the two circled each other.
The elf tried to distract Mordan with a sweep of his cloak, but Mordan twisted aside from the probing rapier that followed it. He feinted to the left before bringing his sword back in a fast slash to the right that forced the elf to jump backward.
After a few probing attacks, the Valenar swept with his cloak again. Mordan ignored it, preparing to dodge the thrust he knew would follow. But he was wrong. Under the cover of his cloak, the elf had drawn a broad-bladed dagger with his left hand. Seeing the flash of the blade, Mordan sidestepped a blow that would have struck his sword hand, but the Valenar was one move ahead of him. A backhanded slash of the dagger struck his left wrist hard, sending a jarring pain the length of his arm.
Gritting his teeth against he shock of the wound, Mordan glanced down. His left hand lay on the ground twitching. Blood pumped out of the stump of his wrist. His vision was starting to blur. He had only a few seconds to act.
A feint with his longsword forced his opponent further to his left. The elf watched his blade, ignoring the maimed left arm. That was his mistake. Twisting aside from a rapier thrust, Mordan slammed the bleeding arm against the Valenar’s own wrist. There was a small flare of black energy, accompanied by a brief sizzling sound, and the elf yelped in surprise, momentarily off-balance. In that instant, Mordan stepped inside the elf’s reach and spun round, reversing his sword and stabbing backward at the exposed torso. His longsword pierced the elf’s mail coat, and he heard a grunt of surprise that turned into a soft, bubbling wheeze as the elf collapsed.