"The waiting is not easy, is it?" whispered a voice behind her.
The Lady Morgwais, sometimes known as the Lady of the Wood, shared the large platform with her. She was beautiful and graceful, with long auburn hair and a copper-red complexion that made her seem half a dryad. She had asked Gaerradh to stay close by her in the large tree near the village's center, along with half a dozen more sharpshooters and mages. In better times their perch served as the hall of the village elders, the largest structure in Rheitheillaethor's canopy, but the wood elves had fitted new screens and camouflaging panels to make the hall into a hidden redoubt high above the forest floor.
Gaerradh did not take her eyes from the woodlands to the northeast.
"I don't like meeting them in the village, Lady Morgwais," she replied. "I do not mean to question your judgment, but I can't help but think we would be better off in the open forest, where we could ambush and melt away from pursuit. I fear being trapped."
Morgwais frowned and said, "I think you might have found these orcs and their bat-winged allies more difficult to ambush than you think. They have held to their course and kept on toward the village, despite our illusions, enchantments, and our scouts' efforts to decoy them away. I suspect that they have some skilled wizards among them, someone who can dispel our defenses and divine a path to our village."
Gaerradh glanced around at that and said, "If they are using magic to sniff us out, then maybe we shouldn't be here at all!"
"Rheitheillaethor is no more or less significant than any other place in the forest," the noblewoman replied, "but it's as good a place as any to try our enemies' strength. And it might not hurt to teach these new foes that searching out our homes and marching on them will not be as easy as they think."
A soft owl's cry came from the night beyond the village, answered by another.
"They're here," Gaerradh whispered.
Other elves nearby repeated the warning. Gaerradh crouched back down in her chosen spot and unlimbered her bow.
She heard the orcs before she saw them. The brutish creatures were holding their tongues, but their armor clinked and jingled softly, and their sandaled feet crunched and scuffled in the thin snow and leafy debris of the forest floor. She spied the leaders, a handful of scouts and skirmishers trotting warily before their fellows, crouching and stooping as they moved from cover to cover. Behind them came a ragged line of berserkers, the champions of the tribe-powerful warriors who disdained armor, wearing little other than broad leather belts and dirty breeches, huge axes gripped in their hairy hands. After the berserkers came long, dark files of orc warriors creeping through the shadows. It was a large warband, bigger than any raiding party Gaerradh had ever seen before.
They know enough to be wary of the trees, she thought, watching the gleam of their yellow eyes as they peered into the dark branches of the weirwoods, shields held high by their heads. But where are the others, the demons with elves' faces?
Almost directly below their tree, a pair of the scouts halted, looking up into the darkness. The rest of the orcs continued forward, but from below Gaerradh heard a wet snuffling sound.
They smell us, she realized.
She started to signal to Morgwais, but the Lady of the Wood simply said, "Now."
Five dozen wood elf archers fired as one, sending arrow after arrow plunging down into the orc company below. orcs screamed and bellowed, some roaring in rage, others gurgling out awful death cries as they spun or sagged into the snow. Gaerradh shifted her position and fired straight down the bole of her tree at the scouts below, taking the first one in the throat as he looked up at her, and the second high between the shoulders as he scrambled back looking for cover.
The first volleys were devastating, scything through the orc ranks with merciless efficiency. The elf archers above did not speak or shout, but bowstrings thrummed like harps and arrows hissed in the air like angry serpents. orc after orc fell, plucking at arrows buried in chests and necks. Others quickly covered down beneath their shields, forming turtle-like knots of a dozen or more warriors crowding together to make their shields into an impenetrable wall. Even as she plied her bow with deadly skill, Gaerradh saw one of the orc shield-knots blown apart by the lightning spell of an elf mage hidden overhead. Thunder boomed in the village clearing.
"Beware the war priests!" Morgwais called to the elves in the redoubt.
Gaerradh caught the guttural sound of orc shamans chanting spells. She held her fire, searching quickly for the spellcasters. Few orcs ever studied wizardly magic, but priests devoted to the dark and savage gods of their race often accompanied the warbands. She spotted one fellow, a chanting war priest with the ceremonial eye patch worn by the servants of one-eyed Gruumsh. She aimed carefully and shot him through his remaining eye, cutting off his chant in mid-syllable.
Other chanting voices shrieked and fell off as priests fell wounded or dead. But enough of the clerics lived long enough to cast their spells together. Barking out the last words of the chant, the priests gestured and shouted.
Dense white fog filled the forest floor, rolling away from each shaman and covering the orcs below from the elves' arrows. Gaerradh peered at the ground below, but all she could make out were roiling clouds of white mist, out of which rose the black boles of Rheitheillaethor's weirwoods like pillars in a great hall. She glimpsed movement here and there, dark shapes flitting below, but nothing she could shoot at.
Morgwais joined her in leaning out carefully to study the fog below.
"Damn," she whispered. "That was a good idea. These orcs are far too clever and determined for my comfort."
"Do we have any spellcasters to dispel the mist?" Gaerradh asked.
"Yes. But they anticipated our attack from above. They'll have a counter ready. Still, we should try. We need to see them to shoot them."
Morgwais dropped back down to the main platform and started to give her commands.
Flickering orange light filled the forest as a dozen burning globes of fire appeared above the canopy and streaked down toward the elves' fighting platforms with a rumbling crackle of magic. Gaerradh glanced up to see one of the great spinning orbs heading straight at her perch.
"Fireballs!" she screamed.
She threw herself down to the main platform only a heartbeat before the globe struck where she had been kneeling and detonated. The mighty weirwood trembled in the blast as a huge gout of scathing red fire blasted through the elven house, shattering light screens and snapping the smaller limbs. Gaerradh turned her face away from the blast and cowered beneath her cloak. Pain seared her exposed limbs, and the impact picked her up and threw her back down to the wooden deck.
Elf voices shrieked in pain around her. One of the sharpshooters with whom she'd shared the post toppled out of the tree, wrapped in flame like a living torch. He plunged into the mist below like a meteor. Fires burned in many of the hidden tree blinds.
They used the orcs to learn our positions, Gaerradh realized. They got above us and watched us fire at their allies, and when they spotted our blinds, they threw their spells. How many spellcasters are up there? A dozen? Maybe more?
The orcs below whooped in delight at the burning trees and elves' screams. The weirwoods didn't burn easily- they were guarded with protective spells, and were not naturally inclined to burn anyway-but shadowtops were a different story, and several of the towering giants were alight despite the winter weather and the damp.