Less than thirty yards away, Eladamri saw Crovax striding about, shouting and waving his sword. The rebel leader simply watched Crovax rave.
"Will you fight him?" Gallan asked.
"Look at him," Eladamri said. "He's utterly mad."
"He's the enemy commander. Why don't you kill him?"
Eladamri leaned on his spear shaft. "Did you see what he did? He fell from his animal, wallowed in the fire and got up, unhurt. He's not flesh and blood-he's been altered, like Volrath. He's not going to fall to a snakefang spear." He laid his spear on his shoulder. "It's time we put an end to this battle. Lord Crovax will have to wait another day to die."
Eladamri put a hand to his mouth and uttered a loud, trilling cry. It was echoed by the throats of a thousand elves along the battle line. The sound halted Crovax's futile ranting, and he turned his back on the elves, walking swiftly back to his singed and shaken troops.
Elves circled wide around the western flank of the burning camp. There Darsett waited with over four hundred Dal in full battle gear. Beside him was Tant Jova and the main Vec force, three hundred strong, most armed with Rathi weapons scrounged from Crovax's fallen soldiers. Eladamri whacked Darsett on the back and clasped hands with Tant Jova.
"Time to wash our spears in enemy blood," he said.
The three rebel elements swept forward, shouting, screaming, banging their weapons on their shields. To the Rathi infantry, it seemed as if an entirely new enemy force sprang out of the darkness and hurled itself on them. The flustered Stronghold troops formed a hollow square and fended off waves of rebel attacks, the dead and wounded piling up deeper each time a fresh attack broke over them. Moggs outside the infantry squares were slaughtered in great numbers. Gradually, the exhausted Rathi line was pushed backward, changing from a square to a narrow triangle. Eladamri kept the pressure on all through the night while segments of his force were sent away to safety in the forest. The Hub wind died before daybreak, and the fire went out. The camp was a heap of cinders. Of the ten thousand soldiers who arrived on the edge of the Skyshroud the night before, two thousand were dead or dying, and another three thousand were wounded. Only a few hundred moggs could be found. Crovax had lost over half his army in a single battle.
Eladamri was not in a celebratory mood. With far slenderer resources, his loses numbered just over one hundred elves, three dozen Dal, and nearly two hundred of Tant Jova's Vec nomads killed. No rich haul of captured weapons could be expected following the all-consuming fire.
He blamed himself, and he blamed Cardamel for ruining his trap. "Another six hours and we could've had them all," he stormed at the post-battle council deep in the forest. "Not just their lives but all their weapons and supplies too! That's what your little adventure cost us, Cardamel."
The young elf, who lost a hand in the fight, said nothing. Tant Jova tried to calm Eladamri. "We have beaten them in open battle for the first time, my brother," she said. "Their new commander, Crovax, is disgraced. There's no one to lead them now. We've gained time as well as a victory-time we can parley into a bigger and better army."
The aged Vec matriarch shuffled to the center of the tree house. "Another thing, perhaps most important of all-I have this morning received a summons from the Oracle en-Vec. She has tidings, she says, of the Korvecdal."
The Korvecdal was the fabled deliverer of Vec prophecy, a hero who would overthrow the Stronghold and lead the peoples of Rath to freedom. When Weatherlight came to Rath there was talk that her captain, Gerrard Capashen, was the Korvecdal. No one thought so now, as he'd left in his flying ship, and the Stronghold was unbowed.
Every eye in the room turned to Eladamri. Eladamri sighed deeply. He'd won an expensive victory, and his first thought was the preservation of his army. Holy prophets were not his concern.
"We'll withdraw to Korai," he said, rubbing the smoke from his eyes. "There we can take stock of our losses and maybe gain a glimpse of the future."
CHAPTER 9
VICTIMS
The operation began at sunrise. It was not going well. It should have taken a few hours to cull hostages from the leading families of the Dal, the Vec, and the Kor, but as Dorian il-Dal stood on a broken wall in the ruined city quarter, studying his timepiece, he saw the roundup was entering its eighth hour. It would take longer still to get things recorded properly.
Greven descended on the crater with two thousand soldiers and as many moggs. He had a list of names drawn up by Dorian and his fellow courtiers, and he had to go house to house to find the people he wanted. Quotas called for no less than two thousand hostages from each group. Word quickly spread about the roundup, and finding the listed hostages got harder and harder. There were scuffles but no real fighting. Most of the hostages were quietly anxious or stubbornly sullen, but few offered open resistance.
Lines of captives, sorted by family and race, marched four abreast out of the City of Traitors under the Stronghold to the ruins beyond. Soldiers lined the way with arms ported.
"If I put whips in the hands of my moggs, the lines would move faster," Greven mused.
Dorian was horrified. "You can't do that! Moggs whipping the evincar's subjects! They'll riot-they'll rebel."
"Easy, old man," Greven said. "This job's about stopping a rebellion, not starting one. I was just thinking like a soldier." Thinking like a savage, Dorian thought. So the chamberlain stood on a tumbled-down wall with a trio of scribes below him, totting up the people as they trudged by. Each list was checked against Greven's master list to make certain the exact number from each group was represented. In an operation like this, Dorian stressed, no one race should be seen as being favored by the authorities. The resentment thus caused would undo the salutary lesson of taking hostages in the first place.
Greven turned away from surveying the operation. "What's the count?"
Dorian slapped his secretaries on the shoulder in turn. "One thousand, three hundred and forty-four of the Dal," said the first.
"One thousand, two hundred and eighty-nine of the Vec," said the second.
"Eight hundred and seventy-five of the Kor," added the third.
"Why so few Kor?"
"They're more elusive," Dorian said. "I've had reports that Kor from outside the Stronghold have not been taken at all." "The Fishers of Life?"
The chamberlain consulted a scroll. "Yes, that's the clan. How did you know?"
Greven didn't answer. Instead he asked, "Have the holding areas been prepared?"
"Such as they are. If we have to hold these people more than a few days, they'll not stand for the conditions here."
"They'll stand for what they're told to stand for," Greven snapped. He signaled his escort to form up. He wanted to see the holding area himself.
At the far edge of the ruins, near the city moat, three large squares had been cleared by mogg laborers. Rough walls made from the debris of fallen houses were piled up to create crude stockades. Each stockade had a single entrance. Hostages were marched into the stockades according to their race.
Some hours passed, and the lines began to thin. Eventually
Dorian and his secretaries appeared with the soldiers who'd been driving the lines forward. The chamberlain looked happy.
Greven turned his eyes to Dorian. "What's the final count?"
"We made up the Kor tally. A whole band of them arrived at the last minute," Dorian said under his breath. "The quota is within 20 persons of being prefect."
"Where are the Kor?"
"There, at the end of the line. They turned themselves in."
"What!"
Dorian shrugged. "They appeared on their own behind the escort detachment. One of them spoke to me and asked to be added to the tally."