Ulakan collided head on with something and bounced off, falling back. Just like he’d run headlong into a wall. Two paces later, Nillis suffered the same fate. He bloodied his nose on the invisible barrier, jarred one wrist and snapped his stave. He sat down hard on his backside and looked over at Ulakan. His friend was staring at him, disbelieving. Ulakan got up. A single pace this time and the barrier was there.
Ulakan reached out to touch it. Nillis did likewise. It felt like nothing. Not metal, nor wood. He couldn’t describe it. But it was moving as the men moved. Nillis backed off fast. He turned, ran back to the crowd. Men were closing in all around them. A dozen of them, all with their arms outstretched, pushing the barriers before them.
More and more Tuali tried their luck only to bounce off the implacable blockades. Elves were screaming. In their panic, Tuali iad and ula flung themselves at the invisible barriers again and again. Blood smeared faces and hands. Knuckles were raw. Nillis and Ulakan stood shoulder to shoulder. Ulakan’s parents were behind them. All of them backed off pace by pace as the walls closed in.
Nillis fought to believe what was happening. He knew it was real. He could feel the barrier right in front of his nose but still it confused him and part of him felt his mind was playing tricks.
‘We’re in big trouble here,’ said Ulakan, his confidence gone and real fear in his eyes. ‘What if they don’t stop pressing?’
There was no space. Tuali were crammed hard against each other. The heat inside was rising. Nillis’s arms were down by his sides and he had no way of raising them. Bit by bit, they were being squeezed. The screams and cries to stop grew louder in the confined space. Prayers to Yniss and Tual were chanted.
Nillis tried to turn his body and found he could not. Ulakan next to him was being crushed back and front. His breathing was coming in short gasps. Behind Nillis, someone passed out, their body leaning against his, unable to fall.
Abruptly, the movement ceased. Indeed the pressure eased just a fraction. People could breathe again. Literally. Nillis watched the warrior men move to stand in a ring just behind the others. One took a single pace forwards. His speech, heavily accented, was in reasonable common elvish.
‘You will drop any weapons you hold. Then we will give you more space. You will then lose any weapons you carry in scabbards, belts, boots. We will then release the barrier and you will be our prisoners.’
Iad and ula hurried to obey. Weapons hit the ground with thuds and clatters. The man shouted in his own language and was answered by several others, all with what sounded like an affirmative. The unarmed men drew back their arms a little, giving the Tuali glorious space. Nillis flexed his arms and rolled his shoulders. The ula who had fainted behind him was helped to the ground and tended. At least six others that Nillis could count were in similar states.
‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Now, any other weapons. We are watching you.’
Nillis took both of his knives from his belt and dropped them to the ground to join the thickening carpet of weapons. Ulakan hesitated.
‘Don’t be stupid, Ulak,’ said Nillis. ‘Now is not the time for your sort of bravery.’
‘We can’t just surrender. It’s just giving ourselves up to the Ynissul.’
‘Live today, fight tomorrow,’ said Nillis. ‘You won’t help anyone by getting stuck by a human blade because you tried to take them on all by yourself.’
Ulakan glared at him then unbuckled his sword belt, on which hung three daggers. He brought a short knife from his boot too and threw it down. He made a show of empty hands to the men outside the barrier.
The one who was apparently their leader, a big heavyset human with a thick beard and a nose squashed over his face, strutted to and fro, nodding and laughing.
‘Fucking sharp-ears,’ he said. ‘You don’t get any smarter, do you?’
Nillis felt cold as the laughter spread around the circle. The man barked another order. The barriers were gone. Warriors charged them.
‘NO!’ screamed Ulakan.
He dropped to his haunches and snatched up his sword. He held it to ready. Nillis, too terrified even to scream, felt warm and wet down his legs and tried to back away to nowhere. The men crashed into the helpless elves. He saw one bat Ulakan’s sword aside and then plunge his blade straight through his chest. Blood fountained into the air.
Bloodied blades rose and fell, chopped and hacked. Elves tried to run in every direction. Men howled in brutal pleasure. Nillis turned around. A blade covered in slimy gore ripped into the neck of an ula standing right in front of him. The elf crashed back on top of him, trapping him.
He stared out at the carnage. Shrieks filled his ears. Laughter too. Prayers turned to sobs and then to nothing. The sick thud of metal on flesh and bone. The desperate pleading, the screams cut off. The awful wounds. Jaws smashed to fragments. Skulls cracked open. Bodies split, entrails pouring on to the ground. The splash of boot through blood. The hot sour stench of shit mixed with innards. Steam rising.
Blood slapped at Nillis’s ear like the gentle incoming tide. The elf lying atop him was still shuddering with the last of his life. A blade came down and hacked deep into his skull and the shuddering stopped. The body slid to one side.
Nillis stared straight into the cruel eyes of a human swordsman.
The man grunted a laugh. His teeth were broken and rotten when he grinned.
His blade rose.
Nillis watched it all the way down.
Chapter 26
Courage lies in the willingness to die for those who are yet to be born. Pelyn had her hands over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Tulan and Ephran had run upstairs to confirm by sight what they had heard. Methian was standing in front of the bedroom door, stopping them from running out to fight.
The slaughter was done. Hundreds of Tualis butchered by men in the service of the Ynissul. Pelyn felt sick. The spray of blood when swords were raised to hack down another youth or helpless ula or iad would remain in her nightmares for eternity. As would the sight of men walking through the charnel, kicking the bodies to make sure all were dead. Chopping down on those still in the final throes.
Others knelt to clean their blades as best they could on blood-soaked clothes before searching pockets and picking up the best of the weapons. Daggers smothered in gore. Short swords kicked from the hands of those who had tried to defend themselves at the last.
‘We can’t just stand here!’ shouted Ephran.
‘And what will you do, the pair of you?’ snapped Methian, shoving them back yet again. ‘Rush out there and take on a hundred men and their bastard magic?’
‘We have to do something,’ said Tulan, weeping his words.
‘We can keep quiet for a start,’ hissed Pelyn, dragging her gaze from the park. ‘And we will do something. We’ll take news of this to any who will hear. And we will strike back, I promise you.’
Pelyn felt empty. Never mind that many of those murdered would have visited equal cruelty on her. This they did not deserve. No elf did. She glanced back outside. Men were gathering, talking and pointing. Immediately, they began to move towards the houses of the Ash. Others were already most of the way to the street.
‘And they don’t want any witnesses,’ said Pelyn. ‘Time to leave.’
The four Al-Arynaar ran down the stairs and headed for the back entrance across the garden. The men were already at the front door, crashing through it. She heard shouts behind her. They’d been seen.