“What do you want with me?” he asked, his voice surprising her with its total lack of fear.
“I won’t hurt you,” she replied, suddenly angry when the elf smiled slightly in response.
“Move, you!” grunted one of the guards, stepping in front of his companion and waving his blade past Kith-Kanan’s face.
Kith-Kanan reached forward with the speed of a striking snake, seizing the guard’s wrist as the blade veered away from his face. Holding the man’s hand, the elf kicked him sharply in the groin. The swordsman gasped and collapsed. His companion, the warrior who had slain the elf in the tent, gaped in momentary shock—a moment that proved to be his last. Kith pulled the blade from the fallen guard’s hand and, in the same motion, drove the point into the swordsman’s throat. He died, his jaw soundlessly working in an effort to articulate his shock.
The dead guard’s helmet toppled off as he fell, allowing his long blond hair to spill free when he collapsed, face first, on the ground.
Kith lowered the blade, ready to thrust it through the neck of the groaning man he had kicked. Then something stayed his hand, and he merely admonished the guard to be silent with a persuasive press of the blade against the man’s throat.
Turning to the one he had slain, Kith looked at the body curiously. Suzine hadn’t moved. She watched him in fascination, scarcely daring to breathe, as he brushed the blond hair aside with the toe of his boot.
The ear that was revealed was long and pointed.
“Do you have many elves in your army?” he asked.
“No—not many,” Suzine said quickly. “They are mostly from the ranks of traders and farmers who have lived in Ergoth and desire a homeland on the plains.”
Kith looked sharply at Suzine. There was something about this human woman. . .
She stood still, paralyzed not so much by fear for herself as by dismay. He was about to escape, to leave her!
“I thank you for inadvertently saving my life,” he said before darting toward the corner of a nearby tent.
“I know who you are!” she said, her voice a bare whisper. He stopped again, torn between the need to escape and increasing curiosity about this woman and her knowledge.
“Thank you, too, then, for keeping the secret,” he said, with a short bow. “Why did you ... ”
She wanted to tell him that she had watched him for a long time, had all but lain beside him, through the use of her mirror. Suzine looked at him now, and he was more glorious, prouder, and taller than she had ever imagined. She wanted to ask him to take her away with him—right now—but, instead, her mouth froze, her mind locked by terror.
In another moment, he had disappeared. It was several moments longer before she finally found the voice to scream.
The elation Kith-Kanan felt at his escape dissipated as quickly as the gates of Sithelbec shut behind him and enclosed him within the sturdy walls of the fortress. His stolen horse, staggering from exhaustion, stumbled to a halt, and the elf swung to the ground.
He wondered, through his weariness, about the human woman who had given him his chance to flee. The picture of her face, crowned by that glory of red hair, remained indelibly burned into his mind. He wondered if he would ever see her again.
Around him loomed the high walls, with the pointed logs arrayed along the top. Below these, he saw the faces of his warriors. Several raised a halfhearted cheer at his return, but the shock of defeat hung over the Wildrunners like a heavy pall.
Sithelbec had grown rapidly in the last year, sprawling across the surrounding plain until it covered a circle more than a mile in diameter. The central keep of the fortress was a stone structure of high towers, soaring to needlelike spires in the elven fashion. Around this keep clustered a crowded nest of houses, shops, barracks, inns, and other buildings, all within other networks of walls, blockhouses, and battle platforms.
Expanding outward through a series of concentric palisades, mostly of wood, the fortress protected a series of wells within its walls, ensuring a steady supply of water. Food—mostly grain—had been stockpiled in huge barns and silos. Supplies of arrows and flammable oil, stored in great vats, had been collected along the walls’ tops. The greater part of Kith-Kanan’s army, through the alert withdrawal under Parnigar, had reached the shelter of those ramparts.
Yet as the Army of Ergoth moved in to encircle the fortress, the Wildrunners could only wait.
Now Kith-Kanan walked among them, making his way to the small office and quarters he maintained in the gatehouse of the central keep. He felt the tension, the fear that approached despair, as he looked at the wide, staring eyes of his warriors.
And even more than the warriors, there were the women and children. Many of the women were human, their children half-elves, wives and offspring of the western elves who made up the Wildrunners. Kith shared their sorrow as deeply as he felt that of the elven females who were here in even greater numbers.
They would all be eating short rations, he knew. The siege would inevitably last into the autumn, and he had little doubt the humans could sustain the pressure through the winter and beyond.
As he looked at the young ones, Kith felt a stab of pain. He wondered how many of them would see spring.
6
Lord Quimant came to Sithas in the Hall of Audience. His wife’s cousin brought another elf—a stalwart-looking fellow, with lines of soot set firmly in his face, and the strapping, sinewy arms of a powerful wrestler—to see the Speaker of the Stars.
Sithas sat upon his emerald throne and watched the approaching pair. The Speaker’s green robe flowed around him, collecting the light of the throne and diffusing it into a soft glow that seemed to surround him. He reclined casually in the throne, but he remained fully alert.
Alert, in that his mind was working quickly. Yet his thoughts were many hundreds of miles and years away.
Weeks earlier, he had received a letter from Kencathedrus describing Kith-Kanan’s capture and presumed loss. That had been followed, barely two days later, by a missive from his brother himself, describing a harrowing escape: the battle with guards, the theft of a fleet horse, a mad dash from the encampment, and finally a chase that ended only after Kith-Kanan had led his pursuers to within arrow range of the great fortress of Sithelbec. Sithelbec—named for his father, the former Speaker of the Stars. Many times Sithas had reflected on the irony, for his father had been slain on a hunting trip, practically within sight of the fortress’s walls. As far as Sithas knew, it had been his father’s first and only expedition to the western plains. Yet Sithel had been willing to go to war over those plains, to put the nation’s future at stake because of them. And now Sithas, his firstborn, had inherited that struggle. Would he live up to his father’s expectations?
Reluctantly Sithas forced his mind back to the present, to his current location. He cast his eyes around his surroundings to force the transition in his thoughts. A dozen elven guards, in silver breastplates and tall, plumed helmets, snapped their halberds to attention around the periphery of the hall. They stood impassive and silent as the noble lord marched toward the throne. Otherwise the great hall, with its gleaming marble floor and the ceiling towering six hundred feet overhead, was empty.
Sithas looked at Quimant. The elven noble wore a long cloak of black over a silk tunic of light green. Tights of red, and soft, black boots, completed his ensemble.
Lord Quimant of Oakleaf was a very handsome elf indeed. But he was also intelligent, quick-witted, and alert to many threats and opportunities that might otherwise have missed Sithas’s notice.
“This is my nephew,” the lord explained. “Ganrock Ethu, master smith. I recommend him, my Speaker, for the position of palace smith. He is shrewd, quick to learn, and a very hard worker.”