The Puppet King by Douglas Niles

Author:Douglas Niles [Puppet King, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2014-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

A Night of Glory and Blood

The outlaws found Palthainon on the muddy field. His hair had been seared off by a dragon’s lightning bolt that had also knocked the warrior elf unconscious, but other than that, the general was unharmed.

The same could not be said for two of his three companies of recruits. Nearly four hundred elves had been caught in the clearing when the blue serpents had flown over, and nearly three-quarters of them had been slaughtered by dragon breath or by the talons of the monsters and the swords of their riders.

Only the elves of the first company—the group that, ironically, would have been the first to suffer the lethal strike of Porthios’s aborted ambush—had survived unscathed, by taking shelter in the thick woods that would otherwise have been their undoing. Though these city elves had tumbled among archers who had been prepared to attack them, both bands of the sylvan folk had been so startled by the arrival of the greater foe that their initial conflict had been immediately forgotten.

Fortunately the dragons hadn’t stayed long after working their butchery on the field. Neither had they discovered the outlaws’ griffons, who had been sheltered in small clearings very near the site of the intended ambush. Now these savage fliers had been gathered, and the survivors of the Qualinesti force had joined with the bandits preparatory to falling back into the forest. General Palthainon was still dazed and disoriented, so Porthios had assumed command of all the elves.

“Get the wounded back to our camp,” he directed. “See that the general is made as comfortable as possible, but don’t waste any time.”

“Lord Porthios!” The cry came from the skies, and the shadow of a griffon’s wings momentarily passed over. One of his Qualinesti warriors gestured wildly as the creature came to rest before him.

“There’s a whole army to the north. It’s a full-scale invasion!”

“All under the banner of the Dark Queen?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“Knights, and columns of marching troops as well—great, blue-skinned brutes, they look like they could crush an elf’s skull with their bare hands. It looks like the dragons are winging back to rejoin the infantry.”

Porthios didn’t know where this army could have come from, but the attack on the elven formation made its objective clear enough. “How far away are the ground troops?” he asked, trying to think, to plan.

“Twenty miles. They’re finding slow going in the woods, but they’re coming this way.”

“Let’s get away from here, then. We’ll make plans as soon as we reach the gorge.”

Together with about three hundred survivors from the Qualinesti militia, the outlaw band made its way back to the encampment. Because so many elves had to travel on foot, the journey took quite a bit longer than the one-hour griffon flight that had led the band to the ambush site. The wounded were loaded onto litters, which further slowed down the party’s progress, and it wasn’t until well after sunset that the weary elves marched down the trail into the deep darkness of the cool gorge.

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