Three Elves climbed down the mountain towards Elitaa. Well, one climbed, one skidded slowly being propped up by the third. As they reached the foot of the mountain, Antar began to help haul Vatren up into the riding hut.
“What happened?” Elitaa asked, watching them like a Pyrelighten Mako Hawk.
G’nar explained to her the fight with the Lootan, then added, “The Kvorn are definitely here and hot on the trail.”
“Where’s M’talek?”
“He’s checking out the house for clues.” Antar stated.
Just then M’talek came running down the rocks toward them. “I’ve got it! Found the clue! Quick, there’s no time to waste, the slimy kvorn could be on their way to Carta’s Great Waterfall already.”
“How do you know it’s Carta’s Great Waterfall?” G’nar asked.
“The Weatherman must’ve seen the Kvorn coming, because I don’t think they captured him.” He told them. “I think he got away, because he left ‘Karta’s Grate Faul, ate daze’ scrawled on the wall, and his cloak was missing. The Kvorn might not be able to directly translate it, but may have worked it out. There’s no time to lose.” M’talek said, heaving to catch his breath.
Vatren, still conscious and until this point silent, looked at M’talek oddly. “How did he know we were coming? How did he know about what we were looking for?”
M’talek’s expression screwed up. He hated the possibility of being wrong. “Dammit…”
“Don’t worry.” Antar said. “We can figure that out later.”
“Huh?” G’nar blinked.
“You suggesting we go on this assumption, Antar?” Vatren said disapprovingly.
“The way I see it, it’s the only lead we’ve got.” Antar replied. “And however he knew, it seems he did know.”
“Antar has a point.” Elitaa nodded. “I say we should go with M’talek’s conclusion here.”
M’talek visibly glowed with the remark.
Antar took a long coil of rope from his shoulder. “I found these.”
“What for?” G’nar was puzzled.
“We’re travellers. You never know what you might need.” He said with a smile.
They all climbed onto the Multar. Once they’d sat down in the basket-like hut, Elitaa pulled on another lever and they set off across Pyre Swamp again.
G’nar smiled. “Next stop: Carta’s Great Waterfall!”
“Alright…” M’talek winced. “You don’t have to shout it out loud.”
“But isn’t this exciting?” G’nar said giddily.
Vatren spoke up; his voice weaker than he’d liked it to have been. “Don’t lose focus, guys.”
“Hmph, me?” She laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“No…” Antar said quietly to himself. “Perish the thought. Listen, I think we need to get Vatren some help, perhaps we ought to stop at Donimor on the way so he can rest.” Donimor, capital of the Elven Republic, was not far from their trail.
“I don’t want to slow us down.” Vatren dismissed.
“Don’t worry, we’ll check out the waterfall and come back for you.” M’talek nodded.
“Great, sounds fun.” Vatren sighed. “It’s not like the capital will be anything new either.” He was really beginning to regret that encounter with the Lootan. Of all the rotten luck… still, he was pretty sure something somewhere was broken. But so long as his brain still worked fine, it didn’t really matter to him.
The journey became much quieter as evening drew in and the Elves began to catch a rotary of sleep between them. Antar lay slumped back-to-back against Vatren, with G’nar curled up between them. M’talek sat facing opposite to the direction they were travelling, beside Elitaa, looking out at the dusk sky of vibrant blue and purple.
“Amazing how it can keep walking for so long.” M’talek said with admiration in his voice. It was quiet, too. Especially now that G’nar was asleep.
“It’s good for them. They actually become stiff and unhealthy without walking.” She said. “And they digest better on the move.”
She smiled, leaning over to one side of the hut and removing a long thin stick from a set of hooks. M’talek watched curiously as she took a piece of hard vegetable from a sack next to her and skewered it on the end. The stick had a mechanism whereby it could twist at one point about three quarters along. She did this, and the end of the stick with the vegetable suddenly became highly articulate. She leaned the meal forward over the creature’s huge head and bumped it playfully on the nose with the vegetable. The creature made a noise that was something not unlike curiosity, and opened its wide mouth to bite the vegetable from the end of the stick. M’talek looked at Elitaa’s face as she did so. She was smiling a little.
Afterward, she withdrew the stick and returned to her stern yet non-chalant expression, twisting the stick back again so it became rigid.
“What’re you gonna do now? The Weatherman is still missing.” M’talek stated.
“I think he’ll be alright.” She replied. “I’d like to continue travelling with you, but I will have to inform the Mark of Techtolitos of the update in this. Or else I’ll be in a bit of a mess, you see.” She said, in such a way that he felt compelled not to delve into why.
A short while later, they came across a tall box on a post sticking out of the mud. The box, on closer inspection, was a post box.
“What’s one of those doing out here?” M’talek frowned.
“Minimum distance intervals, it’s Republic regulation.” Elitaa smiled a little, taking a small piece of paper from her cloak and jamming it into the box as they passed it. She swung the clip around on the top to show there was a message waiting in it.
“What was that?”
“My update.”
* * *
Serian scanned the tree-line once more. She was getting sick of all the waiting. The Kvorn must realise that their presence is known by now? They were probably waiting purely to drag it out. Purely to derive pleasure not just from pain and death, but fear and anxiety too.
She shook the thought off. They weren’t that smart. In all the time the kvorn had been fighting her species, they’d shown very little ability to adapt. The thing about kvorn intelligence was the fact that their leaders were really quite cunning, while the vast majority were overwhelmingly stupid. But despite being devious fighters, they were poor scientists. Nearly every piece of machinery or complex method they applied in their simple lives was either a chance discovery or stolen from the Elven.
There was a time long ago, before the Kvorn. At least, before they got to Alutai. They’d been sharing the planet on different continents for countless millennia, blissfully unaware of the other’s presence. Then an Elven expedition over the ocean started the whole thing off with one big accident…
Serian pushed her line of thought away and searched her brain for something else again, like somebody looking for something edible in a fruit basket of fetid-looking apples. She needed something to occupy her mind. That’s the problem with being on alert. High alert duty for generals is something you can’t hand over, so she decided to walk to the battlements of one of the taller towers for a change of pace.
* * *
Antar stumbled over a few rocks and walked further ahead of the Multar, which carried the others. As he neared the edge of a ledge, he met with a troublesome obstacle.
Before the Elves was a grand and deep canyon, with a near vertical drop to the bottom some 200 meters below. The bottom was littered with rubble and debris. It was unlike the desert canyons of common sight; it thrived in a mass of lush plants and flora.
The sloping sides were covered in greenery and a variety of other colours of the plants. It was probably about half a kilometre wide, and spanned only by a long rickety rope bridge, the usual White Marbelus bridge strangely absent. It looked like it would barely support an Elven on a Choobador alone but with five Elves, four Choobador and a Multar, it would certainly break.
“Thousand curses.” G’nar said bitterly from the riding hut. “We can’t cross a rope bridge on a Multar!”
“Impossible.” Elitaa said.
“If we each go one at a time, we might just get over on our own.” Vatren said thoughtfully.
“I can’t leave Joen. You know how much it means to me.” Elitaa told them.
“We won’t.” M’talek said confidently.
Antar nodded to G’nar. “If you take across the others with all the Choobador, one by one, I’ll follow. M’talek, would you stay and help Elitaa with the Multar?”
“Okay.” M’talek agreed.
Slowly Vatren and G’nar led the Choobador over the bridge, one at a time. Antar was about to leave over the bridge, when he saw a winding track up the opposite rock face of the mountain.
“Elitaa, do we still have that rope?” Antar asked.
“Yeah, right here.”
“Good, we might be able to use it with that boulder there to make a pulley over the tree branch.” Antar explained.
“Your counterweight is too light and crude to control.” A man’s voice came from the nearby shadows. “The Multar would surely fall.”
Antar turned to face the cloaked man. His figure was small, and looked old. His hair was faded and his tunic a dark scarlet colour, although it bore a colourful amount of embellishment.
“Who are you to know?” Antar questioned.
“I am the keeper of the White Marbelus bridge. I am the one who helps those cross.” The old Elven said. “An Acolyte, of Sabarah. My name is Oben, how’d you do?”
“Acolytes? As in those descended from the assistants of the Mage Order?” Elitaa asked cautiously.
“Of course, my young kin. We, the Acolytes, served the great Mages for many years as their messengers and followers.”
“Then you would know of Mage Eurterna, of the Physical. We seek to find his Ornithopter, but it appears that the Bridge of Arion Canyon has been destroyed. Is this the Kvorn’s doing?” Antar asked.
“No.” The Acolyte shook his head. “I destroyed it to halt their warband. They cannot be allowed to approach Arion, so I sent them to their deaths.”
Antar peered over the edge at the wreckage of the bridge at the bottom of the canyon, noticing sure enough a few destroyed siege machines and dozens of bodies amongst the thick foliage. “You blew up the bridge while they were on it?” Antar asked.
“Not blew up. Deconstructed.”
“I don’t understand.” M’talek groaned.
Meanwhile G’nar was waving frantically from the other side of the canyon in the hope someone might notice her there and tell her what was going on.
“Acolytes retain much of the ancient knowledge of the Mages. We have a few ‘spells’ under our eye, if you will. Unfortunately, I failed to destroy all of the warband.” Oben sighed. “A band of infantry escaped. The only bridge that remains now is that wooden one made a long time ago. The only way you can get that Multar to the other side is on a White Marbelus bridge, such as the one I destroyed.”
“I feared as much.” Antar said.
“You seem to be in a hurry. I should be able to resurrect it.” Oben told them.
“What!? It would take even a strong healthy young Elven days to even piece a few parts together.” M’talek exclaimed.
“Using their physique, yes.” The Acolyte drew a deep breath, and then exhaled, just to make sure they were listening. “You see, each of the many ancient Mages founded a shrine to study their science. I am a follower from the Shrine of Mage Sabarah, of The Psyche. She studied the power of the mind to master the most powerful psycho-kinesis known to exist. I know in my mind that I can resurrect that bridge in minutes.”
“Please demonstrate, then. We are after those that escaped you and cannot waste time with games.” M’talek said, a usual hint of doubt in his voice.
Oben grimly ignored the comment and turned to face the gap where the bridge should be. He began to mutter a long string of syllables almost silently which none of the others could even begin to recognise or understand. Closing his eyes, he began to tremble ever so slightly as the power of ancient minds coursed through him. Suddenly, the rubble of the bridge far below began to tremble. Pieces began to rise, floating upward like bubbles from the bottom of a water tank. Oben seemed to go into even deeper concentration as the parts began to form, stone by stone, the bridge it had once been.
“That is incredible” Elitaa remarked quietly. The other two gazed, speechless, at the bridge as it was gradually re-completed. The rocks looked weightless, like bits of debris twirling in a pool as they began to form a new version of the bridge.
“How did you do that?” Antar asked, moments after Oben had finished placing the last fragment and the bridge stood as though it were built the day before.
“It’s not your average White Marbelus bridge, let’s put it that way. The material is psychotropic.” He told them. “Think of it as an elaborate drawbridge, if you will. Now, hurry onward. You must warn the Senate.”
M’talek stood at the beginning of the bridge, treading on it warily. “Man, it sure is solid.” He affirmed.
“Thankyou, Oben.” Antar gave a slight bow to show respect to an elder, then leaped back onto the Multar, slowly followed by his two companions. M’talek was muttering things to himself; “Incredible”, “I can’t believe how quick…” and “He didn’t touch a single stone”. Elitaa geared up Joen, and they set out across the resurrected bridge to meet G’nar, saying goodbye to the mysterious acolyte.
On the other side, Antar glanced over at G’nar as she stepped up into the riding hut. “Right then.” He said. “Now we’re definitely off to the capital.”
* * *
General Serian was woken from her daydreaming by the sound of a Forest Horn, an instrument carved from the bent funnel-shaped branches of the Quellan tree. Its loud bellowing foghorn sound could mean only one thing: They were here. The Kvorn were here, and the battle was finally about to begin. Serian called to her archers to get down low and ready their bows, and she ordered the Ballista to load. She crouched down and peered over the wall, waiting for the Kvorn to emerge from the forest.
Suddenly, without warning, arrows flew up from the forest cover, raining down on the Elven. Without a moment’s hesitation, Serian yelled a single-syllable command, upon which every Elven brought their shield above their head and formed a mosaic of shields. The arrows bounced off harmlessly like sticks dropped on a road.
The young general smiled to herself and pushed her pride to one side. She ordered her Archers to hold fire until the Kvorn were out of the forest. Another good move. The Kvorn warband, disappointed that the Elven did not waste their arrows attempting to kill them in cover, charged the castle only a few long-drawn minutes later. As they emerged from their cover, Serian saw that the Rangers did not exaggerate much in their reports; there really were thousands of them. Four thousand Kvorn and five hundred Elven?
She stood and, realising that there was no time to waste, said only one word calmly:
“Fire.”
* * *