Elves: Beyond the Mists of Katura (31 page)

The humans separated, one flying close to the ground, another going high and the other pair closing up and heading directly at the Julatsan elves. The trio of elves split to counter them, with
one diving on her foe from directly above. A shout sounded but it was too late: the elf thumped into the human’s back with both feet. His wings guttered and died, and he ploughed into the
grass twenty feet below while the elf soared skywards, arrows chasing her higher.

She barrelled up, just missing another enemy, who had the wit to furl his wings and drop away in time. The humans backed off and the elves returned to their circling. Auum ran harder, Faleen
right on his shoulder now and the others crowding behind.

They tore up a shallow slope, leaped across to the next and ran down towards the stream where the gradient was easiest and led them straight into the camp. Elves were still milling about despite
the cajoling of Ulysan, Grafyrre and Merrat. The TaiGethen were all ready, though: faces were painted, weapons clean and sharp, packs were on backs loaded with clothes and food.

‘No time to fill your waterskins,’ he shouted as he ran past Il-Aryn at the stream. ‘Get your packs and get moving. My warriors are about to become sitting targets waiting for
you. Move!’

He ran on, finding Ulysan by the barking of his voice.

‘Where’s Stein?’ he said.

Ulysan pointed while chastising a Julatsan elf who was still strapping on his boots. Auum clapped him on the shoulder and ran on.

He found Stein. ‘I need your mages in the air finding us the best route up the mountain.’

‘Right.’ Stein turned away. ‘Julatsa. Wings! Let’s go. Best path required.’

One of the trio of spotter mages already in the air swooped down to hover in front of Auum.

‘They’re closing fast,’ she said. ‘Bow range shortly and spell range moments after that. We need to clear out now; their mages saw us and they know where to
strike.’

‘Thank you,’ said Auum. ‘Good move out there, by the way.’

‘Plenty more where that came from,’ she said and shot back into the sky, pausing to point in a wide arc to indicate the angle of the human advance.

Auum waved then clapped his hands.

‘Get running. Ulysan is leading. Go, go!’

Finally they were pouring away, running along beside the stream until the ground became loose shale and they had to divert to a grassier slope. Auum glanced up into the sky, expecting to see it
misting with arrows at any moment. Letting his gaze drop, he almost jumped out of his skin. There, with his back to the slope the humans would fire over, was a hunched figure.

‘Tilman. You can’t still be here. Your boot! Get your boot on!’

Tilman raised his head. His face was blotched and there were tears on his cheeks.

‘I can’t,’ he wailed. ‘It hurts too much. I’m so sorry, Auum.’

Auum ran to him and dropped to one knee, pushing Tilman’s hands away from their grip around his ankle. Auum put his hands on it and could feel the mass of swelling up into his calf and
down across his foot.

‘Yniss preserve us,’ breathed Auum, glancing up to see his people disappearing out of sight behind a scree slope. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

Tilman wiped his nose and eyes on a sleeve and managed to compose himself a little.

‘Because you’d have sent me home and I didn’t want to go.’

Auum felt a vibration through the earth – the enemy were close. He weighed up his options; it didn’t take long.

‘We’ve got to move fast. Can you put any weight on this?’ Auum already knew the answer.

‘It was all right at first – it just felt odd – but it just got worse and worse and this morning I couldn’t stand on it. You’ll have to leave me here.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Now listen carefully. You haven’t broken it, which is lucky, but it’s dislocated. Not good.’

‘So I’d have been going home,’ said Tilman.

‘Rather than being peppered with arrows at any moment, yes,’ said Auum, feeling tension build across his shoulders as the vibrations increased. ‘Look, there’s something I
need to do. It’ll make you scream, but that’s better than screaming every time you put your foot down.’

‘You can make the pain go away?’

‘No, it’ll still hurt like a panther bite but it will help. Brace yourself.’ Auum positioned his hands on Tilman’s foot and ankle, hearing the boy wince. ‘On three.
One, two . . .’

Auum pressured the ankle and turned the foot back to its correct position, feeling bone grate on bone and sinew and ligament protest. Tilman screamed and clutched Auum’s body, dry-retching
and shuddering. Auum gave him a moment and then moved him back to lie on the grass.

‘Now we really have to go,’ he said. He grabbed Tilman’s boot and gave it to the youth. ‘Hold this. Don’t drop it, you’ll need it later.’

He took Tilman’s free hand and dragged him up onto his good leg. He stooped and picked up Tilman’s pack and slung it over one shoulder. Arrows came flooding over the rise, falling
against the opposite slope. Auum blew out his cheeks.

‘Come on and try not to make too much noise.’

‘Why did you have to do that now?’ wheezed Tilman.

They moved off, Auum hurrying Tilman along, taking the weight off his bad leg for now, letting the human hop but keeping the pace quick.

‘Because now you can put your foot down without risk of breaking bones or crippling yourself. Your mages can fix you properly later.’

Auum got them to the stream and followed the elves’ tracks. They were out of sight, but the humans had come up faster than he thought and so they would have to move faster too. Another
volley of arrows rushed across the space. Auum ducked reflexively, hearing shafts strike water and stone behind him.

There was a movement in the air, a pressing on his back and shoulders.

‘Down!’

Auum threw them both to the ground. Tilman yelped as orbs of fire, deep blue shot through with yellow, cruised over the rise and slammed into the recently vacated campsite. Up in the sky, elven
mages were keeping the Xeteskian spotters well back but soon they wouldn’t need them anyway.

Auum dragged Tilman back to his feet. The first Xeteskian crested the rise, saw the pair and shouted.

‘Move!’ said Auum. ‘You’re going to have to use that foot – it’s faster that way. Brace yourself.’

‘Three,’ said Tilman putting his ruined ankle down and gasping at the pain.

Auum smiled. ‘Good on you, young human.’

Even the fleeting weight Tilman could put on his left leg was enough to almost double their speed. They made it around the scree slope and Auum saw a sharp climb before him, up to a narrow pass
between two hills. The last elves were just passing through, disappearing from sight some two hundred yards away. One stood there, looking back down the pass.

Seeing them, he started to run back down the slope. Auum waved him to go back.

‘Ulysan, no! Get the rest of them away!’ he shouted.

Ulysan wasn’t hearing him. Auum and Tilman made their best speed towards him, the young human beginning to struggle as the pain from his ankle spread up his leg and through his back. Auum
could feel his body tightening with every step. Tilman stumbled more than he trotted, and Auum shouldered more and more of his weight as his strength failed.

More spells detonated behind them, cracking off the shale slopes and showering them with dust and splinters of stone. Ulysan was still running down the slope but he was looking beyond Auum, who
saw his eyes widen.

‘Move faster!’ called the big TaiGethen.

‘Only so fast we can go,’ said Auum, practically lifting Tilman off the ground. ‘He’s not as light as he looks.’

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Tilman.

Arrows rattled into the stone around them and the slope behind. Auum hunched again.

‘That was too close. Ulysan, how far away are they?’

‘Not far enough,’ said Ulysan running up to him and taking Tilman’s other arm around his shoulder, the boot still held in a death grip in the youth’s hand.
‘Run.’

They ran up the steep slope towards temporary safety. Spells smashed into the ground not ten feet behind them, the shock waves throwing them all forward to sprawl on the ground. More arrows
fizzed in, one clipping Ulysan’s ear and drawing blood.

Auum rolled back onto his feet and spared a glance downslope. The sky seemed full of mages, elven and human, dodging around one another, the ground covered with humans, less than fifty yards
distant.

‘We’re in trouble,’ he said.

‘You noticed,’ said Ulysan. ‘Let’s get him up.’

And then Stein was hovering above them with another mage.

‘Get out of here, we’ve got him,’ he said.

With that, he and the elven flier swooped, grabbed Tilman by the arms and lifted him clear and fast into the sky. Auum and Ulysan looked at one another in relief.

‘Speed,’ said Auum.

By the time they reached the lower slopes of the mountains they had put a good distance between themselves and the chasing pack but the race was not yet won. Auum looked at
what lay before them and took a deep breath.

The incline of flat granite they were moving up grew steadily steeper over the course of about three hundred yards before rearing into the sky, a wall of bleak stone broken by cracks, outcrops
and occasional narrow ledges. Clumps of vegetation clung on here and there and gliding birds climbed tall thermal updraughts, their cries echoing on the wind blowing across the base of the
climb.

Grafyrre, Merrat, Merke and Marack were in a group pointing out potential routes up the wall. Auum sighed, awed by the sheer scale of it. Comparing this rock face to the cliffs at Verendii Tual
was like comparing a banyan to a balsa tree.

Stein and the elven mage had lain Tilman against the mountainside and the elf was assessing his injury and preparing a casting. Auum trotted up with Ulysan to crouch beside him.

‘Still with us?’

Tilman managed a vague smile. His face was covered in sweat and his colour was a sick-looking grey.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘You may be a fool, but you are a courageous fool,’ said Auum. ‘What can you do for him?’

The elven mage laid his hands on Tilman’s ankle and cast. Tilman relaxed and his breathing became more regular, some colour returning to his cheeks.

‘I can take the pain away,’ said the mage. ‘But until we have time to probe the extent of the damage, I don’t know. It’s not horrible in there, but without magical
assistance he isn’t going to be walking for fifteen to twenty days.’

‘We’re about to climb a mountain,’ said Auum. ‘And we aren’t leaving him here.’

‘We’ll take him up,’ said Stein. ‘Look, Auum, what you did for him . . . a human . . . it means a huge amount, and, um . . .’

‘I think he’s trying to ask you why you risked your life to save a mere human rather than leave him to become cinders and an archery target,’ said Ulysan.

‘Thanks, Ulysan. Where would I be without your insight?’

‘Lost and alone, skipper.’

‘Sometimes an attractive prospect,’ said Auum. He turned to Stein. ‘I would do the same for anyone who would lay down his life for an elf. It’s the TaiGethen
way.’

Oryaal was running up the slope towards them, the veteran warrior indicating behind him.

‘They’re on to us. Spotter mages have got close enough to identify our position, and the mages and archers are moving up. There’s a good ambush point—’

‘No more fighting,’ said Auum. ‘How long before they are in range?’

‘They’re moving slowly because they know we’ve stopped, and that makes them nervous, but they can be on us in a quarter-hour or less once they know we’re
climbing.’

Auum hissed a breath over his teeth. With this many elves unused to climbing that was too short a time.

‘Then we’ve rested here for too long. Ulysan, let’s get our best climbers on the face now. We need six routes, if we can find them. I’ll speak to the Il-Aryn. All
Julatsan elves should be in the air, helping the climbers. Stein, you have your first charge already. Have your mages try and identify the likely fallers and help them however you can. How high is
the first rest point?’

Stein grimaced. ‘A long way. Three hundred yards at least, but once we’re there the incline is dramatically shallower and we’ll be able to walk. It’s a narrow edge but
doable, taking us far past the snow line.’

‘All right. We’ve got a few little ledges on the way up if we’re desperate. Let’s go.’

Ulysan moved off, calling for Merrat, Grafyrre, Merke, Marack, Thrynn and Hohan. Auum trotted to the gathered and nervous-looking Il-Aryn.

‘None of you will fall,’ said Auum when he had their attention, ‘because the TaiGethen will not let you. Follow your leader. Use the same hand- and footholds they do. Be afraid
because that will make you careful. Stretch your bodies when you must and grip hard; jam your feet into those cracks hard. Know you can do this. You are all fit and strong because that is the way
Takaar made you.

‘If you are struggling, cry out and we will help. The Julatsan elves will be around you. Have faith in Yniss, faith in yourselves and faith in all of us. I believe in you, or you
wouldn’t be here now. Let’s go. Ulysan will assign you to your teams of TaiGethen.’

Auum watched them go and prayed to Yniss that none of them slipped. And so the climb began. Marack and Merke moved smoothly up the first thirty feet or so to a point where they could assess the
next segment. The going was a little harder for Grafyrre and Merrat, who were climbing to either side of the first pair. Hohan and Thrynn were to Merrat’s right and moving well enough.

There was now space on the wall and Ulysan cajoled the first Il-Aryn to start. He bit his lip and looked behind him, seeing Oryaal back at the lookout point. Up in the sky the Xeteskian mages
couldn’t fail to see what was happening.