Page 87 of The Broken Elf King
“Hold to the plan!” I screamed at our men and began to back up my horse. Going around the valley meant going around the hill, which took more time and was rocky and not an even trail. She’d struggle to get even a hundred men through there in any good length of time.
I rode over to Cahal, who stood ready for my word. “When her men get into the Narrow Valley, light the match and let it burn. Kill anything left moving with arrows.”
He nodded. “You’re going to the open hillside?”
I grinned. “I want to see her retreat with my own eyes.”
Cahal gave me a crooked smile. “It’s an honor to serve under you, my queen. Raife chose well when he married.”
My throat tightened with emotion, more so because my heartbreak was so fresh. Still, his sentiment was genuine, and I thanked him before riding off behind and around the hillside, dismounting my horse to climb up the side of it where my team was waiting with the nets.
Civilians had volunteered to fight for their land in droves when they’d heard I had declined Foxworth’s plan to flee.
I knew the Nightfall queen would suspect a trap at the Narrow Valley and so I’d had the civilians grab whatever rocks and boulders they could and shove them into fishing nets. Now we stood crouched behind bushes and makeshift camouflage as we waited for the queen and her men to cross the path at the base of the large hill. From this vantage point I could already see her army. I’d made it just in time. The past two hours had been the most rigorous and pulse pounding of my life. Mobilizing an army, preparing for war, it was nothing I’d ever experienced and so I was pleased that even though I could see the banner of Nightfall waving in the distance as they neared, we had a plan.
The sheer sight of over four hundred men, dozens of machines, trebuchets, and men flying in the air with mechanical wings, was enough to make terror crawl down my spine.
Another line fromThe Nature of Warcame back to me in that moment, and I thanked the Maker I’d read the entire book and committed it to memory, as I did most books I read.
People will die. As a leader, you need to worry about minimalizing the losses and tending to the wounded.
People will die.
People will die.
I looked around at the elvin men and women gathered, most of whom had brought their bow and arrow from home and wore makeshift breastplates made of cooking pans. A sob formed in my throat and I spun so that they wouldn’t see me break down. Putting my face in my hands, I wept softly. Suddenly hands were on mine, ripping them away from my face and drying my eyes. My eyelids snapped open to see Haig standing before me.
When did he get here? He should be hiding in the castle with the rest of the council.
“My queen, the people look to you now for strength,” he reminded me.
I cleared my throat, nodding, and then pulled him down to take cover with me behind the brush. I wiped the remaining tears from my cheeks and spun and faced the task ahead.
“Ready the nets,” I whisper-screamed. The queen’s army was quite far below at the base of the hill, but still I couldn’t lose my element of surprise. She passed the hill, her archers shooting randomly up at it as we all crouched and hid, not firing back.
Shouts of alarm and screams rang out behind us on the other side of the hill, within the Narrow Valley, and I knew the war there had begun. They’d funneled right into our trap and our Bow Men were picking them off before the—
Smoke filled the air and I wrestled with climbing over the ridge to look down and see how the field burning idea had gone. But by the sounds of men screaming and machines exploding, I knew we’d won the Narrow Valley and they were surely retreating from there. Whatever men were left alive that was.
The queen knew too. I saw her then, leading her men. She wore her customary red battle leathers; mechanical wings hung from her back as she rode her black stallion. Strapped to her arms were the usual fire thrower and bolt shooter. She was as powerful as a dragon shifter from Embergate, or as deadly as a Bow Man from Archmere.
In all my planning, I hadn’t thought of the flying men. The mechanical wings were relatively new. I’d seen men testing them around Nightfall City, but seeing six grown men fly towards where we all hid crouched on the hillside now had bile rising in my gut.
We needed the queen and her army to walk deeper past the hillside. But she’d stopped, no doubt seeing the smoke of her burning people and hearing the shouts of alarm. If we shot her men out of the sky she’d know we were here. If she doubled back for her men and then they all came at us, my boulder idea was gone and we were dead.
Press forward. You’re not afraid of anything and you wouldn’t have sent those men into the valley if you hadn’t already prepared to lose them.
The ground they walked on was rocky but for a sandy flat path that hugged the base of the hillside. I watched as indecision warred in her gaze. She looked up to her flyers who were now ten feet from us. No one on the hillside moved. We were covered in leaves, bushes, moss sheets, and anything brown or green we could find. I had a perfect view of the queen’s face from between the cropping of thick bushes I squatted behind. I saw the moment she sealed her fate. A cocky look of superiority washed over her face and her nostrils flared. The scent of burning flesh, of her men dying, filled the air, and then she grimaced.
“Attack!” she screamed.
They charged forward, funneling three by three down the narrow sandy walkway in an attempt to pass the hill and attack my army from behind as they waited in the Narrow Valley. The flyers, distracted with their queen’s orders, veered away from the hill and sped towards the back of the Narrow Valley, where our entire army lay in wait.
Maker be with me.
Once the queen had gotten as far as my last net, I stood and screamed louder than I ever thought possible. “Now!” The bellow ripped from my throat, my voice cracking at the end.
Our civilian army burst into action, letting go of the taut, boulder-filled nets they’d been holding this entire time. At the same time, our Bow Men erupted from bushes and shot at her flyers and any of her archers on the ground.
