The Art of Death: 'A Brush With Magic' Prelude

‘Captain, watch out!’

Harailt turned and parried the incoming sword so hard, he knocked it out of his Elven assailant’s hand, darting to the side to get a clean angle for a strike with his double-edged battle axe. His aim was sound; the Elf’s head came off in one slash. The only reaction he allowed himself to the blood spray was to wipe it off his forehead so it wouldn’t get into his eyes. He nodded to the soldier who gave him warning.

‘My thanks, brother,’ he acknowledged.

He took a moment to assess their situation. The battlefield was strewn with corpses. Many had the pointed ears of the Elven invaders but there was no denying it; however skilled Eiran warriors were, the members of his company were joining the fallen due to the Elves’ relentless assault. They were greatly outnumbered.

‘Damn it all to Hell and back!’ he cursed under his breath. ‘There weren’t supposed to be this many! What happened to our scouts?’

Someone screamed. Harailt whipped around. One of his archers was standing there with a sword in her stomach. Her guts were already spilling out of her; she was beyond help. She stared at him incredulously and her eyes died as she crumpled to the ground. He couldn’t see who did it; there wasn’t anyone near enough. She would have seen it coming from a mile off if it had been thrown, surely?

Cautiously, he gripped his axe tightly with his hands, his senses heightened and on full alert. He concentrated on using his ears as well as his eyes.

A splash from behind him.

He honed in on the sound, looking at the puddles in the water-logged field. Something was causing those ripples. Something he couldn’t see. He wasn’t going to take any chances.

He hefted his axe into one hand so he could pull a dirk from his boots. He flung it towards the puddle. It connected with a fleshy thud.

With a pained cry, the assassin suddenly materialised out of thin air; an Elven mage clutching at his thigh where the knife had landed. He barely had time to look up before Harailt descended on him, avenging the archer with a deadly back-handed spin, separating the Elf’s legs from his torso. He thrashed about in agony as the Eiran captain stood over him.

‘Spirit Master, eh?,’ Harailt said. ‘Good thing you Vertciellens are such lightweights that you’d drop your Spirit Fabric at the smallest scratch. Eira’s battle mages can handle a lot more.’

He was not without mercy, so he put the Elf out of his misery with a breezy sweep of the axe, severing his head from his body.

Today seems to be a day for decapitations, Harailt thought wearily.

The Spirit mage provided a clue for why his scouts hadn’t returned; they may have been ambushed by agents with invisibility shields.

He looked towards the west. The sun had made most of its way across the sky during the fighting; they had been holding onto this position for several hours, having only dropped back once since morning. Would there be any reinforcements coming? Given the mistaken intelligence they’d received about enemy numbers and how long they had been fighting without any contact from the Queen’s guard, he was forced to consider the possibility that they were on their own.

Eiran’s military wasn’t stupid; if he could buy enough time, the absence of any reports from his company would soon be noticed. Even if they perished, the generals would have amassed a sizeable force to investigate by morning, as a precaution.

The bridge was less than a hundred yards behind them now. They had to defend the main route to the capital for as long as they could, at all costs.

He raised his axe up high to catch his troops’ attention.

‘Warriors of Eira!’ he bellowed. ‘Set that bridge on fire! This is our last stand! No Elf shall cross that bridge today, whether we live to tell our tale, or die in glorious victory!’

He wished his company had had the budget to include a piper, but his soldiers did him proud. As one they chanted, ‘For the Queen! For Eira! Forever! Fág a’ Bealach!’

His foot soldiers rallied around the archers who started breaking out their cloth-wrapped arrows; within moments they were dipping them into bottles of oil and lighting them with the remains of their campfires. The first few flaming arrows were loosed from the longbows, landing on the bridge.

Upon seeing the emerging fires the Vertciellen commander, a great brute of an Elf, started barking orders at his troops. The enemy surged towards them. It seemed that they figured out his plan. No matter; if they could defend the longbows for just a little while longer, they’d be able to get enough arrows on the bridge to start a fire that the Elves wouldn’t be able to stop.

He gritted his teeth and braced himself for impact, already analysing the front line of Vertciellens for weaknesses to exploit. He and his soldiers needed to take down at least five each to give the longbows any chance; anything else would be a bonus he hoped would add to the glory of their names after they died. As the Elves rushed at him, he lunged forward, swinging his axe in a massive, unstoppable arc. The blade scythed through several abdomens before smashing into a face as it hung high in the air, then came crashing down, cleaving a head in two.

It was slow-going, unrewarding and ceaseless. As soon as he had dispatched one, another two would appear. They were starting to blur into each other. Ever the captain, he spared a thought for his soldiers; if he was already beginning to flag, they must be having trouble too.

Ciel, by the grace of your light, he prayed. We give our lives willingly. So give us the strength to defend our lands, just a little while longer. Eira did not start this war.

A clarion call cut through the dust and the heat. ‘Harailt!’

He searched for the voice that called his name and lightened his heart.

The bridge was beginning to blaze at its edges, enshrouding the fields behind it in smoke. He could just about make out the figure of a lone rider. Galloping through the flames, she rode her horse hard, jumping over the corpses to reach him. He barely caught a glimpse of her hooded face as she plucked a throwing knife from the saddlebag and threw it past him into the throat of an enemy soldier. But her long, red tail and her deadly accuracy was enough for him to recognise who she was.

‘My thanks, Champion!’ he shouted above the noise. ‘Does the Queen know of our situation?’

‘I had my suspicions, so I rode ahead,’ she replied, pulling up in front of him. ‘She is sending a force of fifty men; they are following not five miles behind me.’

Harailt’s early optimism started to waver. ‘They will take at least an hour to reach us! My company have dwindled to a mere dozen; how can we hold these Elves off until then?’

Beneath the hood, he could see the glimmer of her hard, yellow eyes turn malevolent, matching her fanged smile. He swallowed nervously, reminded that she wasn’t Human.

‘My dear Harailt,’ she purred. ‘That is why I am here.’

The captain had heard astonishing accounts of the Queen’s Champion – he had even had the honour, and subsequent pain, of sparring with her once during a training exercise in the barracks – but he had not seen her at work on a real battlefield.

She thrust her hands behind her back and drew out two vicious-looking crescent blades, twirling them above her head as easily as batons. She tested one of their edges with her clawed finger.

‘I’ve been wanting to give these babies a spin.’

She gathered her knees up and leapt high off the saddle, her cloak rippling about her like a bat’s wings in the setting sun. She fearlessly dived into the enemy, slicing through the joins in their armour with millimetre precision. Her figure disappeared among the Vertciellen ranks, the red flashes of her tail heralding the blood that soon followed. The Elves started falling one by one, like puppets whose strings had been cut. In a manner of speaking, they literally had: hamstrings, spinal cords, she played them with her blades like a sadistic bow.

Never before in his life had Harailt ever witnessed such perfect kills; each death she caused was a beautiful lesson in airy efficiency; every crippling blow was a cruel work of art. It was all at once horrifying and mesmerising.

As a Vertciellen sword swung towards him, he dodged and was forced to concentrate on killing the few Elves she’d left alive near him. Inspired by her butchery, it only took a few seconds each to crush their skulls into the ground.

With renewed vigour, he roared loud enough for the remains of his small company to hear. ‘The Queen’s Champion is here! Let’s show her what we’re made of! Fág a’ Bealach!’

His soldiers howled a warcry in approving response and redoubled their efforts. Together, they created a bloodbath and proudly waded through it, taking down far more enemy troops than their number should. Harailt had never felt so alive, it was as if Ciel herself was breathing her light into him.

Then the thought struck him. The Queen’s Champion was also known by another name. The Divine Dagger. A warrior chosen by Ciel herself, so long ago that most people dismissed it as rumour and hearsay. Was it true, after all?

His eyes quickly skimmed over the battlefield. Harailt had lost sight of her but could track her progress easily by watching the wave of slaughter she caused; a scarlet mistral gusting over the wheatsheafs of falling men.

It was truly staggering: from the moment she arrived, they, a mere thirteen Eiran warriors, had slain nearly two hundred. The tide had turned in their favour within the hour, just as she said it would.

There were cries coming from the Vertciellens now, a flurry of activity as many of them started to turn around and run. What caused them to panic? Harailt wondered.

He started to run towards the commotion then stopped dead in his tracks as the retreating Elves finally revealed the abominable sight of the Champion.

She was standing with her back to him on a pile of limbs and corpses that, no doubt, she had amassed. Her arms were spread wide apart and high, still holding the crescent blades that were now drenched in blood. Hanging from both tips of her blades were the two halves of the Elf commander’s body; everything below the waist had been shredded to ribbons but his head and uniformed torso was cleanly cut and recognisable. She was making an example of him.

After a minute ensuring the fleeing Elves got a good eyeful at the remains of their commander, she flung the dead flesh down at her feet and turned around to face the captain, calculated savagery and bloodlust still singing in her golden eyes.

It took a lot to scare Harailt. He was terrified.