Questing Sucks (Book 1) (52 page)

“Turn and run. Now!”

Calen turned around, followed by the rest of his men, and together they ran for their lives. Crossbowmen emptied bolts into the narrow cave opening, and for the first time in Calen’s life, he heard the sound of his people die. Against Calen’s orders, a dozen Elves remained behind, using their own bodies to block the entrance. They were ripped to shreds as hundreds of bolts slammed into them.

“No…” Calen whispered. “No!”

Daniel grabbed his hand and pulled him along. “Come on, Calen. Let’s go.”

“My men. My men!”

Calen struggled. It was his fault, all of it. Even five volleys had been too greedy, and now his Elves, his kin, his brothers, twelve of them fell lifelessly to the rocky floor. When Calen refused to flee, Daniel put a second hand over his first and tugged, dragging Calen behind him with the rest of the men.

“Wait, Daniel. Wait! My people. They cannot die here. They need to be buried in the forests. Gods, Daniel, wait!”

Daniel looked behind him at Calen while he trudged forward through the damp cave. “Snap out of it, Calen, and quickly, because without you, we’re as good as dead. And then who’ll bury you in a forest?”

Calen blinked his eyes and shook his head. “It’s just…I messed up. We should’ve retreated after the fourth round of fire, we should’ve—”

“Enough of that!” Lira snapped. “No one here has ever expected you to predict the future or to be perfect. Now look, we’ve got close to a thousand seriously pissed off men chasing after us. Either you get yourself together or…or I’ll take command. Choice is yours. Your men deserve to be cried for. Who’ll spread the news of their death if you go running back to impale yourself on some foolhardy soldier’s lance?”

Calen looked at her, and in the woman’s eyes he saw her determination, her will to survive. He ripped his hand free of Daniel’s and ran on his own. “I’m sorry, Daniel, Lira, you’re both right.” He raised his voice. “Keep running! We’ll exit through the end of this cave and regroup. We’ll plan our next attack when we’re in the clear.”

The heavy black armor the enemy soldiers wore would prevent even the most agile of them from catching up. The water level rose slightly as Calen and his army ran through, and the sound of splashing feet drowned out all other noise.

“How far does this cave go for?” Daniel asked.

Despite the short notice, Calen had taken the time to thoroughly memorize the geography of Hahl. “It’s not that far. It’ll run to the other end of the cliff face, and from there we’ll be in the clear.

Calen focused on anything other than the death of his men. He closed his eyes while he ran, listening to the splashing of feet against puddle. It was inevitable that some men were going to die, and Calen knew that from the start. But still, it didn’t make it any easier to accept.

The cave widened as they continued. The damp air turned dry and the temperature lowered. Calen made sure his men kept their daggers unsheathed and at the ready. In the unlikely event that Humans shed their armor and caught up to them, Calen wanted to be prepared.

The other Elves relaxed when after ten minutes there was no longer any sound of pursuit. “I think we’re okay now,” Daniel said. “Perhaps we should slow down a bit and catch our breath?”

Calen nodded. “Slow the pace!” he commanded. “Bring it down to a jog.”

The cave became taller as it widened, until it formed the shape of a giant mouth and emptied back out into the valley. The fresh air covered Calen, washing away his fear and replacing it with sadness for his lost men.

“I want to go back for them when this is over. I want them collected and buried. Brought back to the city of Helena and laid to rest under the mightiest oak.”

Calen knew he was hoping for too much. More than likely his men would be burned, their corpses disgraced and violated. Still, hope was all he had. It was the only thing pushing him forward. Daniel and Lira helped pass around canteens filled with water, while the rest of the Elves checked their equipment and tended to the wounded. Luckily, aside from the casualties, there were no injuries save for some minor scrapes and bruises.

Calen didn’t like the change in terrain. There were no hills, caves, hot springs, or even tall stalks of grass to give his men cover. They were in a smooth part of the valley, a stretch of land that was nothing more than a grassy field. Calen couldn’t afford to give his men the chance to rest. If they were found, they'd be cut down like animals. “We’re moving out. Let’s go.”

With that, Daniel, Lira, and the rest of the Elves resumed their march. Despite the loss of men, the second skirmish was technically a victory, although it didn't feel like one.

“More will die, won’t they?” Calen asked.

Daniel nodded compassionately. “I’m afraid so. But you’re Sword Calen now, aren’t you? You’ll find a way to cope.”

“Will I?”

“You will.”

Chapter 49: To Come with the Rising Sun

 

Calen knew that above all things, he couldn’t allow himself to panic. If he panicked, then his men would panic, and if his men panicked, well, that was the point where organization ended and needless deaths began. Yet, try as he might, he couldn’t prevent the tension from rising as his unit moved through the flat terrain. Everyone knew what would happen if the enemy caught them out in the open. Not even the fine soldiers of the Naris clan would be able to do more than die with their honor intact. And these days, honor held little value to Calen.

The men wanted to break into another sprint and head for the mountains—it was obvious in the way they stared at their feet and avoided looking at the rocky terrain in the distance. But Calen refused. He’d had his Elves sprint for far too long, at too far a distance. They needed to rest. The elves would be even worse off than they were now, if the enemy caught them clutching their stomachs and gasping for breath.

“So far so good,” Daniel said. Every few steps, the Human paused to glance over his shoulder. Despite his calm voice, Calen suspected that Daniel was the most nervous of them all.

Calen ignored the stinging insects that appeared during the night, and whispered. “The men are holding up well. With Helena’s blessing, we’ll be back under cover and able to plan another ambush before sunrise.”

“Hah!” Lira said. “What is this ‘men’ you speak of. At least half of your ‘men’ are women.”

Daniel slapped himself on the forehead and sighed. “Not now, Lira. This isn’t the time for your gender semantics.”

Lira ignored him and called out to a pair of female Naris archers marching behind Calen. “Hey, you two. It ever bother you that these gruff, ‘military boys’ call you men?”

Despite the overbearing fear of death, failure, and the loss of loved ones, the Naris women never failed to display their playful side. The two Elven soldiers giggled. “It’s all right,” one of them said. “The boys might as well call us men, since we can kick their rumps like men.”

Elven men added their laughter to the women’s. “Sure you could,” a red-haired Elf said. “Assuming we tied our hands behind our backs and fought with our eyes closed.”

The sound of laughing Elves soothed Calen. It was good for morale to laugh, especially during such precarious situations. Calen ordered the men to pick up the pace slightly, while he tried to ignore the painful pinching sensation in his ankles from the biting insects crawling up the stalks of short grass.

Calen had ordered an ammo and weapons check several moments prior. Aside from the dozen slain Elves, none of his men—and women—had lost any of their weaponry, and arrows were still in fairly plentiful supply. Several of the deceased Elves were brothers, cousins, and in one case, even a father, to the men and women that made up Calen’s unit. But even with the loss of loved ones bearing down on them, none of the Elves cried, and Calen swelled with pride.

Daniel’s mouth fluttered. He looked on the verge of speaking, yet all he released was barely audible mumbles. “What is it, Daniel?” Calen asked.

“It’s just…I cannot believe they abandoned their mounts and gave chase. We were caught off guard.”

Lira nodded. “Was as much our own fault as anybody’s. We were all surprised by their little stunt.”

Calen stared once more at their mountainous destination. Distantly, he wondered if the souls of his fallen comrades had risen above and beyond it, perhaps into the clouds themselves, or, maybe even the stars.

“The steam,” Calen said.

Daniel, only moments from raising a water-skin to his lips, paused. “Steam?”

“Steam,” Calen repeated. “Hidden behind it, I was certain we had a great advantage—and we did. But it was also a weakness. We never heard or saw the soldiers approach. They were on us too fast. I should’ve considered the possibility, but I…I didn’t.”

The Elf with the razor-filled voice—who Calen now knew to be called
Roal
—gave Calen a rough, painful smack on the back. “Cut it out,” he rasped. “If we expected you to be tactically perfect, then we’d be calling you Alan Marshall, not Sword Calen.”

“Speaking of commander Marshall,” Daniel said. “Do you think that, umm, given the circumstances he’d want us to return to the city? We’ve gotten pretty far away from the main force now, too far to effectively continue our hit and run campaign.”

Lira sneered at him. “Quit being a coward, Daniel. You just want to go back to your precious prince and hide in the command room.”

Daniel flared with indignation. “I am not a coward, Lira! And coming from you, that really hurts.”

“
Bleh
, I was just teasing ya. Relax.”

Cruel joke,
Calen thought.
She knows how much Daniel loves her, and yet she names him coward?

“It’s not…” Daniel’s voice lowered to a whisper, yet Calen—and the other Elves, from the looks of things—had no problems overhearing him. “It’s not what you think, Lira. I’m not a coward.”

Daniel inhaled. “It’s just that you told me we could only be together if we made it back home alive, and I…I want to go home. Not because I fear for my life, but because I fear for my life without
you
. I don’t mind dying, but I want to know what it would be like to love you first.”

What happened next surprised even Calen. Within moments, the Elves were huddling around the two Humans, forming two divided groups—the men on one side and the women on the other. The men pulled Daniel aside and hammered him with advice, precautions, and in some cases praise, while the women did mostly the same for Lira.

That’s right,
Calen remembered.
The Naris clan is notorious for meddling in other people’s love affairs.

Close to two hundred Elves tried to offer Daniel and Lira advice, and eventually the two groups mixed together into one, with the women evaluating Daniel and the men evaluating Lira. Once each group had made clear their acceptance, they grinned at the two Humans and nodded their heads, causing Daniel and Lira to blush a dark red.

Calen tapped Daniel on the shoulder. “Their nodding means they approve.”

Daniel gulped. “Approve?”

“Of you and Lira. They think you two are a perfect match.”

Daniel’s face turned a brighter shade of red than Calen thought possible for a Human. “Why don’t you try telling her that? I have a bad feeling about things, and I think we should turn around and head back to Hahl.”

Calen laughed. “You’re that anxious to be with her, are you?”

Daniel shook his head, and a grin formed on his small lips. “Wouldn’t you be? I saw you sneak some…let us say, appreciative glances?”

“She is quite the beautiful woman,” Calen agreed. “Don’t worry. I don’t plan on allowing anyone else to die. Besides, you’re probably safer in this group than you would be back in the city. As hard as it is to accept, when all this is over, our princes will both probably be dead, and every defending soldier in the city along with them.”

The words seemed to hit Daniel hard—harder than Calen intended. Daniel bowed his head and rubbed his eyes. “My prince,” he whispered. “I cannot imagine our kingdom without Patrick in it.”

You’re going to have to try,
Calen wanted to say, but instead nodded compassionately. He ordered his men to continue forward. “All right, that’s about as much childish gossip as I’ll allow. Come on, let’s keep moving. We’re almost to the mountain.”

The terrain changed as they approached the mountain. Rock formations, small at first, appeared over the landscape, all in such odd and artistic shapes that Calen marveled at their very existence. He wondered how they remained standing or didn’t implode. Calen spotted a fragmented, twisted rock that resembled a snake crawling along the ground. Another was a large, upside down, U-shaped curve, with two narrow openings supported entirely by a few pieces of rock planted firmly in the dirt.

“It’s amazing,”
Roal
rasped. “Just when you think you’ve seen the best the Valley has to offer, there’s something else to gawk at.”

Lira smiled. “It’s lovely.”

There was a cough from Calen’s right, and he turned to see Daniel blushing yet again. Calen didn’t need to be Human to see that Daniel’s facial expression was one of hesitance. His jaw tightened before he spoke. “Y-You’re…you’re the one who’s lovely,” he stammered.

Lira, in such a short time, had become quite popular among the Elven women. At least two followed her wherever she went. “I’m not sure,” a beady-eyed Elf said, marching along to Lira’s left. “But I’d say someone was trying too hard. I won’t say who.”

“Besides,” said the other from Lira’s right. She ran a smooth hand along Lira’s shoulder, slowly and seductively. “She’s already told you a whole bunch of times—nothing is happening until you both get back to Hahl. You’ll just have to wait. Oh! Look at him, Lira. He’s turning into a tomato.”

It was true. For a moment, Calen worried what would happen if he didn’t put a stop to the women’s teasing. Daniel’s eyes bulged as he watched the Elven girls taunt him, and Lira, rather than show any signs of embarrassment, appeared nothing other than amused. She even contributed to the torture, winking at Daniel and blowing him a kiss in the air.

The Naris clan was an obedient bunch—at least when it came to most things. Despite ordering them to cease their childish behavior, the Elves of his lineage were uncontrollable when it came to matters of love. Calen would never forget the first Elven girl he’d had a crush on, or the way the girl had somehow tricked him into running around the village naked.

I’ve lived a life full of humiliation,
Calen thought.
And yet here I am, acting as a Sword Elf, with the lives of others in my hands.

The overall mood brightened as they closed in on the mountain. Calen’s group picked up the pace once they were close enough to the mountain to see the individual cracks in the rock illuminated under the full moon. There was a spring in their step now. The Elves no longer had to worry about being caught in the open.

A few steps later, and there was no longer any grass left on the ground. Calen’s feet crunched against rock while he scouted for an opening. There was a ridge above them that poked out of the mountain. It would be the perfect place to ambush the enemy soldiers once the black-armored men managed to catch up. But how would they get up there?

“There should be a path in here somewhere,”
Roal
said.

Calen nodded. “But where?”

“Over there,” Daniel answered. He pointed towards a veiled entrance hidden beneath a wall of shrubbery.

Calen ordered his unit to form into a single-file line. “All right. Here’s what we’ll do. We’re going to ambush the enemy when they come through here. We’ll hide in that ridge above us, and when the enemy comes looking for us, I’ll give the command to—”

For the second time in Calen’s life, and also the second time that day, he once again heard the sound of his kin die. Nine Elven lives faded instantly. There were a few grunts of pain, and then the unfortunate Elves fell backward, with arrows sticking through their chests. With a thud, they landed against the rocky surface, twitching slightly before lying still.