Iron Elf - A Race Reborn (Book 2) (20 page)

I looked at the butter. I’d been on a dairy farm. I’d seen the sad, hungry calves. It explained much.

“Then someone figured out that caprans made pretty good rape fodder.”

I choked. “Hell!”

“It would’ve been, for those first caprans. Either way, they were screwed. Can I start a bath?”

“Certainly. You can give me your report afterward.”

“I was planning to give it to you in the tub.”

“How is this not highly inappropriate?” I asked Dagonet. We sat in the tub, naked. “You know, in Corinthe we can afford individual baths. Where you from again?”

“Lamemheth.”

“Well, that explains it.” She looked at me. I said, “It is the city of hot tubs and communal bathing, isn’t it?”

“That’s true. And it’s nothing you haven’t already seen.”

Was that a blush? I reminded myself that elves, with our long lives and low fertility, could be very relaxed about nudity. Why, the wood elves might as well be the bikini elves, they wore so little.

“I never planned on getting naked with you,” I said. “If you’ll remember, I hired you for your organization skills. Well, your coffee was the tie-breaker.”

The water had been warm before but not it was close to boiling.

“Not that you aren’t a highly qualified assistant! Yessir, got it in all the right places.”

“Is that—?”

“Eh heh heh. Water sure does funny things to light, doesn’t it?”

She turned the surface into a mirror. “I’m going to show you a selection of memories. I think you’ll find them interesting.”

This was high-level magic. The only other practitioner I’d met was the Witch of Deepwood, who’d used it on a halfling girl. This girl had come from another world and knew nothing of Brandish, not even its language. The spell had given her a basic elvish vocabulary and a dash of local lore. According to the Witch, some of the refugees thought that standing still would make them invisible to a wyvern. The giant reptiles didn’t exist in their homeworld, but they believed these apex predators didn’t have good senses when of course they did. These halflings usually didn’t last long.

“Do we have to do this?” I asked. “I don’t mind oral summaries and, frankly, this will probably give me a headache.”

“It’s not the easiest thing for me, either. But it would take too long to describe what I saw, and I don’t have the military training to interpret everything. And you have to see Hafgan. I cannot tell you just how formidable he is—you have to see it for yourself.”

The silvery water flowed up my shoulders and neck. It was cold and I told her so.

“I’m interfacing with your nervous system,” she said. “There may be side effects.”

“My mind to your mind, your fluids to my fluids?” The water crept into my ears and I was suddenly dizzy.

I was breathing hard. I couldn’t move. The water covered my eyes and down the rabbit hole I fell.

I walked up the cliff and looked down at the valley, where the dust of battle swirled.

This is the main invasion force, judging from the presence of Hafgan, the Field Marshal, and other high-ranking officers.

I knew caprans favoured mounted combat. This confirmed it. There wasn’t a single foot soldier. Instead there were several kinds of cavalry. Mobs of horse archers chased one another. Arrows sprang like water birds. The mobs would wheel and shoot in reply. They weren’t mobs, but loose and superbly trained formations. With magically-enhanced eyesight I saw lancers chase a group of bow cavalry, who drew maces and engaged in a running melee. Horse archers dismounting to shoot, the solid footing allowed them to fire faster and more accurately.

How would an elven army fare against this? What about our combat mages?

“Badly,” I said. “We can’t match this level of coordination. It looks a mess, but see how they communicate by drum and flag? They react quickly and that counters our ability to teleport around the battlefield. As for our combat mages, I don’t know.” My voice sounded funny. “A capran sorcerer might match them in terms of raw firepower. Can we get closer?”

Walking away from the cliff, I noticed my balance was different. I looked down. “Whoah, I have cleavage.”

MY cleavage. This is my memory, after all.

I couldn’t stop looking. I’d never seen a woman’s chest from this perspective and Dagonet had an impressive bust, for an elf. She was normally buttoned up, but I saw her bosom was dusted with freckles. Bosom. “Heh heh. Bosom.”

Stop that! You want to break synchronization?

“Okay, okay.” Clearly this wasn’t an exact reconstruction of her memory. She hadn’t talked to herself, or admired herself. She definitely didn’t cup her own butt to see how it felt.

Stop. That.

“Sorry!”

The battle shifted. Across the valley two ranks of cavalry faced each other. They charged.

“That’s crazy,” I said. “They’re not wearing armour. They’re not even carrying shields. They’ll skewer each other!”

Watch.

The horsemen pounded toward each other, their lines ruler-straight, their lances never wavering. The distance between them shrank and they began to glow. Bits of steel appeared out of hammerspace. Thousands of them swarmed like metal bees. The riders passed through clouds of them and emerged in full armour.

“That’s dwarven gear!”

The caprans were clad from head to toe. Even their horses were protected. They were heavy cavalry now and when they met the valley rang. Lances splintered. Armour shattered. Horses screamed and tumbled in the dirt. Bits of armour flew in all directions.

Notice how the armour breaks on impact?

“Those bits launched themselves to lessen the impact. They break so the man doesn’t have to. Ha ha! They’re reforming!”

The two ranks pulled apart, a little less solid. The loose links and plates followed, once again covering each knight in scalework. A few of them discarded the armour and took up their bows.

So. Capran cavalry could go from light to heavy in moments. They could serve as archers, lancers, or mounted infantry. The invasion force was an extremely versatile army. “We are so dead.”

The scene shifted. I was in the capran camp, under a cloak of invisibility. Everything looked dim, like I was wearing sunglasses indoors.

I walked slowly, staying out of the main pathways. I kept track of every pair of eyes, adjusting my camouflage to match. It was an intricate bit of magic and I was impressed at Dagonet’s skill. Not only did the water veil conceal her from sight, it also muffled her steps and contained her scent. Every exhaled breath and drop of sweat was shunted into hammerspace.

The sound of single combat drew us to where Hafgan trained. I wasn’t disappointed. He stood in a circle, bare to the waist but armoured in muscle. His pecs were wide and thick he could probably balance a glass on them. The rest of him was equally massive. And these weren’t vanity muscles—not from the way he moved. A soldier stepped forward and cut low. Hafgan stomped on the blade and clipped the man on the shoulder. The medics pulled the man out of the ring and another man stepped forward. This one parried with his mace and slashed with his knife. Hafgan kicked him out of the ring. The medics got him, too. They had a system going—they collected the wounded as quickly as they were made.

Around the ring, a circle of men. They beat their shields and chanted, cheering when a man tried his luck. These were hard, scarred men, career soldiers, utterly competent at the business of war. Hafgan dealt with them like a scythe to wheat, cutting them down and leaving them for others to gather. He was faster than Laraib, stronger than Herkus, simply better than Lister or Sham.

Hafgan’s face was expressionless, like he was playing Sparrow. He wasted no effort when he fought. He mowed down one hundred opponents without pause. Any of those men would have given me trouble. Some would have given Heronimo trouble. But Hafgan was equal to all. Few lasted more than a minute.

One did manage to cut his shoulder. It bled a bit. Hafgan threw the man out of the ring. Another poked him in the ribs with a sword, but this was a scratch. A two-handed mace swing had chipped a horn.

One hundred men. Hafgan was barely breathing hard. If I were still a dragon, I could’ve taken him. As a puny elf? Might as well write my will. (Heronimo would get the castle, but he’d share the gatehouse with Aunt Marilla and Uncle Erumaren. Mina would get the larger share of my income, to give her independence from her father. Meerwen would get my wine cellar.)

The rest of the invasion force was still practicing manoeuvres. There was an explosion, then a tremor that swept through the valley. The invisibility cloak fell off my back.

The cloak fell away, forming a puddle at my feet. Suddenly I was visible to the entire invasion force. This was only Dagonet’s memory, but I felt a chill when Hafgan turned.

Do you realize what this means? They can create null-magic fields!

“There goes another advantage,” I said.

“A spy! An elven spy! Get him!”

I was aware of the dozen or so weapons I was carrying, from the push dagger up my sleeve to the stiletto in my left boot. Dagonet was an expert in all of them. A rider was almost on top of me. I grabbed his lance and stuck it in the ground, throwing him over my head. I kept the lance and flourished it in two hands. I screamed to Dagonet, “If you kill anyone that would be war!”