Swords Over Fireshore by Pati Nagle Read Free Book Online

returned in force.
    How long might that be? Long enough, she hoped, for Yaras to return with more of Clan Darkshore. Her handful of hunters were barely enough to hold the city, not enough for what she wanted to do next, which was to carry the fight forward to Woodrun.
    Her lips twisted in a mirthless smile. Woodrun was where the ælven had gone, no doubt. If she could get to them there, she might take back her prizes. She cared little about the spineless usurper who had called himself governor of Fireshore, but the loss of the Stonereach angered her.
    He was hers. He was useful. So few of her people conceived, and those who managed to conceive with ælven always had strong children.
    Shalár paused, her hand going to her belly, her thoughts to the spirit that would enter the body growing there. The child had long been silent, but she felt its presence nearby. For a moment she was gripped with a strange desire to apologize for the loss of its father.
    Folly. The child was hers, and the sire was unimportant to its future. This child would grow to be a leader of Clan Darkshore, and would see them achieve a new prosperity in their homeland.
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    Midrange
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    R ephanin’s soul was spread across the valley, tied to each spark of ælven khi by the task that had brought him here. Ehranan shone brightest for him, closest in thought though not in flesh.
    Rephanin had all but forgotten flesh. His own lay in a guarded tent well south of the battle. The flesh of others, of the hundreds of the ælven in the valley, he tried to ignore, for there was much pain there, and much fear.
    Marovon, move twenty of your guardians up that slope to your left.
    Ehranan’s voice sang in his mind, even as it rang through him to every guardian on the field. This was his gift as he had never before made use of it. He could not speak over great distance, but he could speak to any ælven nearby, and in this war he was the conduit for Ehranan’s commands.
    He sensed the twenty guardians moving, cutting off a group of kobalen trying to cross the ælven’s flank. A small ripple in the seething cauldron of the valley.
    Kobalen dead lay everywhere, black-furred corpses piled in the river and along its bank, heaped in ghastly rows across the valley that marked the ebb and flow of the battle over the last few days. Now the ælven were moving, pressing north on both sides of the Silverwash.
    In the valley’s bowl to the west of the river the ælven’s main force pushed steadily forward, forcing the kobalen back toward the pass. Another army hastened through the forest along the eastern bank, gathering within the trees at the outpost near the north ford. Ehranan was with them. Soon he would lead them across to fall upon the kobalen from behind.
    So long had he been Ehranan’s voice to the ælven warriors that his awareness was spread like a net among them, each individual ælven a knot in the web. They moved as one, obeyed as one the commands of Ehranan, who watched and thought for them all.
    A strange elation filled him, a sense of the army’s power as his own. Despite his passive role, he knew none of this would have happened as successfully as it did without his aid. The theory had been proven. Mindspeech was a powerful tool for an embattled army, therefore a powerful weapon.
    How strange to think of oneself as a weapon. Rephanin was disturbed by the idea. As one who had tried—not always with success, but always with sincerity—to keep the creed, it seemed ironic that he should now become a tool of widespread destruction of life.
    There was no choice, of course. They must fight or be overwhelmed, so they fought.
    Make ready.
    Ehranan's voice rang in his mind, and through him to all the armies. A tension rose in the khi of the ælven as the hundreds across the river braced to move, took firm grip upon sword or bow, and turned their gaze westward. Their silence was a heavy weight within the