The power of the Earth flowed through my heart, body, and mind. I was so much faster than I could have ever contemplated as a human, and much more swift than an Elven, yet the next series of events happened so quickly that I could do little else but dive to my side and try to roll behind the boulder for cover.
Alexia and her warriors released the arrows in a chorus of high-pitched twangs a fraction of a second after the Elven yelled his words. One of our arrows missed their leader by a quarter of an inch, but the other five connected. Two into and through the skull of the Elven to his left, one into the face of the Elven to his right, and one into the eyes of the Elven at the end of the line closest to the boulders. He had managed to get his bow up and an arrow in his hand quicker than the rest.
I observed this volley before my first retreating footstep landed.
Then the canvas covering the wagons behind the row of Elven guards tore away.
There were a dozen of them inside the first cart and eighteen in the second. Alexia and her warriors were behind the boulder, but I was out in the open and twenty feet from cover. My first footstep landed as the canvas covering the two wagons did. The second footstep landed at the same time as twenty or so bow strings sang in unison. My running speed was quick, but I imagined that these Elvens would account for that in their aim. I braced for impact and dove with all the strength I had toward the safety of the boulders.
Pain shot through my body as an arrow shattered my right thigh. Another ripped through my abdomen and cut my stomach in half; a third caught my right shoulder and tore into my lung. If I had dived to my left, I would have taken fatal damage to my heart. My left arm pushed me up into a flip and I landed in a heap of agony, blood, and arrows behind the cover of the boulder.
My vision swam for a few precious seconds as I reached for the first arrow I could find. The one in my leg hurt the most and I found my left hand closing around the bloody shaft. The leather armor we wore probably did more harm than good at this point. If I had been wearing simple clothing, the arrow would have just passed through me. Now it was caught up in the bindings and I needed to take a few deep, blood-soaked breaths through my one functioning lung before I mustered up the gumption to rip it out of my muscle.
I heard screams from the wagons behind the boulder and figured that Gorbanni had his few bowmen shoot down into the Elven archers. Then the screams were echoed by twangs beside me as Alexia’s team stood from their cover and let loose with a volley in such perfect unison that it sounded like one single bow being released.
"You dead?" Alexia whispered after she crouched beside me. She didn't even bother to look at my injuries.
"No." I spat up a mouthful of blood and stomach acid.
"Wish you were?" She threaded another arrow into the weapon as easily as most people brush their hair back.
I choked out a bloody laugh and reached for the shaft that ran through my stomach. My hand closed around the fletching and I gave it a light tug. My vision swam into darkness and I hacked up what felt like a pint of blood. Alexia and her team stood and let loose with another volley of well-timed shots. She crouched down quickly and a drum roll retort of arrows deflected off of the side of the boulder where she had just been standing.
"Where the fuck is Thayer?" She looked at me with an eyebrow raised. When she noticed me struggling to pull the arrow from my stomach she reached over with her left hand behind me, grabbed onto the head, and ripped the shaft from my back. The yank pulled the full length of the arrow through my stomach and out the other side, as the Elven had intended.
The only reason I didn't scream was because my lung and throat were full of blood.
"Gorbanni can't charge down the bank of the cliff because they will be easy targets for the Elvens. They know our positions here and some of them are scaling the wall opposite Gorbanni to come around and flank us." Alexia gave me a battle update before she motioned for Omon to stand up alone, without taking a shot, and then crouch again. Dozens of arrows filled the space where Omon had just been, while Galazara and Ional stood and ducked down before the Elvens released another round of arrows.
My vision cleared enough for me to risk pulling out the arrow that was stuck in my right shoulder and lung. My left hand closed around the shaft and I forced myself to lean against the wall for leverage. I grunted, pulled, and felt the arrowhead rip out more of my lung and muscles, and scrape past bones in my chest as my strength pulled it free.
My eyes closed and I made myself relax. I felt the Earth flow through me, trying to heal me, trying to steady my heart as it squirted my blood through the holes in my body and onto the rough sand of the ravine. It sounded like a small waterfall crashing down a rocky stairway. I pushed on the bones in my leg and ground them together in a rough formation of how they should fit. I didn't really need to do this to ensure that my body healed, but it would speed up the process by ten seconds or so.
That could make a difference.
Omon stood up again to shoot and his head snapped back suddenly as an Elven arrow found his face and killed him. He tumbled down the slope of the boulder like a small, wet pebble and landed on the floor of the ravine. His bow bounced down a different path than his body and landed in the open space between our clashing forces.
The Elvens roared in victory.
Alexia stood and risked another shot while they were cheering, then she yelped in pain when an arrow hit her in the shoulder and sent her falling. The arrow passed through the ligaments by the rotator cuff. She crawled over to me and leaned against the side of the boulder.
"We'll be fine. I have them right where I want them." I forced a smile at the blonde woman that she returned with a frenzied look in her eye. Alexia was slow to anger, but when she lost control of her emotions I had seen horrible things happen.
"Magic?" she asked in a tone that made it seem more like a demand.
"No." I shook my head. "Our kind is out there on the wagons." She nodded and then touched her shoulder. Alexia was strong with her Air and Fire. She could have easily obliterated the entire caravan with a small twist of energies. Unfortunately, it took dozens of years to fine tune the ability into something as acute as an arrow.
"I need to assess," I said between another volley of arrows. About thirty seconds had passed since I pulled the arrow out of my shoulder, and my leg still hurt, but I could move. My stomach wasn't bleeding anymore, and my lung had started to reform and eject the blood. It would be a struggle to crawl up the side of this boulder so I might look at the battlefield, but I needed to see where our next move should be.
Alexia nodded and stood again to get their attention. I dug my elbows into the boulder and pushed myself up away from the warm stone. My right arm couldn't move that well, but my left was more than strong enough to pull me over the rock face of the boulders. After a few seconds of crawling, climbing, and healing, I made it to the top of the boulder stack where Alexia and I hid. I could then see what had transpired in the last few minutes of the battle.
There was an organized resistance by our enemies. The first, second, third, and last wagon seemed to be where the Elven archers hid themselves. In the middle of each wagon they had crafted a stomach-high wood barrier that gave them cover. They had the wagons positioned in a rough semi-circle that also protected their back lines from Gorbanni's men on the ridge and our position on the boulders to their north.
I counted about fifty-four of them. Nine of the pointy-eared fuckers were dead, five on the ground where I had stopped them initially, killed by Alexia's archers during the first few exchanges of arrows. Four other Elven bodies were inside the semi-circle of I noticed the human caravan drivers were laying down in the seat of each of their wagons.
I wanted to call out to them and let them know we were here to save them, but I feared that would aggravate our already outnumbered situation. One of the Elven bowmen spotted me peeking out from behind the rock and I ducked my head back under cover before he could put an arrow through my face.
Perhaps the humans on the wagons weren't the ones who needed saving.
While there were always an infinite number of options available during combat, only three came to mind now. We could hold them off here and wait for Thayer to rescue us. If he went where I had told him, he would approach their back side and probably be able to take down half of them with his archers before they could retaliate. Another choice was to fall back to the north through the maze of canyons and lose them. The final option was using magic, the downside being that we would kill the twenty humans, and obliterate the very supplies we were here to obtain.
"We'll hold here as long as we can for Thayer." I used our sign language to communicate with one of Gorbanni's warriors on top of the ridge. Then I crawled down to Alexia. My leg was feeling perfect, but my stomach, lung, chest, and shoulder still complained violently with every movement.
"We've got half a dozen arrows each," she commented without concern.
"Then they will have to count. We are holding for Thayer."
"I guessed so. Where do you think he is?" She spared me a glance.
I was about to answer when a surge of energy hit the boulders where we hid. Dust and rocks filled my vision and my ears rang like I had just stuck my head into the epicenter of a thunderstorm. I felt the ground shake and another magic comet connected with our boulder again. Then an echo blast smashed into the boulders where Alexia's other archers took cover.
A boom sounded and screams came from Gorbanni’s troops on the ridge. The Elvens must have three or four skilled magic users with them. It took the Elvens much longer than us to learn how to use Air. Those of their kind who could actually launch a fireball and conjure other effects were extremely valuable. To risk them on a mission like this meant that the Colotar tribe was serious about stopping our raids. It also meant that the intelligence we had gathered was wrong. They should not have this many Elementalists in their tribe.
Unless the Bolatar were helping them.
Dirt, sand, and dust were everywhere. I choked on it, spat it out, and tasted it on my tongue. I realized that we were fucked unless I could change the tide in the next few seconds. We couldn't wait for Thayer anymore. We were either going to have to retreat or retaliate with our own magic and risk destroying the reason we attempted this raid.
I opened my mouth to bark out the retreat order and it filled with sand again. The thick cloud was so dense I couldn't even see Alexia standing right next to me. It was a small blessing because it would effectively cover our escape.
Then I got a crazy idea. It was risky in that I couldn't tell if Gorbanni's ridge had the same dust problem we did. I hoped that I was right or we would be dead in less than a minute.
We had a command word in our old language; the same language that gave us the word: "O'Baarni" and most of our names. I yelled at my troops to charge their caravan.
My right arm protested dramatically when I used it to assist in my flip over the top of the rocks. The jump took me twenty or so feet in the air and gave me time to rip my trusty mace free from the bindings on my hip. I landed on the ground in between the boulders and the semi-circle of wagons the Elvens were using for protection. I thanked my luck that the sand and dust still gave me some cover, I could see that it seemed to end around the perimeter of the first wagon. They might be able to see me before I made it there and got a shot off with an arrow, but even if I fell, Alexia's warriors chased behind me and they were deadly in close combat.
I sprinted across the soft, sandy ground toward the caravan and risked a quick glance to the canyon wall where Gorbanni's men were positioned. They had heard my command and the bulk of his men were running down the sides of the cliff face under a light cover of dust and sand. Dozens of arrows bounced off the sides of the wall and the fire was returned by Gorbanni's own archers.
I reached the first wagon and jumped over the fifteen-foot barrier to land in the middle of their group of archers. My mace connected with the skull of an Elven as soon as my boots hit the ground. It was a downward strike that crushed her helmeted head like a hammer would squash a too ripe tomato. Blood sprayed ten feet in all directions and the force of the blow smashed her body into the sand.
I was midway through their ranks and guessed about a quarter of their archers saw me descend from the sky. It didn't matter if they saw me. I was too close now, and the nearest Elven warrior tried desperately to swing his bow around toward me and release his notched arrow. My mace was much faster. The weapon took him in the right side of his hip, shattering his bones like glass and passing through to the other side of his body like I was wielding a blade. The Elvens didn't heal as fast as we did, but they would recover from most wounds that they could live through for ten or fifteen minutes. This fucker was dead as soon as I separated his spinal column from his hips.
I spun and slammed my mace into the back of an archer who had not realized I was behind him. Then my right hand closed around the neck of another. I crushed his vertebrae before flinging him over my shoulder and into three archers who were about to punch me full of arrows. Alexia cut the skull of an Elven who had drawn his sword next to me. Then I broke the arm, bow, and arrow of another about to shoot up the cliff wall toward Gorbanni’s men as they emerged from the dust cloud.