Page 124 of Of Empires and Dust

“Nor Salara,” Eltoar responded.

“How can you see that far?” Argil Ford was the commander of Elkenrim’s city guard, a short man with a wiry frame and hair brown as bark. He was a dour and cantankerous man.

As though answering Argil’s question, Helios unleashed an enormous roar, matched by Seleraine as both dragons droppedlow over the city and swept a gust in their wake, leaving cloaks and banners flapping and dust spiralling.

Cheers and roars erupted, and all along the walls grew a cacophony of sound as the city’s defenders threw their fists in the air, clapped their gauntlets against their breastplates, and knocked wood against stone. All one hundred thousand were within the walls. Just short of eight thousand manned the outer wall, six thousand more at the inner. The rest stood by for replenishment or were arranged across chokepoints throughout the city. Plans had already been put in place for if, and when, the elves broke through the various sections of Elkenrim’s defences.

With Helios’s roar, Eltoar felt no need to answer Argil’s question. Instead, he continued to observe through the dragon’s eyes.

Eight elves stood before the trench, unmoving, their gazes fixed on the city as the golden stag banner flapped before them. Even with Helios’s sight, it was impossible to make out their faces through their helms. But he would have known Vandrien or Salara anywhere. They were either not at Elkenrim at all, or they lingered within the fog. Neither option made sense.

Another roar thundered in the night, followed by a second and a third. The fog whirled and twisted, bursting outwards as three enormous shapes erupted from within its bounds.

The cheering on the walls stopped.

All three dragons bolted upwards like streaks of lightning, twisting about each other and weaving through the low bank of clouds that had drifted in. One had scales of deep crimson – the dragon from the Three Sisters. The second was Andrax, yellow scales and pale pink wings marking him. But it was the third creature that held Eltoar’s attention.

The Blood Moon’s light glinted on the golden scales that adorned Vyrmír’s chest and snout. The dragon was almost twiceas large as the others, his powerful wings blotting out the moon’s light.

“So youarehere,” Eltoar whispered to himself. In the back of his mind, he could feel Helios soaring on a current of air, twisting as he tried to get a better look at the three dragons and their Draleid.

Three rows of armoured elves with long glaives stepped from the fog, moving in perfect time. They stopped with a snap of their boots and drove the butts of their glaives into the ground, still as statues.

“Commander Ford. Assemble a guard of ten and send word to the commanders of the armies. It is time.”

“So be it.” Argil turned but then hesitated a moment. “What are the chances we live to see tomorrow?”

Eltoar looked back at the man, then at the faces of those around him. The mood was dark, their expressions grim. He could feel the fear in their hearts. These men and women were good soldiers, but they had never faced elves on the field of battle. That might have been a good thing, if they had not heard tales of the devastation along the Lightning Coast or of the Battle of the Three Sisters.

He’d heard the stories spreading through the ranks. As far as many of the Lorians were concerned, the elven army was a host of demons sent from the void to rip the living world to pieces. Eltoar felt no need to correct them. That was how war functioned. Or at least, that was how a soul survived war. You turned your enemy into monsters. Monsters were easier to kill – not in the physical sense but in the sense of the soul. Fewer sleepless nights were born from the deaths of monsters. But it was Eltoar’s intention to show these men and women that monsters could bleed.

“Focus on today, Commander. I’ll see what I can do about tomorrow.”

The portcullis squeakedand groaned as it opened, aged iron that was long past needing oiling. Soldiers marched, carrying a large wooden bridge on their shoulders, their backs straight and expressions sombre.

Eltoar, Voranur, and the army commanders followed in the bridge’s wake. Not one of them spoke. There was nothing to be said. Eltoar had already explained the elven tradition of Narvírinín – ‘the meeting of commanders’ – before a battle. He had explained Alvadrû, and he had explained that there would be no slow, long siege. Elves did not lay siege in that way. There was no honour in watching your enemies starve and wither. Battle was meant to be quick and savage, not slow and fumbling.

The men lowered their bridge, setting it in place across the trench, then bowed their heads as Eltoar and the others passed.

The crunch of dirt beneath Eltoar’s boots was all he could hear after he stepped from the bridge, his gaze fixed on the flapping banner of the golden stag, the banner of his home.

Had he never heard the Calling, never been bound to Helios, he may well have been standing on the other side of this battle, garbed in the same gilded plate his mother had once worn. That was lifetimes ago though, and the choices had been entirely out of his control.

He remembered what Alvira had once told him long ago, after his sister had fallen in the war between Lunithír and Kavathíl, and he had not been there to die by her side.“Every soul has a thousand lives not lived, born of a thousand choices not made and a thousand paths not walked, Eltoar. We must not dwell on those other lives. They are ghosts, and if we let them, they will haunt us. Look forward. There are more choices to make, more paths to walk, more life to live.”

Eltoar’s jaw clenched reflexively at the memory, a wave of sorrow and regret bleeding into his mind from Helios’s.

If only we’d walked the same path. I miss you.

Eltoar stopped within ten feet of the banner and the eight elves who stood about it. For a brief moment, the wind was the only voice that spoke, crimson cloaks and tabards flapping. The rows of elves behind the banner stood still and rigid.

“Eltoar Daethana.” One of the elves by the banner stepped forwards, pauldrons ornamented with charging stags, a blazing sun on his breastplate. The cloth on his armour was white as opposed to the usual crimson of Lunithír. “I had hoped it would be you.”

“I’m afraid I do not know you as well as you do me.”

The elf removed his helmet and held it into the crook of his arm. “Better?”

“Olmaír Moridain…” So many faces Eltoar thought were lost had resurfaced these past months. And of them all, Olmaír’s was the least welcome. Eltoar dipped his head, bowed at the waist, and pressed a fist to his breastplate. “Alaith anar, Aeldral.”

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