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632
“Forgive me, Tarq’Vreegan.” The sister hurried to correct herself.
The sister was right though. She had to get her head into the right frame. Her forces would be able to see the forest soon enough, and that meant that the forest whores could attack any minute. The fools defended the forest like it was sacred. Trees were trees, though it seemed once you entered the forest, every tree spat arrows at you. Why the wood elves didn’t just hide in their trees and use their more effective tactics was beyond her.
The large cats walked up the ridge and Tarq’Vreegan let her gaze settle on the great forest of the wood elves. She’d seen it twice before, but the size of the forest still made her grip her reins in rage.
For centuries, her people had scrapped by, barely finding enough to eat in the stone depths of the earth, and these bitches had a forest full of such bounties of food that they never had to wonder if they could feed their children. According to Kathra, the priests of Ya’av, told us that if we could just exterminate the cunts then we could pluck the plenty of their forests and never be hungry again. Each of the sunlit races we had to claim as distant kin hoarded the wealth of the surface while we struggled and starved.
She would slit the throat of every wood elf and laugh as they choked. Her eyes focused on the treeline, her elven eyes refocusing to allow her to make out the forms of the fucking bitches preparing her and her sister’s arrival, though from this distance they looked like ants.
“Sisters!” She called to her forces on the twenty great beasts, “First one to kill a forest bitch gets double rations tonight!”
Her sisters raised their spears in a warcry.
The gruthir felt their excitement and began to pick up the pace. Battle meant we’d let them eat the corpses of the dead. Any shadow sister who fell wasn’t worthy of the rations she’d eaten, so she might as well feed the beasts, and any foe who had fallen was unworthy of burial.
Tarq’Vreen shifted so her battle corset would settle better. The leather pants the bitches wore were defensive, as were their boots, and she had taken a set from the corpses of her foes years ago, but she still preferred the corset of overlapping leather plates, reinforced with metal strips, over their jackets. She needed her shoulders unencumbered if she was going to lance the blight on the world that all races, aside from the shadow elves, were.
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The Mage outside the barracks finished the intricate gestures and long chant of the teleportation magic, making the world around us blur and settle into a new location. I had to turn to the south to see what was happening. We were high in another one of the gigantic trees. I crouched so that the leaves of the great tree would hide me, and moved to the edge of the branch where I could find a window in the leaves and set up for my sniping. The shade of the leaves would keep my scope from reflecting and betraying my position.
I laid out and deployed my bipod. Creadean laid next to me, pulling out her viewing crystal, and Tavrowen strung her bow. I could see the distant creatures as they were starting to move down the ridge miles away.
Looking through my crystal I could see these gruthir more clearly. They were dark brown large cats. The metal blade enhanced horns looked foreign to me on a cat, but they looked strange in other ways too. They were somewhere between a tiger and a wolf, not built to climb trees but to be large and in charge. The saddle that dominated their massive backs were laden with shadow elf soldiers. The soldiers wore a mismatch of stolen wood elven gear and the black leather armor of the shadow elves. They seemed to favor spears, but had the scimitars and other dueling blades that most shadow elves favored. A few of these soldiers had massive crossbows strapped to the saddle, but other than that they had no apparent ranged weapons.
“How long until they are in your range?” Creadean asked.
I struggled to convert miles to elven furrows. If I had my math right, a furrow was just shy of a third of a mile. So I could probably do my opening shot at around five furrows.
“So I can probably fire my opening shot at… what… five furrows? That’s around 2700 paces, right?” I replied.
“Unbelievable.” Tavorwen breathed.
The big cats began a loping jog. Gruthir apparently had enough stamina to make a long distance charge like this. The distance was getting rapidly eaten up. It seemed that the shadow elves weren’t terribly worried about their beasts being injured, because the only thing really protecting them was the saddle on their back.
It looked like the gruthir would have a thick sternum at the crest of their chest. I’d want to just miss that.
Spears bristled from the backs of the beasts.From NôvelDrama.Org.
Four miles to contact with the wood elves.
The wood elves formed up. The gruthir would tear right through them if nothing was done. I picked out the front gruthir, and made sure I was familiarizing how their chests moved as they ran. I was going to have to figure out where to shoot, and it would take around six or seven seconds for the round to reach my target at these ranges. Luckily, as the gruthir accelerated, their chests leveled out, their legs making contact with the soil again before their torsos sank very much.
Three miles to contact.
I glanced at the others to pick out my target orders. I’d want to hit as many as I could in short order. I was about thirds of a mile from the line of wood elves. I’d be able to fire once they were about a mile from the wood elves.
Two miles to contact.
I steadied my breathing. Falling into my rhythm for a long range shot. I was tracking the shot. Focused, aiming precisely where I wanted my round to hit. Aim small, miss small.
One mile.
BANG!
The round flew. I racked the bolt, chambering a new round. I turned quickly to my second target and…
BANG!
… a second round was headed downrange. I chambered a third round.
The second round could hit before they really had a chance to figure out what was happening. The third round would never land in time.
The round hit the first gruthir in the chest and it dropped like a rock. A spray of shadow elves thrown from the saddle flew skyward. The gruthir all turned their heads toward the first to fall and the second took it’s round in roughly the same way. The pattering of shadow elves hitting the ground was met with various reactions. Some lay unmoving, others rose collecting their gear.
The gruthir looked around, fear in their eyes. The main rider of the beasts urged them forward, and the loping charge resumed, leaving two of their fallen animals behind.
I tracked another shot and sent it. The beast tumbled hard, another spray of shadow elves being flung from the saddle.
Three gruthir down, seventeen remaining. I looked at this much like when I was involved in anti-vehicular fire. A round into these beasts was like a round into the engine of a personnel carrier.
The fall of the third gruthir brought fear into the beasts. The horned heads swung side to side scanning the trees, trying to find what had caused their fellow to fall. The fear of whatever was causing this exceeded the fear of the shadow elves spurning them to charge.
If they were going to hold still, I wasn’t going to miss that shot. I had to hope I could figure their physiology on profile, since in stopping they had turned their side to be able to dodge. I sent a fourth round, hoping to end another of the beasts.
That beast went down. This time the shadow elves just fell to the ground as the beast fell out from underneath them. Two of the beasts broke. Running in a full sprint from the battlefield. The remaining beasts tried to decide. Facing something that you can see and understand was one thing, but spontaneous seeming death from an unknown cause was a whole other level of terrifying.
I zeroed in on the beast that looked least likely to run, and sent a fifth round. A gust of wind kicked up and my round hit his rear leg instead of his chest. With a pain-filled yowl, the beast went down. I must have shattered its femur. I chambered another round, adjusted for the wind and aimed for its heart and sent it. The beast might have been willing to kill at its master’s command, but it didn’t deserve to suffer.
The remaining gruthir broke, fleeing.
I chambered another round. I wasn’t going to shoot a fleeing enemy, but it seemed about ten elves had been riding each gruthir, so roughly fifty of them could still be ready to fight. I scanned the field.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sar’Vona watched from position on a overlooking hill as the gruthir fell. Chills went down her spine. After each beast fell, the slightest of noises could be heard. She was far enough away that hearing anything, even with her sensitive ears, was shocking. She closed her hand in anger, pulling the hood of her cloak down tighter on her. She didn’t know what was killing the beasts, but the fact that such power had been granted to the wood elves infuriated her.
Her mission however had been very clear. The battle wouldn’t last long. She had to move fast.
She raised the amulet of teleportation, her eyes focused on a shadowy gap in the roots behind the wood elves. “Release.” She uttered. The darkness rose around her and when it faded she was now behind the wood elves’ line. The teleportation drained her, forcing her to wait for a minute, relying on the shadow magic on her cloak to keep her hidden. Her stomach churned, but she kept her food down. It had taken her years to get to the point that she could manage that.