The Last Elf of Lanis (9 page)

Arnwylf found the lead horse easy to control. He simply held handfuls of the horse’s mane, and when he pulled to the left or right, the horse followed his directions. After what seemed like a long time, far from the encampment, Arnwylf pulled on his horse’s mane to stop and confer with Len as to their intended direction. As his horse halted, Arnwylf turned to see if all the humans had made it out of the garond encampment, or if any had fallen from their mounts.

In the dark, overcast night, in the crush of milling horses, as Arnwylf called for Len, Deepscar roughly pulled Arnwylf from his horse. As they tumbled to the ground, Arnwylf’s sword went clattering from his hand over the flat stones on which they landed.

Deepscar rained heavy blows on Arnwylf’s face as he tried to escape his grasp. They rolled around on the gray rock, Deepscar pummeling, and Arnwylf deflecting. Arnwylf had never been taught how to fight, and the best he could do was deflect Deepscar’s thrashing. Deepscar began alternating cracking Arnwylf in the face and punishing blows to his body. Deepscar tried to rise to his feet. Arnwylf was reminded of the stauer hunt and knew that if he let go it would be the end of him, and so, clung tightly to Deepscar.

All around, the humans sat on their horses in frozen terror.

“Do something!” Frea cried, then got down from her horse.

She picked up a large stone and hit Deepscar soundly in the back of the head. He roared in pain and wheeled quickly with a backhand fist that knocked Frea unconscious.

Arnwylf, battered and bloodied, saw his sword was only a few feet away and struggled to reach it. Deepscar, on top of Arnwylf, saw what he was doing, and clamped both of his great paws around Arnwylf’s throat. Choking, turning red, Arnwylf rocked and struggled closer to the sword. He felt the world going black.

Then, as if by magic, the sword was in his hand. Without hesitation, Arnwylf drew the sword’s edge down across Deepscar’s neck. As Deepscar let go of Arnwylf to grab his own, freshly cut throat, Arnwylf thrust the sword back up and hard into Deepscar.

Deepscar jerked with paralysis, his ugly face a grimace of pain. He pulled the sword, still in his body, away from Arnwylf’s hands. He stood, snarling. Arnwylf wearily rose to his feet. Deepscar began to curse Arnwylf in garond, both his hands still on the sword’s hilt. He swayed, trying to pull the sword from his body. But, Arnwylf stepped forward, clasped Deepscar’s hands and thrusting, turned the blade.

Deepscar’s face went slack, and he fell to the flat, gray stones dead.

Arnwylf saw Faw, off of his horse, worriedly staring at him. Arnwylf raised his hand to reassure the young boy, and stumbled to Frea’s side. She was awake, and trying to tell him something. She was telling him to turn around.

Spent and battered, Arnwylf turned to see Ratskenner pull the sword from Deepscar’s corpse.

Ratskenner advanced on Arnwylf.

“You nearly ruined everything,” he sneered, that sick smile playing across his face. “But I will return with your head and the princess, and become a great hero.”

An evil light shined in Ratskenner’s eyes as he raised the sword to Arnwylf. Then, a loud, low, deep growling froze Ratskenner. Behind him yellow eyes glowed in the dark. Ratskenner tried to turn with the sword, but it was too late. Conniker bound forward, sinking his teeth into Ratskenner’s spine. Ratskenner let out a loud, shrill shriek. Then, Conniker violently shook him until Ratskenner was dead.

The humans mumbled sounds of despair and fear as the white wolf stumbled up to Arnwylf. But, the great beast began to lick his smiling face.

“Thank you,” Arnwylf said to Conniker, stroking his head. Arnwylf noticed Conniker’s tattered coat, healing gashes and badly damaged tail.

“You’ve been in quite a scrap, haven’t you, brother? But we need to get going. They are sure to be tracking us, and we are not yet in safe hands.”

Arnwylf tried to stand, but he was clearly too hurt. Frea steadied him. Len jumped from his horse to help.

“Perhaps I should take the lead horse,” Len offered. “We are in my lands now, and I can guide us to Scatterstone, a place of easy shallows across the Burnie River.”

“Yes, the pass between the Burnie and the Bairn will be heavily guarded,” Frea said. “Help me get him onto your horse, and you take the lead horse.”

As soon as Arnwylf was situated behind Frea, and Len had mounted the lead horse, a sound of a tracking party could be heard in the far distance.

“We must fly as swift as a Kipleth arrow,” Len called to the company. “Hold tight and pray to your gods!”

With that, Len spurred his horse and the whole company exploded into the dark of the night as fast as their horses could gallop.

All that black, heavily clouded night, Arnwylf clung to Frea as she rode her horse. The tracking party of garonds, also clearly on horseback were always within earshot, their hunting horns blaring.

Near dawn, the company ran down into a shallow ravine into Scatterstone. Here the Burnie River was very wide and easy to cross. The pleasant and clear water of the Burnie laughed and rippled as it played over the many smooth stones in the vast river bed. Steam rose from the softly flowing water in the dawn light. The horses bent their weary heads to drink.

“Only a sip,” Len hissed to the company. “We still have a day’s ride until we cross the Madronwy River, and reach the safety of Kenethley.” To himself Len whispered, “May it still be standing and
well-armed
.”

Arnwylf really felt the great beating he had received from Deepscar all the next day of relentless riding. His face and kidneys ached mightily. Once he wiped his running nose to find his hand covered with blood. He clung to Frea and could feel her strength as she rode the war horse. He smiled to himself.

“I saved her,” he said quietly to himself.

The countryside was mostly lightly wooded, rolling hills. About midday day, as they topped a ridge, they could see the garond trackers several miles behind them. It was no small platoon, it seemed the whole army was on their heels.

The white wolf stayed near Arnwylf and Frea the whole way. Conniker seemed to look up at Arnwylf with concern. Arnwylf looked down and weakly smiled to reassure his friend, but his head was hot with fever.

All that day it seemed as though their trackers were closing in on them, even though they never stopped for food, water or to rest the horses.

As the sun began to set, Len pulled close to Frea and Arnwylf. “We’re near the Madronwy River. There are several secret bridges. Fallfont Gorge is the closest. We’ll have to leave the horses. But, the gorge is steep, and if we fell the bridge, they won’t be able to follow us.”

The company galloped through forests of evergreen Yew and leafless Alder, black and ready for the winter.

As night began to fall, no clouds gathered. The light from both Nunee, the mother moon, and the Wanderer, her companion moon, was full and bright. In the dusk, they traveled through rockier terrain, climbing, always climbing.

In the moonlight, they came to a steep cliff with a thin rushing river, the Madronwy, far below.

“It’s close, now,” Len called to the company. The band of horses trotted along a trail beside the lethal gorge. Up ahead, a precarious rope and wood bridge spanned the jagged abyss, reflecting moonlight.

“Dismount,” Len cried. As soon as the humans were all off their horses they ran for the bridge. Frea and Len supported Arnwylf, who tried his best to keep up. His legs were weak and unsteady.

Behind them, they could hear the cries and shouts of the garond tracking party.

The humans skittered over the bridge in single file. Sentries on the other side helped them off the bridge as quickly as possible. Frea lead Arnwylf across the swaying bridge last.

Len stood at the far side of the bridge with a sentry. The sentry held a sword aloft to cut the supports as soon as they were across.

Conniker led Frea, who held her arms around Arnwylf, helping him to the other side. A garond arrow whistled past her and hit the sentry square in the chest.

Behind her garonds, bellowing in rage, began to cross the bridge. The garond leader, Ravensdred was in front.

“Leave the bridge! There’s no time to fell it!” Len shouted and they ran into the darkness of the Hills of Madrun with the garond army hot on their trail. Garond arrows angrily whirled all around them.

Frea, Arnwylf, and Len stumbled up to a ridge in the moonlight, when Ravensdred got a good sight on Arnwylf.

Ravensdred nocked a huge, deadly arrow and let fly. The arrow was targeted perfectly, dead center on Arnwylf’s heart. “You’ve gone far enough!” He bellowed.

Then, above in the night sky, the great, horrific terror began.

Chapter Eight

The Archer and the Elf

The Archer slept so deeply, he missed the garonds with Frea, only a hundred yards away, when they left in the morning. He hadn’t slept for five days.

Before he freed the families at Bittel, he had been fighting garonds in the small village of Tyny. For three days the garond platoons had tried to take the village with its bridge across the Holmwy River. There was only one family that lived in Tyny, but men from Kipleth and far Reia were camped there to hold the bridge. If and when the garonds took Tyny, or Alfhich further to the south, their armies would pour into the western Meadowlands, and the end would come soon for Reia, and then there would be no human left alive in all of Wealdland.

The garonds disbursed on the fourth day and the Archer had been tracking them when he found hidden Bittel. He knew he couldn’t take Kellabald and his clan southwestward to Alfhich or anyway near the eastern side of the Holmwy, as it was swarming with garond patrols. He thought it best to make for what he thought was the safety of the Weald.

The elf was still comatose.

In the late morning, the Archer finally awoke to the sound of stealthy footsteps in the crisp, dead autumn grass. He could see the tawny ears of two lionesses, above the grass, stalking towards him.

Without hesitation, the Archer grabbed the elf by her hood with one hand, and he climbed the pine tree as quickly as he could. The nearest lioness bounded towards the tree with the sudden movement. Her massive claws gripped the tree, her green yellow eyes wide with ferocious hunger. The Archer moved up the pine tree with some difficulty due to the denseness of the small, bare, inner branches which cut at his hands and face. The lioness was right at his feet, a low guttural growl in her throat.

With his free hand, the Archer gripped his bow, pulled an arrow from his quiver with the same hand, nocked the arrow, held it with his teeth, and released as the lioness leapt at him. The bronze arrow shot right down her throat into her heart. With her roar frozen on her face, she slowly fell through the pine branches of the tree, dead.

The Archer climbed as high as he could, secured the elf in an elbow of the tree, and readied another arrow. But, the second lioness didn’t attempt the climb. She paced around the tree for a moment, sniffed at her dead companion, but was constantly looking in the distance for something her sensitive ears could hear. Eventually, she left her dead sister, and in a low stance, stalked away into the grass.

Then from his fortunate height in the tree, the Archer saw what had frightened the lioness away, a squad of a dozen horse garonds in the meadow. From his vantage point, he could see them riding in a V formation, obviously carefully searching the foliage. They had probably found the carnage at Rion Ta and were looking for those responsible.

The Archer carefully climbed down from the pine tree, his hands sticky with pine sap. Good, he thought to himself, my hands will be sure. And a quiet smile played across his dark, grim visage.

The formation of horse garonds was moving away from the Archer at a rapid pace. He thought of the elf for a moment. But, he made his decision. He found a firm, even patch of earth and dug his feet in.

“Hoy!” The Archer called at the top of his lungs. The band of riding garonds pulled to a halt. Looking over his shoulder, the lead garond, riding point, bellowed an order. The whole squad wheeled in formation, and the V of riders bore down on their prey.

The Archer immediately realized he had a problem, and smiled to himself. He only had seven of the black arrows, and would have to use five flint arrows. The problem wasn’t in the composition of arrows, but in the spread of his field.

The leader in the center was easy. A black arrow knocked him clean off his horse, but the formation was closing fast. The Archer shot two more arrows, sweeping back and forth, and horse garonds on either side of the lead horse fell dead.

Closer still, the archer shot his last four black arrows, alternating swinging left and right at the garonds closest to him as the V bore down on him.

Almost on top on him, surprised they hadn’t stopped or broken ranks, the Archer shot five flint arrows swinging wide, back and forth, to his left and to his right.

The last arrow clipped the ear of the rider at the far left end of the formation, as the riderless horses harmlessly rushed past the Archer. The surviving garond turned his horse to glare at the Archer, and rather than attack, he spurred his horse away out onto the vast Eastern Meadowland.

The Archer shook his head, and then proceeded to recover his black arrows, and as many of the flint arrows as were intact.

The Archer stepped over the dead lioness. The flint arrow was too far down her throat to bother retrieving. He climbed the tree to find the elf awake and smiling.

“You let one get away,” she mocked.

“I know, I know,” he smiled back. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel good,” the elf said. “But I can’t move my arms or legs.”

The Archer carefully carried the elf down the pine tree, then holding her gently in his arms asked, “Now what?”

“We continue tracking the girl,” the elf said as if it were completely obvious.

The Archer shook his head, but knew arguing would be futile.

Cradling the elf in one arm, tracking in the late morning light, the Archer quickly found the place where Frea and the garonds bedded down for the night. The Archer and the elf shared a frustrated, unspoken moment.

The Archer realized he couldn’t continue with the elf in one arm, and so constructed a sling out of his hooded outer tunic to carry her on his back.

Frea and her garond kidnapers were already a half a day ahead on horseback when the Archer and the elf started tracking them towards the Bairn River.

Late in the day, the Archer and the elf came to the shore of the Bairn River and found the garond with the crushed skull.

“What do you think?” The elf asked.

“I think it is a good sign that Frea may still be alive.”

“They are fighting over her.”

“Which means she is not dead and merely meat to eat.”

The elf gravely nodded.

The horse’s tracks were easy to follow along the river’s sandy bank. The elf looked at the dark, closely cropped hairs on the Archer’s neck. There were a few white hairs among his thick, dark hair. A sign he was filled with worry and pain.

“Tell me about the black arrows,” the elf said, hoping to draw the Archer into conversation.

“The arrows of Yenolah?” The Archer huffed with a pleasant laugh. “You recognize them?”

“No,” the elf said. “But they are definitely of elf design.”

“Forged by Weylund, the greatest of all elf smiths, from a fallen star.”

“Weylund was my grandfather!” The elf exclaimed.

“I’m not surprised,” the Archer said. “There were so few elves in the last hundred years or so. You must all be related.”

They both grew quiet, and the Archer knew he broached a difficult subject.

“There were about five hundred.” The elf finally broke the silence. “All were slaughtered at Lanis Rhyl Landemiriam.”

“How- Elves are great warriors. How could this be?”

“Less than two hundred elves killed close to six thousand garonds that day. They just kept coming. Only I survived. My brother and I were outside the gates of the city to greet the garonds, who were our friends at the time. I was knocked unconscious early in the assault and hidden in the woods outside the city by my brother. When I awoke, I saw the last elves fall. My brother was among those last courageous few.”

Both the Archer and the elf continued on in silence.

After a long stillness, tracking the horse garonds who had taken Frea, the Archer told the elf the story of how he had discovered his family was slain by the garonds.

“Let us rest for a moment,” the elf said. The day was getting late. “We both are driven by grief, but I fear neither of us will listen to reason. At least we can rest when we should.”

The Archer grimly smiled and stared down at his feet. He set the elf down.

The night was falling, and a cloud cover moved quickly across the darkening sky.

“Something unnatural wishes to hide its doings,” the elf said, peering up at the thick skyward blanket.

“Let us camp for the night,” the Archer said. “You’ll probably feel better and we can move much quicker. If Frea is still alive, the garonds still have far to go to find a passable break in the Bairn River.”

The elf agreed, and the Archer set up a small campsite away from the openness of the river bank.

The elf told the Archer where to find carrots growing wild in the earth beside the river, and they both had nicely roasted carrots for supper.

“That sword of yours is unusual,” the Archer said between mouthfuls.

“The moon sword of Berand Torler. It’s tens of thousands years old.”

“How old are you?” The Archer asked squinting through the darkness.

The elf laughed that light, tinkling laugh. “How old would you guess I am?”

“I would say... no more than twenty two years of age.”

“I have seen over three hundred winters.”

The Archer choked on his roast carrot, then laughed. “Three hundred...?”

Their laughter quickly subsided. The elf stared into the flames of the small camp fire.

“The moon sword was part of a sacred pact with humans, a part of the treaty which ended the elf human wars. It is forbidden to touch it. I thought no other elf would now object.”

The Archer had no response to comfort the elf. After staring into the dwindling fire for a while, the Archer and the elf were soon both fast asleep.

In the bright, cloudless morning, the Archer and the elf awoke and rose to track the garonds.

“No clouds,” the elf mused.

“Good day for tracking.” The Archer smiled. “How do you feel?”

“I can move my hands and feet, but not my arms and legs.”

“That’s good,” the Archer smiled. “You can carry me tomorrow.”

Then, cheerfully, the Archer tied his hooded cloak into a sling as he had before, gently picked up the elf and slung her onto his back.

The sandy shoal of the river bank was easy to track, and in the late afternoon they found the place where the kidnappers and victim had bedded down for their second night. There were three large indentations in the sand where the horses lay, and three smaller hollows indicating two garonds and a smaller body, Frea’s.

Now the Archer strode as quickly as he could, measuring his strength, but confidant that the girl was alive.

“Tell me of the elf folk,” the Archer called back to the elf. “These traces are plain, and I need a distraction to clear my mind.”

The elf considered the fine shape of the Archer’s ear. It could almost be an elf ear, tapering high and thin. There were rumors that elf blood was mingled with human blood, but the elf gave these whispers no merit.

“A tale of the elf folk,” the elf reflected. “Wylkeho Daniei created the earth as a special honor to the aspect of love, and so all creatures on the earth are here for joy. Wylkeho Daniei filled the earth with animals and beautiful gardens.

“But the creator of all things was lonely and wanted conversation. So from his brightest flames, he created beings who walked on two legs, the elves, and they lived for three eons in a paradise of love and peace.”

“An ancient elf lord named Brudejik met Jofod Kagir on a trek through the desert, and begged for his life as he had neither food nor water for a whole year.”

“Jofod Kagir offered him either food, drink, or power over his brothers. In his delirium Brudejik chose power over his brothers.”

“Whereupon, Wylkeho Daniei immediately appeared and asked Brudejik why his inner flame was so different.”

“Brudejik lied to Wylkeho Daniei and said it was because he was so hungry and thirsty.”

“Wylkeho Daniei offered a fruit growing in his hair to Brudejik, but he was frightened and refused. Wylkeho Daniei then offered a drink of water springing from his own hands, but again Brudejik was frightened and refused.”

“Wylkeho Daniei then perceived that Brudejik was lying and had consorted with Jofod Kagir, and asked him what he had given him.”

“Brudejik knew he couldn’t lie anymore to his god and told him the truth.”

“Whereupon Wylkeho Daniei said to Brudejik, ‘you will have power over your brothers only because you have denied your inner light, and so you shall live a short life and die.’

“And, as the great parent said these words, Brudejik fell to the earth and rose with a different countenance and became the first human. So, ashamed, Brudejik fled out of the gardens of earth to live amongst the wild animals and rocks of pain.”

“After several eons, Wylkeho Daniei had pity on Brudejik and his children, and so created a race from the dust of the earth, and borrowed flame from the animals nearby. They were a dark faced and red haired race, created to guide the humans with wisdom born from nature. They were the garonds...”