Reign of the Dark Elves
Book One: The Sorcerer
Copyright© Andrew G. Wood
2017
ISBN-13:
978-1981628308
ISBN-10:
1981628304
All Rights Reserved.
Special thanks to the following people for giving up their time to help and support me in writing this book :
Claire Wood
Adam Dakin
Claire Kinrade
Emma Carter
Prologue.
Over two hundred years had now passed since the Dark Elves crossed the Great Sea and enslaved the lands of the humans. Ordinarily, the Dark Elves were a race to war amongst themselves but had united under the leadership of a Warlock named Saedor, and with unity within their own lands, they had sought to conquer others. The Humans, far across the vast expanse of water known as The Great Sea were the obvious choice, and Saedor had ordered a fleet of ships to be built capable of reaching them
The Humans, while capable of great feap[ets and making good fighters had been easily overrun. With no cohesion or leadership, the humans had been brushed aside by the invading force. As the villages and towns ordinarily ruled and ran their own communities, each had attempted to defend itself rather than group up with others and form an army capable of repelling the attacks. Within just six months of the Dark Elves landing, most, if not all of the human settlements were under their command.
While defeated, to this day the humans are allowed to live in their settlements, but only to serve their masters. As well as growing the crops that feed their oppressors, some humans are taken as slaves. These are usually transported to Gashek where they are either worked to death in the mines just north of the city, or used for building and maintaining the Dark Elven hub of power. Although most humans selected were harshly treated, a few are treated a little better, fed and looked after but then used for sport or pleasure. The Dark Elves love nothing more than to be entertained watching humans fight themselves or battle against some of the more ferocious creatures that share their land.
In addition to those taken to the City of Gashek and in order to help keep the human population under control, the Dark Elves conduct a reaping each year, selecting and taking children in their fifteenth year. Both male and female are picked and taken to the capital for use there, or even special camps where they are trained and brainwashed to serve their Masters. Some acting as soldiers and guards while others are loaded on to ships and transported to other parts of the world to help the Dark Elves with their worldwide plan of domination.
While most humans appeared to be content living their subdued lives, it was rumoured that a few still fought on regardless. Hiding out in the mountains of the south or seeking refuge nearer the less hospitable regions to the north known as The Wastes. While these groups apparently sought to overthrow those that had taken their lands, they were evidently too few in number to ever cause more than a minor inconvenience to the Dark Elves and their regime. Most of those in power believed no such human settlements even existed and were merely a fantasy created to give a forlorn hope to those they oppressed.
Chapter 1.
The sun rose bringing another new day as Liana pushed out her arms and yawned. Stretching out her aching muscles, it had been a hard few days of late working in the fields around her home village of Tepton. A quiet, secluded place it may have been, but that did not excuse them from producing crops for their Masters. Not only did they have to ensure there was ample food for themselves but they also had to meet the quota set them by the local Governor.
At fifteen years of age, Liana was approaching womanhood and up for selection in this year's reaping. However, with still a few days to go before she had to travel to the town of Sarton to offer herself up for selection, her time, for now, would need to be spent digging and planting. With another yawn, Liana sat up and clambered up from the narrow bed placing her hand at the base of her back as she once more felt the aches of her labour. Pulling on her cotton breeches and lifting her threadbare shirt on over her long dark hair, she then looked in the very small piece of mirror that she had once found to check everything was as it should be. A pair of dark eyes stared back at her set within a rather sad, forlorn-looking face that suggested this was a girl unhappy with the way her life was going, and one that perhaps demanded more than the bleak future laid out before her.
Liana owned very little in life, and apart from the clothes on her back and a small stone pendant she kept around her neck, she regarded the mirror as one of her most precious belongings. Reaching out and touching the glass with her finger, Liana remembered back to the day she had discovered it. Having been digging in one of the fields the previous spring she had been fortunate enough to have unearthed it. Turning the soil over, something had caught her eye as it glistened in the sunlight, and after cleaning off the mud to reveal her find, Liana had thought herself the luckiest girl in the village. Upon returning home, her Mother and Father had seemed a little less excited about her mirror than she had, but Liana had not let their sullen responses dampen her mood that day.
Liana’s bedroom was very small, and apart from the narrow bed and a small crudely made table it contained nothing else of note. The home she lived in was little better and consisted of just a few rooms. Apart from her own bedroom, her parents had one a little bigger, and the rest was classed as living space. A small stove and stone sink took up one corner, and a well-worn table with four chairs filled up most of what remained. The only other piece of furniture was a tall built-in cupboard that was used to keep their bowls, spoons and a small store of food.
As with all human families, Liana was an only child. After she had been born her mother was made to drink something the Dark Elves call the Blood of Saedor. From what Liana knew this apparently stopped human women from having any more children and just another way in which they kept the population under control. Although Liana always tried to do the right thing by her parents and those that lived in the village, she could not help but think they did not live their lives, but merely existed to serve. With her own future soon to be decided at the reaping, Liana had started having doubts about what she should do. If not selected she would be expected to return home and stay with her parents until such time she was paired off with one of the local boys. She would be expected to have a child, and continue to work the land so others could come and steal away half of their food every harvest, leaving them with barely enough to survive.
While Liana had heard rumours of humans that lived free from the oppression of the Dark Elves, she did not really know if they were true. She had often spent many an hour pondering over this very subject while working and thought that if they had been accurate, then surely people would just go and live there instead. When bringing up the subject with her parents, they had quickly and abruptly told her to stop such talk, telling her that spreading such rumours would see her in big trouble. In a way, it was this lack of belief from her own parents that saddened her. The fact they had given up and accepted a life of misery and hard-labour to serve others rather than even try to find out about these free-humans, to see if they existed or not. It was this lack of self-belief that had driven a wedge between Liana and her Mother and Father. While she still cared for both, the idea of living her life as they did was not something she wished for.
While dreaming of such places where humans were free was one thing, Liana knew that if she were selected at the reaping, then her future would be decided for her anyway. Whether that future would be working in the city of the Dark Elves or being sent to one of their training camps, it was still not her own choice. Worst of al
l, as a young woman, Liana could be selected and find herself sent to the castle at Gashek. Apparently, while the Dark Elves thought themselves superior beings, they did not seem to mind using human women, especially young ones, for their own pleasures; a fate Liana had sworn she would never accept.
After bidding her parents a good morning and eating a measly breakfast consisting of a single dried cracker, Liana headed to the tool shed in the village to collect her spade. Today she would need to continue her work in the field, digging shallow trenches for the seed potatoes to be planted. With the soil around Tepton not being particularly good for grain crops, much of what they grew was root based, with carrot, turnip, beets and parsnips being the most successful. Any grain they had to make bread had to be traded with other villages and hence was at a premium. While they did have a few animals in the village, just four goats they used for milking and a dozen sheep that grazed on the small field set as pasture supplying them with wool, meat was considered a luxury and something Liana had only eaten a couple of times in her entire life. As a result, those that lived in Tepton lived on a diet of dried crackers, and vegetable stews for the best part, with the occasional variation every now and then if another village wished to trade.
With the sun already up and Liana struggling with her digging, she looked up and gazed around. Three others were working the same field as she was, while she could see several more on the next one over. Every day the same thing, if they weren’t digging they were planting, watering, weeding and then harvesting and repeating over and over. One crop came out, and another went in, an endless rotation and Liana decided there and then, that this was not the future she wanted. Her parents may be willing to accept this miserable existence as the life they deserved, but she wasn’t willing to. After the reaping next week, she would make her own destiny. Perhaps even seek out these free-humans who lived as they wanted and not how the Dark Elves said you should.
With her rebellious thoughts in mind, Liana continued her digging, no longer feeling the aches and pains of earlier. The more she thought about all the things in life she would never be allowed to do if she just accepted the same fate as her parents, the more she wanted. Liana even considered avoiding the reaping but realised doing so would only cause trouble for others, as anyone not attending a reaping could expect harsh reprisals. At best the person not attending could get a public flogging, but if that person could not be found, then the parents would be punished instead. Moreover, whichever village or town that person came from would then have to forfeit another ten percent of its yield to the authorities as a punishment.
Using her forearm to wipe the sweat from her brow, Liana paused and looked at the small mark upon it. Placed there just after her birth, it consisted of a small symbol followed by six numbers. What they meant she had no idea, but it was something every human had, and apparently each was unique and registered with the authorities. Liana had assumed some of the numbers must relate to her year of birth, and was how those in power knew who should be attending the reapings. After taking a deep breath, Liana gripped the spade back in her hard calloused hands and continued with her digging.
Feeling tired and weary, Liana was glad when the sun had passed its zenith, and the shout came for them to take a break. After pushing her spade into the soil and leaving it to stand up by itself, she slowly walked towards the village well. Here, she would be allowed a short rest as well as to drink deeply from the cool waters brought up from its depths in the wooden pail. Her mid-day food would consist of the half a carrot she had saved from yesterday in addition to another cracker. While not a feast in any sense of the word it would still be more than most would be eating.
Selecting a quiet spot around the side of one of the homes in the village, and one that was shaded from the sun, Liana nibbled at the small cracker she had been handed at the well. Dry and rather tasteless, they made up a large part of the villager’s diet, and was something she was now accustomed to eating; after all, any food was better than none. Liana had just finished her cracker and pulled the half-eaten carrot from her pocket when she was joined by an unwelcome guest. A young man just a year older than herself who went by the name of Oswald decided to join her. Passed over at the previous year’s reaping, Oswald was far from a handsome young man, at least in Liana’s opinion. Moreover, as he was a similar age to her, Liana had begun to wonder whether this could be the person she could well end up with after her own selection had taken place. With her own reaping due very soon and the likelihood that she would be expected to return to Tepton to live out her days there, Oswald probably thought he was in with a chance. With dark greasy looking hair and a face that could turn milk sour, this was not a young man Liana liked.
Although Oswald had never actually done anything to harm her, Liana had often caught him staring her direction, something that made her skin crawl, and now he was sat beside her she felt no different.
“Hot day isn't?” he said making small talk, before munching on the cracker in his hand.
“Is it?” I hadn’t noticed,” Liana replied somewhat sarcastically.
“You got your reaping soon?”
“Apparently so,” Liana said shuffling just a little further away as the young man’s body odour drifted her direction.
“Think you’ll be starting a family when you get back here?” Oswald asked.
Liana shuddered, surely this creep was not already thinking of mating with her? She glanced his direction, although regretted it as he noticed her looking and cast her what she presumed was a smile.
“Perhaps I’ll get selected for something!” Liana eventually said leaning away from him just a little bit further.
Oswald chuckled, “Nah! Not been anybody from Tepton picked at a reaping for years. You’ll be back here,” he added with another grin of that repulsive looking thing he called a face.
The thought of eating anything else with Oswald present turned her stomach, and so Liana decided to keep her small piece of carrot until tomorrow. Carefully placing it back in her pocket, she then picked up her wooden beaker and finished her drink of water. Gulping down as quickly as she could just so she would not have to spend any more time than was necessary, in the company of Oswald.
“Where you going?” the young man asked as she got to her feet. “We got a little longer yet. I was hoping we could talk a bit more.”
“Ah! Would love to Oswald but I need to go and pee,” she replied, saying the first thing that came into her head as an excuse.
Before Oswald could say anything else, Liana quickly darted off and around the corner of the building before exhaling loudly. Although she didn’t really need to, Liana thought as the idea was in her head, sitting in the privy was still better than having to sit with Oswald. Heading over to the small outbuilding beside her house, Liana glanced back just to make sure Oswald wasn’t following her, not that she thought even he was that weird.
Chapter 2.
Liana had spent the morning working in the fields around Tepton as she usually did. However, now the shout had been given for Mid-day break, work for her at least was over for the next day or two; maybe more if she could commit to not coming back to the village. After eating her small, meagre lunch and going back to her room, she stood just looking around at what she owned. Nothing! Was the truth of it. Aside from her small piece of mirror, was there anything really worth coming back to Tepton for? She shook her head and walked out, picking up the small water container and food package her mother had left out for her. Today Liana would travel to Sarton, where she would have to stay the night, to be ready in the morning for her reaping.
Passing the other derelict looking homes in the village, affording them little more than a glance, Liana headed up the narrow track to set out on her journey. Sarton was a good half day's walk away, and somewhere she needed to be before nightfall. Staying out in the wilderness was not an option, at least not for someone as inexperienced as her. While being out alone in the forests and wooded areas between her village and Sarton
did not concern her, what prowled around during the hours of darkness did.
While few people had ever seen them, it was said that when the Dark Elves arrived on the shores of the human lands, they released several different types of wild animals. All of which were carnivorous, and apparently not impartial to a little human flesh. Whether these stories were true or just there to scare people to ensure they stayed in their towns and villages, Liana was not ready to find out. As a result, she picked up her pace just a little before glancing over her shoulder to see that her village was already out of sight.
Although it would have been nice to travel with others, Liana was the only one of age this year, and so the journey was hers alone to take. Those who lived in the larger settlements may have had three or four from the same place going, but alas that was not the case for her. Of course, it could have been worse, had she been born a few months earlier she would have qualified for the previous year’s reaping and had to travel with Oswald; a sobering thought indeed.
Liana, like most of the villagers, had very little time for travelling, being as most of their days were spent toiling in the fields. Although she had left the village before, the trip to Sarton would be by far the furthest she would ever have travelled. The only other occasion of her leaving Tepton had been when much younger with her father. Back then they had a surplus of vegetables with which to trade, with two of the neighbouring settlements, and she had tagged along on the journey. Her father and another man had used a hand cart to transport the goods and had managed a deal that had seen them return with several large of cuts of salted meat. Liana thought back to the first time she had savoured the taste, the strange texture in her mouth, and she had loved every minute of it. Such a shame that after being divided up among the other villagers, there was so little of it to eat.
Reign of the Dark Elves: Book One : The Sorcerer Page 1
