Elvenshore: 03 - Elf's Bane

by Clark Graham

  When the group crested the hill, they halted their horses and sat and watched the destruction in silence.

  After having traveled all night, the villagers of Vil Harben finally came through the forest and had arrived at Vil Mawe. They were scratched up from beating back the branches they had continually come across in the last seven days. They were also dirty, tired, and hungry. The villagers were surprised to see the beginnings of a moat around the town. Elf warriors were hard at work in constructing it.

  Varian had his men working day and night. They had dug a ditch and filled it with oil, behind that he had decided to build a moat and fill it with sea water. He would have planks over the moat to reach the ditch. When the monster came they would light the oil then run back over the planks to the village and pull the planks back.

  It was another line of defense to the town. Varian’s main problem now was all of the refugees. He had eleven hundred and now, just as he had gotten rid of three hundred and fifty only to have three hundred more of them from Vil Harben walk into camp. With the wagons of wounded expected any day, he was going backwards in the number of refugees.

  Despite his frustrations, Varian was graceful to the new arrivals and got them some food, water and a place to stay while they were waiting for evacuation. He could see the shipwrights working on two more ships and was hoping that they would be done soon.

  After riding around the outside of the wall at the Capital, Istuin entered back into the gates. He had been taking a survey of the weak points of the wall. Although he knew that the Trolls would attack the point nearest to the mountain. It would be hard to get through the live black oak of the walls. They had grown together and there was hardly a spot that one could stick a knife blade between the trees.

  Istuin was satisfied with the outside, he now watched his men preparing timbers to reinforce any spots that the Trolls damaged. It had worked well in Morgus Tier. They had held out several days longer that way. With stronger walls, they should last a longer time in the Capital. There was no thought to actually winning the war, just delaying the attack on the coast.

  The irony was not lost on Istuin, that he was now commanding the Captains that used to be commanders over him. They were true soldiers about it, to his relief; they were not complaining about the situation and they were obeying orders.

  When he had finished his inspections he went to report to the Chancellor.

  Kolis was at his usual spot, looking out of the balcony window when Istuin walked into the chamber. “We are as ready as we can be; the wall is strong and will last through a lot of pounding.”

  “Good,” Kolis replied without turning around. “We have to give those at Vil Mawe as much time as possible to get those people out.”

  “Is there anything else?” Istuin asked.

  “It occurs to me that neither one of us would ever have attained these positions, at this time, if circumstances were normal. We are throw- away leaders. The others don’t want to watch the destruction of our villages and our culture. Lanor wasted his life in a solo attack on a Troll; Armurous took the Chancellorship only to prevent the idiot Mauric from getting it. When that threat passed he gave the position to a teamster. It will be our heritage to die here, defending a city in a hopeless cause.”

  Istuin didn’t like the Chancellor’s fatalistic attitude, but, having fought the beast before, could not argue with it, either.

  Kolis continued, "when we see what this has been all about, we will look back and see wine. Yes, wine, we wanted a better wine, like the wine we used to have in Elvenshore. To be able to get a better grape we ignored the wise counsel of the Human we brought to the Capital for the sole purpose of counseling us. We moved to the slopes of the mountain. Now we watch the world being destroyed because we wanted a better wine."

  The Battle of Fernar Darus Begins

  The next night the war horns sounded alerting the Capital of the approaching enemy. Kolis watched from his balcony as the club and torch carrying monsters approached. They had been described to him, but he had never seen one. The description still didn't prepare him for seeing the beasts for the first time. The enormity of the Trolls was beyond description. The ugliness and ferocity of the look in their faces as they came near the wall was terrifying.

  Kolis had been left alone in his chambers. Istuin was down at the wall overseeing the defense. It was an almost ear splitting crack when the first blow of a Troll club hit the wall. Kolis jerked back, despite not being close to the action.

  He heard men barking commands and running to the opposite side of the wall to shore it up if it started to give way. Soon the loud crack of clubs against the fence was happening every two to three seconds. Archers were trying to distract the Trolls by shooting them, but it was having no effect.

  Istuin was moving his troops to where the attack was. His ears were ringing from the sound of the clubs smashing against wall. Two of his archers had already been knocked off the battlements from the shaking of the wall. Men were already attending to them. The top of the Trolls’ heads were even with the top of the wall. The original builders of the city could never have imagined an enemy so large.

  IstuinHe was constantly looking for signs of the fence starting to crack, but it was holding strong. Just when it looked like they would going to be safe against the attack, the Trolls started trying to light the fence on fire. The living wood of the fence didn't take to fire easily, but with what the Trolls had chipped away by their constant pounding did start to burn. The Elves on the wall responded by dumping pails of water on the fire. This caused them to be exposed at the top of the wall and the Trolls started swinging their clubs at the Elves who were putting out the fires. Several were of them were hit.

  When one man would fall, Istuin would bring up another to the wall to take his place on the battlements. The attack lasted three and a half hours, and then they were gone. As they were leaving, even before they vanished over the hill, Istuin and several of his men rode out and put out the last of the fires.

  "That went well," Kolis said when Istuin came in to report.

  Istuin shook his head, "I was hoping we would just sit tight and watch them pound on the wall and wait till they left. The wall is damaged beyond what I thought was possible, and I have eleven dead and eighteen wounded."

  "Will the wall hold?"

  "No, it will eventually give way, but probably not tonight," Istuin responded. "I didn't think that it would catch fire like it did. The fired did more damage than the clubbing did."

  "We must stand here as long as possible; we have to make time for the exodus of the people."

  "Yes, Sir."

  The men of Darnic Tewl hid when they saw that the monsters were coming their way. They had been on the way back to the Capital, when they heard the attack. After the attack the Trolls started their walk back to the mountain. After the beasts passed the Humans by, Aron's men rode up to the gate. The rattled Elves of the city took awhile to open the gates to the Humans.

  Darnic rode up the road towards the Chancellor’s chambers and then dismounted and went in. Istuin was still there when he arrived.

  Darnic was surprised to see yet another man wearing the Chancellor’s robe. "I am Darnic,” he said, even though everyone knew who he was. He was hoping the new Chancellor would introduce himself.

  "Kolis is my name." The Chancellor gave him a short bow, "I have heard about all of the things you are doing to help my people and I thank you."

  Darnic gave him a slight bow and then said, "The people of Vil Harben have made it to Vil Mawe, but you will never get all those people across the large water. There are around fifteen hundred waiting to leave. You are running out of time."

  "Tell me something I don't know," replied Kolis.

  Darnic was not done. "You have two ships that are almost complete at Vil Mawe.What if you loaded them and took them to the back side of the Motherland? You could then transport them past the mountain and then go overland to the swampland and safety."

  Kol
is was delighted by the idea, but there were problems which Istuin brought up, "There are no docks on the back side of the Far Shore. The water is shallow there, so we would have to row skiffs from a long distance to get there. It would take a long time."

  Darnic replied, "Would it not take less time than the journey to Elvenshore?"

  "I think we shall try it. If it proves to be impractical then we continue the exodus to Elvenshore. We will take the two ships, when they are complete, and make the run towards the back side of the Far Shore. Meanwhile, if the other ships come back, we continue sending them across the Stormy Sea."

  "I will send a rider to Vil Mawe informing them of your decision," Istuin said.

  Kolis turned to Darnic. "We are very grateful for all of your help in this crisis that we brought upon ourselves."

  Darnic just gave him a slight bow and then excused himself.

  A Journey to an Old Home

  Elvenshore

  The Dwarves were having a very hard time with the motion of the ships. They were only two days out and a lot of the Dwarves were lining the rails, while losing the little that they had been able to eat. Sarchise had had an uncle who was a fisherman so he had been out on the sea before. The fishing boat bobbed up and down like a cork in the water, compared to these large Elf ship. They sailed through the ocean waves effortlessly in comparison. The large sails were able to harness even the slightest of breezes.

  Sarchise looked across the vast ocean while enjoying the wind in his hair. They called it the stormy sea, but it was anything but stormy. When he had asked the captain of the ship about it, the captain had confessed that the Elves named it the Stormy Sea to discourage everyone else from following them to the Far Shore.

  Roalig, the commander of the Dwarf troops under Sarchise had tried to hold down his lunch, in front of the troops but now he was along the railing like the others.

  The Captain of the ship said, “They are going to be in no condition to fight when we get there.”

  Sarchise smiled and said, “Give them a battle and they will forget all about the misery of the journey.”

  Fannor thought that the wagon ride to the coast was painful; it was gentle compared to the ride in a Dwarf hand cart. The King's road had not been so bad, but when they got off the road and into the forest, he was miserable. The old road to Santera had been overgrown and now had tree roots and rocks that the cart had to be pulled over. Each time the cart would hit a new obstacle, it would cause pain in the Captain’s bones. They had not fully mended yet.

  The people had wanted Fannor to stay in the tent city until he was better, but as the ranking Elf on Elvenshore, he insisted on going with the first group of settlers, back to the city that was once theirs. Gilead watched his Captain and saw the pain of his face as the Elves struggled to get through the forest. It was a long line of bedraggled refugees that had left South Fort a week ago. The nearness of their old home just made them that more impatient to finish the journey.

  Sadness flooded over them when they first rounded the corner and saw the city for the first time. The gate was still open and the streets had had bonfires lit in the middle of them. Broken furniture and other debris littered the streets.

  Fannor looked up from the cart. "We have returned. It is not the home that we remember, but it is better than living in a tent," he said to all of those within earshot. The people went into their old city with a better humor after that.

  When they finally all inside the city, the first thing that Fannor had his men do was to check all corners of the city. He had them bear lit torches, just in case the evil that had once lived in the Lost City was now in the city of Santera. The search of the city proved that it was safe. He then let the rest of the settlers in.

  It was heartbreaking to see how bad the city was. The Minotaur had left a mess behind them, and then the rebels who possessed the city afterwards had burnt most of the furniture in their big bonfires that were set in the middle of the streets.

  The good news was that the homes were intact and that they would have shelter over their heads. They had been provisioned by the people of the land. One of the first tasks they sat about was planting. The women of the Elves were going to have to do the lion's share of the work, because most of the men that they had with them were the ones that had been wounded in the battles or old ones.

  Those men that had healed sufficiently were the ones that Fannor sent out to do the work of hunting game and finding fruit and the bounties of the forest.

  When they started to settle in, Fannor brought his people together. "We have a new start in an old home. We will thrive as we always have," he said. "We have survived, and by the grace of those who have brought peace to a troubled land, we have our old home again. It's not perfect, but we will make it so."

  The people cheered. Fannor was still feeling the rough road, so they managed to get him into one of the houses and placed cushions on the floor for him to rest on. A healer came along and gave him something to drink to help with the pain. He slept straight through until the next day.

  Gilead had thought of all of the accomplishments of Fannor over the past few weeks. Despite being badly wounded, he had negotiated their resettlement with the people of the land, settled them in a new home, and gave the people encouragement. Gilead had decided that Fannor should be made Chancellor before some other leader with more authority came to upset the balance of power. He started talking to his fellow Elves about it and everyone liked the idea. They scheduled a vote on it in a week's time.

  The journey of Fawn and Amlius had been a quiet one. She didn't want to talk about what he did and he was not in the best mood. They traveled on in silence. Amlius was getting good at riding horses. She said her goodbye to him at the Ornomac tree and then she headed straight north to the Hidden City to visit her mother. Her shunning had been hard on her, but now that it was over, she was welcome back into the cities of the Valkyrie.

  When the gate of the Hidden City was finally opened, Fawn rushed to the Palace to see her mother. She was shocked to see how frail the once powerful warrior queen had become. She still sat on the throne, but she was only a shell of her former shelf.

  The Queen raised her hand and beckoned her daughter forward. "I am so sorry, I was wrong to do what I did to you. I am so happy for you and Sarchise. It must have been a wonderful wedding. I wish that I could have been there."

  "Oh, Mother, you didn't miss much. King Cazz said something in old Dwarfish that I didn't understand and I nodded my head. He then said something else in old Dwarfish that Sarchise didn't understand. He then talked Sarchise into nodding his head. That was all there was to it."

  "The first Valkyrie wedding after four hundred years, I would have expected more than that!"

  "It is so good to see you, Mother," Fawn said as she hugged her.

  The Battle of Fernar Darus Continues

  The Far Shore

  The nightly attacks of the Capital were taking a toll. It had been a week of it. More and more of the Elf warriors were getting wounded. It was all the more they had to send to the coast, adding woes to their evacuation efforts. In the end Istuin had to request two hundred more men to replace those that he had lost. The ones coming back were feeling that they were being sent to the slaughter and their moralee was very low.

  Istuin was having trouble keeping the Chancellor's spirit up also. The Chancellor was fatalistic about the chances of the Elves remaining in the land or surviving. Night after night Kolis sat looking out his balcony window, waiting for the Trolls to break through and kill him.

  When Istuin arrived at the Chancellor's chamber he reported the latest news of the war. "Two hundred men from Vil Mawe have arrived. I have set them to the task with helping shore up the wall. The two ships that the shipwrights were fixing are finished. We have put Mauric to the task of getting the refugees to the swampland using the ships."

  Kolis turned to look at Istuin. "So you wanted to guarantee failure of the projects so you could divert the ships back
to Elvenshore?"

  "Something like that. Verian is about to kill him anyway, so getting Mauric out of town serves a dual purpose."

  Kolis turned back toward the window, "Those that Verian sent from Vil Mawe must be thinking that this is a death sentence."

  "They drew lots to see who had to go; we got those who lost."

  Kolis smiled despite his dark mood then asked, "How much longer will the wall last?"

  "Not long, today, maybe tomorrow, between the chipping away by the Trolls and the fires, there isn't much left of the wall. We are bracing it, but it's like putting a small cork in a large bottle of wine; it isn't going to hold."

  "Wine; funny you should use that analogy," Kolis said.

  "We will drink a toast of good Elvenshore wine when this is all over."

  Kolis turned to look at Istuin, "Your optimism is misplaced, neither one of us are going to survive this. I am planning on dying right here in this chamber. I think it's up to you decided where you will die before the Trolls decide it for you."

  "You can have your fatalistic attitude between the two of us, but in front of the men I want you to keep everything light. Their moralee is low enough. It does them no good for them to hear how bad it is from their leaders. They already know how bad it is."

  "Are you daring to instruct your Chancellor?" Kolis said with a red face.

  "Yes, Sir," Istuin said and then turned around and walked out of the room.

  As Istuin went about preparing for the night's attack, he kept expecting Chancellor Kolis to come down and relieve him of command, maybe even send him packing. It didn't happen. Istuin just thought that the worst thing you could do to an officer you didn't like was to leave him in the Capital at this point and time. It was akin to a death sentence.

  The enemy had their timing precise. They came at nearly the exact same time every night, and left at nearly the exact same time. Surviving was making it through the hours that they were there. They didn't disappoint this time either; at the expected time, Istuin and his soldiers watched as the Trolls’ torches appeared over the hill.