Kingdom's Forge: Book 01 - Paladin's Redemption

by Kade Derricks

  Dain considered the situation. The staff gave Siam too much reach. He needed to be more aggressive to maneuver the elf close. Up close, his superior strength would work for him.

  Time to change tactics and force the issue.

  He pressed in. He thrust his sword and Siam parried with the staff. He followed up with a combination of rapid attacks from both sword and tomahawk, trying to push the elf back to the arena’s outer edge. If he could trap him there, he might get a few open shots in. Siam, however, seemed to sense the wall behind him, and darted sharply to his left, breaking free of the trap and putting his back to the open area.

  Again Dain pressed the attack, trying to bully the elf into a corner. This time Siam knocked his sword down, pinning it, before reversing the staff up toward his face. The tomahawk barely intercepted the weapon and Siam repositioned himself in the arena’s center.

  Winded, Dain stood off at a distance, trying to catch his breath, until Siam attacked in a flurry. The elf sent quick strikes left and right, high and low, searching for a gap in his defenses. Dain blocked most, but one finally caught him soundly in the ribs. Siam swung hard from the opposite side, going for the knockout. Dain ducked beneath the staff, and instead of slashing with the slow sword’s edge he punched the elf’s stomach with its hilt. Siam recoiled slightly and Dain followed with the hilt of the tomahawk. He drove it into the elf’s unprotected side. A rib shattered beneath his fist and Siam fell back.

  Dain tried to end it there. He began swinging both longsword and tomahawk toward his injured opponent, but Siam blocked each with the runed staff and escaped without further harm.

  Backing out of Dain’s range again, Siam swung the staff. The gem-capped end flashed and unleashed a rolling wave of red and orange fire. The surprise attack washed harmlessly over Dain’s spellshields. He took advantage of Siam’s momentary confusion, dropped his sword, and reached out, and grabbed the staff. With the enchanted ironwood held fast, he stepped close to Siam and kicked his knees out from under him, driving him into the dirt. Dain knelt atop the elf, pinning him in place with his own staff and then placing the tomahawk squarely against his unguarded chest.

  “Yield,” Dain said between gritted teeth. He was breathing hard. A bead of sweat dropped from his forehead onto Siam’s.

  Siam raised both hands, palms open in submission. For the third time in two days, the crowd stood in stunned silence. A great champion, one of their favorites, had been defeated by a human.

  Dain, along with Sera, left the arena and its occupants without acknowledgment.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  King Elam sat alone. He liked to come here, to his private gardens, and rest on the plain wooden bench. He looked out on row after immaculate row of brightly-colored flowers. Roses and tulips grew near yellow honeysuckle vines and green sprigs of mint. He remembered a time, long-distant now, when his wife still lived and his children had been small.

  Verna would often chase all three with her watering pot while Elam sat on this same bench, watching and laughing. He remembered how the earthy compost smell blended with her perfume and the flowers’ sweet fragrances. She loved her gardens and had insisted on tending them herself, rarely taking help from their servants. Elam longed for those simpler times. He missed his wife daily and had all through the long years after her death. How different things might be if she had lived? How different might their children be?

  Children need both their parents.

  His father, Ulric, an Earl and not a true king, had been born in a great and powerful golden elf nation. The Golden had controlled a vast country of fertile green fields and rich mines. They had possessed the world’s finest healers and scholars and artisans and mages. Trade routes from a dozen lands crossed through their cities, spreading wealth and knowledge to all. The strength of their armies had been legendary. It was lost now, all of it. Their former had nation crumbled decades ago when stricken with a prolonged drought.

  Only his father, an Earl instead of a king, had possessed enough foresight to see that the drought was unnatural, brought on by the Skree, and therefore would have no end. Misshapen beasts, part man, part insect, the Skree spread their arid sands even as their spells dried up his homeland.

  The legendary army had fought valiantly but won few real victories and no lasting ones. For every Skree killed, two more rose up in its place. Like a colony of ants or a swarm of bees, they overran the kingdom’s defenses and the nation’s fertile fields dried up and blew away. Ulric alone understood that there would be no peace, no compromise, and no way to defeat the enemy. Acting in that knowledge, the Earl sent Elam and half of his province to seek a new homeland for the Golden.

  Elam had led the people west and north on a yearlong march before finally arriving in this valley. They battled through demons, orcs, and raiders of every race during their exodus. Of the thousands he had started out with, less than a third lived. To survive, he convinced the local wood elves to allow them to settle into the upper valley and in return offered support in their unending war with the mountain-dwelling orc tribes.

  After two years, their foothold firmly established, he sent an elite portion of the army back to retrieve his father and any remaining golden elves. The troops had returned with Ulric and another ten thousand survivors, reporting that their former home was now a sea of dry sand spanning hundreds of miles. Great shifting dunes had swallowed up all traces of the once mighty nation. It had broken his father’s heart, and perhaps, his mind.

  The Earl believed, wrongly, that to survive the Golden should intermarry and join the wood elves. Ulric had even agreed for Elam to wed one of them. But Elam had known better.

  The wood elves were filth, little better than wild animals. Joining their peoples would destroy his proud race. Their heritage would be lost. So he planned and waited until his anointed wedding day and then had struck quickly, decisively. In one bold stroke he cut down the wood elves’ strongest warriors and assured his people’s salvation. He would take the valley. He would forge a new empire. Elam’s legacy, his greatest wish, was to leave a strong, wealthy, and united land for his descendants. His father had been unable to perceive it, and though it grieved Elam, he’d ordered the Earl’s execution to keep him from interfering with that glorious vision.

  Since then, Elam’s reign had expanded ever outward from Mirr, first to the north where the Wessen river split near the foot of the mountains, and then pushing south into wood elf territory.

  At first he was successful, and each summer he swallowed up large swaths of land, but his more recent campaigns had proven disappointing. Five years ago, his advances south stalled at the old road. He could push no further. Constant orc attacks from the north divided his forces and the troublesome wood elves fought back with their hit-and-run raids on his outposts. He found the lack of progress frustrating. If only he could concentrate his efforts on one foe or the other.

  He had hoped for his kingdom’s renewed growth once his sons were old enough to carry on the battle, but they needed experience first. They needed to see war. No amount of training or lectures could prepare them to lead an army. Elam had plans to give Gallad and Haldrin each a regiment and assign them to defend sections of the border. His sons would learn how to lead, how to be strong, and how to kill.

  But Haldrin was dead now. At the hands of a pitiful human. The wood elves may have helped, Koren hadn’t found that out for certain. They had surely aided in his escape.

  As yet, the reward for his son’s killer had produced no results. Elam knew the man’s name, knew where he had gone after killing Haldrin, and yet the human remained alive and free. Scouts had searched Galena top to bottom for days now and still no trace of him surfaced.

  Those that returned, after speaking with some humans who knew this Dain, painted a clearer picture of the killer. They brought back word of a tall man with dark hair and green eyes. Heavily muscled, he carried multiple weapons, including a rare short axe. He was reported to use powerful healing spells, having saved
a lone army survivor from a grievous injury.

  News that a survivor existed at all threw Elam into a terrible rage. He had given specific orders that no one, orc or human, was to escape. If the humans discovered that the Golden had finished the battle the orcs started and then taken their gold, they would never meet his price for transporting their precious cargo. Giving the miners back half the shipment had been a stroke of genius from Gallad. Though costly, any suspicions had been thrown well away from the Golden. Better yet it gave the miners hope. Hope that brought more miners and more fees.

  A survivor could change all that. If awakened, he could bring the humans’ wrath down on them. They were weak, these humans, but his kingdom hardly needed more enemies. So far the survivor remained unconscious, according to his spies, and the secret slept with him. Yesterday, Elam set his plan in motion to take care of that dangerous loose end. The orders were sent. Success was certain.

  He had also commanded the scouts back to Galena to mingle among the humans and learn what they could about his son’s murderer. A pair of High Mage Blythe’s apprentices joined them, searching with their spells for some indication of where the human now hid. The group had left days ago, and Elam was eager to learn of their progress.

  To satisfy Koren, he’d turned over two of the failed scouts into her custody as punishment for their failure. In her desperation to find Haldrin’s killer, the princess had driven herself to new depths of depravity. He knew she had captured and tortured at least one of Haldrin’s sword instructors—reasoning, in her madness, that if he had better prepared her brother then he would still be alive.

  Elam certainly didn’t look down upon a little torture—he had enjoyed conducting rigorous interrogations in his younger years—but Koren was going too far. Intervention would be necessary if she continued to seek vengeance among her own people. He was desperate to find the human soon, not just to give the wretched creature what he deserved, but also to save his daughter’s sanity.

  Gallad was a different matter entirely. If Koren was obsessed with her brother’s killer, Gallad couldn’t seem to care less. The two had never been close, but his older son had expressed little concern over finding his brother’s killer. The Crown Prince focused himself solely on using the stolen gold to improve the army. He trained his soldiers day and night, preparing to take war to the kingdom’s enemies. And with the orcs now driven back, Gallad was eager to send the army after the wood elf capital of Teran.

  Teran…

  In years past Elam had launched three expeditions to find it. None had returned. The city was shrouded in rumor and mystery. Gallad, though, was convinced that he would succeed where all others had failed.

  Elam prayed he was right. To be fair, previous expeditions hadn’t been half as powerful as what Gallad could now raise. The Golden’s armored troops were far superior to the wood elves’ warriors thanks to better weapons, armor, experience, and dozens of Blythe’s mages who stood ready to combat the wood elf spellcasters. No organized wood elf army had even been seen in years. Only with their cowardly hit-and-run tactics had they stalled the Golden advance southward.

  Footsteps on the garden pavestones intruded into his thinking. Few would dare disturb him here in Verna’s garden, but High Mage Blythe was one of those. He approached Elam and bowed deeply.

  “You may rise, mage. You bring word of the search?”

  “My apologies for disturbing you, my lord, but yes, we have important news in the search for our prince’s killer. I brought my subordinate, Slerian, to make a full report. Forgive me for bringing him unbidden to your garden, but I believed you would prefer to hear his results immediately and from his own lips,” the high mage answered.

  Elam hadn’t noticed the lesser mage trailing in Blythe’s wake. He wasn’t wearing the traditional robed garb, but was dressed instead in simple merchant’s clothing. While Blythe had risen to his feet, the younger spellcaster remained on his knees with his face down.

  “You are the one Blythe sent to the humans to seek out my son’s killer?”

  “Yes, my lord. The High Mage sent me to find Prince Haldrin’s murderer in Galena just days ago.” The young caster’s eyes remained downcast, staring at the pathway.

  “You have news for me then?” Elam asked. His patience was limited today. There was much to be done.

  “My king, I was…unable to locate the killer himself. However, I met a human woman, a priestess, who aided me. She told me he had left just days before I arrived and led me to his former room. I ordered one of the scouts to break inside, where I found a set of arrows that belonged to the murderer. A black, elven arrow with red bindings, one of Haldrin’s, was among them. With the human’s own arrows I was able to track him through the settlement and finally back into your kingdom,” Slerian answered.

  “My kingdom? He’s in my kingdom? How could that be? The bridge guards have been doubled, and now they watch for anyone even remotely fitting the killer’s description. How could he get inside our borders without using the bridge?” He rose to his feet and towered over the kneeling mage. If the killer had already escaped into the west, to Arctanon or Ghent or beyond, the search could take years.

  “I tracked him along a narrow trail far to the south. At the trail’s end, there was a cave that tunneled under the Wessen and into the enchanted lands.” Slerian swallowed audibly.

  “My lord,” Blythe interjected, “we have long suspected the wood elves have used their abilities to create their own hidden crossing. The human used this cave to enter into those lands still held by the wood elves.”

  “Once across the river, I was unable to follow him further,” Slerian continued. “As my lord doubtless knows, the wood elves shroud their land in powerful magics and I lacked the strength and skill to track him further.”

  “Is he still in the enchanted lands?” Elam asked.

  “The trail seemed recent and the priestess confirmed it. I don’t believe he was more than a few days ahead of me.”

  Then the human hadn’t escaped yet. He wouldn’t now, either. Elam’s mind raced. He would triple the patrols along the western border, and Arctanon’s guards were easily bribed. For a dozen gold pieces, they would bring him this Dain if he tried to escape.

  “Blythe, can you track him further yourself?” Elam asked.

  “It won’t be a true tracking spell, not in the shrouded wood elf lands. But with his discarded quiver and aid from a few other mages we could guide the way,” the mage offered.

  Elam nodded.

  “Slerian, you have done well for your people, well for your king,” he said. He put a hand on the young elf’s shoulder. “Now go, and summon Gallad to me. He’s in the great hall meeting with some armor merchants. We have a war to plan.”

  Only one match—the final—was scheduled on the tournament’s last day. Two fighters remained, Dain and Cleeger, and they would meet after twilight to decide the better.

  Dain spent most of the day considering how to defeat the powerful shapeshifter. Over the years, he’d grown confident in his fighting abilities. One-on-one he’d been able to hold his own with the finest fighting men in any mercenary army he’d found himself fighting with. In the Tyber river war he had easily been among the top warriors. He’d come into his own as a commander in that bloody struggle as well. Men had looked to him to for leadership.

  But this…this was different. This wasn’t meeting a foe in battle. This wasn’t leading a squad against ranks of enemies. Facing Cleeger would be like meeting a force of nature itself. Doubt crept into his being, and he willed his mind to be clear as he contemplated his options.

  He had watched Cleeger in an earlier match and been impressed. Unlike the other elves Dain had faced, or any others he’d seen in the tournament, the powerful elf didn’t rely on speed or magic or cunning or skill with weapons, instead he shapechanged into an enormous bear and used brute strength and savagery to smash his opponents. Dain had seen the beast take a full fireblast from a mage at close range and simply shrug
it off. His thick hide seemed impervious.

  Tarol told him that Siam had beaten Cleeger in a previous tournament by shattering the gemstones on each end of his staff against the shapeshifter’s head. The power stored in them had knocked Cleeger cold. But when Siam had defeated him last, Cleeger had fought as a massive wolf. Since revealing his bear form, no one, Siam included, had bested him.

  Dain needed a weakness he could exploit, but none presented themselves.

  Twilight faded away and the brightest stars began to appear as he entered the arena for the last time. The formerly clean dueling surface was tinted a hundred shades of red with the blood of wounded fighters. Blood that he and the formidable Cleeger had spilled to get here.

  Wood elves crowded into every seat, even packing themselves into the aisles to get a glimpse. Dain sensed their energy, felt their excitement. He could not allow himself to get caught up in it, tempting as it was. As the underdog, he needed calmness and clear vision to have even a slim chance at winning.

  At least all his gambling had paid off—in total he now had over a thousand gold pieces to his name. He would also take the tournament’s thousand-coin grand prize, if he defeated Cleeger. Out of his earlier winnings, he placed another hundred gold on himself at six-to-one odds. The gambling house vendor, a white-haired old elf, smiled broadly while taking the wager. A gold crown on his front tooth sparkled at Dain.

  “Confident, eh? Maybe I’ll place a few gold pieces on you myself. Cleeger’s due for a loss, but I don’t know if it’s possible in that bear form of his,” the vendor had offered.

  “Guess we’ll find out tonight,” Dain had replied.