Of Dark Elves And Dragons Read online

  OF DARK ELVES AND DRAGONS.

  Greg Curtis.

  Copyright 2011 by Greg Curtis.

  Kindle Edition.

  Dedication.

  This book is dedicated to my mother Ruth Curtis and my sister Lucille Curtis, my biggest supporters, harshest critics and all round cheer team, and without whom this book would not have been written. It’s also dedicated to my father Allen Curtis, gone too soon but not forgotten.

  Chapter One.

  “Bull scat!”

  Alan was relaxing peacefully in the garden, enjoying the sunshine and the sensation of a full belly gurgling happily away, breathing in the delicate scent of the fresh wild flowers wafting through the air, when he was almost overcome by the sudden overpowering feeling of fear. It was the terror of a horse and riders galloping madly through the woods as they in turn spotted something frightening giving chase and gaining ground.

  He’d felt the horse and riders in their panicked flight for some time if only faintly; the fear and desperation were difficult emotions to block out even a league or more away, but being so distant he’d only hoped that their pursuers weren’t going to catch them since there was little he could do. Now suddenly their fear had become so much louder, so much more strident that he knew they were going to be caught. Actually he only knew it because they believed that they were; they’d heard or seen something and they were panicking. Ironically enough, even as they thought death was approaching swiftly he knew that they were actually getting nearer to safety with every passing minute. From the way their terrified thoughts were becoming so much louder in his, he knew that they were much closer than before. They would be with him soon, and he would not allow them to be killed. He didn’t allow murder, not in his home.

  Doubtless in their panic they’d taken a wrong turn on the trail somewhere and instead of passing straight through the Haellor forest on their way to the north eastern provinces of Gaulda, they were heading north west to the elven province of Soolleni Woods by the back trail. All being well, they would reach the city of Nightfire within a couple of days. Moreover the fact that he could feel them with such intensity meant both that they were already far closer then he’d anticipated, and that the ones pursuing them were as well. Soon he was going to have uninvited and very unwanted guests; some wolves lost in the frenzy of the chase as well as a number of men who’s evil and blood lust made his skin crawl. Together they raced after their prey and unknown to them straight toward him.

  There was going to be trouble.

  Alan sighed, knowing that regardless of anything else, they would all be at his front door within a matter of minutes as the trail led straight past his front yard. It was time to act to protect the victims and himself both, especially since shortly after the horse and riders had passed him the hunters would arrive. They would not be friendly.

  Still he would be ready for them. While to a stranger he would have looked like any other young man, albeit a trifle fitter and stronger than most as his years of training with weapons had made him a true soldier, he was far more dangerous than they could have imagined. Beneath his dark sunburnt skin, chest full of wiry muscles, and weathered face lay the soul of a powerful wizard. He was ready for them, and then some.

  Grabbing his trusty silver infused long sword and parrying blade from the cottage’s balcony rail where he’d left them hanging in their scabbards and belt only an hour before, he strapped them on firmly, just in case. He didn’t plan on using them, except perhaps as a very last resort, but he was always prepared. A lesson his father had taught him well and despite the fact that he was a powerful wizard, he could use most martial weapons too. Daily practice had kept his reactions fast and accurate. He was already wearing his silver and bronze light armour. He had been from the first moment he’d felt the pursued fleeing through his woods and realised he wouldn’t have had time to don it later if they did turn up on his doorstep. He’d also already summoned his magic to him. That left just the basic defences to see to.

  “All’owee jara.” The ancient elven spell was almost second nature to him by then, and with a simple wave of his hand his handsome and well-built cottage, once his family’s summer home, was transformed into a rude peasant’s shack surrounded by scrub, while he himself changed from a tall athletic and well-armed half elven man, into an elderly peasant farmer supporting himself with a hoe. The sort of person no one would bother with, in theory. In truth though, nothing had changed, it was only a spell of concealment and illusion. But it was a good one and had always worked well to date, mainly because no one was interested in peasants or their rude shacks and no one was looking for him.

  Barely a couple of minutes later the horse and rider passed through the last of the great pines, redwoods and cedar trees that made up the Haellor Forest and burst out into the sunlight of his clearing, surprising him. It wasn’t their sudden arrival in the clearing that caught him off guard though, it was their identity.

  The rider was a woman, part elven if he wasn’t mistaken from the points on her ears, but also part human like him, a none too common combination, and wearing the livery of the royal guard of Calumbria, the nearby human kingdom to the south. As further proof if it was needed, her horse’s saddle was strapped down over a riding blanket bearing the same livery, and only a royal guard would dare ride one of their highly trained and well-bred steeds. That made her a relatively important personage in the kingdom. The royal guards were all from good families, and as befitted anyone charged with defending the court and the Baron, well trained and schooled. The sort of personage whom no one should be chasing.

  The woman though wasn’t alone. In front of her - actually she was bent nearly double over her in the saddle - sat a child, a young girl who couldn’t have been more than five or six years old, who she was obviously protecting. A frightened human child. That was as much as he had time to take in as the rider saw him, a broken down old peasant in a rude vegetable patch, leaning on a hoe as far as she knew, and guided the horse directly towards him.

  “Who are you knave?” She screamed the challenge at him, even as she was bringing the beige mare to an urgent halt in front of him, and though she hadn’t brandished her sword, he knew she would have had she thought it necessary. She simply believed she was due his obedience and that he would comply. Perhaps she was right, in as much as he would do so. It would return the peace to his home quickest.

  “Alan my lady. A humble trapper and woodsman at your disposal.” He even managed a shaky bow to her, though he hated showing obeisance to anyone. But it went with the disguise. No actual peasant would ever have dared to not bow to her. It seemed to be enough for her, and instantly her questions were gone and replaced with tiredness and pain. By the looks of things she’d been riding hard and for a long time, maybe all the way from the castle itself, and her horse showed the signs of hard riding as well. He could see the breath blasting from the mare’s nostrils in explosive bursts and the steam floating up off her body as her sweat evaporated in the still cool spring air.

  “You need to flee. Not more than ten minutes behind us are the dogs of the Baron Umber and his huntsmen. They will not spare your life.” Her words surprised him, but not as much as he would have liked them to. If what she said was true then she was right by most normal definitions. The Baron’s huntsmen were little more than barbarians and cut throats especially well trained in tracking, and their dogs were wolves, packs of them trained to hunt down and tear apart their prey, and any others who were unfortunate enough to get in their way.

  As a force they were the stuff of legend and a terror in the night, as the Baron used them as his personal enforcers, to destroy his enemies and occasionally to have a little sport with the peasants. The only problem wa
s that the Baron Umber was already the ruler of Calumbria. Why would he be sending his enforcers after his own royal guard? And why of all places, deep into the Haellor forests? Even they surely knew that the forest was hallowed ground. Off limits to those of evil heart. He thought he’d made that clear the last time the Baron’s men had been so foolish as to enter his lands.

  “My lady?”

  “The court is broken, the council dissolved, its members dead, murdered, and the poxy Baron has claimed the ancient throne of Calumbria in his own name! He is no longer happy sharing his power with others, and his huntsmen are busy killing all who might object and the witnesses too. You need to flee. Now!” With no more than that she pressed her heels into her exhausted horse’s flanks, and galloped off madly once more along the forest trail. Her duty to him was done, he had been warned, and she clearly had to protect the little girl, whoever she was, as well as herself. Peasants would have to look after themselves.

  He watched her as she galloped off down the trail, heading for the lands of the Soolleni Woods and Nightfire, though he suspected she didn’t realize that yet. She was too busy fleeing and worrying about what was behind her to concern herself about what lay ahead. But the elves of Soolleni Woods were a good people, a decent elven nation, well able to protect themselves from a few hunters, and though as a stranger, even one of part elf blood she might not be truly welcome among them, she would be safe among them for a time. It was time to worry about himself. Not that he really needed to worry, only to prepare.

  He could have simply hidden. He could have made the cottage and himself completely unseen to the human eye and animal senses both. It was the simplest solution, but it would have been wrong. That would have left the woman and child to the huntsmen’s blood-lust and they would have been upon them within the next few hours at the most, long before they reached the safety of the elves.

  Such self-serving cowardice would go against everything he had been taught, and while he might never have taken the vows of a knight, in his heart, in his every bone and sinew he held their values dear. Courage, honesty, justice, service and purity. To have saved himself at their expense would have been unthinkable, and were his father still alive he would have been ashamed of such thoughts.

  Besides, these woods, this great forest and all those who lived within it, were his home, and he wanted none of evil hearts and savage disposition running through them. Especially not the Baron’s huntsmen. They would kill the local creatures for sport, ravage the trees for firewood, murder and loot any innocent travellers passing by, and destroy the peace and harmony of these lands with their poisoned souls. He couldn’t allow that. Not on his door step. Not again. Once before they had dared to come to his home, and he had told them then; never again.

  “Fei Na!” With a gesture he removed the spells of illusion from him and his home. For what he was about to do, he wanted the huntsmen to know they faced certain defeat, and to learn, or relearn fear so that they would not return. Besides, he was proud of his cottage. It might not be a palace or some grand mansion such as the nobles would live in, but it was comfortable and homely, and well appointed. Anyway, soon it would seem a palace.

  There were no dirt floors in his home, no rough and patched sidings or rotten thatched roof. Clad with carefully carpentered weather boards, painted white with a dark grey slate roof and large glass windows in every room, it was well built, and well maintained. And with the ornate and carefully tended flower gardens which he kept, it was as pretty as any palace. It was roomy too. The main room in which he spent most of his time could have sat a dozen people in comfort, and each bedroom could have held two family sized beds, while the deck, which actually circled the entire cottage, was large enough to put more beds on if need be, and all of them kept dry by the vast overhanging roof.

  Add to that the wooden support beams, white balcony rails and balustrades, the small watch tower built right into the centre of the cottage from which he could watch anyone approaching from all sides of the clearing, the cobbled path leading to the front door past the two duck ponds he’d built with a tiny water fall between them, the carefully sculptured rock furniture which he’d shaped just to give him some outdoor seating and last but not least the beautiful white pergola to one side, and at least in his mind the cottage started to look more like a fairy home than that of a mortal man. Of course, it wasn’t enough like one for the moment as demon spirits such as he was pretending to be didn’t live in cottages, but wizards might, and he wanted to keep them guessing.

  A few more spells of illusion transformed his pretty if humble cottage into a true fairy castle, with glistening turrets and a magical moat in which sea serpents might play. The garden and pergola began to shine with a light all their own as he covered them with hanging sculptures and rivers of coloured glass, while high in the air above them the rocs glided freely.

  Although he’d never actually seen a fairy castle with his own eyes, it looked very like the ones that he’d seen pictures of in the many tomes in his library, and as illusions went, it was most convincing. Hopefully the huntsmen would think that too in the brief time they had to take it in before they began to learn the true meaning of fear and suffering.

  “Accla ro, somee fal, lee ala pril!” With a series of gestures and words of ancient elvish command, he began setting up his defences, magical wards, spells of confusion and control, enchantments of fire and light, sorcerous traps and summonings of elementals. Some days it paid to be a powerful wizard and this was one of them. It would be a long time before any huntsmen dared return to his lands. Then again he’d thought the same the last time they’d foolishly come near him, but apparently they’d forgotten his lesson. Now it was time to make sure of their education.

  Though he’d had a full ten maybe even fifteen minutes between when the rider left and when the first of the dogs arrived, it was scarcely enough, and he was still putting the finishing touches on his web of wizardry when the first of the great mastiffs broke through the forest, saw him and started making tracks for him. Behind it another two dozen of its wolf like pack heard its cry of triumph as it saw their prey, and started howling in the distance, even as they too ran for him with all they were worth.

  The war dogs were a terrifying sight, more so when they finally made it out in to the open. There were maybe two or three dozen howling, slavering monsters. Half dogs half wolves, they were the size of small ponies, and had bared their teeth as they growled and rushed him with savage intent. And even though Alan knew he had everything under control, they still bothered him for a few heartbeats. The Baron used such creatures for a reason; they spread terror as well as death, and more than anything else he wanted the people to fear him. Then he released the first of his wards, and the worry left him as did the threat they posed.

  With a single gesture of his hand, the war dog pack suddenly degenerated into a frenzied free for all, as they all suddenly realized that their prey was their fellow pack mate, and promptly started tearing into each other with a savagery no natural animal could ever know. It was perhaps a cruel way to deal with the pack but it was effective, especially when more and more of their pack kept arriving all the time, and he knew the animals had to be destroyed. Not just to protect himself and others, but to preserve the balance of nature.

  A natural wolf pack would have hunted in harmony with their environment. They would have hunted enough to live on and no more, and they would have taken the weak and the sick and left the fit alone to carry on the next generation. These poor creatures had been raised from pups to be bloodthirsty, reckless and powerful and would have attacked and killed everyone and every animal they met. Their need for food ran a distant second to their need to rend and kill. Killing them was a sorrow for him but he knew they could not have been retrained and they would never have found a place in the natural world. It was the best he could do for them and the world.

  Several minutes later as the last of the hounds were fighting and dying, the first of the hunters broke throug
h into the clearing and saw him and their hounds, and then like any normal well trained enemy soldier, immediately fired an arrow at him. The arrow missed naturally enough. The wards of wind that encircled him sent every arrow off course as quickly as they left the bow, a sensible precaution in Alan’s view even if the huntsman didn’t understand that. Instead of worrying about what else he might do, Alan spent the time studying his new foe.

  Unfortunately the huntsman was everything Alan had always been led to believe of such people. Everything the last bunch had been. More a barbarian than a man, he was dressed in furs and crude leather armour, carried a disturbing array of dark steel weapons including swords and knives as well as his long bow, and his clothes such as they were, were covered with dried blood. Most grizzly of all, the finger bones of too many unfortunate men and women, the trophies of his kills, were strung around his neck in a grisly necklace.

  Such an adornment was said to be a mark of pride for the huntsmen, as if murder and killing could ever be such. This one had killed a lot of people, and by the looks of things he was very proud of it indeed. He was also determined to kill Alan, even as he saw his arrows miss and surely knew something was wrong, and he screamed his rage at being thwarted. But he wasn’t a fool, and instead of charging madly in with sword held high, he waited for his fellow huntsmen before committing himself to battle. Perhaps he’d learned caution from the dogs. Maybe he was just confused and wanted some directions. Either way it wouldn’t save him.